Johanna Hendrina Catharine or Catherina Meertens (née Slengarde)

Mortgage holder on the Westminster estate and the enslaved people on it.

1. Will of Johanna Hendrina Catharine or Catherina born Slengarde widow [now residing at] Bath Somerset [widow and relict of Anthony Meertens formerly of Demerara but lately of Clifton] [made in 1824] proved 09/10/1829. In the will she rehearsed a deed of 1813 between herself an her husband Anthony Meertens on one part and Evan Baillie, Hugh Duncan Baillie and James Evan Baillie of Bristol, whereby £40,000 [secured in an unspecified fashion] was placed in trust for Johanna Meertens to dispose of if she outlived her husband [which she did]. The Baillies as trustees had in 1823 advanced £10,000 to her, which she in turn had lent to her son Jacobus upon the security of Vauxhall and Westminster estates [and the enslaved people on them], and which she said she still regarded as part of the settled trust. She instructed that after her death the remaining £30,000 be transferred to her three sons Jacobus; Anthony Mangelaar; and Henry George Ferdinand Meertens. She left the remaining £10,000 to her daughter Catherine Maria the wife of Isaac van den Heuvel. Then [oddly] she left the £10,000 she had advanced to Jacobus to him, and provided that if he had repaid any part of it she left him an equivalent sum; she then clarified that she was thereby leaving £20,000 to her other two sons. In a codicil of 1825 she said that she had since received sums of £12,000 and £8000 from the Baillies, of which she had invested £12,000 and£5000 in consols, lending the balance of £3000 to her son Anthony Mangelaar secured on his estate called Voom [?] near Utrecht. In a second codicil [made in 1829] she said that she had purchased an estate near Utrecht for 100,000 guilders, and she left this in trust with David Cornfoot of Woolley Lodge near Maidenhead Berks. and Robert Bell of Stickworth Grove in the Isle of Wight, with the instruction that it be offered to each of her sons in turn for 120,000 guilders.

1. PROB 11/1761/433.