Devon House is a Georgian style mansion that was built in 1881 for George Stiebel, Jamaica’s first black millionaire. Though having a German Jewish father, Stiebel’s mother was black and in photographs, he appears to have more of his mother’s color. Stiebel was born in 1820.
When he was 20, Stiebel’s father, Sigismund, gave him start up money to buy a ship which he used to transport cargo between North and South America. Eventually, he acquired two more ships and became involved in the lucrative gun trading. This landed him in jail in Cuba.