About us

We recognise the growing public interest in historic links to slavery and overseas plantations. Some of the results of our research, undertaken over the past twenty years, are summarised here for those with an interest in the Rolle family, and in particular Denys Rolle’s and John Rolle’s cotton plantations in Florida and Exuma.

Denys Rolle (1725–1797)
was an independent Member of Parliament for Barnstaple between 1761 and 1774. He inherited extensive property in Devon and was a generous benefactor to charities and religious societies, a serious student of natural history and science and a keen agriculturalist. The Rev J H B Andrews, vicar of Chittlehampton and historian, wrote that Rolle was “the richest man in Devonshire, and yet nothing pleased him more than to do a labourer’s work. He would set out early in the morning, bag of provisions and spade on his shoulder, dressed like a peasant, and work as hard as any day labourer on his estates.”

Denys Rolle spent much of his life in Florida, attempting to establish an “ideal society” and seeking to ensure that the indigenous people living on the land were treated with respect. His biographer Robert Legg records that “before he went to Florida he set out the principles which he intended should guide his conduct towards the native people. He said that there would necessarily be close contact with the Indian people, and that both natural justice and humanity required that they should be treated as true and original owners of the land. Nevertheless, it was inevitable that disputes and causes of complaint would arise – and therefore necessary that such conflicts of interest should be quickly resolved if greater troubles were not to follow. To this end he proposed that, from the first, any settlement which he made should have some proper judicature established within it. This was not granted, but on the arrival of Mr Lloyd his name was inserted in the Commission of the Peace.”

Denys Rolle brought to the Florida colony a group of 300 homeless and criminal people rescued from the London slums. However, many of them fled seeking an easier life, and were replaced with about 140 slaves. Following the loss of Florida as a British possession in 1783, the community, together with its dismantled houses and livestock, moved to a smaller site on Exuma in the Bahama Islands. The ship on which they sailed was the “Peace and Plenty”, now the name of an Exuma hotel.

Denys Rolle’s son and heirJohn, 1st Baron Rolle (1750–1842)inherited a colony of some 377 slaves on Exuma. By 1822, about fifty of them were over 40, and had most probably been brought to Exuma in 1784. The remainder were under that age and had probably been born there.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography records that while serving in Parliament John Rolle actively supported William Pitt’s campaign to abolish the slave trade.

No land or other assets in the UK were purchased with money derived from slavery. The Rolle Estate that passed to Mark Trefusis (later Mark Rolle) in 1842 was practically unaltered from the property which Denys Rolle had inherited during the previous century.

The compensation John Rolle received on losing ownership of the Exuma plantation following the abolition of slavery was substantially less than he had spent in sustaining the plantations in Florida and later Exuma. They had generated little, if any, revenue for their owner, and required a substantial subsidy to keep the business afloat and the families housed and fed. Between 1818 and 1828 Rolle spent over £5,000 (the equivalent of roughly half a million pounds today) in supporting the Exuma community.

When the slaves were officially declared free on 1st August 1838, many of them adopted the surname Rolle. They took over the Rolle lands in Exuma and ran them communally, although there was no formal deed of conveyance to them. Today there are still five Lord John Rolle Commonage Estates on Exuma, including the village of Rolle Town. These have been passed down to the descendants of the former slaves and cannot be sold.

Although the name of Rolle died out in England on the death of Lord Rolle in 1842 (revived for a while in the person of his heir Mark Rolle), the surname Rolle is still, in the 21st century, commonly found on Exuma and in the wider Bahamas. For example, the actress Esther Rolle, born in Florida of Bahamian parents; Myron Rolle, the Bahamian National Football league player, member of the Tennessee Titans and Rhodes Scholar; and Magnum Rolle, a professional basketball player born in Freeport in 1986.