Details

Name

Lewis Hoyes

Brief Biography

1784 - 1842, British / Scottish

Occupation

Merchant; Attorney; Speaker of the House of Grenada; Plantation co-owner

Description

Lewis Hoyes was the wearer of items in Glasgow Museums' dress collection. Lewis was born in Forres, Moray, on 28 April 1784, the son of William Hoyes, a merchant, and his wife, Margaret Logan, and was baptised on 4 May. In his twenties he settled in Grenada, in the Caribbean. His name appears multiple times in the Slave Registers from at least 1818 onwards as the owner of enslaved people on his own properties in St George, the capital of Grenada, but also as the attorney or executor in possession for Baillie’s Bacolet, Beaulieu, Dunfermline, Grand Mal, Hermitage, Hope Vale, Isle Rhonde, Lower Latante, Mount Alexander, Mount Craven, Mount Gay, Munro’s Bacolet Estate, Munro’s Little Bacolet Estate, Plaisance, River Antoine, Thuilleries & Munich Estates. As well as being a merchant and attorney he was involved in local government, standing on several committees and was elected as Speaker of the House in November 1834. That same month his first wife, Almeria, died on 12 November. In 1835 he submitted four uncontested claims for compensation to the UK government for the enslaved labourers that had been freed as a result of the 1833 Emancipation Act and was awarded a total of £942 12s 5d for 37 enslaved people, and it may be this money that enabled him to co-purchase the Westerhall Estate on 21 November 1836. He married his second wife, Janet Fraser, at the Mount Parnassueus Estate, Grenada, on 13 February 1838. Their son, Lewis, was born in 1841. Hoyes died on 5 December 1842 after being run over by a horse on the way to church. His widow gave birth to their daughter, Elizabeth in April 1843. Several auctions of Hoyes’ property and household possessions, such as plate and linens, took place later that year, which were used to provide an annuity to Janet, who returned with their two children to Scotland.