Bartholomew Douce II

A minor, shown as co-owner of Riverhead in St Ann 1772-1780. In 1754 the estate of John Douce held 6000 acres in St Dorothy, St Ann and Clarendon and [presumably another] Bartholomew Douce held 197 acres in St Ann. The John Douce whose estate held 6000 acres in 1754 was presumably the same man as the John Douce planter whose daughter Mary (the widow of Philip Wheeler) in 1738 married John Wigan (1696-1739) who had an entry in the DNB as physician and author. Given the scale of ownership by the family in 1754, the Douces have been surprisingly difficult to trace. Barry Higman has a reference to a Bartholoemw Douce having purchased part of land belonging to Drax Hall before 1758, and a man named Bartholomew Douce was an overseer on Liberty Hill in St Ann 1795-1800, but to date nothing further on either the two Bartholomew Douces or the two John Douces has been found by LBS. However, the estate named Douces in Clarendon passed into the hands of the May family: Mary Trelawny or Trelawney Wigan, the daughter of John Wigan and Mary Wheeler nee Douce, married Rose Herring or Hering May I, and the estate was in the hands of the couple's son William Vassall May on his death in 1811.

'A List of landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of acres each person possessed taken from the quit rent books in the year 1754', TNA CO 142/31 transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples2/1754lead.htm.