Black History Month Part 2: From a Barton schoolboy to a famous boxer

No 4: Francis Barber (above)
c1742-1801, secretary

IN 1750, Colonel Richard Bathurst’s plantation on Jamaica collapsed financially and he returned to Lincoln, taking an eight-year-old slave, Francis, with him.

He sent Francis to the Reverend William Jackson’s school in Barton, between Darlington and Scotch Corner, and the lad probably boarded in Church Cottage opposite the village church.

It hasn’t been explained how Barton came to the venue: perhaps there was a connection with the Bathurst family which owned Arkengarthdale; perhaps the Rev Jackson had a reputation for handling Caribbean youngsters because the parish registers record that on January 5, 1747, Joseph Cooke, a "negro from Jamaica" was baptised at the church.

We don’t know who Joseph was or what happened to him, but in 1754, Col Bathurst died and left £12 to Francis along with his freedom. He was transferred to a Bathurst family friend, Dr Samuel Johnson, who was compiling the first English dictionary in Staffordshire.

After an uneasy start, Johnson paid £300 to put the Barton schoolboy through grammar school and Francis became his secretary and closest companion. Francis was at Johnson’s bedside in 1784 when Johnson died and he was left a £70 annual allowance. It was a huge sum, but he managed to fritter it away so he died in poverty in Stafford Infirmary in 1801.

No 5: John York
c1758-1820, manservant

IN the 1780s, there were about 20,000 people of African descent and about 80 per cent of them were male, indicating their origins as slaves.

John was born on a slave plantation in Jamaica and was one of two black house boys who sailed to London with the plantation owner’s daughter, Elizabeth Campbell.

In 1769, she married John Yorke of the famous Richmond family – his father was the town’s MP who built Culloden Tower on a hilltop above The Green.

The two black servants must have caused quite a stir in rural Richmond.

In 1772, keeping slaves was banned in England. Although the two boys were servants, rather than slaves, the Yorkes encouraged them to go their own ways. One, called “Richmond”, went to work for the curate of Muker, while the other, called “York”, became a servant to the Hutton family at Marske Hall in Swaledale.

They educated him, baptised him – when he took the first name “John” – and appreciated his musical abilities.

In 1800, he married Hannah Barker from Kirkby Ravensworth and had seven children – on their birth certificates, he is referred to as “John York the African”.

He was probably into his sixties when he died, having become accepted and well regarded in the dale.

No 6: Bill Richmond (above)
c1763-1829, boxer

BILL was born into slavery in Richmondtown in New York, but by the time he was in his mid-teens, he came to the notice of British soldiers for his boxing skills, beating them regularly in tavern contests.

Lt-Gen Hugh Percy bought him out of slavery and in 1777 brought him back to Alnwick Castle. He sent him to school in Yorkshire, and Bill started as an apprentice cabinet-maker in York. He married and Englishwoman, Mary, and he made his name as a bare knuckle boxer – probably because of racist attacks against him and Mary.

They went to London, where he became a fashionable boxing training, and they ran the Horse and Dolphin pub in Leicester Square. He was described as “as intelligent, communicative, humorous, and an excellent cricketer”.

READ MORE: OUR FIRST THREE LIFE STORIES GOING BACK TO ROMAN TIMES IN THE NORTH EAST

• Three more amazing stories tomorrow