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The following was very kindly sent to me by Nicholas Payne.
Records can be found in the archives in Spanish Town. From the archives a friend in 1976 found:
Mahogany Vale, Parish of St Andrew owned by Mrs Prideaux, J.A. Stephens in charge
226 acres 30 coffee
50 guinea grass
150 woods and ruinate
Orchard Estate, Jessie F. Prideaux 800 acres mostly wood and ruinate.
We had not heard of Orchard Estate before, and do not know where it is.
In Kingston Cathedral is a font erected by Charles Jackson to three daughters; this is a great mystery.
All the above came from a friend who went to Jamaica in 1976 and found this out for Anne. She set off for Mahogany Yale but did not find it because of bad weather and very bad roads.
The photographs were taken by a man called Wilson Knight whose family had an adjacent estate. He was quite a distinguished Shakespearian scholar who turned up in about 1949 The grandfather's grave is in Kingston, but we do not know which church (St Andrew?). I enclose photos of his grave.
Charles Forbes Jackson was the son of Susannah Campbell Jackson who seemed to have been a formidable and bossy woman. He was born in 1808; her husband Robert Jackson brought Mahogany Vale into the family, but it was sold in 1835 at the time of the emancipation, (how could you run an estate without slaves).
1825 He became an
ensign in the 2nd Bombay Light Cavalry.
He served mostly in Scnde. He became a blood brother of the future Rajah of Bikaner (not uncommon in
those days). He was engaged in drawing
the boundary between the states of the Maharajahs of Bikaner and Bawalpur - it
is now part of the boundary between India and Pakistan.
1846 Ho was removed from the job for being "contumacious and not good tempered" (he was probably taking bribes) At that time he was political agent at Balmer.
1840 December. He rode into camp carrying under his cloak a little girl one year old with red hair (your great grandmother Jessie Jackson/Prideaux). It was never known who her mother was, he would never talk about her - but she was said to be called Sarah Sher1ock. He wore a miniature of a fair haired girl round his neck and it was buried with him. The baby was taken in by his blood brother, now the Maharajah of Bikaner and brought up in the zerala with the young princes and princesses. This could be done without the rajah losing caste because he and her father had exchanged blood. Nevertheless all the cups and plates she ate off were broken because they had been defiled. She had her own elephant.
Anne has Jessie Prideaux's dressing case and it contains this mysterious note:
"When I was young, you used to tell me, in the
Indian 'Dialect, that wherever my father had hidden me, you would come and find
me Please come now and ·fulfil your promise"
Jessie stayed with the rajah until she was eight.
1848 Major Jackson took Jessie to Europe, to Genoa, where his sister Camilla Jackson was living. She was a friend of Mazzini & Cavour the Italian liberators. This reunion is described by Robert Louis Stevenson in his life of Fleeming Jenkin, Camilla's son. By degrees he took her back to England crossing the Alps in a diligence and taking a boat up the Rhine where Jessie was befriended by Lady Cardigan "Has this child a flannel petticoat?" "I believe not Ma'am" Lady C. supplied two petticoats made by her ladies maid.
In England he took her to stay with his mistress, Caroline Mainwaring, and subsequently to his mother who had gone to live in France for reasons of economy.
1851 Major Jackson
returned to India and became Colonel to his regiment, 2nd Bombay Light Cavalry.
When the mutiny broke out in 1857 he was stationed at Neemuch. He and Colonel Showers disagreed
with the policy of George Lawrence so they made independent plans to stop the
mutineers from intercepting the regimental pay train on its way to Agra. There
was a small engagement at a place called Musseerabad during which Jackson was
found drunk. He ordered a retreat and was relieved of his command and returned to
Neemuch.
A few days
later Neemuch was attacked. The cavalry refused to charge without him and so
wearing civilian clothes he rode out calling “For God’s sake charge. Gentlemen,
you will lose your names and disgrace your regiment”. (From “A Missing Chapter of the Indian Mutiny” p125 by Lt General
Showers. Longmans Green 1888 ) He charged and dispersed the mutineers, two
native orderlies were killed and another lost his thumb. This happened on 17
December 1857.
After being
deprived of his command. He returned to Europe where he enlisted under
Garibaldi and became one of the “1000” who liberated Sicily. He lost a finger
in this campaign. Ann has a photograph of him in his red shirt worn by
Garibaldi’s troops.
Eventually,
he came to London and in an agent’s window, either in the Strand or Long Acre
he saw Mahogany Vale for sale and bought it. He then about L26,000 which rather
confirms the suspicion that he took bribes
Meanwhile
Col Jenkins’ mother has died in France and his daughter Jessie was sent to
relations the Fleeming Jenkins of Stowting Manor Kent. There she married
William Prideaux, son of the nearby vicar of Hastingleigh, where family graves
are to be found. Before this he had taken
Jessie to Baden, hiring a manege ( a riding establishment) and then quit
leaving her alone and penniless aged 18. She appealed to to the Consul a man
named Dix. This was the start of a long family friendship that lasted until
about the Second World War.
About 1862
Jackson went to Jamaica with his daughter and son-in-law who became estate
manager. This return is the subject of a novel by Jackson’s sister Camilla, who
wrote a number of mildly successful books. It is called “Cousin Stella” but no
copy seems to survive outside the British Museum.
On arrival
in Jamaica, he aspired to a life of some style. The story is that the dinner
table was always laid for 24. The house was derelict when he returned but he
did it up and had furniture made with mahogany from the estate, handsome heavy
stuff in 18th century rather than 19th century style
1863
Jamaica Rebellion. This gave the General liberal opportunities to exercise his
argumentative military skills with little chance of being reprimanded. He
supported Governor Eyre and was full of enthusiasm for quelling “the Blacks”.
Jamaica had a number of settlers who, like him, had fought in the Indian Mutiny
(First War of Independence) and who looked on the Jamaicans as offering the
same sort of threat and needing the same harsh treatment. Jessie, William and
the children, Henrietta, Charlie and Gostwick, stayed in Mahogany Vale. The
General had a great time leading his own campaigns, bad tempered, often drunk,
but enjoying himself hugely. There are accounts. There are accounts in a book
called “The Myth of Governor Eyre” and Anne has many dispatches and reports,
hard to read and marked “Secret”. He was brave, but far too impulsive, a trait
still visible in the family. One account is of his defending an empty house
because it contained some fine York hams.
A calypso
was written (reprinted in the myth of Governor Eyre)
O General
Jackson
O General
Jackson
O General
Jackson
You kill
all the black men them,
Oh what a
dreadful judgement,
Oh what a
dreadful judgement,
Oh what a
dreadful judgement,
You kill
all the black men them,
Oh what a
day of mourning,
Oh what a
day of mourning,
Oh what a
day of mourning,
You kill
all the black men them,
Henrietta,
his oldest daughter, collected and wrote a note book she called “Songs
Collected about the Jamaica Rebellion”. It is now lost.
Soon after
this the marriage of Jessie and William Prideaux broke up and he fulfilled a
childhood wish of going to sea. Family pressure made him return and it is
probable that this “reconciliation”
resulted in Mabel (Dub) and Ada
my
grandmother.
William, however remained discontented and took refuge with Nellie, one of house servants. Jessie discovered this and turned William out and he got a job on a neigbouring estate. Nellie did not accompany him. He caught typhoid and during this illness he went to help put out a fire in a “native” hut. The strain was too much and he died. This left Jessie with her ill tempered father and five children.
About 1860 the Agra Bank, which held General’s money failed, the coffee crop was also doing badly and the family found themselves in financial difficulty. The General died about 1874 and Jessie stayed on for a few years trying to make an income from the estate. Under the General’s will the land was left to Henrietta and the money to Jessie, about L600 p.a. from which she had to pay an annuity for life of L100 p.a. to his ex- mistress Caroline Mainwaring and another to Camilla Jenkin his sister who was also short of money.
Jessie came
to England where relations were anxious to welcome her, however she settled
abroad, first in Geneva and subsequently in Dresden and Leipzig. It was in
Geneva that Charlie died of typhoid and a portrait was painted of Ada aged
about 8 smoking a cigar. Henrietta went to the Dresden conversatoire to study
the piano. The family spoke German together
Jessie
rigourously discouraged any notions of marriage. Henrietta was courted by her music master who became a minor
composer according to his obituary which appeared in the Times in the 1950’s.
Mabel was courted by one of the Trevelyans, a curate in Yorkshire, who had
known them through their Indian connections. Mabel however detested the idea of
marriage because of the bad relationship between her parents. Henrietta was despatched
to a nunnery at Wantage for two years, she wanted to become a teaching nun, but
this too was forbidden.
Gostwick
went to Clare College Cambridge and subsequently became a monk, first on Caldy
Island where he first took Benedictine vows. There was an upset at Caldy when
Dom Aeldred went to the Roman Catholic church and took most of the monks
followed him. Gostwick established himself at Pershore and later at Nashdown.
He became Abbott Denys and Nashdown continues to be a Benedictine community.
Mahogany
Vale continues in the family, managed by “managers” until 1923 when it was sold
for L2,000.