Mibiri Creek - The House of Mr Charles Edmonstone

In Demerara, Waterton met his future father-in-law, Charles Edmonstone, and they became firm and lasting friends. Mibiri Creek was the house of Mr Edmonstone, Charles Waterton always found that his health recovered during his stays at Mibiri creek. Edmonstone became a most valued friend, his nephew, Archibald, also showed Waterton great kindness and hospitality. Archibald knew much about the local wildlife and the forest. Many years later Waterton recalled that he still had Archibald's catalogue in which he described nearly 70 trees found in the Mibiri Creek locality, including their eventual size, qualities, uses and their Indian names.

Waterton's wife, Anne, was the daughter of Charles Edmonstone and Helen Reid. Helen was the daughter of a Scot, William Reid, and Princess Minda, the daughter of an Arowak chief. A dark and exotic creature, Anne Waterton died shortly after giving birth to a son, Edmund - the couple's only child. Waterton was overcome with grief and could not bear to talk about his young wife throughout the remainder of his long life. Her two sisters - described by Charles Darwin as "mulatresses" remained with Waterton as his housekeepers and joint foster mothers to his son. These ladies, whom he loved and regarded as his own sisters, stayed with Waterton until his death and, had he had his way, they would have kept Walton Hall, but his son thought differently.

House on Mibiri Creek - Source
Thomas Staunton St. Clair, A Residence in the West Indies and America (London, 1834), vol. 2. The author sketched this scene while visiting this place. In left foreground, two male slaves are cutting wood, next to them are "their wives and children." In the very lower right hand corner is the boat-house, above it the main dwelling house, "and on the top of the hill were the Negro huts, with some cocoa-nut trees" (Timber Estate, British Guiana (Demerara), 1834. Image Reference LCP-33, as shown on The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas, http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/).

John Edmonstone
When Charles Edmonstone returned to Scotland, he was accompanied by John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who made his living in Edinburgh teaching university students the art of taxidermy. He lived at 37 Lothian Street in Edinburgh, just a few doors down from where Charles Darwin and his brother, Erasmus, lived. John learned his trade from Charles Waterton, who had met him at the Edmonstone's house in Guyana - then Demerara. Darwin employed John at the rate of 1 guinea (i.e. £1/1/- or £1.05) an hour when he heard that he was a protégé of Waterton.

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1."Some Account of the Writer of the Following Essays", by himself. Charles Waterton writing at Walton Hall on 30/12/1837 and published in the First Series of his Essays on Natural History, Chiefly Ornithology, 1857 (new edition).