Irish planters & merchants: Daly

As early as 1759, Richard Bass Daly snr owned plantation Irish Hope [later re-named Vlissingen] on the east bank of the river Demerary. This was the Richard Bass Daly elsewhere referred to as ‘of Monserrat and Demerara’, who married in Montserrat, moved to Barbados where his son was born in 1764, and then settled in Demerara. He died later in the 1760s.

His son, also Richard Bass Daly (1764-1818), was educated in Holland, served in the Dutch navy and was active in Demerara from 1804-10. He was imprisoned in the Netherlands from 1811-15 and died in Islington in 1818. In 1799 he married Maria, youngest daughter of the wealthy Dutch planter Joseph Bourda. [Caribbeana I, p114]

John Daly snr (1736-1796), who may have been a brother of Richard Bass Daly snr, owned plantation Parica on the east coast of Essequebo. This John Daly was in London from 1783, from where he corresponded with a Canon Aston in Liege, who had the sons of Michael Daly (see below) in his care. John Daly died in 1796 and was buried at the parish church in Sunbury, Richmond.

At some time, probably in the 1760s, Michael Daly ‘of Demerara’, caught sight of the ‘remarkably handsome’ Anne Waterton in the streets of Wakefield, fell in love and married her, despite the opposition of her family. They went to Demerara where they were later joined by Anne’s brothers, Christopher and Thomas. Michael Daly died before 1786, having acquired plantation Bellevue on the west bank of the river Demerary.

John Daly jnr, possibly one of Michael's sons, was in Demerara from c1783 and later owned plantations Schoon Oord and Egipe. By the late 1790s he was regarded as one of ‘the principal proprietors of land in Demerara’ and had an annual income of between £20,000 and £30,000. In 1798 he presented a memorial to the government in London in which he proposed the creation of a force of ‘disciplined mulattoes’ to protect the colony. In 1799 [Close Roll, 40 Geo. IIL, Part 3, No. 5] he was living at Cobbins in Essex but returned to Demerara in 1807, with his daughter-in-law Miss St Felix.