The Tale of ‘Jack Indian’
An intriguing entry in the Warwick Castle account books from the 1640s refers to an individual known as 'Jack Indian'. But who was 'Jack', and what might the term 'Indian' mean?
Historian Kerry Apps will explore the surviving documentation surrounding Jack and the theories about who this young man might have been and his probable Indigenous American origins. Kerry will describe the connections between Connecticut, New England, and Warwickshire, and the context of Anglo-Indigenous contact and conflict that likely influenced Jack's presence in Warwickshire, as well as his role within a broader history of Indigenous American presence in Britain.
Kerry Apps is a historian specialising in the seventeenth century, with a particular emphasis on early America. She earned an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, concentrating on Indigenous American presence in the early English colonies in the Caribbean in 2022. By 2026, she will have completed a PhD with the National Trust, examining the links between Restoration-era Ham House and the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.
Wheelchair accessible
Location: County Record Office
£12+ booking fee , includes tea and coffee. Book at warwickshire.gov.uk/heritageboxoffice
Image: Close up of signature of Jack Indian, Courtesy of WCRO
