ORANGE
TREE VALLEY
Descendants
of Herbert Newton Jarrett (ca.1724-1790)
of
Trelawny, Jamaica
Orange
Tree Valley was the original name of an estate in the parish of
Trelawny on Jamaica's North Coast. King Charles II granted the patent
of the property to Edward Drake on 12 July 1678, and by the 1750s, at
the height of Jamaica's prosperity as a sugar colony, it consisted of
about 1000 acres, making it the second-largest estate in Trelawny after
Good Hope.
At
that stage, Orange Tree Valley belonged to Robert Allen. He seems to
have hit hard times, and on 9 June 1757 he sold the property to Herbert
Newton Jarrett,
a successful 33-year-old planter, proprietor of Bamboo Estate, farther
west in the parish of Hanover.
At
the time he bought Orange Tree Valley, Herbert Newton Jarrett was a
widower with an 11-year-old son. Born in the parish of Westmoreland in
south-western Jamaica, he had acquired Bamboo through his first
marriage to a Miss Kerr. He now based himself in Trelawny at what
became known simply as Orange Valley. A year or so after buying the
estate, he married its former owner's sister, Ann Allen, with whom he
had five more children - four daughters and a son.
Orange
Valley continued to belong to Herbert Newton Jarrett's descendants
until the 1920s.
For more about them, click here.
NB: THIS SITE IS STILL VERY MUCH UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
