Thomas Oakley senior

Brother-in-law of Stephen Attlay and uncle of Thomas Oakley and Stephen Oakeley Attlay (each of whom q.v.). Although there remains potential for confusion between Thomas Oakley senior and his nephew Thomas Oakley, it appears from the Slave Registers for the Mount Oakley estate that Thomas Oakley senior, the Hon. Thomas Oakley, died c. 1826, and that his Jamaica property passed to his nephew at that point.

1. 'Thomas Oakeley (b.1744) was the brother of Stephen Attlay’s wife Parnel (1735-1815). In 1786, Oakeley was resident in Port Antonio as a merchant, handling sugar and rum sent from Prospect for export. By 1817, an individual named Thomas Oakeley had become the owner of two properties in Portland parish that collectively employed sixty enslaved workers. Three years later, the slave registration return prefaced the owner’s name with the word ‘Honourable’: a title reserved for members of Jamaica’s Council. The person named was either the Port Antonio merchant or his nephew Thomas Oakeley (b.1773), who in 1796 was living on Jamaica under the care of his uncle, but by 1816 had returned to England in order to re-marry. Thomas Oakeley senior and junior were both members of the Snakecroft (later Bagnall) Oakeleys: a scion of the gentry Oakeley family of Shropshire. The Snakecroft Oakeleys originated from Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, where brother and sister Parnel and Thomas were both born, but the family also possessed land in Monmouthshire. Parnel Oakeley lived out years of widowhood at Lydart House); after her death, members of the Oakeleys resided at Lydart and the 1851 Cenus provides an indication of their social status. The head of the Oakeley household was a freeholder and farmed 136 acres, while his three sons were occupied as a solicitor, a curate, and an Oxford undergraduate.'

1. S. D. Smith, An Introduction to the Plantation Journals of Prospect Sugar Estate, with contents of the microfilm (2004), http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97615.pdf [accessed 08/02/2014].