Sir Nicholas Lawes and Jamaica's First Coffee

Jamaica's coffee industry traces back to a colonial governor's private planting rather than a planned agricultural policy. Sir Nicholas Lawes is credited with introducing coffee to the island, most commonly dated to 1728, though the historical record is less tidy than the familiar date suggests.

Who was Sir Nicholas Lawes?

Nicholas Lawes served as Governor of Jamaica from 1718 to 1722, according to Wikipedia's list of the island's colonial governors. He had a personal stake in Jamaican land well before that: in 1698 he married Susannah Temple, and received Temple Hall, an estate in St Andrew parish north of Kingston, as part of the marriage, according to Wikipedia's biography of Lawes. That property is where the planting most associated with his name is usually said to have taken place.

When did Lawes introduce coffee, and was he still governor?

Here the sources genuinely disagree, and the disagreement is not trivial. Wikipedia's own biography of Lawes states plainly that he "introduced the very lucrative coffee growing into the island in 1721 according to some sources or 1728 according to others." The 1721 date sits within his recorded term as governor; the far more commonly repeated 1728 date falls six years after that term had ended, which means most popular accounts describing "Governor Lawes" planting coffee in 1728 are using the title as a lasting honorific for a former governor rather than describing him in office at the time. This site follows the convention used by other historical accounts of Jamaican coffee, including the history of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee page, in citing 1728 as the commonly given date, while flagging that his governorship itself had already ended by then.

Where did the first seedlings come from, and how many were there?

Accounts differ here too. A Jamaica Gleaner history of the industry states that Lawes planted around eight seedlings at Temple Hall, and that they came from Martinique. A 2024 Gleaner commentary by trade specialist Elizabeth Morgan, covering the same period, gives the number as seven, without repeating a specific island of origin in that piece. Wikipedia's separate article on coffee production in Jamaica does not name an origin for the seedlings at all, and gives a different planting location, describing the crop as introduced near Castleton, north of Kingston, a place distinct from, though in the same general part of St Andrew as, Temple Hall. None of these accounts can be checked against a single definitive primary record among the sources reviewed for this page, so the seedling count, its origin and even the precise planting site are all best treated as reported rather than settled.

What happened after the first planting?

Whatever its exact origin, the planting took hold. Cultivation was concentrated in the foothills of St Andrew parish through 1768, roughly the same area as Temple Hall and Castleton, before spreading higher into the Blue Mountains proper and into other parishes, including Manchester, St Ann and St Elizabeth, according to Elizabeth Morgan's 2024 Gleaner commentary. Coffee went on to become one of colonial Jamaica's major export crops, grown on plantations worked by enslaved people through the following century; that expansion, and what happened to the industry after emancipation, is covered separately on coffee plantations and slavery in Jamaica.

Why the date still matters

The exact year is more than trivia. It sets the starting point for the origin story that every account of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee eventually repeats, and it is the reason 1728 appears at the top of the history timeline elsewhere on this site. Given how far the historical accounts diverge, on the year, the seedling count, the place of origin and even whether Lawes was still governor, readers researching the period closely should treat the "Governor Lawes, 1728, Temple Hall" version as the most commonly repeated account rather than a fully verified one.

Reading further

For the fuller timeline from 1728 to the present, including the industry's colonial-era peak and its regulation today, see a history of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. For how coffee reached the Blue Mountains area specifically, see the Blue Mountain region.