While there is no evidence to suggest any connection to my ancestors, it is interesting to look at some of the people through the ages who have carried the name Noers, Norreys, Norris or Nurse.

In this article I look at John Henry Nurse and Joshua Bushell Nurse, Barbados Plantation and Slave owners.

When looking at your family history it is important to recognize the bad with the good. I was aware growing up that there were Nurses in Barbados. Seymour Nurse who was a famous cricketer in the West Indies teams of the 1960s, was a Barbadian.

More recently, I discovered references to a family of Sugar Plantation owners and therefore Slave owners with the name Nurse, and it is more than likely that Seymour Nurse was descended from one of these slave owners, as enslaved children often took the name of their owner, especially when their owner was in fact their biological father.

In 1833 the British parliament passed a law to abolish slavery in most parts of the British Empire (“Slavery Abolition Act 1833” 2023). This was followed in 1837 by the Slave Compensation Act (“Slave Compensation Act 1837” 2023) which distributed £20 million to the Slave owners as compensation, for their “loss of property.”

John Henry Nurse and Joshua Bushell Nurse were brothers, children of John Nurse and Elizabeth Bushell and they were both Plantation Owners at this time in Barbados and they registered claims for compensation.

It doesn’t take much research to find out that the Nurse family settled in Barbados soon after settlement in the colony began in 1627. On 13^th December 1646 a Susanna Nurse was baptised in the Parish of Christ Church, Barbados, the daughter of Robert and Mary Nurse¹. At least four more children were baptised over the next 10 years.

It is not clear if Robert and Mary emigrated from England after they were married or whether they met and were married in Barbados, as the marriage register for Barbados only starts about 2 years before the birth of the first recorded child.

Robert and Mary were John Henry Nurse and Joshua Bushell Nurse’s 3x great grandparents.

It is likely that Robert had a small holding Plantation which he worked when he first settled in Barbados, but by the late 18^th century the Nurse family owned at least one sizable Estate - Todd’s, located in the parish of St John (see Figure 1)², which John Nurse, John Henry and Joshua Bushell’s father bought for £14,000 from Robert Burnett Jones.³

Estates fluctuated in size as land was bought and sold over the years, but in 1913 Todd’s was reckoned to be 255 acres. When John Nurse was buried on 7^th May 1806⁴ the burial entry mentions that John was the owner of two estates - Todd’s and Horn’s⁵. Horn’s which was later referred to as Ashbury⁶, was purchased by John in 1802 for £17,000.

John owned a third estate, Kirton⁷, which was identified in an Inventory by his Executors. Kirton was inherited by John’s son Joshua Bushell Nurse, while the other two Estates were inherited by John’s other son John Henry Nurse.

The Slave registers show that on Todd’s Estate alone the Nurse family owned between 142 and 188 Slaves, at the peak in 1834⁸ - the last year the return’s were made. John Henry Nurse was awarded £3,804 compensation for Todd’s Estate alone, and he was awarded another £3,911 for Ashbury⁹, which must have had a similar number of slaves.

Meanwhile Joshua reported 121 slaves for Kirton in 1834¹⁰ and received £2,874¹¹, and the brothers shared awards of £590 for miscellaneaous smaller claims.

This family of Nurses did well out of the slave trade. Some of them returned to England, but in 1913 Ashbury Estate at least was still owned by the Nurse family.

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