I have written before about William Macintosh’s business relationship with William Johnstone (later William Pulteney), with whom he co-owned a plantation on Dominica. I had been unaware, however, about the specific details of their holding. The above map, digitised by the John Carter Brown Library, was published in 1776 following an eight-year survey of the Windward Islands undertaken by the Commission for the Sale of Lands in the Ceded Islands following the end of the Seven Years’ War.
The map was accompanied by an explanatory pamphlet—References to the Plan of the Island of Dominica, as Surveyed from the Year 1765 to 1773 (1777)—which indicates that, by the year of the survey’s completion, Macintosh owned the freehold of three lots in the parish of St David (one of which he had previously co-owned with Pulteney, or Poultney as he is rendered here).
Macintosh’s lots—51, 52, and 53, bordered to the south by the French River—can be seen in the detailed enlargement of the map below.
Two years after the map’s publication, Dominica was invaded by French forces eager to regain their lost territory.