Joseph Foster Barham I (1729–1789) was the English owner of the Mesopotamia plantation in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica.
[2][3][4] He was the son of Colonel John Foster (1681–1731) of Elim, Jamaica and Egham House, Surrey, and his wife Elizabeth Smith.
Barham settled in England as stepfather to the Foster family of five sons and two daughters; he died in 1746.
An evangelical Christian, his friends included John Newton from 1773, in his days as a curate at Olney.
He married again, in a Church of England ceremony in 1785; and moved to his new wife's home, Hardwick Hall in Shropshire.
Over half of the slaves inventoried by his step-father Dr Henry Barham in 1736 had died by the time Joseph visited Mesopotamia in 1750.
A year later, Joseph paid his attorney, Dr James Paterson, to purchase 21 more African slaves to bolster the workforce.
[19] During the American War of Independence, supplies from North America to the British Caribbean were cut off, and combined with a series of hurricanes, resulted in food shortages and famine in western Jamaica.