Francis Barber
Encyclopedia
Francis Barber was the Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

n manservant of Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 from 1752 until Johnson's death in 1784. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

70 a year to be given him by Trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield
Lichfield
Lichfield is a cathedral city, civil parish and district in Staffordshire, England. One of eight civil parishes with city status in England, Lichfield is situated roughly north of Birmingham...

 in Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, Johnson's native city. After Johnson's death in 1784, Barber did this, opening a draper
Draper
Draper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer, of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...

's shop and marrying a local woman. Barber was also left Johnson's books and papers, and a gold watch. In later years he had acted as Johnson's assistant in revising his famous Dictionary
A Dictionary of the English Language
Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language....

 and other works.

Biography

Barber was born a slave
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.-Conditions:The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, St...

 on a sugar plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...

 in Jamaica belonging to the Bathurst family. At the age of about 15, he was brought to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 by his owner, Colonel Richard Bathhurst, whose son, also called Richard, was a close friend of Johnson. He was sent to school in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

. Johnson's wife Elizabeth Porter
Elizabeth Porter
Elizabeth Jervis Porter was the wife of Samuel Johnson.Born Elizabeth Jarvis , her first marriage was to Henry Porter, a Birmingham merchant, with whom she had three children...

 died in 1752, plunging Johnson into a depression that Barber later vividly described to James Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....

. The Bathursts sent Barber to Johnson as a valet
Valet
Valet and varlet are terms for male servants who serve as personal attendants to their employer.- Word origins :In the Middle Ages, the valet de chambre to a ruler was a prestigious appointment for young men...

, arriving two weeks after her death. Although the legal validity of slavery
Slavery at common law
Slavery at common law in former colonies of the British Empire, developed slowly over centuries, characterised by inconsistent decisions and varying rationales for the treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of slaves and slave owners...

 in England was ambiguous at this time (with Somersett's Case
Somersett's Case
R v Knowles, ex parte Somersett 20 State Tr 1 is a famous judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772 which held that slavery was unsupported by law in England and Wales...

 of 1772 clarifying that it did not exist in England), when the elder Bathurst died two years later he gave Barber his freedom in his will, with a small legacy of £12. Johnson himself was an outspoken opponent of slavery, not just in England but in the American colonies
Slavery in Colonial America
The origins of slavery in the colonial United States are complex and there are several theories that have been proposed to explain the trade.In 1607, English settlers established Jamestown as the first permanent English colony in the New World. Tobacco became the chief crop of the colony, due to...

 as well.

Royal Navy

Barber then went to work for an apothecary in Cheapside
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...

 but kept in touch with Johnson. He later signed up as a sailor for the Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, until retrieved, perhaps against his wishes, by Johnson, returning to be his servant. Barber's brief maritime career is known from James Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....

's Life of Johnson
Life of Johnson
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. is a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson written by James Boswell. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre of biography; many have claimed it as the greatest biography written in English...

:
Later Johnson put Barber, by then in his early thirties, in a school, presumably so that he could act as Johnson's assistant. From Boswell's Life:

Later years

Barber is often mentioned in James Boswell's
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....

 Life of Johnson and other contemporary sources, and there are at least two versions of a portrait, one now in Dr. Johnson's House, which may be of him. Most recent art historians thought it was probably painted by James Northcote
James Northcote
James Northcote RA , was an English painter.-Biography:He was born at Plymouth, and was apprenticed to his father, a poor watchmaker. In his spare time, he drew and painted. In 1769 he left his father and set up as a portrait painter. Four years later he went to London and was admitted as a pupil...

, or perhaps by Northcote's master Sir Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

, who was one of Barber's Trustees under the will. An alternative view, recently expressed on a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 programme, is that it is by Reynolds himself, but of his own black servant, not Barber.

When making his will, Johnson asked Sir John Hawkins
John Hawkins (author)
Sir John Hawkins was an English author and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. He was part of Johnson's various clubs but later left The Literary Club after a disagreement with some of Johnson's other friends. His friendship with Johnson continued and he was made one of the executors...

, later his first biographer, what provision he should make for Barber. Sir John said that a nobleman would give 50 pounds a year. Then I shall be "noblissimus" replied Johnson, and give him 70. Hawkins disapproved, and after Johnson's death criticized his "ostentatious bounty and favor to negroes." The bequest was indeed widely covered in the press.

Barber's life in Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

 was unsettled, and he was apparently given to drinking. He died in Stafford
Stafford
Stafford is the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies approximately north of Wolverhampton and south of Stoke-on-Trent, adjacent to the M6 motorway Junction 13 to Junction 14...

; his descendants still farm near Lichfield
Lichfield
Lichfield is a cathedral city, civil parish and district in Staffordshire, England. One of eight civil parishes with city status in England, Lichfield is situated roughly north of Birmingham...

.

See also

  • Edward Thaddeus Barleycorn Barber
    Edward Thaddeus Barleycorn Barber
    Edward Thaddeus Barleycorn Barber was born on 1 July 1865 in the Spanish colonized capital city of Santa Isabel on the island of Fernando Po in West Africa....


  • Black British
    Black British
    Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...

  • Historical immigration to Great Britain
    Historical immigration to Great Britain
    Historical immigration to Great Britain concerns the inward movement of people, cultural and ethnic groups into island Great Britain before 1922, Immigration during and after 1922 is dealt with at the article Immigration to the United Kingdom .Modern humans first arrived in Great Britain during the...


External links

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