This is the third video in a series where John Knox tells the untold story of The Quakers in Barbados focusing in this episode on the wills of the Gallop, Holder and Foster families.
John has recently setup a YouTube channel: @TheUntoldHistoryOfBarbados. It’s about: The Untold History of Barbados – Amerindians, Quakers and Slavery. As John adds to his series of informative videos we will look to share them here on BajanThings.
The wills of Henry Gallop, John Holder, George Foster, his wife Grace and his cousin Thomas
This video presents 5 will extracts from actual wills in the Department of Archives. Henry Gallop’s will shows the Quaker’s link to William Penn when he was in London, before he moved to Pennsylvania in 1681. It allows us to use following will extracts from any testator to identify who was a Quaker in early Barbados.
John Holder’s will shows how Quakers built up the spread of the Gospel from the ground level with meetings at the local level held in Quakers’ houses.
The three Foster wills show that trade with the New England States occurred, and that Pennsylvania came into the picture once William Penn bought it from the King.
Samuel Carpenter was a Quaker merchant who came to Barbados and stayed 8 years before moving to Pennsylvania. I suspect he may have been a relative of Richard Carpenter who died just before Samuel arrived but cannot find the evidence in support. You can google him and see that he held high office in Pennsylvania from 1694.
Thomas Foster’s will also shows how the vault on Hackleton’s Cliff came into being before 1685 and who were its first residents. His will also shows the Todd and Pilgrim family link to the Foster family and it is not surprising to discover as we shall see that the Quaker Burial Vaults close to St. Philip’s Church include a Pilgrim vault, the “P” and a Jones vault, the “J” in which the coffin of Benjamin Todd Jones is to be found.
One of John Todd’s daughters married a Jones from who Benjamin Todd Jones was descended. His year of death was 1792, more than a century after John Todd departed this earth …. more on that later.
Click here to see the all videos in the series where John Knox tells the untold story of The Quakers in Barbados.
Some background:
John Knox is a mapping aficionado and is merging his love of engineering with his love of Barbados history in this series of YouTube videos starting with the Quakers in Barbados. These videos merge maps, place names, on-the-ground research, wills, deeds and trade to document the untold history of the Quakers in Barbados.
John was awarded a Barbados Scholarship in 1975 and Dutch Government Fellowship in 1979. He holds a BSc in Electronic Engineering and Physics and a Masters in Electronic Engineering. He worked at Intel in Barbados from 1980 and gained experience at their facilities in the US and Far East.
When Intel in Barbados closed in 1987, he joined a start-up company providing technical services, building services engineering and product development. John went out on his own in 1995 concentrating on product development mapping and modelling Barbados. From 2002 to 2007 he also taught various courses in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
John started hiking with Richard Goddard and Colin Hudson and others in 1988 and led the Barbados Hiking Association (BHA) medium group from the early 1990’s to the mid 2000’s. Recently John has concentrated on documenting and sharing the knowledge he gained from exploring Barbados.
