George Watson (accountant)

[2] George Watson was buried in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirkyard, and although the precise location of his remains is unknown, there is a memorial plaque in a wall in the north-west of the graveyard.

[3] Letters held by the Edinburgh City Archives written in 1695-6 between George Watson and two Scottish merchants residing in London, James Pitcairn and Michael Kincaid, show an intent for a mercantile venture to procure a ship and transport slaves from West Africa to Barbados and return to the British Isles carrying sugar.

Colonial Office records held by the National Archives in Kew show that between 1698 and 1700, Duncan’s Amity sailed between Plymouth, Maio (Cape Verde), Barbados and Maryland three times.

[6] While the imports sections for the Amity within these records are either blank, damaged or illegible, it can be reasonably inferred that, given the conditions of secrecy and the sailing of the Middle Passage by the ship, this venture carried out the plan set out in the initial letters between Watson, Pitcairn, and Kincaid.

George Watson's College continues to be a successful Edinburgh school and has undertaken a programme of research and reflection about how it should acknowledge the involvement of its original benefactor in the slave trade.