Good Hope plantation

Furness notes that John Tharp sold the land he'd inherited from his father (including Batchelor's Hall in Hanover) and the land he'd acquired through marriage (Potosi in St James), to consolidate his holdings in that part of St James which was later separated as Trelawny parish, where he bought the adjoining plantations of Good Hope, Wales and Lansquinet from their previous owner, Thomas Williams, in 1769. Furness suggests that he probably also had to borrow to fund the purchase, but no evidence of a loan survives. Together, the three estates were 3000 acres and Tharp acquired 473 enslaved people with his purchase. During Tharp's ownership, a watermill and hospital were constructed on the estate.

In 1773, Williams sold Potosi in St James to his brother-in-law, Samuel Horlock, who got himself into debt with William Miles, Tharp's business partner, and with John Wedderburn. 

Miles lent Tharp the money to buy Wedderburn's claim to the estate. To satisfy this claim, Tharp then ejected Horlock from Potosi and took away the 160 slaves, who were there, for his own estate at Good Hope. (Furness, p. 5)

In 1791, Tharp bought a parcel of land from James Scarlett, who owned the neighbouring Peru estate, to improve the boundary of Good Hope (Furness, p. 14). In 1792, he bought the neighbouring Cheshire estate from the widow of its previous owner, Lt-Col. Spragge. Since there's no evidence that he ran Cheshire as a separate concern, Tharp may  have incorporated it into Good Hope.

In 1791-2, Tharp's eldest son, Joseph, was left to run Good Hope while Tharp was in England, and after his death, it was William Blake Tharp, his youngest son, who was left holding the reins on his next trip to England in 1795.

When Tharp's marriage broke up, he abandoned his plan to retire in England and returned to live at Good Hope. He died there on the 30th of July 1804.

James Wyld's map of Jamaica (1843)

After Tharp's death, all of his Jamaican estates were overseen by attorneys. These were originally William Green and Simon Taylor, though the planting was overseen by John Harwood, Tharp's slave-born son. 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 Francis James Phillips before 1826 (his sister, Anna Maria, was married to Tharp's son John). By 1829, the attorneys were Kerr and William Tharp, with William Tharp left as the sole attorney by 1832.

The 1817 slave register for Good Hope lists 238 females and 210 males enslaved on the plantation, with an average age of about 27. Almost a fifth were aged ten or younger, and only about 3% were sixty or over. About a fifth had been born in Africa. Later almanacs show the plantation's population peaking at 550 in 1826, but this number is inconsistent with all other estimates, and 450 may have been intended. As on Tharp's other estates, almost all of the increases in population were by birth in the period 1817-1832. This was partly because prices rose after the abolition of the slave trade and partly because the trustees had no motivation to go to any trouble -- it was more comfortable to sit back and let the existing workforce get on with it.

Across the lists from 1817 to 1832, 639 individuals were listed by name on the Good Hope plantation, of whom about 15% had a white father (about 20% of those born in Jamaica). This was an unusually high proportion, which can be explained by the presence of the great house on the plantation. This was where John Tharp had lived when he was on the estate, and where his trustees lived after his death. The rape and sexual exploitation of the enslaved women on Good Hope was demonstrably well-established: 6% of the Jamaican-born individuals on the plantation had two generations of white fathers and another 1% had three generations.

Long after Tharp died, when slavery had been abolished, his estate (still being managed by trustees) received compensation of £7725 7s 8d for the value of 373 enslaved individuals on Good Hope. The Measuring Worth website translates that into modern values as follows:

If you want to compare the value of a £7,725 7s 8d 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 £773,700.00
labour earnings of that income or wealth is £7,054,000.00
relative income value of that income or wealth is £9,391,000.00
relative output value of that income or wealth is £33,230,000.00