Nathaniel Wells

Nathaniel Wells was born on 10 September 1779 on St Kitts, in the Caribbean. His father, William Wells, was a Welsh-born planter and merchant who had earlier been a slave trader, and his mother, Juggy, later known as Joardine Wells, was an enslaved house worker on his plantation. Nathaniel was one of at least six children. In 1783 his father freed him, and he was sent to England to be educated.

He inherited his father's sugar plantations on St Kitts, and in 1802 bought the Piercefield estate near Chepstow in Monmouthshire for £90,000, adding to it until it reached almost 3,000 acres. His wealth came from sugar worked by enslaved people. His marriage settlement with Harriet Este refers to the Vanbells plantation on St Kitts and lists the names of 146 enslaved people.

In Wales he became a figure of local standing. He was made a Justice of the Peace in 1806, a Deputy Lieutenant of Monmouthshire and churchwarden of St Arvans, and in January 1818 he was sworn in as High Sheriff of Monmouthshire, the first person of African descent to hold the office in Britain. In 1820 he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Chepstow Yeomanry, and he resigned at the end of 1822, after striking miners and ironworkers had been put down by force.

The other half of his story is that he was a slave owner. He remained one until emancipation, and after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 he was paid £1,400 9s 7d in compensation for 86 enslaved people on estates on St Kitts. The compensation went to the owners, not to the people who had been enslaved. Nick Draper of University College London's Legacies of British Slavery project has said that Wells relied on his enslaved people for his fortune.

Wells moved to Bath in 1850 because of failing health, and died there on 13 May 1852, aged 72. Historians have long noted the paradox of his life, a man born into slavery who rose to high office in Britain and who also profited from slavery himself. He is in this archive because he is part of the history of Black Britain, not as a model to admire, and his page is meant to tell both halves of that story.