Barclays Bank History Series V

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART V--EAST INDIA COMPANY CONNECTION

Merger by Marriage

 

Sir Josiah Child, chairman of the East India Company (EIC), or perhaps his brother James Child, lived at Streatham House, not far from the Anchor Brewery in Southwark mentioned in previous segments of this history. The brewery was operated by James Child, possibly on behalf of his brother Josiah--employer of  John Howland at the EIC, who married Child's daughter, Elizabeth Child in 1681.

 

Howland had grown up in nearby Tooting Bec, where his ancestors had lived for generations, but after his marriage, he and Elizabeth moved to Streatham and proceeded to have a family. They named their first daughter Elizabeth Howland, and she and her siblings lived at Streatham with their mother, Elizabeth Child Howland, while their father was off with Sir Josiah Child, their grandfather, on important trade business in foreign ports. 

 

Teenage bride and groom

When Elizabeth Howland, was still a child, in May 1695--possibly younger but no older than fourteen--she was married at Streatham to fourteen-year-old Wriothesley Russell. The marriage was contracted by the Russell family who had a long history of political involvement. For example, his grandfather was William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford (1616 -1700), who had been a Member of the House of Commons for Tavistock in 1640, moving to the House of Lords a year later as 5th Earl of Bedford. 

 

In the wars then raging between King Charles I and Parliament, he tried to take both the royalist and the Parliamentary sides, and as a result was distrusted by both factions. At the same time, he watched his own son, also Sir William Russell, be executed for treason against the Catholic King Charles II in 1683. 

 

The Act of Settlement in 1688 brought William of Orange and Mary to the throne as joint Protestant monarchs, and once King Charles II died, the Russell (Bedford) crimes against the Catholic King were pardoned by King William III, who reversed the attainder (March 1689), appointing a House of Commons committee to find out the advisers and promoters of his "murder".  

 

William's father, who "had been named as a petitioner with Lady Russell in the act of reversal, was created a duke, the preamble to the patent describing him as father to Russell, 'the ornament of his age'." 

 

As Shakespeare said, "All's well that end's well."

 

Coronation of William and Mary

The father of the beheaded and now pardoned "traitor" carried the sceptre at the coronation of William and Mary, and was made a member of the Privy Council and given many important offices in Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, and Middlesex counties between 1689 and 1700. By allowing his son to be sacrificed, he was vastly rewarded with landed titles to which his grandson, the teenage bridegroom was named successor.

 

John Howland, father of the pre-pubescent bride,  had been amply rewarded as well. Howland received  a tract of land from his employer and father-in-law, Sir Josiah Child. The land located in lower Rotherhithe, about three miles east of Southwark, where the Barclay & Perkins Brewery made ale, was to be the site for the Howland Great Wet Dock--capable of accommodating around 120 ships for use by the East India Company. 

 

Josiah Child, EIC chairman

Sir Josiah Child did not live to see the comple-tion of the docks, which were not fully operational until after 1700. The docks were to be held in the names of the Howlands, their teenage daughter and her husband, Wriothesley Russell, and were financed and built by John Wells and his brother, Richard Wells, from a very successful Rotherhithe shipbuilding family in Surrey, who also owned the Surrey Docks Farm, which had previously built several ships for Sir Josiah Child as head of the East India Company.

The Howland ancestry

 

At the time the entailment deed was drawn, it was not known that Wriothesley Russell would die in 1711 at a young age, having lost his first two infant sons by 1707. Since his eldest child was a girl, named Rachel, for her mother Rachel Wriothesley, all the titles passed in 1711 to the next male heir. 

 

Nevertheless, out of interest, we note the the ancestry of Lady Rachel Russell can be traced back for centuries. The Wriothesleys first received the title as the Earl of Southampton from King Henry VIII--too far back in truth to be relevant to any study of Barclays Bank. But it's still a fascinating fact.

 

What is more interesting, however, is how the East India Company's chairman Child and his successors plotted to gain some political advantage in 1795, simply by what I've labeled a "merger by marriage".

 

 

Click to enlarge.

 

Editors, Finn, Margot C. Finn and Kate Smith, of a book published in 2018, The East India Company at home, 1757-1857, were interested in the interiors of the homes built during this era, and offered an observation of how Chinese designs were prolific at that time.

The Dukes of Bedford used their position as owners of East Indiamen [ships] hired to the Company, and as investors to gain privileged access to these Asian goods. The marriage of the 1st Duke of Bedford’s grandson Wriothsey Russell, Lord Tavistock (1680–1711) to Elizabeth Howland (1682– 1724) in 1695 brought a spectacularly large dowry of near £100,000 (roughly equivalent to £9 million today) into the family whose estates included Thames-side property at Rotherhithe. The marriage also connected the Russells with the Childs of Wanstead House, as Elizabeth was the granddaughter of Sir Josiah Child (1630– 99) whose advocacy of the EIC’s monopoly led directly to his appointment as a Director in 1677, rising to Deputy- Governor and Governor of the Company in 1681.

At Rotherhithe the 1st Duke of Bedford (1613–1700) built the first docks, whose rental brought in a useful income, first from the Greenland, and then the South Sea Companies. At these docks he built the Streatham which was presented by his grandson to the EIC. The Bedford, Tavistock, Russell and Howland followed, all commissioned before 1700, to which were added the Tonqueen, and later the Houghton and Denham.63
The Bedfords invested between one- sixteenth to one- eighth part in the voyages these vessels took, and thereby had considerable holdings in the East India Company.  [Source: The East India Company at Home, 1757– 1857, Edited by Margot Finn and Kate Smith (London: UCL Press, 2018).

 

Clearly, some deal had been made in 1795 by the parents who seemed so desperate to unite two families by marrying off their children. The plot could only have been designed by Sir Josiah Child, who had no sons. He had earlier married off his daughter to John Howland (a lower officer in the East India Company) and had no qualms about using her daughter, Elizabeth Howland in a marriage ritual to connect his family to the powerful Russell family, long close to royalty. 

William Russell, grandfather of bridegroom

The excerpt to the left [Source: Dictionary of National Biography, Volumes 1–22 (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1921–1922)], citing the historian Macaulay, indicates that William Russell, grandfather of the bridegroom, accepted his new title "somewhat reluctantly." 

 

Does that suggest he was embarrassed to have been involved in the plot? 

Wm. Russell, 1st Duke Bedford

William, the 1st Duke of Bedford, seems to me to have been both pompous and ambitious. The best description would be to call him a chameleon. He was wishy washy, taking turns siding first with one king, then against the next. Nobody knew where he really stood, unlike his son, who maintained his backbone as he literally lost his head.

Hatching the Bribe  

Wanstead

The East India Company apparently first began trading with China in 1699, but did not start selling opium to Chinese merchants until the 1770s. Before that time the Company reaped a significant fortune by virtue of the monopoly granted to it by those in power, and Sir Josiah Child wanted to maintain that connection free of competition. He had acquired enough resources through the trade to acquire an estate in Wanstead, according to Hannah Armstrong, who adds:

When Child purchased Wanstead in 1673, he owned only 2 per cent of [EIC] company stocks. Therefore contrary to common consensus, Child’s acquisition was not financed by East India Company wealth, but by other means such as his role as a founding member of the Royal African Company in 1671, as treasurer to the Navy in Portsmouth, and through the ownership of a sugar plantation in Jamaica and a brewery in Southwark, London.

 But things began quickly changing shortly after he bought Wanstead. Armstrong writes:

East Indianman clipper

Child’s shares in the East India Company equated to £12,000, and by 1679 this had increased to £23,000, making Child the largest stock holder in the Company. Further success came about in 1681 when Child was elected as Governor of the East India Company. In 1684 he served as Deputy Governor, until 1686 when he was once again Governor for another two years. He returned to his position as Deputy Governor again in 1688 until 1690. 

We are told that Sir Josiah Child was not above making bribes to get what he wanted. Armstrong in the same essay just cited tells us:

New East India Co. charter 1698

The London Society Magazine stated that ‘by his great annual presents Child could command both at Court and at Westminster Hall, what he pleased’. In order to secure a royal charter for the East India Company, Child reportedly bribed King Charles II on the 12 October 1681 with 10,000 guineas, an annual bribe until the revolution in 1688. James II also bowed to Child’s domineering nature and renewed the 1682 Royal Charter for the East India Company when given East India shares worth £10,000 in 1687. The 1867 study Citizens of London from 1060-1867, estimated that in 1693, £100,000 were spent in bribery to obtain the new charter for the East India Company.

[Sources: (1) The Merchant Princes of England, London Society, an illustrated Magazine of light and amusing literature for the hours of relaxation (March 1865), Vol 39, p. 264.  (2) Richard Grassby, ‘Child, Sir Josiah, first baronet’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, www.oxforddnb.com, Accessed: 08/03/2013. and (3) Benjamin Brogden-Orridge, Some Account of the Citizens of London and their Rulers, from 1060-1867 (London:William Tegg,1867), p.174.]

That brings us up to the coronation of William and Mary, when the new king was looking for a way to finance his next war and plot among Howland, Russell, Child and perhaps the King that led to the wedding of the teenage grandchildren and the titles William Russell "somewhat reluctantly" agreed to accept. 

Russell fretted only a short time, then died in 1699. The titles quickly passed down the lineal chain to his grandson, who enjoyed them only until his untimely death at Streatham in 1711, followed within a few years by his wife Elizabeth Howland Russell in 1724. 

East India Co. trade routes in 1800

By this time the Howland Wet Docks at Rotherhithe were busy building numerous East Indiamen owned by the Russell family, who in turn leased them to the EIC, and shared in the rich treasures the ships brought from China and other parts of the world. As for the Child family, they did not last long. The sons dissipated the fortune and never gained any admiration from the peerage. His son Richard Child, "completed the family’s journey from its mercantile origins by purchasing his ennoblement via George I’s mistress the Duchess of Munster (afterwards Kendal). However, he had to wait until 1718 before he was formally gazetted as 'Viscount of Castlemaine in the County of Kerry and Baron of Newtown in the County of Donegal'," thus acquiring a rise in station that caused grumbling on the ground that it “was making a man that’s no gentleman a lord.”

The other descendants of Wriothesley Russell felt themselves, after their parents' deaths, too wealthy to live at Streatham and were happy to rid themselves of it, using Dr. Samuel Johnson as their agent in selling the house and brewery to Hester Thrale. According to Audrey Nona Gamble's History of the Bevan Family, :

Although Silvanus was a Banker by profession, he was also a sleeping partner in Barclay, Perkins’ Brewery at Southwark. This business, formerly Thrale’s Brewery, was sold in 1781, on the death of Henry Thrale, by his executors. The purchasers were nominally Robert Barclay (cousin of Silvanus) and John Perkins, Thrale’s former manager, who had married Amelia, Timothy Paul Bevan’s young widow. 

For the sake of clarity, we set out here the names and statistical information--births, marriages and deaths--of the Russell children who survived. They will also become important subsequently.  

Children of Wriothesley Russell and Elizabeth Howland: 

 
• Rachel Russell, born 1700, married Scroop Thomas Egerton, 1st Duke of Bridgewater, in 1722. A widower, Egerton's first wife had been Elizabeth Churchill, born in 1687 to Queen Anne's best friend, Sarah Jennings Churchill as her third child. Her first child born in 1681 had been Henrietta, who married at age 17 the son of Lord Sidney Godolphin (2nd Earl of Godolphin) on 23 April 1698.
• There followed two sons given the name of their grandfather William, but both died as infants.

• 

  Dictionary of National Biography

  The fourth child, a son named Wriothesley Russell II, born in 1708, lived to become the 3rd Duke of Bedford after his father died in 1711. In April 1725 WRII married his older sister Rachel's stepdaughter--Lady Anne Egerton, daughter of Scroop Egerton and Elizabeth Churchill. A year and one month into this marriage--October 1732--the 3rd Duke died His widow remarried a few months later in June 1733 to become the Countess of Jersey, her new husband being William Villiers, the 3rd Earl of Jersey.
•  John Russell, born in 1710 (who had married Diana Spencer in the fall of 1731) upon the death of his brother in October 1732. His wife Diana gave birth to child who quickly died, and then Diana too died in 1735. In the meantime, the Bedford, Tavistock and Howland titles passed to him, and two years later he remarried. His second wife was  Gertrude Harriet Mary Leveson-Gower, whom we will explore possibly in the next segment of this series.

 

The Bank of England Chartered in July 1794 

We have not forgotten that the title of our series is about the History of Barclays Bank. We promise there's a method to all this apparent madness about kings, queens and empire. We also have not overlooked the historical timeline. 

 

Goldsmith banks on Lombard Street

Possibly the most important date in British history occurred at this same time, only a few months before the young teenagers' grandparents had a big wedding celebration in Streatham. Less than a year earlier, in late July, the King granted a charter to William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England (joint-stock corporation) as the Government's bank. 

 

According to James Edwin Thorold Rogers' book (First Nine Years of the Bank of England), first published in 1887 but still in print today, the bank followed the principles previously established by goldsmith bankers, who stored gold and silver to bank notes they issued as currency. The book is unusual for the fact that the author admits he did not have all the answers to some of the questions that arose during his research into what occurred during that time that would explain the bank's ultimate success. He simply did not understand where all the money came from.

 

He does conclude, however, the following: 

For in point of fact, the history of the Bank of England during its first years is in no slight degree the history of the settlement of 1689, and of the new departure which that great event makes in the politics of the civilised world.

Wanstead location near Hackney

In 1887 Daniel Defoe published his first work called “Essay on Projects,”based on events that occurred around 1694, when he lived at Tooting Bec (located near Streatham), when "the Government received with favour a project of his, which is not included in the Essay, 'for raising money to supply the occasions of the war then newly begun.'”  The timing and location lead me to believe he was part of the plot to explain where the gold for establishing the Bank of England came from. 

One hint contained in that essay indicating the plot is as follows:

These are the men this commission would discover; and here they should find men taxed at £500 stock who are worth £20,000.  Here they should find a certain rich man near Hackney rated to-day in the tax-book at £1,000 stock, and to-morrow offering £27,000 for an estate. Here they should find Sir J— C— perhaps taxed to the king at £5,000 stock, perhaps not so much, whose cash no man can guess at; and multitudes of instances I could give by name without wrong to the gentlemen.

Project to salvage gold

Defoe also made a reference to Sir William Phips, who "brought home a Cargo of Silver of near 200000 [pound sterling], in Pieces of Eight, fish'd up our of the open Sea remote from any shore, from an old Spanish Ship which had been sunk above Forty Years ," and about William Paterson who had invested in the expedition to salvage the ship. Other investors in the salvage enterprise included Christopher Monck, husband of Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of Henry Cavendish. 

Martin Parker, in a simplified modern-day story  titled "How stolen treasure kick-started the Bank of England," about William Phips' diving expedition," explained:

"The money was to be lent at 8% interest and the subscribers would be incorporated in order to manage 'the perpetual fund of interest' which would be produced. The interest would be paid out of levies on ships’ tonnage and wine and beer....The sunken galleon enabled the creation, in 1694, of the Bank of England as a private corporation to act as the government’s banker and owner of the state’s debt. It wasn’t until 1946 that the bank was finally nationalised and the heirs of the original investors were then paid off – though many were difficult to track down."

Could it all have been a ruse to launder opium proceeds from the East India Company? 

GLOBAL FAMILY NETWORKS

In 2006 the author was asked to deliver a presentation for a Sanders Research Associates conference, that was later cancelled. The ideas that arose from that endeavor have been expanded. What appears below is the first segment, which will be continued later.

Micro Versus Macro View of the World

During my brief talk, I want give an overview of my own concept of the historical development of transnational globalism by use of a metaphor that effectively depicts the growth and evolution over the last five centuries of similar patterns that have occurred among various nations and the economic models they use to sustain that nation's economy.

Then I want to go into a little more detail into one family I have studied which has had a very significant role in behind-the-scenes transnational finance. The family we’ll be looking at, like most merchant bankers, started out as just merchants. Whether we use other terms, like “private” bankers, “investment” bankers, or simply “venture capitalists,” they are essentially small groups of very discreet people—often family members—who have access to vast pools of wealth, which they promise to invest at great rates of return. Their costumes may change from one generation to the next, but they are always at the scene, pulling strings (often hidden behind the curtain) to make history unfold as it does.

Patterns Beginning in Early 16th Century

The earliest examples we find of global trade, such as the exploits of Marco Polo, were family enterprises. Even Christopher Columbus, after his initial discovery of the “new world,” made four or five subsequent voyages with his brothers and son. Shipbuilding was a family business, and therefore the seamen who became traders operated in family units as they set out in search of the unknown.  Over time they established trading networks in various ports throughout the world, attempting to make a profit each time they unloaded their ships in a different location. The danger was great, but the promise of large returns on a successful voyage made the risk worthwhile.

It didn’t take the seasoned travelers long to realize, however, that competition brought profits down, and that it could be eliminated by acquiring a monopoly from their local prince, or a concession from a foreign one—to have the sole right to engage in that particular enterprise in that precise location. However, such a trading right would be worthless unless it could be protected by force. The development of nation states occurred as local fiefdoms expanded, garnering increased power to secure these commercial rights. Political boundaries went as far as the lord of that domain could protect the people within.

Organic Metaphor

I tend to think in organic, rather than mechanical, terms. Visualize if you can a series of oceans surrounding masses of land. Each mass of land with a separate economic system is depicted as if it were a self-sustaining plant growing in an earthen pot. There is a root system, a cluster of leaves and a stem.   

Spider Plant as metaphor

Over the centuries, as the plant increases in size, it becomes root-bound. The roots consist of members of the economic society who cultivate the soil in some fashion--like miners or farmers--who have become unable to provide enough resources from the restrictive boundaries of this pot to furnish nutrients for the plant’s leaves in order to produce a surplus above bare subsistence that would allow the plant to produce flowers or seeds to ensure physical survival. 

It was that lack of resources, as well as the bland existence of life that motivated explorers to escape the walls of the fief during the dark ages. And it was what they brought back from their adventures that resulted in further change.

Thus the Renaissance was like a genetic mutation of the medieval plant. Think of the stem of that plant as being the lord of the manor whose responsibility was to ensure the most efficient production of all units within the plant by properly coordinating distribution of raw resources and finished consumer goods. He served as the clearinghouse or marketplace where all such products were exchanged. He could maintain power only so long as he was able to satisfy the needs of these units. The lord recognized his power was draining away when there was no longer enough soil in the pot to feed all the leaves. He either had to enlarge the pot (something that would require a war), or he had to find another way of getting the necessary nutrients. The solution he found was to change the plant’s structure.  

Since this is my metaphor, I allowed my lord of the pot to create the spider plant; lords of the various pots equate to the crowned heads of seventeenth-century Europe, whose lawyers devised the concept of the chartered company. These crowned heads were, by this time, desperate for new resources, having found that wars to increase the size of their pots had further depleted their resources. As new lands were claimed on behalf of each root-bound pot by explorers  authorized to trade outside the pot, the lord found he or she had magically acquired the means to pay these explorers as bankers suddenly popped up, generously offering to turn that new land into ready cash (specie) for the pot.

 “Give us a portion of that new land as a grant,” they said, “and we will do your work for you, as long as we have a monopoly on the trade.”  

Like stems of a spider plant, each pot on the original map began sending out new shoots, each with its own cluster of roots and leaves ready to plant itself in new soil and recreate itself. When this shoot (like a colony) settles on soil, its roots can develop to feed its leaves while still being connected to the original stem by the stolon, which allows it to send the required percentage of absorbed minerals back to the parent plant, whether assessed against the company or the settlers brought there by the company.  

In return, the lord is able to promise protection to the colony should a threat occur. Thus a reciprocal relationship was developed between trading families who invested in such charter companies and the heads of state. That relationship persists to this day even though the legal framework has evolved from chartered companies into multinational corporations.

Unfortunately, a metaphor is not the truth. It is a visual and an intellectual aid to assist in understanding the truth. It must be tested for accuracy. The plant metaphor acts as the macro illustration of the world. What follows is the micro test. Here we focus on one example--one family network arrived in America only a decade or so after the Constitution was adopted. We will examine that family to learn how its banking business became intertwined with governments in America and abroad, in so doing testing whether the metaphor we have presented gives a true and accurate picture of the world.

With reference to modern financial institutions, what is now called Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, Inc. is the result of a series of investment bank buyouts culminating in 1999 when the German bank acquired all assets of the old  investment bank established in Baltimore, Maryland, by Alexander Brown who first arrived in America in 1800 to engage in the linen trade. 

White Linen Hall in Belfast, Ireland

Brown’s parents were William and Margaret Davison Brown, who were living in Ballymena, Ireland, when Alexander was born in 1764. Scots like the Browns had begun to settle in this section of Ireland at the height of Parliament's legal dueling with Charles I in 1641.

Fifty years later, upon accession of William and Mary and creation of the Bank of England, the Protestant population began to explode in Catholic Ireland restrictions on the woollen trade, coupled with legislation allowing linen to be shipped duty-free to England and to British colonies in America, increased the importance of the linen industry in Northern Ireland.

Most of the immigrating Scottish families stemmed from Huguenots who had fled France during the latter part of the 16th century rather than convert to Catholicism. For more than a century the flax and linen industry would be Northern Ireland’s main source of wealth as trading networks were established by immigrating families.

From Oyster Bed to Walrus in One Fell Swoop

In "Seeing the World Whole," I tried to emphasize what two English men, prime minister Disraeli in 1844 and Lewis Carroll in 1871, had discovered about the world in which they lived, during the same era in which the Forbes family came to prominence in the early years of self-government in the United States. We live simultaneously within alternative universes. THE WORLD IS NOT AS IT SEEMS.

Hedging Bets

Hartford Convention or LEAP NO LEAP, ca. 1814

As we ended the previous segment in 1776, we were struck by the number of colonists, such as James Murray, who bet all they had on the wrong side. Loyal to the British Crown to the end, Murray went with others who opposed the revolution to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and forfeited all his interest in properties he owned within the newly declared nation.

His sister and two daughters, nevertheless, remained behind in Massachusetts and fought to retain title to the land and businesses they had worked for. The collected letters of James Murray, Loyalist, published in 1902, tell us that his these women were near Cambridge when they heard the guns from the battle at nearby Bunker Hill, and they fled from the Inman estate, taken over by patriot general, Israel Putnam, for his camp. They ended up at the Brush Hill mansion near Milton. Scroll down to the map inset below for these locations.

Murray's sister, Elizabeth Inman, remained in Massachusetts throughout the war and until her death in 1785. The property of Ralph Inman in Cambridge, though confiscated for a time, was returned to his family, all Tories as well, and sold in 1792; it is now part of the community northeast of Harvard. Elizabeth somehow reconciled with the old curmudgeon, and he survived her by three years, though his avarice and envy continued even as his wife lay dying. Dolly Forbes was present to witness this, while her sons were coming to adulthood.

Unlike her father and husband, Dolly was a realist who was able to cast aside any preference for British rule from a distance and take her chances with the new self-government. She did so completely alone, after her father's evacuation in 1776, her husband's departure in 1783, and her beloved aunt's death in 1785, living on her own there in Boston and its surrounding communities of Milton and Cambridge until her own death in 1811.

John Forbes, you may recall, had spent his adult years in East Florida while it, too, was British-owned, and we are told by E.L. Pennington in an article in "Florida History Quarterly," VIII, 164-68, January 1930 that he had:

received his education at King's College in old Aberdeen, where he passed through the ordinary course of Greek, mathematics, and philosophy, and attended lectures in divinity. The University of Aberdeen conferred on him the degree of M.A. in the spring of 1763, and he was then recommended to the bishops of the Church of England for ordination to the ministry.... In 1783, after nearly twenty years in the province, he returned to England on leave of absence, in bad health. He died in England, September 17, 1783, leaving a widow [Dolly] and three sons:

• James Grant Forbes (1769-1826),

• John Murray Forbes (1771-1831), and

• Ralph Bennet Forbes (1773-1824).

It's Whom You Know...

The first Forbes son, James, took his ill father back to Scotland in 1783, and remained to be educated (see footnote in link) before pursuing the same career as his grandfather and many of his Murray relatives had chosen--trade in the West Indies--as he attempted to recoup his father's land at St. Augustine, East Florida, which had been part of that ceded to Spain in 1783. Some have called the term "West India trade" to be a mere euphemism for the slave trade, but by any definition, the region of Santo Domingo (today's Haiti). where they lived for a time was the center in the Caribbean islands for the triangular trade that did include slaves as one of its legs.

Santo Domingo in the West Indies

John Murray "Jack" Forbes, Dolly's second son, entered Harvard that year at the age of only 15; in 1787, he graduated in the same class with future U.S. President, John Quincy Adams (hereafter J.Q.). Still operating under the articles of confederation, the new country had not yet adopted the current Constitution. J.Q.'s father, John Adams, a diplomat as well as vice president in George Washington's administration before he himself was elected the second U.S. President in 1796, worked hard to see the new country succeed, despite all attempts from opponents to ensure its collapse.

Four years older and more mature than his younger classmate, J.Q. on occasion dined at the Forbes home in Boston. James had returned from Scotland by then, as the two brothers are mentioned in the diary J.Q. kept. Selected excerpts from that diary indicate that most of J.Q.'s youth had been spent abroad with his father, both of whom were born in Braintree, later called Quincy, Massachusetts. A map of the colony, showing the area reveals how closely woven the Adams family's roots were with those of the Murray and Forbes haunts, labeled for convenience below.

Click to enlarge.

Showing the closeness of Forbes and Adams is the following whimsical verse they wrote together during their last year at Harvard. It first appeared in print in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine in 1917:

J.Q.'s diary relates that, after Harvard, he studied law under Theophilus Parsons (author of pamphlet, The Essex Result) in Newburyport before setting up a law practice in Boston in 1790. During this time, in the fall of 1788, J.Q.'s health suffered, and he found himself somewhat dependent upon opiates for sleep, the diary revealed, but whether the dependence continued we do not know.

Of Consuls, Spies and Sealing Wax

Dolly Forbes' son Jack also began the study of law at the same time, but under different men and locations in Massachusetts--in Lancaster under John Sprague and in Brookfield under Pliny Merrick. Intriguingly, however, he began a nonexistent practice in 1794 with Charles Porter Phelps (Harvard 1791), who married Theophilus Parsons' niece in 1800; after her death in 1817, he married Parsons' 27-year-old daughter, Charlotte in 1820. Phelps, like J.Q., studied law under Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, but a few years later. The same year Phelps moved to Boston to begin his law practice, coincidentally, was the only year Forbes claimed to have been in practice, and it was the same year J.Q. Adams was named Minister to the The Hague, Netherlands by President George Washington.

Jack Forbes, really only a boy when they first met at Harvard, was described by Adams in an almost intimate March 1787 entry in his diary, shown in the inset below:

John Quincy Adams' description of John Bennet "Jack" Forbes I

J.Q.'s reference to Jack's older brother, James Grant Forbes, supplemented by footnote 3 which begins at page 343, gives sufficient details about Dolly's eldest son to discern that he was a soldier during the war of 1812, both under Gen. Andrew Jackson and under Gregor MacGregor, where he served as a spy for Secretary of State Adams in 1818 and subsequently.

During this same time the spy's younger brother Jack was serving in the new diplomatic corps being created for the United States by their friend J.Q., Secretary of State for President Monroe. About John Murray Forbes, footnote 2, which begins at page 343, in J.Q.'s diary states:

From J.Q. Adams' diaries about John Murray Forbes (1771-1831)

Commercial Agent for U.S. Gov't?

One month before leaving office in 1801, Pres. John Adams included as part of his "midnight appointments" a place for Jack as commercial agent in Le Havre. 

Although confirmed by the Senate, the papers were not delivered to him before Thomas Jefferson's inauguration, and Jefferson, suspecting these appointees would not be loyal to him, named his own man for the post.

It took some lobbying before he agreed to name Forbes as consul in Hamburg--"a Situation of the highest Commercial importance and responsibility," as Jack Forbes termed it in a thank-you letter to the new President in 1802. 

At this consulate, Jack soon began to operate a "commercial partnership" with younger brother, Ralph Bennet Forbes, now at loose ends after the slave rebellion in Santo Domingo ended his prospects there. (The papers from Jack's days as U.S. Consul at Hamburg and Copenhagen, 1801-19, and U.S. Agent at Buenos Aires, 1819-31 are deposited at the Baker Library at Harvard.)

In a previously published version of this research it was stated:

The youngest son, Ralph Bennet Forbes, who learned the shipping business as an apprentice to his uncle, John Murray, in Virginia, made his first journey to the Bordeaux wine region of France in 1795 with a shipload of rice and tobacco, which he traded for brandy, a product which his ship then transported to Hamburg, the center of the old Hanseatic merchant associations, before making the return voyage, possibly loaded with salt and other commodities from that port. In this triangular fashion he spent much of his life, at times making his home in France, where two of his three sons were born. He was one member of a large family of adventuring merchants who had traveled the world in such fashion for many generations. [See The History of Milton, Mass.: 1640 to 1887 written by Rev. Albert Kendall Teele, (Boston: Press of Rockwell & Churchill), 1887, which mentions John B. Murray of Alexandria, Va., stating that Ralph was apprenticed to him in 1787, but it did not identify Murray as Ralph's uncle; that was an incorrect assumption on my part at the time of writing.]

Of Slaves and Drugs and Sailing Ships

Ralph was in fact an apprentice to Dolly Forbes' first cousin, John Boyles Murray, whose father was Dr. John Murray, her uncle, a physician in Norwich, England. All of the Murrays seem to have been trained for trade with the West Indies, probably the British island of Jamaica, as well as British colonies in America before the revolution. James Murray had chosen to settle in North Carolina where many Scots were situated. At the end of Ralph's training period in 1791, he went to Port-au-Prince, St. Domingo now (Haiti) where his eldest brother, James Grant Forbes, was then engaged in the trade, most likely as an employee of James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins.

Slave revolts begin in 1792.

Thomas Handasyd Perkins was slightly older than James and had decided at a young age to be a merchant servicing as apprentice to the Shattucks in Boston until 1785, at which time he and his brothers entered into trade together between Santo Domingo and New England. That trade consisted of acquiring slaves from Africa with rum and iron taken there from New England. Their ships would then leave the West Indies with raw sugar and molasses produced by slave labor and delivered to New England to make rum.

The marriages that occurred in the Perkins family reveal much about the business climate in eastern Massachusetts at that time. This is the family into which the youngest Forbes son would marry in 1799. His wife's older siblings and their spouses welcomed him into their homes and took him into business with them. Together they would be numbered among the wealthiest families in the entire state.

Children of James and Elizabeth (Peck) Perkins:

• Elizabeth in 1773 married Russell Sturgis;
• James Perkins, Jr. in 1786 married Sarah Paine, daughter of Timothy Paine, a Tory-sympathizing judge, forced to publicly recant his views and resign his judgeship;
• Thomas H. Perkins in 1788 married Sarah Elliott, daughter of Simon Elliott, a tobacco merchant in Boston, from whom they inherited some valuable mill property;
• Samuel Gardner Perkins in 1795 married Barbara Higginson, daughter of Stephen Higginson of Salem, Mass.;
• Ann Maynard Perkins in 1785 married Captain Robert Cushing, and their son John Perkins Cushing was taken into Thomas Perkins' home upon Ann's death.

James and Ralph Forbes remained in Haiti only until about 1795. The slave insurrections devastated any investments they may have made, as well as those of Ralph's in-laws, the Perkins family.

See ebook segment and footnote below*

*(See page 568, in The History of Milton). At one time a firm of distillers called "Loring and Snelling" of which Caleb Loring of Hingham, Massachusetts, was a partner, owned a ship called Rising States; it was seized by the British during the war. Whether or not it was the same ship, one with the same name is mentioned in "Papers of the American Slave Trade." The Perkins family had also started their West Indies trade after starting life in Hingham.

Time to Speak of Commerce, of Cabbages and Kings

What we learn from reading the diaries of various officials in the new U.S. government is that the consular appointments seemed to be rewards granted to men willing to engage in their own commercial business abroad and in turn send intelligence back to the President and his cabinet officials. To illustrate this point, read the biography of James Murray Robbins, son of Dolly Forbes' sister Elizabeth. Robbins was born and reared in Milton and actually moved into the Brush Hill mansion in 1805, where the Forbes girls had lived with their aunt before the revolution. The details were filled in by the Appendix to the Letters of James Murray, Loyalist (p. 310):

James Murray Robbins ... was born June 30, 1796, in the old Gooch house on Milton Hill. When he was nine years old his father removed from Milton Hill to Brush Hill, within the same town, making his residence in the Smith house, which had become the property of his wife; and here, eighty years later, the son died. He received his school education at the Milton Academy, which his father [Edward Hutchison Robbins] had been largely instrumental in founding, and of whose board of trustees the father and son filled the office of president for seventy-six years. At the age of fifteen [1811] he entered the counting-room of the prominent Boston merchants, James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins, and there acquired a thorough training in business habits. But the time was not propitious for commercial enterprise or success; the widespread stagnation of business, consequent upon the blockade maintained by the British fleet, and the hardly less oppressive acts of our own government, seemed to bar the way to entering upon the career of a merchant. In 1814 his cousin, John Murray Forbes, who was consul-general at Hamburg, invited him to accept official employment at the consulate; and it is not difficult to imagine how gladly the boy of eighteen must have exchanged the round of dull and apathetic duty in the counting-room for the excitement of the voyage and of foreign travel.

By 1811 Ralph had already been married to Margaret Perkins 12 years, and the brothers had given up trade in the West Indies for the East Indies, with China. In the meantime the young Robbins cousin went to Europe to replace Ralph Forbes. The editor of The Letters reports that President Monroe, through his secretary of state, Jack's old friend J.Q. Adams, called Forbes home and entrusted him with negotiations following Napoleon's defeat at the hands of the British, while the teenage Robbins was sent to Elsinore [Helsingor], Denmark, not far from Jack's 1813 post in Copenhagen. Was he merely there to keep his eyes and ears open and courier intelligence back?

The United States, as the only republic then in existence, had been engaged in war with the British monarchy since 1812, philosophically assisted throughout by the French after their own revolution against King Louis began in 1787. (See timeline and interactive maps.) The defeat of Napoleon in 1815 by an alliance between England and Prussia did not bode well for self-government. Did Jack Forbes laugh when the American officials trusted him with America's foreign affairs? Did President Monroe, the last Founding Father to serve as chief executive of the United States, know what was about to hit the fan? Did anyone understand at the time that the cost of such intelligence to the new nation was to allow those consular officials free reign in smuggling drugs?

We can only wonder now if Jack Forbes was a serious patriot to American constitutional government or whether he was only looking out for his family's business interests. Did he smile at all the brave oyster-like young men who followed in his steps, believing in their own patriotism? Lewis Carroll would later describe such gullible patriots well in his poem of how the walrus and the carpenter tricked a few eager oysters into becoming lunch by merely inviting them for a walk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

by Lewis Carroll

from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872

The Walrus and the Carpenter
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Walrus wept as Carpenter ate the oysters.

To Be Continued....