Rosehall links with slavery
In Guyana's Berbice region, a handful of interrelated families from the north Highlands were the first to build sugar-cane plantations. Among them were the Baillies of Rosehall.
The first recorded owner of Rosehall Estate, which included the east side of Glen Cassley –the west side being a part of Balnagown Estate–, is William Baillie (c.1705-1779), the second son of Alexander Baillie of Dochfour, and Hannah, the daughter of Hugh Fraser, eighth Lord Lovat.
William had been the factor (‘tacksman’) on the Balnagown Estate for many years, which might explain how he came into ownership of the Rosehall Estate. As a landowner, Baillie didn’t actively participate in clearing his tenants from the land, as he wasn’t interested in sheep farming. However, he did set in motion a period of voluntary migration as he had let his lands to a tacksman at a very high rent. This rent was subsequently passed on to the small tenants who saw their rents increase twelve-fold. This was a time of great hardship in Sutherland, and as a result, some of Baillie’s tenants are known to have left on the ship Bachelor of Leith, bound for North Carolina, in 1774.
Upon his death in 1779 (he is buried in Edderton churchyard), the estate passed to William’s son, Major General Mackay Hugh Baillie of Rosehall (1748-1805), an army careerist and absentee landowner.
Although William Baillie didn’t invest in the West Indies himself, he was related by blood and mariage to three families –Frasers of Belladrum, Inglis of Inverness and Cumings of Ardcannie (Moray)– who alongside Francis Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth and Governor of Barbados, were some of the ‘first speculators’ who purchased and developed 3,000 acres near the Berbice river around 1800. These gentry families with business ventures in the West Indies successfully established a circular migration, by providing jobs to men in their sphere of influence. Bachelors would embark in their youth but return to Scotland to marry, retire and hand off to a new generation to continue the circle.
Rose Hall, Guyana
On the South American coast, south of Guyana’s capital Georgetown, in the province of Berbice, there are over 30 place names associated with the northern Highlands: Alness, Belladrum, Cromarty, Dingwall, Dunrobin, Fyrish, Inverness, Tain, Tarlogie, etc. These were all former slave plantations owned by Highland families.
