Stedman Rawlins


Hon. Stedman Rawlins was a slave and sugar plantation owner, and the President of His Majesty's Council, on the Caribbean Island of St. Christopher.

Life

Stedman was born in the Caribbean and baptized at Trinity Anglican Church, Trinity Palmetto Point Parish. He became a profitable slave owner in Saint Thomas Middle Island Parish, just as his father Stedman Rawlins Sr. did before him, Rawlins Jr. married Gertrude Tyson c. 1805. England outlawed the slave trade.
Rawlins became the Governor of Saint Christopher. He owned the Verchild's and the Crab Hole plantations. Rawlins was one of the magistrates that ruled against slave Betto Douglas's complaint of cruelty, returning her to her master after he had kept her in stocks for 7 months. Rawlins was the President of His Majesty's Council on St. Christopher. Missionary accounts indicate that he encouraged missionaries to preach to the slaves in the President's hall. In 1827, Rawlins became the acting Governor of St. Kitts. He was charged with the selling of criminal slaves, even after the slave trade had been abolished.
He went to Halifax, Nova Scotia and died there being buried in the Old Burying Ground. Rawlins's obituary reads that he was at St. Christopher, "where he was much respected. He had recently come to this country in the hope of restoring his constitution, debilitated by a long residence in the West Indies."
Three years later, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 outlawed slavery all together in the British empire.

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