The Covey plantation

Furness explains that John Tharp set up the Covey plantation at the southern end of his property in 1785, acquiring the labour by buying and selling the Bossue estate and Prospect Pen in the parish of Vere and the money through a loan from his business partner in Bristol, William Miles. 


Tharp used the flow of the Martha Brae river, via an aqueduct, to power the sugar works on Covey, completing the building work by May 1786. After that, he had a hospital built for treatment of the enslaved people. There was also a windmill and a cattle mill to power this early industrial complex. It's not clear which of these are included in Furness's description of the 'beautifully finished freestone buildings' on the plantation.

After Tharp's death, Covey was overseen by attorneys. These were originally William Green and Simon Taylor, and it was a cause of resentment in the family that later replacements were appointed by Tharp's trustees until his grandson came into his inheritance. In 1817 the attorneys were William Fairclough and William Shand, and William Tharp (another grandson) told his uncle that they were both incompetent and corrupt:

The great defection in the crops is easily accounted for, nor is there one single planter in the island but is of my opinion. In fact, Mr F[airclough]’s bad management is the universal topic of conversation throughout the island. He not only forbids the overseers to make the negroes work, but actually appears to me to wish to encourage them in all manner of idleness and insubordination, to the great annoyance of the neighbouring properties and to the utter ruin of my ancestors (quoted in Furness, p. 39)

By 1823 William Mitchell Kerr had stepped in as attorney, joined by James Phillips before 1826. By 1829 the attorneys were Kerr and William Tharp, with William Tharp left as the sole attorney by 1832.


The 1817 slave register lists 237 females and 214 males on the Covey plantation, with an average age of about 28. Just over a fifth were aged ten or younger, and only about 6% were sixty or over. Later almanacs show the plantation's population peaking at 487 in 1826. Across the lists from 1817 to 1832, about 600 individuals were listed, of whom about 10% had a white father. The enslaved population of this plantation was already well established by 1817, when only five individuals were described as having been born in Africa.

Long after Tharp's death, when slavery had been abolished, his estate (which was still being managed by trustees) received compensation of £8866 9s 5d for the value of 418 enslaved individuals. The Measuring Worth website translates that into modern values as follows:

If you want to compare the value of a £8,866 9s 5d Income or Wealth , in 1836 there are four choices. In 2021 the relative:
real wage or real wealth value of that income or wealth is £888,000.00
labour earnings of that income or wealth is £8,096,000.00
relative income value of that income or wealth is £10,780,000.00
relative output value of that income or wealth is £38,130,000.00



 


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