{"id":470,"date":"2013-08-28T02:54:26","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T02:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=470"},"modified":"2017-04-14T02:31:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T02:31:06","slug":"extended-families-mixed-race-children-and-scottish-experience-1770-1820","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=470","title":{"rendered":"Extended Families: Mixed-Race Children and Scottish Experience, 1770-1820"},"content":{"rendered":"

Extended Families: Mixed-Race Children and Scottish Experience, 1770-1820<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

international journal of scottish literature<\/a><\/em>
\nISSN: 1751-2808
\nISSUE FOUR, SPRING\/SUMMER 2008<\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel A.\u00a0Livesay<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of History
\nDrury University, Springfield, Missouri<\/em><\/p>\n

Daniel Livesay was winner of the 2007 North American Conference on British Studies Prize, Dissertation Year Fellowship for \u201cImagining Difference: Mixed-Race Britons and Racial Ideology in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Three years prior to the ending of the slave trade, Jamaica\u2019s richest and most influential merchant mused on the possible consequences of abolition. Writing to his friend George Hibbert<\/a> in January of 1804, Simon Taylor offered a stark vision of the British imperial economy without slave importation, echoing scores of other pro-slavery writers who preached the financial doom and gloom of a post-abolitionist society. \u00a0Economics, however, were not the only thing on either man\u2019s mind. Hibbert, in a previous letter, had asked Taylor for his thoughts on the future of Jamaica\u2019s white population if fresh supplies of slaves came to a halt. \u00a0He wondered if the colony\u2019s whites could farm sugar themselves and if such back-breaking labour would further stifle the increase of the island\u2019s already meager European population. Throwing off his earlier pessimism, Taylor replied with high hopes for the growth of Jamaica\u2019s white residents.\u00a0 His optimism sprung from a phenomenon he had watched develop over the last two generations: \u2018When I returned from England in the year 1760 there were only three Quadroon<\/a> Women in the Town of Kingston. There are now three hundred, and more of the decent Class of them never will have any commerce with their own Colour, but only with White People. Their progeny is growing whiter and whiter every remove […] from thence a White Generation will come\u2019. \u00a0Taylor had seen all other attempts to increase the white population fail and he believed that this process of \u2018washing the Blackamoor White\u2019 to be the only way to build an effective racial hedge against an overwhelming black majority on the island.<\/p>\n

If miscegenation<\/a> was the answer to Jamaica\u2019s problems, Simon Taylor could claim to be doing his part for the movement. Indeed, he had earned a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for his multiracial family. Not long after arriving in Jamaica with her husband, the new Lieutenant-Governor of the island, Lady Maria Nugent visited Simon Taylor in his Golden Grove estate. She commented in her diary that Taylor was \u2018an old bachelor\u2019 who \u2018detests the society of women\u2019, but she seemed determined to win him over.\u00a0 However, she could not help but register surprise after an evening at Taylor\u2019s estate when \u2018[a] little mulatto girl was sent into the drawing-room to amuse [her]\u2019. Recording the event in her diary, she noted, \u2018Mr. T[aylor] appeared very anxious for me to dismiss her, and in the evening, the housekeeper told me she was his own daughter, and that he had a numerous family, some almost on every one of his estates\u2019. \u00a0Taylor\u2019s sexual activities with slaves and women of colour were not unusual, nor was his attempt to hide them from European eyes.\u00a0 Like many white West Indians at the time, Taylor may have given some favours to his children of colour, but he did not treat them as full members of his family.<\/p>\n

In contrast to Simon Taylor\u2019s inattention to his mixed-race children, John Tailyour, Simon\u2019s cousin, made a significant attempt to provide for his offspring of colour. \u00a0Tailyour originated from Montrose, near Simon\u2019s ancestral home in Borrowfield, and made several unsuccessful attempts at business in the colonies. Forced to abandon his tobacco trade in Virginia at the outbreak of the American Revolution<\/a>, he returned to North America in 1781, but failed to establish himself in New York\u2019s dry-goods market. Rather than return home to Scotland once again, Tailyour ventured to Jamaica at his cousin Simon\u2019s invitation, where he operated as a merchant from 1783 to 1792. With very few white women on the island from which to choose, Tailyour took up residence with an enslaved woman from his cousin\u2019s plantation. The couple eventually had four children together before Tailyour finally decided to return to Scotland in 1792. Rather than leave his children in Jamaica, however, John Tailyour sent at least three of them to Britain for their education and to be brought up in a trade. His conduct toward his mixed-race offspring stands in sharp relief with that of his cousin\u2019s and reveals the complicated attitudes that whites had toward these children…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years prior to the ending of the slave trade, Jamaica\u2019s richest and most influential merchant mused on the possible consequences of abolition. Writing to his friend George Hibbert in January of 1804, Simon Taylor offered a stark vision of the British imperial economy without slave importation, echoing scores of other pro-slavery writers who preached the financial doom and gloom of a post-abolitionist society. Economics, however, were not the only thing on either man\u2019s mind. Hibbert, in a previous letter, had asked Taylor for his thoughts on the future of Jamaica\u2019s white population if fresh supplies of slaves came to a halt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,14647,414,459,8,6940,10],"tags":[4177,4176,154,81,2024,80,153,5330],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-economics","category-family","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-uk","tag-daniel-a-livesay","tag-daniel-alan-livesay","tag-daniel-livesay","tag-england","tag-international-journal-of-scottish-literature","tag-jamaica","tag-scotland","tag-simon-taylor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51738,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/51738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}