The fate of mulatto children —the children of white slaveowners— was as precarious as any other slave. All depended on the sensibilities of the owners. Some slaveowners sold off their progeny like any other chattel. Some however, legitimised their children by manumitting them, educating them, introducing them into society and bequeathing inheritances for them.

1822 – The Hon. Lewis Kerr and his mulatto daughter Eliza

Lewis Kerr, an Irishman, came to Bahama Islands in the late 1700s as part of the Loyalist encursion. He was called to the Bahamas Bar in 1809.

In 1822, Lewis Kerr, placed an extraordinary advertisement in the Nassau newspapers. One of his slaves, a mulatto woman named Eliza, about 20 years old, had runaway.

Eliza ran away with her quarteroon child. Quateroon meant that the child was classified (as was the custom at the time) as being near white. Kerr suspected— as noted in the advertisement —- that some white person, was harbouring, Eliza and her child, on New Providence.

The Royal Gazette, WEDNESDAY 24th APRIL 1822
The Royal Gazette, WEDNESDAY 24th APRIL 1822

Lewis Kerr’s 1825 slave return shows Eliza, had been returned. In that year, she was 23 years old. Two of the mulatto children listed, may have been more of Kerr’s children, or Eliza’s quarteroon children.

Lewis Kerr’s 1828 slave return reveals that in 1826, Eliza and two other mulattos, Jessy about 6 years old and Robert about 4 years old, had been gratuitously manumitted by Kerr


Lewis Kerr, Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Assembly

By 1828, Irish born, the Hon. Lewis Kerr, had been twice elected as Speaker of the House of Assembly. Lewis Kerr was a lawyer who had also been appointed Attorney General for the Bahama Islands. Politically, he had an excellent career and was well respected.

In April 1832, Lewis Kerr, joined a number other white freeholders, blacks and coloureds — some 51 persons in total—- who delivered a letter to protest Governor James Carmichael Smyth’s sudden dissolution of the House of Assembly.

Governor Carmichael Smyth, whose administration of the government had been stymied and blocked, by an adversarial faction of slaveowners in the House of Assembly, simply decided to dissolve it.

The Argus (Bahamas) WEDNESDAY 11th April 1832

Lewis Kerr (1778 – 1834) is no more! Died suddenly in October 1834

The Hon. Lewis Kerr, arrived in Philadelphia on 9th August 1834. He died at there at aged 56. He may have been there on business when he suddenly became ill. He was buried there.

The Royal Gazette, SATURDAY 18th October 1834

Eliza A. Kerr, is noted as the eldest daughter of the late Lewis Kerr, Esquire. She married Lieutenant F. C. Richardson, 2nd W. I. Regiment in May 1837

The Royal Gazette, Nassau WEDNESDAY 10th May 1837

Eliza Ann Kerr’s died May 1853 ( born around 1802) meant she died at age 51.

Eliza Ann Kerr’s first husband must have died at some point, because by the time she dies in 1853, she had remarried to a James Jarrett, Esquire, a Bay Street merchant in New Providence.

The Nassau Guardian and Bahama Island’s Advocate and Intelligencer WEDNESDAY 25th MAY 1853

More daughters of Lewis Kerr…

1849 – Mrs. James Boggis, one of Lewis Kerr’s daughters, died in Dublin Ireland.

The Nassau Guardian and Bahama Island’s Advocate and Intelligencer SATURDAY 29 September 1849

1853 – Annie, fourth daughter of Lewis Kerr, who married Lieutenant Maydwell Smith, 3rd West India Regiment, dies in New Orleans

The Nassau Guardian and Bahama Island’s Advocate and Intelligencer WEDNESDAY 6th JULY 1853

1852 – Widow of the Hon. Lewis Kerr finds herself in penury and begs the Bahamas Assembly for her husband’s pension almost 20 years after he died

James Jarrett who was married to Eliza Ann, the oldest daughter of Lewis Kerr, in 1852 sat in the House of Assembly, contributing to the debate over a pension for Lewis Kerr’s widow.

The Nassau Guardian and Bahama Island’s Advocate and Intelligencer SATURDAY 21st FEBRUARY 1852
The Nassau Guardian and Bahama Island’s Advocate and Intelligencer SATURDAY 21st FEBRUARY 1852

1914 – The Hon. Lewis Kerr, former Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Assembly remembered as another Irishman is called to the Bahamas Bar

The Nassau Guardian and Bahama Island’s Advocate and Intelligencer SATURDAY 18th JULY 1914