Zachary Bayly (1721-1769) was a wealthy planter and politician in

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 ...

Early life

In the 1730s, Zachary Bayly was a young boy when his family relocated with him to the

Colony of Jamaica The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was pri ...

. In 1759, his brother

Nathaniel Bayly Nathaniel Bayly (c.1726–1798) was an English owner of West Indies plantations and a politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1770 to 1779. Early life In 1726, Nathaniel Bayly was born in Westbury, Wiltshire.''Nathaniel Bayly'', Legaci ...

moved to England, and the two brothers conducted a trans-Atlantic family business, using their slaves on their Jamaican estates to create large profits, and using their political contacts to protect their investments.

Slave owner

Bayly was the owner of Bayly's Vale, Brimmer Hall, Nonsuch,

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the F ...

Tryall ''Tryall'' (or ''Trial'') was a British East India Company-owned East Indiaman launched in 1621. She was under the command of John Brooke when she was wrecked on the Tryal Rocks off the north-west coast of Western Australia in 1622. Her crew ...

and

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a h ...

plantations as well 3,000 acres in cattle pens."The Letters of Simon Taylor of Jamaica to Chaloner Arcedekne, 1765-1775"
edited by

Betty Wood Betty C. Wood (23 February 1945 – 3 September 2021) was a British historian and academic, who specialised in early American history, Atlantic history, social history, and slavery in eighteenth and early nineteenth century. She was a Fellow of G ...

''et al'' in In addition to being a sugar planter, Bayly was also a successful sugar merchant. He also served as a planting attorney for several absentee owners, managing several thousand more slaves for other estates. He was one of the 10 wealthiest Jamaicans in the eighteenth century.

Tacky's Revolt

In 1760, when

Tacky's War Tacky's War, Tacky's Revolt, or Tacky's Rebellion, was a widespread slave rebellion in the British Colony of Jamaica in the 1760s. Led by Akan people (then referred to as Coromantee but originally from around Kromantsie in the Central Region of ...

broke out, slaves rose up in revolt on Bayly's estates at Trinity.

Death and estate

Bayly owned over 2,000 slaves at the time of his death in 1769. His estate was valued at over £114,000 when he died.Vincent Brown, ''Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War''(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2020), p. 53.

Family

He was the brother of

, both being uncles of the politician Bryan Edwards.

References

{{Jamaica-bio-stub 1721 births 1769 deaths Jamaican politicians British slave owners Planters of Jamaica 18th-century Jamaican people