Husband: Sir John Yeamans
Marriage: Bet. 2 AD–11 Apr 1661 in St John, Barbados
Birth: 28 Feb 1611 in St. Mary, Redcliffe, Bristol, England
Death: Aug 1674 in Barbados
Father: John Yeamans
Mother: Blanche Germain
Wife: Margaret Foster
Birth: 1613 in West Nimba, British Guinea,
West Africa (now Liberia)
Death: 09 Jun 1720 in Charleston, Berkeley, South
Carolina, United
States
Father: John Foster
Mother: Margaret Gibbes
Children:
1
|
Name:
|
Robert
Yeamans
|
M
|
Birth:
|
1664
in St. James, Holetown, Barbados
|
Death:
|
Jul
1728
|
|
Marriage:
|
,
1708
|
|
Spouse:
|
Elizabeth Mellows
|
|
2
|
Name:
|
George
Yeamans
|
M
|
Birth:
|
1667
in Barbados
|
3
|
Name:
|
Willoughby Yeamans
|
F
|
Birth:
|
1669
|
Spouse:
|
Mr.
Smith
|
|
4
|
Name:
|
Edward
Yeamans
|
M
|
Birth:
|
1670
in Barbados
|
5
|
Name:
|
Anne
Yeamans
|
F
|
Birth:
|
1671
|
In the early 1600s
John Yeamans, Sir John's father and husband of Blanche Germain, owned
Bristol's largest brewery. It was much later sold to the Saunders family, who
ran it for a hundred years. It eventually became the Georges' and then the
Courage Brewery. Yeamans had 13 children, John was the eldest (born in 1611)
and Robert was born in 1616. Sir John Yeamans (as he later became) was one of
the early settlers to prosper on the Caribbean island of Barbados.
He owned a sugar plantation in Barbados.
Yeamans' brother Robert was the Sheriff, Mayor (in 1669) and Chief Magistrate
of Bristol, as well as a ship owner and a
merchant, who had an early involvement in the Caribbean
trade. Redland Court
was owned by Sir Robert Yeamans in the 1680s. He died childless. Sir John's
grandson, Colonel Robert Yeamans of Barbados, eventually inherited the
property.
Library of Congress. Sir John Yeamans, Proprietary governor
of Carolina and landgrave, was born in Bristol, England,
where he was baptized at St. Mary Redcliffe on 28 Feb. 1611, the son of John, a
Bristol brewer,
and Blanche Germain Yeamans. He married a Miss Limp, who probably was the mother
of his five sons, William, Robert, George, Edward, and one whose name is
unknown, and three daughters, Frances,
Willoughby, and
Anne. He migrated to Barbados
by 1638 and formed a partnership for land acquisition with Benjamin Berringer
by 1641. In 1643 Yeamans and Berringer were living on the same plantation in
St. Peter Parish, but after 1648 the partnership was dissolved.
Yeamans accumulated wealth as a successful planter and gained political
prominence in the colony's assembly, on the council, and as a judge in the
courts of common pleas. He acquired the confidence of John Colleton, a former
royalist officer turned planter and politician. With the restoration of Charles
II, Colleton successfully developed the concept, which appears to have been his
idea initially, for the establishment of the Proprietary colony of Carolina. As the
principal spokesman for the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina, Colleton took
the lead in trying to attract settlers to that colony.
Prior to his intense involvement in
the settlement of Carolina,
Yeamans married, on 11 Apr. 1661 Margaret Foster, the daughter of the Reverend
John Foster and the widow of Yeamans former business partner, Lieutenant
Colonel Benjamin Berringer. The Berringer's were the parents of Mary, Simon,
John, and Margaret, who was born after the death of her father. Evidence has
been uncovered that the last years of the Berringer marriage were unhappy, that
Margaret had transferred her affection to John Yeamans, and that the Berringer's
were virtually separated. Berringer died in January 1661 after a prolonged and
undetermined illness. Suspicion was raised at the time, admittedly by Yeamans
political enemies, that Yeamans and Margaret Berringer had conspired to murder
her husband. Yeamans was cleared of these accusations by the council of Barbados, and
the Berringer estate passed to Margaret Yeamans and her children. For a time the
Yeamans lived on Nicholas Plantation (now St. Nicholas Abbey),(Pictured Above), built by
Benjamin Berringer after 1656 and considered one of the three great Jacobean
houses surviving in the Western Hemisphere.
The attention of the first prospective Carolina
settlers focused on the Lower Cape Fear region, which the Proprietors named the
County of Clarendon. Here a colony sponsored by
the Corporation of Barbadian Adventurers from Barbados and elsewhere established
itself in 1664. The Lords Proprietors, however, soon shifted their interest to
a more southerly site near Port Royal. Taking
advantage of this interest, another group of Barbadians, led by Yeamans, Sir
Thomas Modyford, and Peter Colleton, negotiated through Yeamans son Major
William Yeamans a Proprietary endorsement for a colony at Port
Royal. As a mark of their favor and to add to Yeamans prestige,
the Proprietors prevailed on King Charles to confer upon him the honor of
knight baronet on 12 Jan. 1665. On the preceding day the Proprietors had
appointed him "Governor of our County of Clarendon near Cape Faire and of
all that tract of ground which lies southerly as far as the river St.
Mathias."
'
In October 1665 Yeamans sailed from Barbados for the Cape
Fear with three ships planning to
explore southward from there to Port Royal,
where he hoped to found a colony. As Yeamans fleet attempted to enter the Cape Fear River, his largest vessel ran aground and sank.
Though most of the passengers were saved, his supplies were lost, including the
cannon with which he intended to fortify the Port Royal
settlement. Shortly after this Yeamans sent another of his vessels to Virginia to obtain food,
clothing, and other supplies for the Clarendon settlers, only to have it wreck
on the return voyage.
Yeamans remained on the Cape
Fear from early November
until shortly after Christmas. Here the governor made plans for Robert
Sandford, secretary of the colony, to undertake an exploratory voyage to the south, which
was later successfully carried out. Having presided over a meeting of the
General Assembly of Clarendon, the governor boarded his one remaining vessel
and sailed for Barbados
never again to return. For another year and a half the Clarendon settlement
hung on, but by the close of the summer of 1667 the last of its settlers
departed, and Clarendon
County ceased to exist.
Its governor meanwhile was embroiled in the uncertain and often tempestuous
politics of Barbados
and seems to have made no effort to save his colony.
Under the vigorous leadership of
Lord Ashley, soon to be created Earl of Shaftesbury, the Proprietors in 1669
renewed their efforts to settle Carolina and
dispatched a fleet of three ships with colonists aboard bound for the Port Royal area. With the fleet went a blank commission
as governor and commander-in-chief addressed to Sir John Yeamans, at Barbados, who
was instructed to fill in the document with his own name or that of another of
his choice. Yeamans took command of the expedition, hired the sloop Three
Brothers to replace a vessel that had sunk off Barbados,
and sailed for Carolina.
A great storm scattered the fleet, and the two surviving ships sought safety in
Bermuda. Here Yeamans decided, for reasons
that are unclear, to withdraw from the expedition and to return to Barbados. He
then appointed William Sayle, a septuagenarian and a former governor of Bermuda
who had had some earlier connection with Carolina,
to take his place as governor.
The expedition then proceeded to Carolina where it established a colony not at Port Royal,
but at Albemarle Point on the Ashley
River. This colony became
the nucleus of South Carolina.
Yeamans finally reached the colony in the summer of 1671 with his wife, some of
his children, and about fifty immigrants from Barbados in his party. The
Proprietors on 5 Apr. 1671 had bestowed upon him the title of landgrave. This
was the highest rank in the colony's nobility created by the Proprietors under
their new framework of government known as the Fundamental Constitutions.
Yeamans expected to be immediately acclaimed as governor of the colony, for
under the provisions of the Fundamental Constitutions when a Proprietor was not
present in Carolina,
the highest ranking member of the native nobility would become governor. Joseph
West, who had been named governor following the death of William Sayle, refused
to give up his office until he received orders from the Proprietors.
Meanwhile, Yeamans established a
plantation on Wappoo Creek and reportedly introduced slavery to the colony.
Despite repeated efforts to gain the governorship, he was stymied until the
Proprietors, acting in accordance with the provisions of the Fundamental
Constitutions, ordered that the landgrave be given preference to a commoner and
sent him a commission.
On 26 Mar. 1672 the Council proclaimed Sir John governor. In
an effort to provide needed food supplies for the colony in 1672 and 1673,
Yeamans made liberal use of the Proprietors' credit without their approval. It
was also charged in the colony that he had attempted to make huge profits from
the food shortages and that his actions had helped bring on these shortages.
Displeased at last with Sir John after years of the closest association, the
Proprietors on 25 Apr. 1674 revoked his commission as governor and proceeded to
appoint Joseph West as his successor. Before this news reached the colony,
however, Governor Yeamans died, and on 13 Aug. 1674 Joseph West was named to
succeed him.
Lady Margaret remained in South Carolina for several years securing additional land
grants that she left to her daughter Margaret, who later became the wife of
Colonel James Moore, the founder of a second and permanent settlement on the Cape Fear.
Lady Margaret eventually married Captain William Walley and returned to Barbados, where
she died.
Sir John Yeamans
continues to be an enigmatic figure. He clearly deserves credit as a founder of
the two Charles Townes-first on the Cape
Fear and then in southern Carolina-but his terms as
governor of each of the colonies were more controversial. Circumstances
conspired to overwhelm the fledgling Cape
Fear colony, but Yeamans
initially tried to save the settlement. His interest, however, lay farther
south. His tenure in the southern colony was marred by dissension, although
again he attempted, even beyond Proprietary limits, to meet the colony's most
pressing problems. The accusation that he alienated his friend's wife and then
murdered him cannot be absolutely proven, but the circumstantial possibility
seriously compromises his character. Seen in the best light, Yeamans may be
viewed as an energetic and restless adventurer who was actively involved in the
West Indian colonization of the mainland, playing a significant role in the
founding of the Carolinas.
St. Nicholas Abbey
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