Grace Nibbs of Antigua (née Hodge)

Slave-owner on Antigua with an interest also in estates and enslaved people on Dominica, married Dr Septimus Nibbs 11/03/1761, and died 11/10/1821.

1. Will of Grace Nibbs widow of Antigua [made in 1815] proved 06/11/1817. Under the will she left specified enslaved people (John Taylor Frank Alice and Eliza and the 'issue and increase of the females') to her daughter Mary wife of John Hall merchant of Antigua, and another group of enslaved people (Nancy and her children, Sally Ann, William, Judith and her children, John, Laetitia and her children, Daniel, Ann and Sam, and again the 'issue and increase' of the females) to her daughter Ann Cox wife of Walter Cox merchant of Antigua. She gave permission to her daughters to manumit any of the enslaved but only on the condition that the daughter concerned 'replaced' the manumitted person at her own cost (except in the cases of Eliza and Laetitia and her children). Under the will of her late son Henry Nibbs of Dominica, she was entitled to one-third of the Felicity Hall estate there, which she willed to George, the third son of her son George Nibbs of Tortola. Under the will of her late husband Septimus Nibbs dated 28/04/1789 she was entitled to charge a sum on the Pagoa Park estate on Dominica should she have cleared the mortgage debt then due to Robert Wynn of London: she had done so, she said, and left the amount of the mortgage charged on the estate (together with another £1600 which she had paid off that had been allotted as £800 each to her two daughters under their father's will and also charged on the same estate) to the children of her son George Nibbs of Tortola. She left the remainder of her estate in trust for her two daughters as residuary heirs.

Vere Langford Oliver, History of Antigua Vol. II 'Nibbs Family' p. 293. This shows her as sister of H. Hodge, although in his section on the Hodge family [Vol. II pp. 76-77 Henry Hodge's sister Grace is shown a s dying apparently unmarried in 1831.

1. PROB 11/1598/57.