Finetta Beauchamp

Absentee slave-owner of Nevis, living at Greenwich. In 1776 she appointed John Stanley as her attorney on Nevis. The wills of her mother Perleta Beauchamp (q.v.) (proved 1750) and sister Martha Beauchamp (proved 1763) show that Finetta Beauchamp inherited three estates on Nevis, given as Saddle Hill and Whitehall in [St John] Figtree, and Mountain. By the time of her death c. 1783 she appears to have owned a single estate in St John [Figtree].

1. Will of Finetta Beauchamp of Greenwich spinster [made in 1781] proved 21/01/1783. She left £100 each to James Butler, Duke Butler and Frances Butler widow of the late John Butler, sons and daughter-in-law of the late Coll Butler of Camberwell, on condition that they relinquished any claim over her estates in the West Indies. She had, she said, an estate in St John on Nevis, rented to Richardson Herbert (President of Nevis), whom she suspected of having been negligent in its cultivation, in order to drive down the value so as to purchase it cheaply at her death, and she expressed her determination that he should never become the owner. Accordingly she left the estate to Mr Clarke and Mr Barry, both of St Maartens 'a Dutch island', the husbands of her two nieces the daughters of her late brother Meese, on condition that they not sell it to Richardson Herbert: should they do so, she charged the estate with £2000 to John Ward of Nevis. She made Mary Oliver, wife of Richard Oliver [q.v.] of Welbeck Street her executor. In a codicil of February 1782 she left further details of the division of her personal effects, including to Mary Oliver whom she described as a neighbour on Crooms Hill.

Common Records 1776-1777, British Library, EAP794/1/1/16, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP794-1-1-16, pp. 386-388.

1. PROB 11/1099/241.