Petersfield is a small town in Westmoreland Parish,

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

. It shares its name with five other places in Jamaica. The town was founded in the 18th century and named after Peter Beckford, a

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

owner who settled the Roaring River Estate. Petersfield was a dormitory community for workers on that estate. To the south of the town's main junction lies the neighborhood locally called "Carawina" which was the original name given to the plantation which predated it. According to an estate record proved in 1723, the original owner of the land that would be called Carawina was Rowland Williams of Glamorgan west of present-day Cardiff. The name "Carawina" given to the estate highly suggests its founders were of Welsh origin. Carawina appears to be the Anglicization of the Welsh name "Carwyn" which is a combination of the Welsh word ''caru'' "to love" and ''gwyn'' "white, fair, blessed." By 1764,

John Wedderburn of Ballendean Sir John Wedderburn of Ballindean, 6th Baronet of Blackness (1729–1803) was a Scottish landowner who made a fortune in slave sugar in the West Indies. Born into a family of impoverished Perthshire gentry, his father, Sir John Wedderburn, 5t ...

was listed as an associated owner of the estate.John Wedderburn of Balindean', Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146634306 ccessed 21 December 20176 This is the same Wedderburn who was a litigant in the Knight v. Wedderburn court case. Today Petersfield is a one street town with a community health centre at one end and a

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

at the other. It is the home of many of the workers at the Frome Sugar Estate as well as many other business people with interests in the nearby coastal cities of Savannah La Mar, Negril and even Montego Bay to the North. The

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...

artist ''Winston Hubert McIntosh'' was born in Petersfield, and later on, when he lived in Jamaica's capital Kingston, he changed his name to ''Peter'' McIntosh (

Peter Tosh Winston Hubert McIntosh, OM (19 October 1944 – 11 September 1987), professionally known as Peter Tosh, was a Jamaican reggae musician. Along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, he was one of the core members of the band the Wailers (1963� ...

External links

Aerial view
*Photos:

References

{{Settlements in Jamaica Populated places in Westmoreland Parish