James Drax

Colonel Sir James Drax ( – ) was an English planter and military officer. Born in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, Drax migrated to the English colony of Barbados and acquired ownership of several sugar plantations and enslaved people. Drax was expelled from Barbados by Royalists due to being a Parliamentarian, though he returned in 1651 when the island was returned to Parliamentarian control. Drax returned to England where he died in 1662. He would go on to establish a dynasty of wealthy slave owning sugar planters. Early life James Drax was the son of Mary ( Lapworth) Drax (b. ) and William Drax (–1632), of Finham, in the parish of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. In 1627, when James was 18 years old, along with Henry Powell, he arrived by ship to Barbados in what is today Holetown. In the late 1620s, James Drax became one of the earliest English migrants to the island of Barbados. He and his companions arrived and lived for a time in a cave, searching for provisions, hunting turtles and hogs and also clearing land for the planting of tobacco, which soon became the staple crop of the island. Drax later claimed he had arrived with a stock of no more than £300, and that he intended to stay on the island until he had parlayed that initial investment into a landed fortune worth £10,000 a year back home.