Q&A with Prof Verene Shepherd, Daily Gleaner (Jamaica)
Alex Renton, whose ancestors were enslavers in Jamaica and Tobago, talks to Professor Verene Shepherd, about his family and his new book, Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery, published by Canongate and which is available at Kingston Bookshop. Renton is donating all profits to charity.
VS: You start off the book by saying: “I am an heir of Britain’s slavery past.” Could you explain how you are connected to Britain’s slavery past?
AR: Both my mother and father’s families were involved in African enslavement.
The Fergussons, of Scotland, co-owned a Jamaican estate called Rozelle, in St Thomas, from 1769 to 1875 and a 300 acre estate at Bloody Bay in Tobago. In total, the Fergussons ‘owned’ around 950 enslaved people.
Conversely, on the Renton side, one great-great-great-grandmother was involved in abolition campaigning in Edinburgh in the 19th century. Meanwhile, a great-great-great-great-grandfather was born in Jamaica and appears to have been the grandson of a freed African woman, Mary de la Roche, by a white plantation owner. He himself ‘owned’ two enslaved people in 1817. My DNA test shows a small percentage from West Africa. . .