The Middle Passage and the Landing Stops

Bristol was Britain's second slaving port, and the Jones name sits inside its merchant records. James Jones, merchant of Bristol — his will proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PROB 11/1259/104) after his death in 1795 — outfitted slave ships in the trade's final legal decade. His will, purchased from The National Archives in September 2026, is the documentary anchor for the Bristol end of this story.

The Register of British Slave-Traders (launched September 2026) identifies its ‘Captain Thomas Jones’ directly with the Bristol merchant who died in autumn 1795: the entry cites his will — TNA PROB 11/1269/203 — as a source, and the register’s separate entry for James Jones (d. 21/03/1795) lists ‘Thomas Jones — Brother’ among his relations (citing James’s will, PROB 11/1259/104). 47 crossings, 1752/53–1795/96, ‘almost twenty thousand Africans’ over a ‘forty-four year career’ — the brother and the trader are one man. (britishslavetraders.org; verified 2026-10-10.)

A September 2026 query of the Voyages transatlantic slave-trade database (2020 release) returned 62 voyage IDs naming Jones, James as owner between 1783 and 1794 — but the corrected count is 68 voyages (1783–1795): David Richardson’s published count, verified through the new Bristol Record Society volume of slave-trade documents (2025) (see “What we got wrong” on the home page). The query's voyages all sailed from Bristol and landed overwhelmingly in Jamaica, with roughly 13,900 recorded disembarkations across the 49 voyages that report numbers. A September 28, 2026 re-query of the rebuilt live database confirmed the identical 62 voyage IDs — no post-2020 additions or removals — with imputed totals of roughly 17,591 embarked and 16,105 disembarked across the voyages carrying values. Not one fleet voyage touches Virginia or the Carolinas: the wealth was made in the Jamaica trade. These figures carry a caveat — 28 of the 62 voyages carry the dataset's own qualified attribution — and one firewall: this fleet is a documented fact about James Jones of Bristol, and no record connects his wealth to the Madison County Joneses. An earlier version of this page called the fleet the strongest candidate for the family's slave-trade capital base; that framing is corrected here — whether Bristol money reached Alabama is a hypothesis, not a finding.

James Jones's ship was the Royal Charlotte. Her captain was James Soutar, a Scottish-born mariner who had migrated to Bristol and was commanding slave ships by 1791. Soutar sailed the Royal Charlotte four times for Jones — three as master (1791–1792, 1792–1793, and 1794), plus an earlier 1790–1791 sailing as second captain under William Peale (voyage 18083: departed Bristol 21 October 1790, landed Jamaica 11 May 1791, 312 people disembarked) — and after Jones's death in 1795 he left Bristol for Liverpool, where he commanded five more slaving voyages between 1797 and 1804 (the Ellis, then the Frances). On the last of them, the Frances (1803–1804), Soutar sailed as part-owner and landed at Charleston, South Carolina — his only voyage touching the Carolinas. He died on 1 October 1819 possessed of just £200.

Four sailings in five years, in the trade's last legal decade: the Royal Charlotte is the one documented vessel tying a Jones directly to the Middle Passage.

The densest Jones footprint in the Caribbean records sits in Saint Catherine, Jamaica. Nine slave returns name an “Honorable James Jones” — eight in 1817 (T 71/1, pp. 655–664) and one on 28 June 1820 (T 71/2, pp. 325–326) — listing 242 enslaved people in 1817 and 233 in 1820, alongside co-enslavers Francis Graham and George Guest. He is identified as James Jones of Great Baddow, owner of Twickenham Park, St Catherine, from 1807 to 1834 — the “Honorable” reflects his seat on the Jamaica Council. His 30 January 1836 compensation claim covered 240 enslaved people and £4,282 15s 2d — awarded not to Jones but to the London merchants Samuel Baker and Thomas Phillpotts (the firm Baker Phillpotts) as mortgagees and judgment creditors, with Jones listed as beneficiary and remainderman. The mortgage trail runs straight from a Jamaica plantation to a London counting house — the metropolitan end of the wealth chain, and a cluster of associated names worth opening.

The Barbados record is smaller and more precise. The 1817 slave return of Major George Juxon (T 71/520, p. 326), verified against the manuscript image, records one enslaved man as his own property: Temple — male, Black, house servant, age 40, country listed as African. One line in a register, one life reduced to five data points, and the only thing this project can still do for him is keep his name exact.

Because the surname is common and the records are full of look-alikes, this project keeps documented firewalls between them:

• Thomas Jones the trader (~20,000 Africans, 47 crossings, d. autumn 1795) is James Jones's brother Thomas — the Register of British Slave-Traders identifies its ‘Captain Thomas Jones’ with the Bristol merchant directly, citing his will (TNA PROB 11/1269/203), and the register’s James Jones entry lists ‘Thomas Jones — Brother’ among his relations (citing James’s will, PROB 11/1259/104). The brother and the trader are one man; no firewall between them.
• Richard Jones is two men: the Liverpool trader who died 18 December 1799 (7 crossings, including the Unicorn), and the Royal African Company subscriber who held £149 of RAC stock in 1726. Same name, different man, different century — do not merge.
• Philip Jones, named as a presumed brother and partner of James Jones around 1784–94, has no register entry — Unresolved, and the missing entry is not evidence he did not exist.
• The William-and-Jane baptism candidate is not merged with the slave trader.
• Bristol's James Jones (d. 1795) is not Jamaica's “Honorable James Jones” — now identified as James Jones of Great Baddow, owner of Twickenham Park.
• Colonel Francis Jones of Bermuda — investor in 14 intra-American voyages, 1729–1745 (~140 embarked, ~125 disembarked, bought in Bermuda, Jamaica, and St Kitts; landed at Hampton, the James River, and New York) — resolves to a wealthy Paget Parish merchant and militia colonel, not a Virginian. Lead closed.

Here is the honest accounting. What is documented: a Bristol Jones outfitting slave ships in the 1790s; a named vessel and captain; a Jamaica footprint of 242 enslaved people in 1817 and 233 in 1820 under another Jones's name — James Jones of Great Baddow, owner of Twickenham Park; a mortgage chain from Twickenham Park to London merchants; and, in Madison County, an Avalon line whose documented wealth is enslaved-labor wealth (47 enslaved people in 1820 per the probate inventory, 139 in 1850, 96 in 1860), creditor and commercial wealth, and land speculation.

What is not documented: any record connecting James Jones of Bristol to Lewellen Jones's Madison County line. That connection is an open hypothesis — a lead, not a finding, and not disproven. The single biggest unrun test remains a full SlaveVoyages surname query for Jones as owner, investor, captain, and enslaver, in both the transatlantic and intra-American databases. Until it runs, absence of evidence is all this page claims.