The Pennant Families and Their Jamaican Plantations

The research of the North Wales Jamaica Society  is uncovering the long and complex history of the Pennant families in Jamaica and the wealth that connected their plantations with the Penrhyn estate in North Wales. This is not simply the story of one family or one property. It involved successive generations of Pennants and Dawkinses, numerous Jamaican estates, and so many enslaved African people whose labour created the families’ wealth.

The family’s documented Jamaican story begins with Giffard Pennant, who arrived following the English seizure of Jamaica in 1655. He acquired land and became involved in the island’s political and military administration. Later generations expanded the family’s influence, particularly in Clarendon.

After aquiring a number of plantations in Clarendon, Giffard died when his son was Edward Pennant was 4 years old. Edward and his wife, Elizabeth Moore, were married and buried at Chapelton. They had numberous children including a son who had challenges, then 3 sons Samuel who became Lord Mayor of London, John (see below 1) and Henry (called Harry and who married well in UK) and several daughters - so far we know about Mary Pennant who married ?? Dawkins, and Smart Pennant (see below 2). They were Aunts to Richard Pennant - first Lord Penrhyn.

Edward became Chief Justice of Jamaica at one stage, but he refused to accept the offer to be the Giovernor General. His will recorded 610 enslaved people and Jamaican property valued at more than £41,000 in the currency of the period. It also provided £200 for a school—an example of philanthropy made possible by wealth created through enslavement. His trustees included Henry Dawkins, Thomas Roden, Thomas Fearon, John Pennant and the Reverend Edward Reading.

The estates associated with the extended Pennant and Dawkins families included Pennants / Thomas River / Kupuis, Denbigh, Coates Pen, Bullards Savannah, and Dawkins owned Parnassus, Friendship, Lucky Valley and Sutton’s. Some were sugar plantations, while others were livestock pens or formed part of a wider system supporting sugar production and transportation. Salt River Wharf, built in 1753, provided an important coastal connection for moving plantation produce.

The line of inheritance passed through Edward Pennant to Samuel, John and Henry Pennant. ( 1 )John’s marriage to plantation heiress, Bonella Hodges, strengthened the family’s position. John and Bonella travelled to Britain and the family became absentee landlords. After John’s death in 1781, his son Richard Pennant inherited the Jamaican properties. Richard, later the first Baron Penrhyn, was an outspoken opponent of the abolition of the slave trade. His Jamaican income became closely entwined with the development of the Penrhyn estate and slate industry in North Wales.

Richard died childless in 1808. The estates eventually passed into the Dawkins-Pennant family through the wider family inheritance. George Hay Dawkins adopted the additional surname Pennant. An 1816 return for four principal properties—Thomas River/Pennants, Denbigh, Kupius and Cotes Pen—recorded a total of approximately 1,000 enslaved people. Further work is needed to establish precisely how Bullards Savannah and other properties fitted into the inheritance at different dates.

The Penrhyn Papers at Bangor University Archives contain plantation correspondence, accounts, maps, legal documents and slave registers naming individual women, men and children. These records can be combined with Jamaican sources, archaeology and the surviving ruins of the Pennants sugar works to reconstruct lives that conventional family histories have largely ignored.

The Dawkins-Pennant interest in Pennants continued into the twentieth century. In 1940 the property was sold to Percy Junor, beginning its transition into smaller holdings acquired by Jamaican families. This brought a long period of absentee ownership towards its close, but its social, economic and physical legacies remain visible in Clarendon and North Wales today.

Other tombs of interest in the church in Kingston is to (2) Smart Pennant (wife of the rector, William May), who “was kill’d in ye 23rd year of her age by ye fall of an house in ye great storm, August ye 28th, A.D. 1722” (when her husband’s leg was also broken; he was commissary to the Bishop of London)

Smart Pennant's father would have been Edward Pennant, so she was Aunt to Richard Pennant - first Lord Penrhyn.