Eliphalet Fitch

Slave-owner in Jamaica, apparently resident but could have also been absentee at times as owned a home in New York.

Eliphalet was son of Benjamin (1706-1767) and Jerusha Fitch (née Boylston, c1710-1799). Benjamin Fitch was a wealthy, well-connected tanner from Boston, Mass, whose business activities enabled him to acquire valuable real estate which was passed on to his surviving children. The family was directly linked to the early Puritan arrivals on the eastern seaboard.

Eliphalet migrated to Kingston, Jamaica in 1761. He became a partner in Ludlow and Allwood who were a firm of merchants and ship chandlers. In Jamaica, he was an agent responsible for trafficking enslaved people to Cuba. His activities as an enslaver continued, as on 31 December 1802, Fitch conveyed the indebted Stoakes Hall estate and the enslaved people on it, which and whom he had bought from Thomas Cargill, to Alexander Donaldson.

He married Mary (last name likely Minott or Minot, lived c.1748-1808) and had at least two sons, Jeremiah and Joseph.

Edward Foord of Jamaica, a prominent Kingston merchant, appointed Eliphalet and his brother Joseph (also merchants of Kingston) as two of the executors of his will in 1777. Joseph died in 1778.

The American Revolutionary War period was pivotal. Burnard and Garrigus (pp.204-205) remark that ‘Some Jamaicans took advantage of the island’s peaceful status to trade with the enemy. The most prominent Jamaican smuggler was Eliphalet Fitch, a native of Boston who became a major merchant in Kingston in the early 1760s. He had close connections with merchants in Cuba and Saint-Domingue and was also willing to pass on information to North Americans about the movement of British warships. Fitch was not condemned for his activities. The advocate-general, Thomas Harrison, a man sympathetic to the positions held by Kingston merchants, advised Governor Keith that he should not prosecute Fitch and other merchants trading with the enemy under the rather specious argument that the government would have to prove not only that Fitch was trading with America but also that the individual Americans he was trading with were actually in rebellion.’

The Fitch connections with the elite of the new republic are apparent in Eliphalet Fitch’s correspondence with his second cousin, John Adams. There was also direct social contact between the Fitch and Adams families.

Fitch was resident in Jamaica until at least 1805. He was Assistant Judge in St Thomas in the East and St David in 1805, having been, for example, President of the Kingston Chamber of Commerce in 1782. However, he also had a home in New York in 1800: the household consisted of Eliphalet Fitch, two (free white) women and five enslaved people. The death notice in 1810 notes that he had been Receiver General and a member of the General Assembly of Jamaica.

He died in New Orleans in 1810.

We are grateful to David Barker for help in compiling this entry.

‘1805 Jamaica Almanac (continued)’, Jamaican Family Search (https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/a1805_2.htm) Accessed 10 February 2026.

Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, US, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database online].

Ancestry.com, U.S., Newspaper Extractions from the Northeast, 1704-1930 [database online].

Ancestry.com, 'History of the Fitch Family, A. D. 1400-1930', U.S., Family History Books [database online]. pp. 233-234.

‘Caribbeana Volume III Extracts: Foord of Bristol and Jamaica’, Jamaican Family Search (https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/b/bcarib59.htm) Accessed 10 February 2026.

‘Douglass & Aikman's Almanack and Register for the Island of Jamaica 1782: Jamaica Lists’, Jamaican Family Search (https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/a1782_01.htm) Accessed 10 February 2026.

‘Douglass & Aikman's Almanack and Register for the Island of Jamaica 1782: Militia of Jamaica’, Jamaican Family Search (https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/a1782_05.htm) Accessed 10 February 2026.

‘Eliphalet Fitch to John Adams, 11 March 1791’, Founders Online (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-21-02-0008) Accessed 10 February 2026.

FamilySearch.org, Jamaica, Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880 [database online].

FamilySearch.org, US Federal Census 1800, New York [database online].

J. H. Parry, ‘Eliphalet Fitch: A Yankee Trader in Jamaica During the War of Independence’, History 40:138/139 (1955) pp.84-98.

‘John Adams to Eliphalet Fitch, 18 July 1790’, Founders Online (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-20-02-0227) Accessed 10 February 2026.

‘John Adams to John Quincy Adams’, Adams Family Correspondence, volume 5, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-05-02-0098) Accessed 10 February 2026.

Trevor G. Burnard & John D. Garrigus, The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica (Philadelphia, 2016) pp. 204-205.