Author discovers ancestor had slaves
An author has made a donation to a Caribbean education foundation after discovering his family’s links to slavery.
Alex Renton is writing a book about slavery in Jamaica and Scots’ involvement in the slave trade, which will be published in April.
His four-times great grandmother, Agnes Renton, was a founder of an Edinburgh ladies’ abolitionist society in the 1820s. But he discovered his ancestors also included James Graham, a merchant who owned two slaves.
Mr Renton said: “He was listed at birth as a quadroon, which meant he was a quarter black. His grandmother was a freed African and she was the common-law wife of a plantation owner.
“That makes me and my family the descendants of an abolitionist, an owner of slaves and an enslaved African.
“When I went to Jamaica and had a look at the plantations where my six times great-grandmother was enslaved, I felt nauseated.
“This hammered home to me the fact that we exploited these people.
“They are still crippled by what we did. We supposedly gave them their freedom in 1834, but we didn’t give them anything else. We compensated ourselves for giving up our property, we didn’t compensate the slaves.”
Mr Renton has made a donation to the Jamaican church that Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor, attended.
He was inspired by Sir Geoff ’s comment that “although we cannot change history, we can change the consequences”
Sir Geoff described his donation as “substantial”.