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Messages - JSowinski

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Other Countries / Re: Jamaica - history of the Shakes surname
« on: Sunday 05 October 25 20:34 BST (UK)  »
I'm also descended from the Shakes family, Thomas was baptized at 22 in 1814 into Protestantism in St. Bess, listed as Mestizo which is a very uncommon racial classification for a Jamaican. In his 1845 Burial record, he was listed as a Planter, not a slaver which can mean very different things. People were listed as Planters in Springfield St Bess up until the latest available records (1920) which was almost 100 years after slaver so a Planter is not necessarily the same as a slaver. In St Elizabeth property records during Thomas' lifetime, he owned a property called Derrydown which was not a plantation to my knowledge. Really a planter in the loosest terms is someone who owned a farm that was of European heritage, although later after slavery the term became more progressive. I do also think his father was David Shakespear almost certainly, but his mother is much more of a mystery, I think his mother was either a (mixed) Sephardic Jew, Spanish or Portuguese, Haitian refugee, or just a Catholic in general.

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