Notes

What's included in the index?

Where more information about specific individuals is available, links in the index will take you to blog posts including family trees. If there's no link, I've included all the information I have in the index, but for linked individuals there will be more information in the linked post. 

So far, individuals living on Chippenham Park Pen, Covey Plantation and Top Hill Pen have been indexed. I'll add in others as I complete the family trees for each of the other estates. Still to come are Good Hope, Lansquinet, Merrywood, Pantrepant, Potosi, Wales and Windsor.

If you're waiting impatiently for information about your own ancestors who were enslaved by John Tharp, please do let me know.

Names

To make it easier to find names, I've normalised their spelling. This doesn't imply that one spelling was better or more correct than another, but the way names were spelt in the records wasn't consistent -- most of the enslaved people would have been denied any education at all and some of the men drawing up the lists clearly found some of the names challenging. Normalisation in the index is intended to save users the challenge of anticipating variant spellings, though I apologise if the form in the index isn't correct for your ancestor. In the posts and family trees, I've recorded the form that appeared in the historical records for each individual as far as possible, and each variant form is cross-referenced to the normalised spelling in the index. 

I haven't grouped variant forms of the same name, so there's a chronological list of individuals called Will, followed by a list of individuals called William and then individuals called Willy. The reason for this is that some individuals seem to have used the abbreviated or informal forms consistently, presumably to distinguish them from other people on the estate with a related name (i.e. sometimes an individual listed as Betty may have considered that to be her name and not thought of it as an form of Elizabeth). Where there are records for a single individual with more than one form of a name, I've listed them under both forms (i.e. if Edward was sometimes recorded as Ned, he'll be listed twice in the index). 

Individuals born in Africa were stripped of their birth names, which therefore aren't provided here, and it's also possible that the trustees and overseers of these estates chose not to record the names or forms of names that other enslaved people preferred for themselves. Where individuals are recorded with more than one name (e.g. William H. Tharp, who was also known as Leander), they are listed twice in the index. 

Enslaved people may also have used different names at different points in their lives. Some took new names when they were baptised, for example. Others may have chosen a different name for themselves as a statement of self-determination or changed their last name when they married or settled down with a partner. I've included all the forms I've found in the records, but if other names aren't documented in the slave lists, they aren't included here. 

What follows is a list of variant forms to look for if you can't find an individual you know to have been on John Tharp's estates. Some of them are still commonly used as informal abbreviations:

Abigail: Abby 

Alexander: Alex, Alick, Sandy

Amelia: Amey, Melia

Aminda: Amey

Ann(e): Annie, Nanny, Nancy

Anthony: Toney

Benjamin: Ben

Catherine/Katherine: Cathy, Kate, Katy, Keaty, Kitta, Kitty

Charles: Charley

Cicely: Ciss, Celia 

David: Davy, Taffy

Edward: Ned

Elizabeth: Bess, Bessy, Betsy, Bet, Beth Betty, Liza, Lizzy, Eliza, Tetty

Frances (f): Fran, Frankey

Francis (m): Frank

Helen: Ellen, Nell, Nelly

Henry: Harry

James: Jamy, Jemmy

John: Jack, Jackey, Johnny

Joseph: Joe, Joey

Lucretia: Cretia 

Margaret: Maggie, Meggy, Peggy

Mary: Moll, Molly, Poll, Polly

Nicholas: Nick 

Pamela: Pam 

Penelope: Penny 

Prudence: Prue 

Rebecca: Beck, Becky

Richard: Dick, Dicky 

Robert: Bob 

Rosannah, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina: Rosy

Samuel: Sam, Sammy 

Sarah: Sally 

Susan: Sue, Sucky, Sukey, Susie

Thomas: Tom, Tommy

William: Bill, Billy, Will, Willy 

Alphabetisation

I've ordered the index by first name and date of birth, so that William Thomas b. 1826 comes before William McGhie b. 1829. There are three main reasons for this:

• last names weren't always recorded
• last names may have changed at different points in an individual's life
• sometimes it's not easy to distinguish between last names and descriptions (e.g. John Little, Bessy Young) 

I've treated second given names as middle names because it's not possible to tell  from these records whether an individual with two given names used both on a daily basis. This means that Mary Ann Saint, for example (who may have been known as Mary or as Mary Ann), is included in the chronological list for Mary.

At the beginning of each list of people with the same name, there may be individuals with that name whose date of birth is unknown. If you can't find the person you're looking for in the chronological list, you may find them among the entries marked n.d. (= no date). These are usually women who were named as the mother of a child but who I haven't been able to identify in the 1817 register. They may have died before the 1817 register was compiled or been included in it under a different name.

Sources

The individuals included in the index and memorial were all enslaved by John Tharp on his estates in Jamaica and recorded in the slave lists from the period. For each person, I've noted their estimated dates of birth and death (if available) and the estate they lived on. If no other information is given and there is no link, the colour description was 'Negro', the place of birth was Jamaica and the mother's name wasn't given. For dates earlier than 1817 and not in square brackets, the source is the 1817 register. Dates in square brackets are from the lists discussed below from 1795/1803.

Unless otherwise noted, dates from after 1817 are drawn from the estate returns for 1820, 1823, 1826 and 1832. Each list was compiled partway through the year, so some records for 1817 are from the 1817 register and some from the 1820 return, etc. These sources are all available through Ancestry. Note that only the 1820 return includes precise dates for births and deaths.

Additional unofficial lists are held among the Tharp family papers in the Cambridgeshire County Archives. These are all dated to 1795/1803 in their catalogue, but comparison with the 1817 register suggests that they were compiled at slightly different dates towards the end of this period. There are lists noted as being from Chippenham Park Pen, Lansquinet, Pantrepant and Wales.

Three other unofficial lists don't identify the estate they refer to. In each case, comparison with the 1817 slave register confirms that they were from Merrywood, Potosi and Windsor. Lists from Covey, Good Hope and Top Hill Pen do not survive.

The contents of these unofficial lists aren't consistent. Most name children who had been born since 1795, and some only do that, but others give additional information. 

• The list for Merrywood is the most comprehensive, including older enslaved people as well, sometimes with accounts of their occupations, health and value. The names of runaways were also included, but without any additional information. It may be that these were individuals the estate continued to claim ownership of, though they had managed to evade recapture. 
• The Pantrepant list is separated into 'infants', 'children' and 'this year seven years old'. It also includes a list of 'women pregnant'. 
• The list for the Wales estate includes children up to the age of 8, and notes mothers' names for a few of them. 
• The Windsor list includes 8 year-olds and notes which ones were 'working'. 

Where these lists indicate the age of an individual, I have calculated their birth year and presented it in square brackets in the index. If no indication of age is given, the birth date is [1795/1803] for a child or n.d. (= no date) for an adult.

Abbreviations and symbols used in the index

b.                = born (approximate year of birth calculated from the estimated age and the   document date)

[b. 1795]     = when the birth date is in square brackets, it is calculated from the age given in the lists from 1795/1803 because this individual is not included in the 1817 register

d.                = died (approximate year of death calculated from the estimated age at death and the approximate year of birth)

d. of            = daughter of

(f)                = female

(m)              = male

m. of           = mother of

n.d.             = no date of birth

s. of            = son of