Jonathan Worrell senior

Charles Worrell, born into a prosperous Barbadian landowning family which by 1800 had removed to Juniper Hall, Mickleham, in Surrey, England, was trained as a lawyer and practised briefly at Lincoln’s Inn. This career was cut short when, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, Jonathan Worrell undertook to settle land on his sons in anticipation of his own death. Jonathan decided that the bulk of the family estates in Barbados was to go to the two eldest sons, William Bryant and Jonathan, and, in compensation, began in 1803 to purchase land on Prince Edward Island for Charles and the fifth son, Edward (the fourth son had taken up an army career). In the hope of imitating their father’s success in Barbados, Edward and, more especially, Charles were drawn into the Island’s affairs.

Jonathan Worrell’s acquisition of Lot 41 in 1803 began the formation of what was eventually a huge estate. Next year the father and his two sons purchased 17,000 acres on Lot 39 and one-third of Lot 40 (lots were approximately 20,000 acres each). Both Charles and Edward now moved to the Island and began construction of Morell House on Lot 40 as a base of operations. In 1804 Plowden Presland, an absentee proprietor, gave Charles control as his agent over Lot 42. Edward bought 10,000 acres of his own on lots 38 and 39 in 1813. When Jonathan died in 1814, the two brothers formed a firm, C. and E. Worrell, and transferred £3,286 to their father’s estate in order to extinguish any claims by other family members to property on the Island. Charles also inherited a small portion of the Sedgepond plantation in Barbados, but apparently took no interest in it and sold it to Edward in 1841.

M. Brook Taylor, “WORRELL, CHARLES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed July 3, 2018, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/worrell_charles_8E.html.