As already noted, (see below), there is doubt about the year of birth of Thomas Austin. We do not know how he earned a living but it was most likely in connection with sugar, for he is mentioned as being the first planter to allow his slaves to receive religious instruction. He married first in 1755. Perhaps he was an overseer on a sugar estate and could not afford a wife until he became a manager or had saved enough money to buy some land and slaves of his own. He is described as of St Thomas, Barbados and Colonel of the Island Militia. There is a miniature portrait of Colonel Thomas Austin, which was passed down from Bishop Austin to his eldest son, William George Gardiner Austin, and thence down to Stella Elizabeth Piercy Austin, who possessed the portrait in 1999.
Thomas’ first wife was Mary Williams, a daughter of Hugh Williams of St Andrew's. On her death in 1767 he was left with three young sons, a daughter having died in infancy.
Two years later Thomas married another Mary, daughter of Major Barker of Andrews Plantation who was probably commissioned in the Island Militia. This Mary survived only five years, leaving three sons and a daughter [Chapter 9]. Nothing is known about the daughter except that she died unmarried, in her twenties.
Thomas’ third wife, whom he married in 1775, was Alice Henery, a member of a family closely connected with the Moores and Grants into which J.G.A. married a hundred years later. Thomas and Alice had eight children [Chapter 16].
Thomas lived through stirring times. His life spanned the Seven Years War (1756-1763), which resulted in the addition of Canada and parts of India to the British Empire by the Peace of Paris, the loss of the American colonies in the War of American Independence and the French Revolution. News of these great events trickled slowly through to the West Indies by sailing ‘packet’, but what was of vital interest to Barbados was the ever-present dread of attack by the French, only temporarily averted by Rodney's great victory off The Saints Islands (between Dominica and Guadaloupe) in 1782. The ruins of 22 forts, all that are now left of the 82 forts and batteries once in existence along the accessible leeward coast, testify to the fear of invasion. The most important was Fort Charles at Needham's Point which guarded the entrance to Carlisle Bay and Bridgetown and which is now the site of the Hilton Hotel. The great guns, encrusted with barnacles, now lie corroding in the sea at the foot of its walls.
Thomas lived to see this fear removed by Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805 but he did not see the statue of Nelson by Richard Westmacott, R.A. erected later in Bridgetown by the grateful citizens of Barbados.
Thomas’ 16th and youngest child was born in 1790. He outlived his third wife and left descendants in direct line now living in the West Indies, the United Kingdom, Eire, Sweden, Canada, the U.S.A., Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.
Thomas was buried in St James Parish in 1806.
Origins of the Austin FamilyThe surname Austin and its variants (including Austen, Astin, Asten, Austins, Oistin, Oysten, the Gaelic Costain and Agustin in Spain and Augustin in France) is quite common. It is possible that many Austin’s in England are named after Saint Augustin (or Austin) of Canterbury, who came to England in 597 and became, effectively, the first Bishop of Canterbury with authority over Christianity in England. There is, of course, no suggestion that all the present Austin families are descended from a single original family. The surname was most likely assumed by many different individuals who may have worked in, or had connection with, one or other of the many Augustinian monasteries.
As far as we know, there is no connection between Colonel Thomas Austin of Barbados and the author Jane Austen, or between Stephen F. Austin, after whom the city of Austin, Texas was named, and Colonel Thomas.
The name AUSTIN, OISTIN or OISTINE has been associated with the fishing village, Oistins, in Christchurch, Barbados since the earliest times.
Edward AUSTIN is mentioned in a list of persons who, in 1638, possessed more than ten acres of land and there is a legend that he was the infamous rogue mentioned in Ligon’s History printed in 1657:-
‘Three bayes there are of note in this island, one to the eastward of Carlisle Bay which they call Austin’s Bay, not in commemoration of any saint, but of a wilde, mad, drunken fellow, whose lewd and extravagant carriage made him infamous in the island and his plantation standing near the baye it was called by his name.’
Surviving registers from Barbados parishes list many other Austins, possibly families from different settlers, who were living on the island from the earliest years of its colonisation. There is further uncertainty, for parish registers give persons with the surnames Austen, Austine and Astin, as well as Oistin and Oistine. All or some of these may have been changed to Austin in later years. However, a note in the Lucas M.S. quoted in the Barbados Museum Journal of 1956 states: -
‘The family of Oistine of Christ Church must not be blended or confounded with the Austins of St Thomas, St Peter or St Andrew’s Parishes. They lived at one and the same time, spelt their names differently and never appeared out of their parishes.’
In a list of political prisoners transported to Barbados from England after the Western Rebellion that ended with the Battle of Sedgemoor and Judge Jeffrey’s Bloody Assizes in 1685, there appears the name of Thomas AUSTIN. He had been a mercer, probably in Somerset, before he joined Monmouth’s army. He was captured, tried and sentenced to be deported to Barbados. Thomas arrived there in March, 1686. It is possible that he was the grandfather of Thomas Austin (d. 1806), although the rebel Thomas may have been the Thomas Austin who left Barbados in 1687, with his brother Henry, and settled in Calvert County, Maryland, USA.
J.G.A. traced his lineage back to a certain John and Judith AUSTIN who were married in 1715, probably at St James’ Church for their three sons were baptised there. However, Thomas, the son of John and Judith, was born in 1720, whereas the age of ‘our’ Thomas when he died in 1806 is clearly written as 77, implying that he was born in 1728 or 1729. If so, he could not have been the Thomas born to John and Judith in 1720. Many early registers of Barbados parish churches were lost or destroyed, and it is also likely that in those times not all baptisms, marriages and deaths were recorded in church registers. It is also possible that ‘our’ Thomas arrived on the island from Britain or from the American Colonies as a settler, so that there would be no record of his baptism in Barbados parish registers. For these reasons, the antecedents of ‘our’ Thomas Austin and his year of birth will probably never be established with certainty.
It was supposed that Mary Williams who married Thomas Austin in 1755 was a descendant of General Asygell Williams, but later research has shown that she was the daughter of another Hugh Williams of St Andrew and no connection between the two families has been traced.
In the census of 1679 the latter Hugh Williams is mentioned as holding 10 acres of land in St Andrew and 10 acres in St Joseph. In his will he is designated as a shoe-maker and Mary Austin née Williams was one of his granddaughters.
She seems to have died in infancy.
Daughter of Major Barker of Andrews Pln., St.George
The first of Thomas’s daughters to survive infancy died unmarried. She was baptised in 1776, when she was 18 months old and presumably after her mother had died.
Thomas Austin’s second wife, Mary Barker died in December 1774 leaving a young family of her own and three stepsons. At the end of the following year Thomas married Alice Henery. They had eight children of whom we know far less than of the children of her predecessors except that they were all born in Barbados, baptised at St Thomas Church and some went to Demerara and spent their lives there.
She died of tuberculosis.
13. Frances Austin
She died unmarried and is buried in Bourda Walk Cemetery, Georgetown.
In 1811, Mary married the Rev. James Lugar (1786-1853), B.A. of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, known as ‘Pappy Lugar’, who owned the estate of Three Friends in Essequibo.
James Lugar was a native of Essex and had been in the Hon. East India Company’s military service before relinquishing his post to become a student at Cambridge. After graduation and ordination he held two curacies in Suffolk, but later went out to Demerara under the auspices of the Negro Conversion Society. He was attached first to St George’s church, Georgetown, but after a year there he went to Holy Trinity church, Essequibo, where he remained until 1827. At some time during his career he was tutor to his wife's nephew, William Piercy Austin, later the Bishop.
On the occasion of his jubilee as Bishop, William Piercy Austin, in the course of his address in the Cathedral, said:
‘... I had hardly arrived in the colony, with no intention of making it, as it has been, my home, when the incumbent of the Church of St George [Rev. James Lugar] was laid low with a severe illness and, at the request of the Governor of the Colony, I went to his relief in order that he might seek a change of climate.’
A few years after this action, William Piercy Austin was offered and accepted the post of ecclesiastical commissary, somewhat to the chagrin of his old tutor who had evidently hoped to be appointed himself. ‘Pappy Lugar’ wrote to William Piercy asking him to cancel his acceptance of the post ‘as it will render affairs hereafter incompatible with the relation in which we stand to one another both in our family and the Church’. The future Bishop did not accede to this request.
The Lugars had no children and there are no Austin descendants from Alice Henery, for one of her sons died in infancy and the other two had only daughters.