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....

Seeing the World Whole

When I first began to write historical research articles about financial subjects for Sanders Research Associates early in 2004, I was quite intrigued by the fact that voters that November would have a "choice" between two candidates for President, each of whom had been a member of a secret society that had existed at Yale University since 1832. (Note: Skull and Bones has been discussed at this blog several times. (Use the search engine provided to the right to locate that previous research on this blog or click Skull and Bones in the labels list.)

What are the odds in a "democracy" of almost half a billion people in the United States, we end up with only two candidates, two years apart at Yale, each chosen by the same secret society which adds only 15 new members each year? What class of people is promoting these two men, I wondered. Wouldn't any discerning voter with an ounce of curiosity have similar questions? As I have revised this original research almost a decade later for publication on this blog, I have finally begun to realize what class that was. It was the same class of ancestors Franklin Roosevelt was accused of betraying by his policies, as you will learn below, for, surprising to me, was the fact that Kerry and Roosevelt were hewn from the same cloth!

Indeed, the world is not what it seems. A decade ago, an image arose in my mind of Lewis Carroll's Alice, perched upon a mantel, peering through a mirror into what was not her reflection, but into a totally different world--an alternative universe not recognized by most people. Catherine Austin Fitts referred to my attempt to merge the two worlds into one as "seeing the world whole," refusing to accept either world alone as reality. 

My research proposed to look behind is the hagiographic biographies of our governing elites and delve instead into the source from which their wealth was derived. That is always my focus, much as Oliver Stone's movie version of Woodstein's fictionalized Watergate tale reminded us: Forget the myth the media has created... Just follow the money!

This research was previously published at the website, Minor Musings, as part of a series styled "Election 2004: Can We Handle the Truth?" and titled "John Forbes Kerry: Globalists Through a Looking Glass." 

by LINDA MINOR © 2004 (Revised 2013)

As the 2004 election approaches, the American electorate nestles dreamily in Wonderland, pondering what changes John Kerry might bring—unaware of the heritage which brought him into being. Kerry’s roots lie, however, in another world—a world that, once seen, destroys that “golden gleam” of childhood and innocence. Once we pass, as Alice did, through a looking glass, we will see another John Kerry, leading us into a maze, each entrance of which opens into a path of mystery and intrigue.

Alice, stepping through the mirror into a different world.

In a Wonderland they lie, 
Dreaming as the days go by, 
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam— 
Life, what is it but a dream?

― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

On this side of the looking glass, Kerry portrays a liberal, Democratic exterior, though it is well known that he has been cultivated all his life by persons of wealth. The maze of his heritage—through all its twists and turns—reveals much more about how the world works than it tells us about the man John Kerry would like to be.

Maze of mystery

It is apparent that he has already been chosen to replace George W. Bush. [From the author: Boy, was I wrong in my prediction!] The world we will see as we enter through the looking glass may help us understand who made that choice. Step through the looking glass, into the maze, and see for yourself the world John Kerry was born into.

John Kerry's Mother and her Roots

Rosemary Isabel Forbes Kerry

John Kerry's mother, Rosemary Isabel Forbes, has a fascinating ancestry from both her Forbes and Murray roots from her father's side. She was born in Paris in 1913, and through some strange accident of fate, or perhaps a lapse in parental supervision, would become the wife of Richard John Kerry—grandson of a Jewish brewer who emigrated from Austria. Her husband's father worked in Boston as a shoe merchant and committed suicide in 1921. These were not the best ancestors a Forbes would hope for their son-in-law, even though he was a graduate of Yale and of Harvard Law. What is known about Kerry’s father has been disclosed in the Boston Globe series of articles, particularly one published February 2, 2003, which can be read here and here. Also see my additional Kerry research, "Very Different Personages.")

The first of Kerry’s Forbes ancestors bearing that name to arrive in America was Rev. John Forbes of Strathdon, Scotland, who, as a young graduate from Aberdeen, was appointed in 1763 to be a judge in the British Admiralty at St. Augustine, East Florida. That was the same year the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War, ceded the French territory in Florida to England. Rev. Forbes, arrived a few months after the appointment, in 1764, with the colony’s newly appointed governor—a Scotsman named Sir James Grant, who was allegedly related to Forbes’ mother. 

Dolly Murray Forbes

Only five years later Rev. Forbes would marry the daughter of James Murray, another Scotsman loyal to the British Crown, and his wedding to Dorothy Murray was celebrated on the 300-acre Brush Hill estate in Milton, Massachusetts, which belonged to Dorothy's aunt, Elizabeth Murray Smith. Seven years prior to the Declaration of Independence, war against England already loomed on the horizon, and a revolution against the mother country to which the Murrays remained loyal, threatened all their hard work as well as the connections so important to the lifestyle they had achieved in America.


The Murrays

Dorothy's father was James Murray, who, as we learn from a book called The Loyalists of Massachusetts by James H. Stark (p. 255):

settled at Wilmington, on the Cape Fear River, and purchased a house in town and a plantation of 500 acres and Negro slaves. He was also appointed collector of the Port, and in 1729 he was appointed a member of the Board of Councillors. In 1737 Mr. Murray received news of the death of his mother. This necessitated a journey to Scotland to settle her estate. On returning he brought with him his younger brother and his sister Elizabeth, not quite fourteen years of age. She was installed as his housekeeper, and then began that affectionate intimacy between them which was perhaps the most vital and enduring element in the life of each. James Murray prospered as a planter and merchant. He imported from England such goods as the colonists required and in exchange sent to England naval stores, tar, pitch, and turpentine.

In 1744 he returned to Scotland with his sister Elizabeth, married his cousin, Barbara Bennet, and remained in England and Scotland for five years. On his return in 1749, accompanied by his wife and daughter and his sister Elizabeth, their ship put into Boston, and he returned alone to Wilmington, leaving his family in Boston, because, as he wrote, "they had an opportunity of spending three of the most disagreeable months of this climate in that poor Healthy Place, New England—their health they owe to God's goodness, their poverty to their own bad policy and to their Popular Government." His sister Elizabeth remained in Boston and married Thomas Campbell, a Scotchman, merchant and trader. Their married life was short, for the husband died in a few years.

William Stevens Powell, editor of the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, wrote that in 1755 James Murray was deputy paymaster for British troops on the Ohio River during the French and Indian War under Col. James Innes. In 1757, Governor Dobbs made accusations that Murray had "illegally issued unlimited private paper currency that was to be accepted by the colony in payment of quitrents," and he was temporarily suspended from his position on the Governor Dobbs' Privy Council. The allegation seems to be supported by the fact that he made use use of a young cousin he brought from Scotland and installed to Murray's own advantage, apparently with the help of "his political patron," Governor Dobb's predecessor, Gabriel Johnston (who died in 1752) and Murray's relationship with Colonel James Innes:  

Murray provided a home for him [his cousin and protégé, John Rutherfurd] in his own house in Wilmington, and put him to work in his store; where he learned to keep accounts and sell goods. He does not seem to have enjoyed any educational advantages prior to coming to America, but he was taught by his cousin, who was a fairly educated man, and it was not very long before he began to get the benefit of Murray's influence with Governor Johnston and others in authority, and to be advanced to official position. He [Rutherfurd?] was appointed Recorder of Quit Rents in 1750 and in 1756 was a member of the Council, but having displeased Governor Dobbs by not agreeing with that disputatious and obstinate old gentleman, was removed from the latter position in 1757, and again restored to it by the Crown in 1763.

Sources: 

• See Janet Schaw's Journal of a Lady of Quality--full title: "Journal by a Lady, of a Voyage from Scotland to the West Indies and South Carolina, with an account of personal experiences during the War of Independence, and a visit to Lisbon on her return 25 October 1774—December 1775," regarding Murray and Rutherfurd's closeness to James Innes. 
• See footnote on page 22 of A history of New Hanover County and the lower Cape Fear region: 1834-1912, by Alfred M. Waddell, published 1909, with reference to Johnston's "most discreditable act" in appointing Murray to the Council; and at page 62 where Murray was described thus: "as the editors of his letters say, 'although public spirited, never a true American,' having been, from his arrival in the Province until he left it and removed to Boston in 1765, an unwavering Loyalist." 
• Waddell also relates at page 62, as to James Murray's property at Point Repose in N.C.: "His property was all confiscated and sold by commissioners appointed for the purpose in 1783, and the deed is recorded in New Hanover County. It was all bought by his nephew, Gen. Thomas Clark, a gallant Revolutionary officer, who was his largest creditor, and General Clark took up his residence at Point Repose." He goes on to state at page 63:

  Gen. Thomas Clark's father, Thos. Clark, Sr., married James Murray's sister Barbara in 1737, and in 1741 was made Sheriff of New Hanover County for two years, and was also appointed Collector of the Port of Wilmington, in place of Samuel Woodward, deceased, by Dinwiddie, Surveyor General of the colonies. He died in 1748 or 1749. His son, Gen. Thos. Clark, was born about the middle of August, 1741, in Wilmington. He was sent to England and there learned the watchmaker's trade, which, on his return, he practiced for a time in Boston, but abandoned it in 1767 and came back to the Cape Fear to take charge of his uncle James Murray's estate, of which his elder brother James had previously been manager. He seems to have been a favorite of his uncle because of his unusual intellectual capacity.

• See also the Laws of North Carolina, 1782, showing Point Repose was conveyed to Clark, to whom Murray was indebted.)

When Barbara Bennet Murray gave birth in 1756 in Wilmington to another daughter, they named her Elizabeth for her aunt (variously called Betzy, Betzey or Betsey in Murray's letters), who had set up a shop in Boston with a supply of millinery and dry goods, which she restocked from English sellers, but becoming increasingly wealthy with each successive marriage. 

In 1760 Elizabeth was remarried to a wealthy sugar refiner, James Smith of Brush Hill near Milton. James Murray's wife had also died, leaving him unable to care for his daughters, whom he called Dolly and Betzey, and they were sent to Boston to live with their aunt. After their father remarried a widow named Mrs. Thompson in 1761, the Murrays began planning to move to Boston, awaiting only an announcement from the Crown concerning the lieutenant governor appointment, which Murray had a vague but unfulfilled hope of receiving.The post was instead filled by William Tryon in 1765, and the Murrays soon joined the rest of their family in Boston. 

James Murray worked in the sugar refinery of John Smith, the second husband of his sister, Elizabeth, and it was Smith's retirement in 1765 that gave James the opportunity to move to Boston, even though he still needed to see after numerous properties he owned in North Carolina. That same year, however, protests against the Stamp Act resulted in an inability to import raw sugar from the West Indies, and the business suffered until the act was repealed a year later. In the meantime, Murray had entrusted his estates in North Carolina first into the care of his nephew, John Inness Clark and later to his brother Thomas Clark. These lands would be confiscated by the new government after a hearing in 1778 and awarded to Thomas, as shown above.

Dolly met Rev. John Forbes who must have visited Boston prior to their marriage in 1769, and he took his bride back to the British colony of East Florida  to her family's great chagrin.
At that time Mrs. Smith (by then a widow once again) took her younger niece to England and Scotland to visit family, and she conveyed the Brush Hill estate she had inherited from Smith to her brother, James Murray, in trust for her two nieces. While in Great Britain, she visited her brother, Dr. John Murray, of Norwich and also went to her birthplace, Unthank and other parts of Scotland. 

Murrays' fear of the American Revolutionaries

During the time there, she arranged for John's children, John and Mary (later joined by their sister Anne), to travel to America, each with a stock of merchandise provided by her brother James, just as she had made her start years earlier. One letter she received from home in late 1770 makes clear the Murrays' sentiments concerning the upcoming revolution. (See the inset to the right.) In other letters, in addition to calling the patriots the "mob," Demons and similar epithets were used.

Elizabeth (variously spelled Betzy, Betzey or Betsey) Smith returned home in the summer of 1771 to look after the affairs of her Boston shop, and in September suddenly married a third wealthy but retired merchant, Ralph Inman, of Cambridge.

Inman had been the agent for Sir Charles Henry Frankland, collector of the port of Boston since 1741, while Frankland's father had been governor of the East India company's factory in Bengal. Being named baronet upon the death of an uncle in 1746, Sir Charles Frankland was able to purchase a large estate in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, west of Boston, and some time later bought the three-story Clarke mansion in North Boston.

STAMP COLLECTOR ATTACKED BY THE MOB

Shortly after his sister's third marriage, James Murray was, unsurprisingly, appointed inspector of the port at Salem. He then visited Dotty in East Florida, attempting to convince her to move back to Boston's healthier climate. The capital of St. Augustine was considered to be as unhealthy a climate as the Cape Fear plantation, so Dolly was often found in Boston with one or more of her three young sons, leaving her husband to fend for himself, according to their correspondence from that time. 

It was a harried time for both Dolly and her aunt, residing respectively in Brush Hill and Inman's house in the Cambridge countryside, warding off the mob of demons, as they called those who protested the Stamp Act. James Murray and Inman were safe in Boston, writing letters back and forth to Elizabeth Inman and Dolly, who now had her three young sons with her, was attempting to keep all their household goods and crops out of the hands of marauding rebels. The letters between the Inmans evidence considerable misunderstanding between the couple, and Elizabeth was not above intense sarcasm, while pretending deference to her elderly spouse. Shortly after February 1776, Murray and Inman were evacuated to Halifax by General William Howe and never saw the women and children again.  

When Elizabeth Murray Smith inherited the Brush Hill estate in Milton from her second husband, the sugar-baker, James Smith, she conveyed in trust for her two beloved nieces, the daughters of James Murray:

1. Dorothy ("Dolly") Murray Forbes, wife of Rev. John Forbes
2. Elizabeth ("Betsy") Murray Robbins, wife of Edward Hutchinson Robbins

Edward Robbins' grandmother (Lydia Foster Hutchinson) was the sister of Sarah Foster (Mrs. Thomas) Hutchinson, the last Royal Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his father was Rev. Nathaniel Robbins, pastor of the church in Milton, whose family went back several generations in Harvard's oversight. The Foster girls were daughters of John Foster, a partner with their husbands' father, Elisha Hutchinson, in a salt monopoly established in Boston in 1695.

Catherine Robbins Delano was Dolly Forbes' great-niece.

Edward H. Robbins, a lawyer and politician from the Harvard's class of 1775, and his wife were parents of 

• James Murray Robbins (1796-1885), who became a European partner of Dorothy Forbes' son John Murray Forbes, who would die in South American in 1831. He acquired the Brush Hill estate inherited from James Smith and conveyed in trust to their mothers; and
• Anne Jean Robbins, who married Joseph Lyman.
• Their daughter, Catherine Robbins Lyman, married Warren Delano II (1809-98), a partner in Russell & Company.
• The daughter of Warren Delano II and his wife, Catherine Robbins Delano, was Sara Delano, the mother of President Franklin Roosevelt.

To be continued....