Reading to Barbados & Back
Echoes of British History: A Narrative of the Tudor Family of Haynes of Reading

By Stewart Johnson
December 2011
Book Guild
Distributed by Trans-Atlantic Publications
ISBN: 9781846246111
450 pages, Illustrated
$42.50 Hardcover


Robert Haynes, born in 1769 and heir to a large sugar plantation, was destined to become an important public figure in early-ninteenth-century Barbados, rising to Lieutenant-General of Militia (the 'General') and later the Speaker of the House of Assembly. He took great pride in his family origins, believing himself to be descended from a Berkshire family traceable back to the time of Henry VIII, and wrote it all down in his 'notes,' first published in 1910.

This book examines every claim made by the General and reconstructs his family history from the early sixteenth century into the seventeenth, their departure for Barbados and their emergence as notable sugar planters (and slave owners,) and as members of the legislature in the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries.

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