Rev. Nathaniel Gilbert the younger

Owner of Gilberts estate in Antigua. His father was Rev. Nathaniel Gilbert of Bledlow (q.v.), born in Antigua in 1761 and vicar of Bledlow in Buckinghamshire from 1798 until his death in 1807. His grandfather Rev. Nathaniel Gilbert of Antigua (also q.v.) is credited with bringing Methodism to Antigua. His mother was Miss Sarah Maria Ford, daughter of Darby Ford Esq. of Coalbrookdale. “The Darby family were a well-known Quaker family in Coarbrookdale; they were iron masters.”

Nathaniel Gilbert the younger appears to have been resident in Antigua. Oliver reports that he was 'of Gilberts' estate and that he was dead by 1854. Married his cousin, Grace, daughter of the Rev. Melville Horne of Antigua. There appear to have been no children of the marriage.

In 1837 James A. Thome and Joseph H. Kimball (American anti-slavery advocates) met Gilbert in Antigua. He professed anti-slavery views and claimed that the enemies of freedom would blame abolition for the economic difficulties facing Antigua:

'...we met the Rev. N. Gilbert, a clergyman of the English Church, and proprietor of an estate. Mr. G. expressed the hope that we might gather such facts during our stay in the island, as would tend effectually to remove the curse of slavery from the United States. He said that the failure of the crops, from the extraordinary drought which was still prevailing, would, he feared, be charged by persons abroad to the new system. "The enemies of freedom," said he, "will not ascribe the failure to the proper cause. It will be in vain that we solemnly declare, that for more than thirty years the island has not experienced such a drought. Our enemies will persist in laying all to the charge of our free system; men will look only at the amount of sugar exported, which will be less than half the average. They will run away with this fact, and triumph over it as the disastrous consequence of abolition."'

See also notes on claim Antigua 131 (Gilbert's and Mercer's Creek) for a meeting between Gilbert and Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey in 1837.

Langford Vere Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua (London, Mitchell and Hughes, 1894), vol. 2, pp. 12-17, 'Pedigree of Gilbert'.

James A. Thome and Joseph H. Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies: A six months' tour in Antigua, Barbadoes, and Jamaica in the year 1837 (New York, American Anti-slavery Society, 1838) p. 7