The majority of this material consists of papers relating to the Akers family business interests in the West Indies, although there is a small amount of more personal material listed under MS999/8. Much of the material was created during the lifetime of the first Aretas Akers, but the annotations found on the majority of the documents demonstrate that the material has been subsequently used and re-used to bring order to the family's financial affairs and to fulfill the demands of Aretas Akers' will.
Akers , Aretas , 1734-1785 Akers , Aretas , 1759-1816 Akers , Edmund Fleming , 1757-1821 Akers familyWill of James Dotin, 1745; inventory of Mount Edge plantation, Barbados; indenture regarding sale of Baxter Valley by John and Elizabeth Dotin to William Duke, 1749; disposition by Edward Hay regarding authenticity of these documents, 1773.
Hay , Edward , 1722-1779Dotin , James , fl 1733-1742
Letter from Thomas Clarkson of Woodbridge, [Suffolk] to Peter Clare of Manchester, 21 Apr 1826. Thanking him for details of a successful petition: 'Yours indeed is a great triumph, when you consider the opposition, if I may so call it, of the Boroughreeve ... It was much the case at Glasgow, where the hireling [James] Macqueen, the Editor of a Glasgow paper [?Glasgow Herald], and pensioned by two of the West Indian legislatures, and a host of W. India planters owners of West Indiamen and coopers, mechanics working for that employ resided ... There is ... something so good in our cause [the abolition of slavery], that it must always make its way among a moral people.
Autograph, with signature.
Clarkson , Thomas , 1760-1846 , slavery abolitionist2 letters written to Frederic Seebohm. (1) From Richard Oliver Heslop, iron and steel merchant of Akenside Hill and Newcastle upon Tyne, 8 Feb 1886. Promising to send a tracing of a map of Corbridge, Northumberland; suggests sources bearing on the history of land tenure in Northumberland. (2) From [James] Saunders, of Clapham and Westminster, 20 Oct 1892. Covering letter sent with tracings of some common field systems, discussing land tenure.
Both letters are autograph, with signatures.
Seebohm , Frederic , 1833-1912 , barrister and historian