1771–74. Rev. Joseph Stoney.
1774–87. Rev. J. Grignon.
1787–95. Rev. Francis Dauney.
1795–1805. Rev. Francis Rickard.
1805–13. Rev. David Duff.
1814–27. Rev. Henry Jenkins.
1827–47. Rev. John M’Intyre, M.A.
1847–62. Archdeacon Thomas Price Williams, D.D.
1862–81. Rev. David R. Morris.
1881–85. Rev. W. H. Williamson.
1885–87. Rev. George Whyte.
1887–97. Rev. F. H. Sharpe.
1897–1904. Rev. J. W. Austin.
1905. Rev. J. Messiah, B.A.
Of the monuments in the church, the best is that of =Mrs. Rosa Palmer=,
by John Bacon, R.A., of the year 1794. It is, after the Rodney and
Effingham monuments at Spanish Town, the best work by Bacon in Jamaica.
She to whose memory it was erected, the wife of John Palmer, custos of
the parish, died in 1790, aged 72 years. This monument has been for
years connected with the legend of Rose Hall, about ten miles to the
east of Montego Bay. Into this legend, of cruelty to slaves and murder
of her several husbands by a certain Mrs. Palmer, it is not necessary to
enter. Controversies have raged having for their object the identity of
the figure on the monument; some maintaining that it was the good,
others the bad Mrs. Palmer. As a matter of fact it represents neither,
but is merely an emblematic figure, such as Bacon was very fond of
putting into his memorials, and in all probability the head on the vase
represents the features of Rosa Palmer. Mr. Joseph Shore, in his work
“In Old St. James” in 1911, solved the mystery. The good Mrs. Palmer was
Rosa Kelly, daughter of the Reverend John Kelly of St. Elizabeth, who
married John Palmer as her fourth husband, and was his faithful wife for
twenty-three years; her other husbands being Henry Fanning of St.
Catherine, George Ash of St. James, and the Honourable Norwood Witter of
Westmoreland. The wicked Mrs. Palmer was Annie Mary Paterson, who
married in St. James in 1820 John Rose Palmer, grand-nephew and
successor at Rose Hall and Palmyra of John Palmer. She ended her
ill-spent days in 1833.
Other good monuments in the church are to Dr. George Macfarquhar, also
by Bacon (1791), to Dr. William Fowle, an early work of Sir Richard
Westmacott (1796), and to Mrs. Sarah Newton Kerr, by Henry Westmacott
(1814). The works by John Bacon the younger are hardly worthy of
mention.
In 1911 a handsome three-light window by Jones and Willis was erected at
the east end of the church. The centre light represents the Crucifixion,
the side-lights the Resurrection and the Ascension. One of the
side-lights was presented by Mr. W. F. Lawrence, whose family owned
Fairfield and other estates on the north side for many years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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