John Lyons (Antiguan landowner)
Antiguan naval captain and politician
Captain Major John Lyons (20 October 1760 – 6 February 1816) was an Antiguan politician of English ethnicity, and a Captain in the Royal Navy and Major in the British Army, who owned 563 acres of sugar plantations in Antigua.
He was the progenitor of a famous naval family. He married Catherine Walrond, who was the daughter of the 5th Marquis de Vallado and Sarah Lyons (1731-1764), by whom he had 15 children, including Vice-Admiral John Lyons, who fought on HMS Victory at Battle of Trafalgar, and Admiral Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons, who led the Royal Navy during the Crimean War.
His grandsons included Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, the leading British diplomat of the second half of the 20th century, who solved the Trent Affair, and Sir Algernon McLennan Lyons, Admiral of the Fleet.
Life
Family
John was born in Antigua on 20 October 1760. He was the eldest of 11 children. His father was John Lyons (1731 - 1775), who had succeeded to the 563 acre Lyons estate in Antigua in 1748 and had served as a member of the Council of Antigua from 1764 to 1775. In addition to his father, his grandfather and great-grandfather also had been members of the Council. John's great-grandfather Major Henry Lyons had emigrated to Antigua from River Lyons, King's County, Ireland, and Ledestown/Ledistown Hall, County Westmeath, Ireland.
The Irish Protestant Lyons family were not ethnically Irish, but English members of the Protestant Ascendancy who had been granted land in Ireland by James I. The grandson of Sir Richard Lyons, who was Governor of Calais during the reign of Henry VIII, was Captain William Lyons, a Huguenot and supporter of Henry of Navarre, and who fled to England, after the Massacre of St.
The public source identifies “John Lyons (Antiguan landowner)” as antiguan naval captain and politician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Lyons and Antiguan.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6245637. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1760, 1816, 1731 and 1764.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Lyons (Antiguan landowner)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.