The Gibbon Families of Stonehaven and Aberdeen
David & Sally Wyllie
Copyright © David and Sally Wyllie 2020 All rights reserved No reproduction without permission Published by Slow Publishing Stenton West Knowe EH42 1TE Graphics by Helen Wyllie Editing by Helen and Imogen Wyllie ISBN 978 1 5272 6351 2
The
Gibbon Families
of Stonehaven & Aberdeen
"I am in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently my family pride is somewhat inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering." From the Mikado Pooh-Bah (Lord High Everything Else]
A Flight of Scotchmen, a 1796 print by Robert Newton. After the Union of Parliaments in 1705 Scots increasingly migrated southwards in search of employment and positions. This caused much resentment among the English who saw preference being given to Scots, such as many Gibbons, for places in the East India Company and elsewhere. The print shows swarms of Scots descending on London and other parts of the world. (© Trustees of the British Museum)
CONTENTS Prologue
p2
CH1
The Turings
p5
CH2
The Duffs
p 27
CH3
The Early Stonehaven Gibbons
p 43
CH4
Alexander Gibbon and Isobel Chalmers
p 57
CH5
William Gibbon and Margaret Wyllie
p 67
CH6
Margaret Gibbon and William Mowat
p 85
CH7
Agnes Gibbon and Alexander Young
p 99
CH8
Elizabeth Gibbon and George Falconer
p 123
CH9
William Gibbon and Maria Cranmer
p 131
CH10
Charles Gibbon and Ann Duff
p 143
CH11
Jessie Gibbon and Edward Eyre Williams
p 155
CH12
Charles William Gibbon and Mary Ann Wheeler
p 173
CH13
Robert Turing Gibbon and Jane Burnett
p 185
CH14
Annie Grace Gibbon and Robert Boyd Tytler
p 193
CH15
William Duff Gibbon and Katherine Murray
p 211
CH16
Amelia Grace Gibbon and Harold Imray
p 229
CH17
Robert William Gibbon and Frances Edith Smith
p 243
CH18
Keith Young
p 263
CH19
James Young and Elizabeth Walker
p 271
CH20
Helen Young and Francis Garden
p 287
CH21
James Catherine Young and John Taylor
p 301
CH22
The Aberdeen Gibbons: Arthur Gibbon and Elizabeth Gartley
p 311
CH23
Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno
p 329
CH24
William Gibbon and Margaret Forbes
p 337
CH25
James Gibbon and Sophia Gibbon
p 361
CH26
Charles Gibbon and Margaret Nicol
p 375
Epilogue
p 403
Image Acknowledgements
p 408
Notes
p 412
General Index
p 420
People Index
p 424
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 1
PROLOGUE This project was prompted because one of the authors is descended on her mother’s side from a family of grain millers named Gibbon from Stonehaven in Kincardineshire and the study traces their known descendants. Among these were several keen genealogists who spent much energy trying to sort out the various generations of the direct line, using the available sources at that time. One of them copied all the raw information in full, in tiny writing, onto large rolls of paper. When these were found to be missing we decided to research the family for ourselves. An intensive summer in the various archives and graveyards gave us a mass of information about the Gibbons. That autumn the precious rolls were discovered on top of a wardrobe in a child’s bedroom in London. However, apart from some very brief ‘Notes by Marie Cranmer’, they contained nothing that we had not found ourselves that summer, as access to the records had become much easier by then. Our research continued and began to take on a momentum of its own as new and interesting descendant lines emerged, taking us on a rollercoaster ride through history. While we focus primarily on the direct descendants we have also included interesting partners or inlaws, unashamedly highlighting the dramatic stories – this is, after all, what makes genealogy fun. More emphasis is given to individuals for whom we have more information. This explains the emphasis on military figures. We accept that the lives of the majority of people go unreported because we know little about them. Most of the women fall into this category: although they provide half the genetic input, they left very few diaries or letters. However, where possible we explore maternal background. The first two chapters, on the Duffs and the Turings, are included because they were so crucial to what happened. We have also included the Gibbons who lived in Aberdeen who originally came from the west of Aberdeen, around Echt. Probably the miller Gibbons made a similar journey, but south-eastwards, to Kincardineshire. The two sets of Gibbons intermingled, going to the same churches, intermarrying, acting as witnesses for each other at christenings and marriages, and being buried in the same graveyards. There are still many Gibbons to the west of Aberdeen, but these would need a separate study. The wider historical background is often explained, allowing a personal hook to an historical moment. Most history is written by and for the officer class. But if an ancestor of yours fought in a battle, even only as a foot soldier, you would surely take a keen interest in the story. This is a very idiosyncratic publication. Firstly, it is designed not only for present-day readers but for future descendants – possibly a 12-year-old living anywhere in the world in 100 years’ time and with little interest in or knowledge of history. The aim is to give such a reader some insight into her antecedents, while also catching her interest in some aspect of the historical setting and encouraging further exploration. This accounts for the heavy use of illustrations. In the interest of readability we have left out many names and dates from the text and put increasing reliance on the genealogical charts. One question often asked is why a book? Why not put it online like modern sensible people? Well, there are two reasons. Firstly, the authors are not modern sensible people. Both are academics who like to handle books. Secondly the web is a very fragile place. Sites come and go, especially sites opened by an individual. Every day family trees on genealogy sites disappear from view and the data with them, as people die or lose interest. Sites run by public bodies may be more permanent but they cannot be relied on to maintain information. While we have used online family trees to obtain initial clues, all details have had to be confirmed in the archives. Much of the information on online trees is simply inaccurate, and mistakes multiply with tree merges until a ‘false truth’ emerges. Sadly, many authors show little interest in correcting their mistakes. We can only conclude that these genealogical fantasists are anarchists determined to create havoc for future generations. What are increasingly online, and of which we have made extensive use, are digital copies of old books, newspapers and records. There is nothing more satisfying than reading, for example, a newspaper item written at the time of the event. One particularly useful online resource for us has been the recent availability of original images of Indian records.
2 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
There will be errors in this account too, major and minor no doubt, but we can only hope that most are only small ones, possibly of transcription. For reasons of space and readability we have only given birth or death years; exact dates can now be easily obtained in the appropriate records. The book is written for the immediate family of the authors and their descendants, rather than a wider readership, and is a non-profit publication to facilitate the extensive use of images. We have included extracts from the writings of Geoffrey Gibbon about the Stonehaven Gibbons, and these are much more detailed and personal than other sections. We have contacted very few descendants outside the immediate family and have tried not to show present generations of people we do not know. The reader will find some of the charts frustrating because of the seemingly arbitrary way in which certain lines are cut short because of incomplete data or shortage of space. There are also many names in the early records which almost certainly belong to relatives, but resisting the temptation to guess, we have left them out. Whilst some of the terms used may be considered archaic or non-politically correct today they are generally faithful to the source material. We use such terms as emigrating, natives, sepoys, whites and so on in their historical context. In the interests of readability there are also few abbreviations. For the same reason detailed sources have often not been given, but this will usually be obvious. Occasionally even the official records or gravestones are inaccurate with a date or a name, but we are confident that any we include are accurate. Sources include not only the obvious church and civic records, but newspapers, wills and testaments, and the various archives listed. Each week more information is available online, such as overseas family records, digitised books and journals. Finally we have benefited from oral family stories, discreet and indiscreet, from various family members still living. Mark Lowe, Dave Gibbon and Colin Imray have been particularly helpful. We have thoroughly enjoyed every stage of this project – the academic research, the travelling, the discussion, the writing, even the editing. We hope that in reading the results, you will share some of our interest and enjoyment – especially that 12 year old.
A motely collection of 'Gibbons' at a gathering in Stenton in 2011. Copies of the Gibbon tree stretch out in front and behind.
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 3
TURING AND DUFF LOCATIONS IN BANFF AND ABERDEEN 4
CHAPTER 1
THE TURINGS Prominent among the early forbears of the Stonehaven Gibbons, both genetically and through their successful and confident family traditions, were the Turings. Together with the Duffs they occupied a wide variety of positions both at home and abroad, creating a web of influence and opportunities for employment. The frequency of cousin and second cousin marriages between the Duffs and Turings led to a notably close family network, facilitating mutual support as well as consolidating wealth. Although the degree of inbreeding sometimes makes for confusing reading, the wider family tree of the Turings is well documented, the most detailed and accurate source being the Turing Archive at Chichester. Geoffrey Gibbon (see Chapter 17), who previously chronicled the Gibbons1, wrote in detail about the history of the early Turings, no doubt inspired by the prevalence of church ministers in the family, as well as by his love of early history. The Turing connection, like several others in this book, goes back to the royal families of both Scotland and England, including Kenneth I and Alfred the Great, and beyond. Like so many prominent Scottish families, the Turings probably came from Normandy, invited to Scotland by King David I, who was keen to establish a feudal system to strengthen his throne. The Turings possibly settled initially at Tourin in Angus, but in the 14th Century they were given the barony of Foveran, north of Aberdeen. They built a castle, called Turing’s Tower, of which no trace remains, and they added an aisle to the parish church, beneath the floor of which many of the family were buried. The Turings married well and fought for whoever was king. Charles II awarded John Turing a baronetcy but their strong Catholicism placed them on the losing side and they lost their land after the Battle of Worcester. Sir John Turing escaped with his life, but his line eventually petered out and the baronetcy lay dormant for a hundred years from 1682. Sir John’s nephew, another John, married Janet Seaton and they had five children. One, Walter Turing, became the Minister of Rayne Parish in Aberdeenshire. He married Ann Ogilvie, the daughter of a titled local laird, and they had six children. By the end of the 17th Century these early Catholic Turings had become Episcopalians, but even after 1699 when the Church of Scotland replaced the Episcopal Church as the official church in the North East this was no major disadvantage, provided a minister acknowledged the Hanoverian royal dynasty (see Box 5.1).
The church at Foveran, Aberdeenshire
The church at Rayne, Aberdeenshire
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 5
CHART 1: THE TURINGS
John Turing 1650 - ?
(SIMPLIFIED CHART)
-M-
Janet Seaton
Katherine Turing 1711 - ? - M 1748 -
Robert Farquhar
Walter Turing 1671 - 1743
John Turing 1680 - 1733
[Minister, Rayne]
[Minister, Drumlade]
- M 1709 -
- M 1700 -
Ann Ogilvie ? - 1746
Jean Dunbar 1678 - ?
Janet Turing 1701 - 1751
James Turing 1714 - 1788 [Merchant, Holland] - M 1748 -
5 others
Alexander Turing 1702 - 1782
John Turing 1704 - 1728
[Minister, Oyne]
[Ship Surgeon]
- M 1735 -
- M 1740 -
John Angus
[Minister, Garioch]
Martha de Colnet c1714 - ?
Anna Brown ? - 1807
Walter Farquhar 1738 - 1819
John Turing 1751 - 1798
[Army Surgeon]
[Merchant, Holland]
John Turing 1742 - 1756
Inglis Turing 1743 - 1791
Robert Turing 1745 - 1831
- M 1771 -
- M 1787 -
[Royal Navy]
[Rector, Jamaica]
[Surgeon, India]
Anne Stephenson
Margaret Tennant
[Minister, Culsamond]
- M1 - ? - M2 1797 -
Robert Townsend Farquhar 1776 - 1830
James Henry Turing 1791 - 1860
[Governor of Mauritius]
[Merchant & Consul, Rotterdam] -M-
Antoinette Ferrier
Anne Campbell ? - 1809
John Robert Turing 1793 - 1828
Forbes Ann Turing 1747 - 1797
Janet Turing 1750 - 1826
-M-
- M 1785 -
Archibald Bruce c1740 - 1799
Robert Duff 1739 - 1825
[Minister, Shotts]
[Minister, King Edward]
[Merchant, Java & Holland] -M-
Jean Stewart Fraser 1804 - 1870 John Robert Turing 1826 - 1883
John Turing ? - 1809 [Indian Civil Service]
Mary Turing 1780 - 1837 - M 1800 -
Ann Amelia Turing 1806 - 1861
Francis Aiskell c1761 - 1821 [General, Indian Army]
[Anglican Vicar] -M-
Fanny Montague Boyd 1841 - 1902 Julius Mathieson Turing 1873 - 1947 [Indian Civil Service] -M-
Ethel Sara Stoney 1881 - 1976
Alan Mathieson Turing 1912 - 1954 [Mathematician]
6 THE TURINGS : CH 1
SEE CHART 2
Henry Turing
2 others
[Merchant, Cupar] -M-
Margaret Lason
Anne Turing 1708 - ?
James Turing 1709 - 1733
Robert Turing 1711 - 1764
- M 1734 -
[Minister, Aberdour]
[Surgeon, India]
William Duff c1700 - 1786 [Minister, King Edward]
Grace Turing 1752 - ? -M-
‘Baillie Cruickshank’
Helen Turing 1716 - 1776
- M 1750 -
-M-
- M 1755 -
David Bannerman Mary de Morgan 1712 - 1810 ? - 1800 [Minister, Perth]
Arthur Mary Turing James Turing 1757 - ? 1756 - 1793 - M 1778 [Indian Army]
Janet Turing 1714 - 1798
5 others
Alexander Cuthbert
6 others
Henry Turing 1708 - 1777 [London Merchant]
Henry Turing 1708 - 1777
6 others
[London Merchant] -M-
Helen Turing 1716 - 1776
James Patrick Bannerman 1756 - 1807
John Alexander Bannerman 1759 - 1819
[Minister, Cargill]
[Governor of Penang]
- M 1793 Mary Turing 1775 - 1838
-M-
- M 1773 -
Ann West 1768 - 1833
Mary Turing 1757 - 1839
John Turing 1744 - 1808
William Turing ? - 1785
[East India Co. & London Financier]
[Captain, Indian Army]
Robert Duff 1739 - 1825
John William Turing 1774 - ?
[Minister, King Edward] - M 1785 -
Janet Turing 1750 - 1826
Mary Turing 1775 - 1838 - M 1793 James Patrick Bannerman 1756 - 1807 [Minister, Cargill]
Mary Turing 1757 - 1839
Helen Turing 1758 - 1845
Robert Turing 1760 - 1801
- M 1773 -
- M 1773 -
John Turing 1744 - 1808
Edward Saunders c1757 - 1796
[Major, Indian Army]
[East India Co. & London Financier]
[East India Co.]
Helen Sophia Turing 1776 - 1845
Ann Catherine Turing c1778 - 1851
John Turing 1779 - 1845
William Turing 1795 - 1813
- M 1812 -
- M 1801 -
- M 1809 -
John Darley ? - 1808
Charles Baker c1788 - ?
Jane Phillips c1783 - 1847
[Captain, Hussars]
[East India Army]
[Episcopal Minister]
5 others
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 7
Sir Walter Farquhar, army surgeon, apothecary and society physician. Engraving by William Sharp of an oil painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, 1794 (1.1)
8 THE TURINGS : CH 1
The church connection continued with two of Walter and Ann’s daughters marrying local church ministers. Katherine married Robert Farquhar, the minister at Peterhead and Chapel of Garioch. Their son Walter Farquhar began his career as an army surgeon, although he did not complete his medical studies. During the Seven Years’ War (1756 – 63) he served with the 19th, or Lord Howe’s, Regiment in the expedition against Belle Isle, an island off the south coast of Brittany. He then lived in Gibraltar before settling in London, where he practised as an apothecary and physician. He became physician to the future George IV, which was probably why he was awarded a baronetcy. However, his reputation as a physician was mixed: he was jealously accused by his rivals of the deaths of several of his patients, including the Duke of Devonshire, William Pitt, and Edward Gibbon (no relation). One observer caustically commented ‘another to the list of Farquhar’s victims’. However, he remained a popular doctor. By 1809 he started to suffer from pulmonary problems and he gradually gave up his practice42. Walter’s will shows that he was an extremely rich man. Walter married Ann Stephenson, the widow of Thomas Harvie, a physician in Jamaica, one of the network of Scottish families, including the Farquhars, who were deeply involved in the slave trade31. Farquhar is shown during the 1790s as owning two plantations with slaves in Jamaica, formerly owned by his wife’s family. The one at St Ann, Jamaica had 57 slaves. One of Walter’s daughters married a Jamaican planter, a son became a banker and a third son joined the East India Company.
A contemporary print illustrating the landing at Belle Isle in 1761 in which Walter Farquhar took part. The British occupied it for two years using it as a base against privateers but returned it to the French after the Treaty of Paris (1.2)
Robert Townsend Farquhar, wearing a blue ribbon from which hangs a masonic mosaic jewel. This portrait hangs in the Mauritius Turf Club.
Biography of Robert Townsend Farquhar, Governor of Mauritius36
Another son, Robert Townsend Farquhar, had a very stormy career35. He started in India before being sent to encourage trade in the Moluccas, where he blotted his copybook by exceeding his orders. He recognised the need to ingratiate himself with powerful people and targeted Lord Wellesley, the Governor General of India, who made him Governor of Penang and then of Mauritius after it was captured from the French. He retrieved himself several times in his career with the help of his father’s connections and his enthusiasm for the masonic order and its influential network. He seems, however, to have been a largely benign Governor, which helped with the difficult integration of the French and the British. He returned to Britain where he continued to fawn on the right people, eventually becoming an MP and a baronet. He had to spend much time defending himself from the charge that he had deliberately done little to stop the importation of slaves into Mauritius for the sugar plantations and that the number had actually increased during his tenure. This was perhaps not surprising given his family background in slavery. The records show that he had actually employed slaves in the Governor’s Residence. James, one of the sons of Walter Turing and Ann Ogilvie, was the first in a long line of Turing merchants in Holland2. He was based at Campvere (or Veere), the Scottish staple port (see Chapter 7). He married a Dutch lady, Martha de Colnet, whose brother was in the British Army. Their son John, who also worked at Campvere, married Margaret Tennant. One of their sons, James Henry Turing, who became the 7th Baronet, was British Consul in Rotterdam. He married his cousin Antoinette Ferrier whose father was the British Consul at The Hague and the last holder of the ancient office of Lord Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere. (His son, Sir Robert Fraser Turing, was also Consul at Rotterdam). The
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 9
Dutch connection ended with him, and the Turing baronets made their home near Chichester3. Other Gibbon connections with Campvere are through James Murray who was also a factor there (see Chapter 7), and through the numerous voyages that the Gibbons made from Aberdeen over the years. Another son of John Turing and Margaret Tennant was John Robert Turing, a merchant in Rotterdam who also spent time in Java, the Dutch colony. His son, also John Robert Turing, born in Java, was yet another Reverend, a Church of England vicar. He married Fanny Montague Boyd who was born in India, the daughter of General Mossom Boyd of the Bengal Army, who had four brothers in India, all Generals. One of the sons of John and Fanny, was Julius Turing, a civil servant in India. He married Ethel Stoney, daughter of Edward Stoney, the Chief Engineer of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway. Edward invented various original methods for the construction of bridges over some of the great Indian rivers. He filed various patents, including one for ‘Stoney’s Patent Silent Punkah-wheel’ (for more about punkahs see Chapter 26). He was made a Companion of the Indian Empire. The Stoney family tree contains an astonishing number of brilliant and original minds26, including Alan Mathieson Turing (see Box 1.1), the son of Julius and Ethel. When Geoffrey Gibbon was writing about the Turings in 1976, the full impact of the influence of the most famous of them all was only then slowly coming to light from behind the Official Secrets Act. John, the third Viscount, another son of John Turing and Janet Seaton, was born in 1680. He was also a minister and was appointed to the Parish of Insch, where he was described as an ‘Episcopal Intruder’. However, as we have seen above he apparently ‘took communion’, i.e. stated his loyalty to the Presbyterian Church, and became minister at Drumblade parish. He married Jean Dunbar, the daughter of the Minister of Forglen Parish in Banffshire. They had twelve children. Their son Alexander became the Minister of Oyne Parish in Aberdeenshire. He married Anna Brown and they had twelve children, several of whom made their careers abroad and must have featured strongly in the network of connections so clearly useful for the Duffs and Gibbons. One of Alexander Turing’s twelve children, John, died aged 14 while a member of Lord Hawke’s Squadron in the Mediterranean. His brother Inglis worked as a clerk with the 52nd Regiment of Foot in Jamaica, before purchasing the position of Chaplain to the regiment34. He then became the Rector of St Thomas in the Vale in Jamaica, where he died, unmarried. We know little of him except that he appears in a Jamaican legal case of 1764 to press that a legacy left by a local man to found a free school in the parish should be released immediately by the executors, who were relatives of the dead man and who were dragging their feet. Inglis was successful.
Newspaper report describing the invention by Alan Turing’s grandfather of a punkah wheel which claimed to eliminate the usual irritating squeaking sound
10 THE TURINGS : CH 1
Anna Brown, wife of Sir Alexander Turing, Minister of Oyne Parish (1.3)
The ruined church at Oyne, Aberdeenshire
BOX 1.1
ALAN MATHIESON TURING
(1.4)
Alan Turing was born in London in 1912 although conceived in British India, most likely in the town of Chatrapur, in the present State of Odisha. His parents were Julius Mathison and Ethel Sara Turing24. His father had entered the Indian Civil Service, serving in the Madras Presidency, and had married Ethel Sara Stoney, the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras railways, who came from an Anglo-Irish family full of original and distinguished minds26. A genealogical study like this might well ask where Alan Turing’s mathematical genius came from. The only clue is that his grandfather studied mathematics at Cambridge before becoming a minister. The name of Turing was previously best known for the extensive writings on fly fishing by Julius’ brother Harvey Doria Turing. Most likely the original streak came from his mother’s side, the Stoney family containing several very distinguished thinkers. Strangely enough another family connection with the giants of computational machines is through Ada Lovelace, born in 1815, Lord Byron’s daughter who is famous as Charles Babbage’s collaborator on the ‘difference engine’. She is connected through the Duffs (See Chart 2). Alan and his elder brother John shared a childhood rigidly determined by the demands of class and the exile in India of his parents. Until his father’s retirement from India in 1926, Alan and his brother were fostered in various English homes where nothing encouraged expression, originality, or discovery. He was exposed to science at school, but only when he became an undergraduate at Cambridge did he find an environment in which to blossom. His career took him to Cambridge, Princeton, London and Manchester. It is of course Turing’s work as a codebreaker in World War II that has made him famous in the wider world. Before the war he had developed an interest in mathematical logic, in particular whether there could exist, at least in principle, a definite method or process by which it could be decided whether any given mathematical assertion was provable. He expressed this analysis in terms of a theoretical machine able to perform certain precisely defined elementary operations on symbols on paper tape. This correspondence between logical instructions, the action of the mind, and a machine which could in principle be embodied in a practical physical form, was Turing’s definitive contribution. The concept of the Turing machine is the foundation of modern theories of computation and computability. Turing made a bridge which crossed conventional boundaries between the logical and the physical worlds, thought and action, It is hard now not to think of a Turing machine as a computer program, and the mechanical task of interpreting and obeying the program as what the computer itself does. But computers, in this modern sense, did not exist in 1936. Turing created these concepts out of his mathematical imagination. Only nine years later would electronic technology be tried and tested sufficiently to make it practical to transfer the logic of his ideas into actual engineering. Meanwhile the idea lived only in his mind, although he did start to make gear wheels and a cipher machine based on electromagnetic relays. He saw a link from ‘useless’ logic to practical computation. By 1938 Turing was working part-time for the British cryptanalytic department, the so-called Government Code and Cypher School. Once the war started he transferred to Bletchley Park working there full time. By 1942 he was the genius loci at Bletchley Park, famous as ‘Prof’, shabby, nail-bitten, tie-less, sometimes halting in speech and awkward of manner. The story of the breaking of the German Enigma machine codes is well known, but it was only because Turing was part of a brilliant team that he was finally able to pursue his ideas of machine computation. By the end of the war the first computer had also been built. After the war Turing continued his mathematical and computational work in various fields and projects, finally working on the mathematics of biological structures. In 1954 he committed suicide having been persecuted since the war by the British authorities because of his open homosexuality, then illegal. They saw him as a security risk.
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 11
Dr Robert Turing, the East India Company surgeon who returned to Britain with a fortune and lived in Banff Castle. He resurrected the Turing title which had been dormant to become Sir Robert.
Robert’s wife, Anne Campbell. This is a photograph of a portrait painted, around 1790, by Sir Henry Raeburn. It was sold at Christies in London around 1970 for 1,600 guineas and the present owner is unknown. She is described as wearing a pale blue cloak.
Inglis’ brother Robert joined his uncle, also Robert, serving in what was to become a major feature of the family, the East India Company medical service. He served during the Second Mysore War from 1780 to 1784 and spent time at Masulipatum. He was appointed Head Surgeon in 1786. He retired in 1788, first to England and then to Scotland. In 1797 Robert married Anne Campbell, whose father, Colonel Donald Campbell of Glensaddel in Argyllshire, had made a large fortune with the East Indian Army in Madras. East India Company servants like these could accumulate money by all sorts of means such as taking a percentage on any supplies ordered. Robert and Anne rented Banff Castle, a modern mansion house built by John Adam, which became a popular feature of the area through their lavish hospitality. The archives at West Sussex contains several of Robert’s account books showing that he had lent money to other people, a common practice then, although his loans were extensive. There is a memorial to them in Banff Church. Robert had five children, three of whom made it to adulthood. Judging by their dates of birth Anne was probably Robert’s second wife. The first wife was probably a local Indian, the birth of son John being recorded as 'mother not known'. In letters to his relatives Robert was constantly complaining of finding it hard to make ends meet. Possibly he wanted to discourage those same relatives from borrowing even more money from him. But his claims were far from true as, just before he died, he showed that he was worth £16,642 with an annual income of £1,060, by present standards a millionaire, although his official will shows only a quarter of this wealth. When Robert died he left various annuities to his nieces. He also remembered a lady in India called Fatima. Son John became a ‘writer’ i.e. a young entrant of the East India Company in 1795. He died of an apoplectic fit at Waltair near Vizagapatam in 1809. His memorial in the Old Cemetery at Vizagapatam reads: 15th June 1809. John Turing. This monument is raised to the memory of Mr John Turing son of Sir Robert Turing, Baronet. Erected as a tribute of esteem by Lieut.-Col Francis Aiskell, brother-in-law to the deceased. John’s sister Mary, born in 1780, also made a career in India (see Box 1.2). She married Francis Aiskell at Dindigul, India; The third child was Ann Amelia, who lived most of her life with her father. She died unmarried in Paris. Both Mary and Anne were left a considerable amount of money by their father. Robert’s sister, called Forbes Ann, married Archibald Bruce, who became the Minister of the parishes of Fintry, Stirlingshire and then Shotts, Lanarkshire. The Duke of Montrose had tried to give him the
12 THE TURINGS : CH 1
parish of Aberfoyle in Stirlingshire, but the locals objected, saying he didn’t speak Gaelic. It was normally extremely difficult for a congregation to resist a Patron’s choice of minister. They could appeal to the Presbytery but even that could be overruled. This issue of patronage eventually led to a schism in the Church of Scotland – the Disruption of 1843. Two of Archibald and Forbes Ann’s descendants appear in Chart 11: Jessie Bruce Lawford, born in 1849, and Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford, born in 1865. The next daughter of Alexander Turing and Anna Brown was Janet, who married her cousin Robert Duff, minister of King Edward Parish. They are included in the section on the Duffs in Chapter 2. Her sister Grace seems to have married ‘Baillie Cruickshank’ of Banff as her brother Robert’s accounts include a reference to an annual payment resulting from a legacy of her mother3. Robert Duff, above, gave an equal amount. A Mrs Baillie Cruickshank was buried in Aberdeen on 7 Feb. 1807. King Edward church, Aberdeenshire
Janet’s brother Arthur James Turing (known as James), was a Lieutenant in the 1st Madras European Regiment. In 1784 a a colleague of James wrote to his brother Robert from Madras saying3: Your worthy Brother James is, thanks to God, safely arrived here. He has a wound in his thigh which honest Dr Falconer says he does not like but I hope he may yet do well with ease and good care. He may well have received this wound during the Siege of Mangalore, where most of the fighting of 1784 took place. James obviously recovered enough to take the field again. At Pollibur in 1790 he was captured by Hyder Ali, a very competent military leader who inflicted several embarrassing defeats on the British. By sheer ability Hyder Ali became Chief Minister and the effective ruler of Mysore. He was succeeded by his son Tipu Sultan, also a very effective military leader. Together with a number of other Company soldiers, James was kept prisoner in the fortress of Seringapatam for 44 months, before being released when a peace treaty was signed. They were subjected to great cruelty46. Among the prisoners was Captain, later Sir, David Baird from East Lothian who, in 1799, played an important part in the storming and capture of Seringapatam and the death of Tipu Sultan. A story circulated that Baird’s mother, on hearing that the prisoners were fettered in pairs, remarked ‘God help the chiel chained to oor Davie’.
Seringapatam town in the 1860s and probably little changed since 1799. This is one of many early photographs taken in India after the Mutiny and shows the clarity and detail of these early images. (1.5)
The storming of Seringapatam in 1799 as imagined in a London print. The fort stood on the edge of a river and was a very formidable place to overcome (1.6).
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 13
Sir David Baird and Tipu Sultan. Painted in 1839 by Henry Raeburn, it imagines Sir David Baird looking at the body of Tipu, the man who had incarcerated him for nearly four years, and has Baird posing symbolically above the dungeon where he had been imprisoned (1.7).
14 THE TURINGS : CH 1
Tipu’s Tiger which Tipu had made showing the prostrate European being attacked by the tiger representing India. It included bellows inside which gave suitable groans and screams; (INSET) Seringapatam medal echoing Tipu’s Tiger (1.8)
After his release Arthur James Turing became a Captain in the 4th Madras Native Infantry, but died soon after while in command of the fort at Pennagaram, now in Tamil Nadu. The regimental history says: He was buried in a field on the glacis of the fort at Pennagaram, where his tomb forms the only remaining indication of military occupancy’4. The tomb inscription says '13th July 1793, Captain James Turing of the Garrison of Pinagra and the 4th Battalion Native Infantry32'. In his will he left his money to his mother, brother and sisters. He also said ‘To Captain Robert Turing of the Madras Establishment I leave one of my servants whichever he chooses’. We now return to the children of John Turing and Jean Dunbar. Their second son, John Turing, became a ship’s surgeon and was the Surgeon of the East Indiaman Greenwich, which called at Madras in 1728. John died in August of that year and was buried in Calcutta. The records of Fort St George for 1729 also show two headage payments being made to John Turing’s executors as the surgeon of a Company ship for soldiers delivered in good health at Madras. This financial incentive to the ship surgeons was evidently highly effective, despite rudimentary knowledge of many medical conditions. John’s sister, Anne, married William Duff, born in 1700 and for 32 years the Minister of King Edward Parish in Aberdeenshire. Ann Duff, who married Charles Gibbon of Lonmay, was William’s granddaughter. They are discussed in the Duff section (Chapter 2). James, the next son, was imposed by the church Patron, a local landowner, as the minister of Aberdour Parish in Aberdeenshire. This imposition was violently opposed by the parishioners. On the morning of 19th October 1733 James was ‘found suspended in his room, quite dead, his feet being only four inches from the floor. Five individuals in the parish were blamed for his death, all of whom met fearful fates before five years elapsed’40. James’ brother Robert Turing became a surgeon in the East India Company and returned with a considerable fortune. In 1729 he was appointed Surgeon’s mate in Fort St. David, apparently on the earlier recommendation of Dr John Turing, his brother. By 1741, Robert was Surgeon at Vizagapatam, a small broken-down fort famous for its ivory-inlaid objects, about 500 miles north of Madras on
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 15
the eastern coast. He served during the First Carnatic war from 1745, and took part in the siege of Madras and its capture by the French in 1746. During the siege of Madras frequent references are made to Turing’s house, which appears to have been situated near the present Harris Bridge. He was presumably among the prisoners released by the French when they gave up Madras after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. From 1753 to 1762 or later he was a Presidency Surgeon, becoming the Head Surgeon5 in Madras. He is said to have helped Robert Clive to recover from a prolonged illness in 1752 which allowed him to sail for England early in 1753. Robert Turing was a persistent advocate for a much larger hospital in the Fort6. He wanted space for 250 men, an area to treat 200-300 seamen when the Fleet was in the Roads, and an operating theatre. In 1758 surgeons including Robert Turing sent a comprehensive proposal to the President and Governor in Council of Fort St. George, for a new hospital to be divided into separate wards for patients with differing conditions and a room each for operations and the dispensary. The role of all the different staff in the running of the hospital was spelled out. However, it was not until 1772 that the proposals were implemented and the present-day double-block buildings of the Madras General Hospital inaugurated. In the East India Company doctors like Robert Turing were generally allowed to engage in private trade which might include charging commission on supplies and official contracts so that considerable sums could be accumulated. Corruption was not seen as corruption but as necessary supplements and the perquisites of office to supplement the moderate salary. Robert married Mary, widow of Thomas Taylor, and daughter of the Governor of Fort St George, Madras, Captain John De Morgan, who was of Huguenot origins. Mary was the aunt of the famous mathematician Augustus de Morgan, born in 1806 at Madura, Madras, who formulated De Morgan’s Laws and introduced the term ‘mathematical induction’. The crater De Morgan on the moon is named after him. Ada Lovelace was one of his students (see Chapter 2). Robert and Mary’s daughter Mary (known as Polly) married her cousin John Turing, who worked in India as a civil servant and was a member of the Council in Madras, becoming Mayor of Madras in 1776. At one point he was Deputy Postmaster General. Some of his correspondence is in the British Library, including some from his time as the Resident at Ganjam. There are also letters written in 1780 by a Colonel Pearse on his way with troops to Ganjam to meet John Turing. Pearse writes to Calcutta describing the incredibly poor quality of the Company Army officers, their constant squabbling and how they caused a revolt by ordering certain high-caste sepoys overseas, counter to their religious beliefs7. No lesson was learnt from this: 75 years later it was to be one of the factors of discontent at the start of the Indian Mutiny.
(L) Landing at Madras by J. B. East c1837 and published by Ackerman who printed many volumes of prints showing life in the British Empire. The most dramatic way to arrive in India was to disembark at Madras. Before the construction of an artificial harbour in the late 19th century, goods and passengers would land directly on the beach, carried through the high-running surf by ‘masula’ boats: nonrigid craft made of planks lashed together with coir ropes. Maria Graham described her arrival in 1809: 'While I was observing the boat’s structure and its rowers, they suddenly set up a song, as they called it but I do not know that I ever heard so wild and plaintive a cry. We were getting into the surf: the cockswain now stood up, and with his voice and his foot kept time vehemently, while the men worked their oars backwards, till a violent surf came, struck the boat, and carried it along with a frightful violence; then every oar was plied to prevent the wave from taking us back as it receded, and this was repeated five or six times, the song of the boatmen rising and falling with the waves, till we were dashed high and dry on the beach.'37 (1.9) (R) Fort St George, Madras, in 1754. The East India Company bought the exposed and waterless site in 1639. It was the second permanent Company trading post established there apparently because the Company’s buyer Francis Day had a mistress nearby. The print shows the line of customs and port authority buildings north of Fort St George on the beach (1.10)
16 THE TURINGS : CH 1
When John returned to London he was a member from 1793 to 1800 of the finance firm George Baillie and Company, which among other activities was a guarantor of payment for cargoes of slaves. He parted company with the company, but later ran a similar firm, Lang, Turing and Company8. John died in 1808, leaving the then enormous fortune of £82,000 to the surviving members of his immediate family: his wife, sons John and William, and his three surviving daughters, Mary, Helen and Ann. John Turing was actively involved in financing the slave trade. This advert is for the sale of a plantation, Yeovil Place, in Guyana (including the slaves). The owner had presumably defaulted on his loans to Turing’s firm (1.11)
Mary married James Patrick Bannerman, Minister of Cargill Parish in Perthshire. Helen married John Darley who came from Dublin and was a Colonel in the Indian Army Artillery. Her sister Ann married Charles Baker, an Episcopal Minister in Kent, and brother John married Jane Phillips. William joined the 18th Regiment of Hussars and became a Captain in 1807. On the way out to Portugal William’s transport ship with 40 dragoons and 60 horses was captured by an American privateer. A colleague wrote in his diary; ‘a very severe loss as in this country horses are so very dear’41. William must have been released by the Americans as he was killed on 21 June 1813 at the battle of Vitoria during the Peninsular Wars. That was immediately before the infamous incident when his colleagues enriched themselves from the fabulous treasures of the French baggage train. General Wellesley wrote about the looting; ‘The 18th Hussars are a disgrace to the name of soldier, in action as well as elsewhere; and I propose to draft their horses from them and send the men to England if I cannot get the better of them in any other manner.’
Anon. member of the 18th Light Dragoons or Hussars with whom William Turing was killed at the Battle of Vitoria. It shows the typically flashy uniforms adopted by cavalry regiments designed either to terrify the enemy or to impress the ladies (1.12).
Helen (or Nelly) Turing, the second daughter of Robert and Mary de Morgan above, married Edward Saunders, who worked for the Company in a variety of roles but principally as a merchant. This may be why he was posted to the port of Cuddalore in a region famed for its exports of red and blue-dyed cotton which the Company exported in large quantities. Edward had entered the Company at the same time as Helen’s brother-in-law John Turing, so it is no surprise to see that they married in 1773 on the same day with a double wedding in Madras. At the time of the marriage John was ‘Senior Merchant and 3rd in Council’ at Cuddalore and Edward was ‘Senior Merchant and 2nd in Council’. David Gilmour writes44: ‘the Company’s servants were carefully graded and salaried, from Writer (the most junior) to Factor and thence to Junior Merchant and Senior Merchant. These titles sound grander than their job descriptions: the ‘second in council’ was in fact the book-keeper, the ‘third’ the warehouse-keeper.’ Fort St David, Cuddalore used to be the main English base for southern east India but it had moved to the more defendable Fort St George at Madras. The Company base in Cuddalore in 1773 would have consisted of a ‘factory’ or warehouse possibly in or near Fort St David but within the official boundaries of the trading colony. This description of the Fort was written in 177345: The country within the boundaries is very pleasant, and the air fine, having seldom any fogs. In the district are many neat houses with gardens; the latter were laid out with much good taste by the gentlemen, who either had been, or were in the company’s service. These gardens produce fruits of different sorts, such as pine-apples, oranges, limes, pomegranates, plantaines, bananoes, mangoes, guavas, (red and white,) bedams (a sort of almond), pimple-nose, called in the West Indies, chadocks, a very fine large fruit of the citron-kind, but of four or five times its size, and many others. At the end of each gentleman’s garden there is generally a shady grove of cocoanut trees.... CH 1 : THE TURINGS 17
(ABOVE) Siege of Cuddalore 1783 (1.13) (L) French map showing the company station at Cuddalore, 1783. Fort St David is the large red building next to the shore.
These early times in India were anything but peaceful and these Turings must have had a few adventures, as there was continual fighting principally against the French and their allies. Even the nonuniformed members of the Company had to fight. The French captured the port of Cuddalore in 1782 but were driven out the following year after a siege. Helen’s brother Robert joined the Company army and became a Major. When he died in Madras in 1801 he was the Military Secretary to the Government at Fort St George. He died unmarried and intestate and a brief glimpse of his lifestyle can be seen from looking at the list of his belongings down to the last teaspoon which were put for auction. He owned a fine library and obviously lived in some style. The Gentleman’s Magazine report on his funeral said that ‘a numerous assemblage attended to pay the tribute of affectionate regret to his remains; and, at the head of the select friends who supported the pall, were the governor and the officer commanding the army in chief.’ He has a tombstone in St Mary’s New Cemetery in Madras.
18 THE TURINGS : CH 1
John Alexander Bannerman
Penang 1810, showing how vulnerable these remote outposts were to attack (1.14)
Janet Turing, born 1714, the daughter of John Turing and Jean Dunbar, married David Bannerman, Minister of St Martin’s Church, Perth. He was the father of James Bannerman, the Minister at Cargill in Perthshire who married his cousin Mary Turing. David and Janet’s other son, John Alexander Bannerman, had a very distinguished career in the Madras Army. An Ensign in 1778, he was a Lieutenant-Colonel by 1800. In 1796 he took part in the invasion of Ceylon and the defeat of the Dutch and was briefly the Governor of Ceylon. On his return to Britain he became an MP at Westminster. From 1808 he was a Director of the East India Company, which enabled him to recommend suitable candidates for employment by the Company, including his relative William Duff, born in 1793 (see Chapter 2). In 1817, no longer qualified to remain a Director because of the length of time he had served, he secured the post of Governor of Prince of Wales Island (Penang) (a position also held by Robert Townhead Farquhar above). Like William Farquhar, born in 1774 (see Chapter 7), John found himself in constant dispute with the egotistical and devious Stamford Raffles9. He married Ann West at Fort St George, Madras, where Ann’s grandfather Captain John de Morgan (see above) had been Governor. Ann’s father, James West, had been in the Indian Army with the 79th Regiment of Foot, and fought against the French. He is an example of how soldiers could not accumulate money on their salary alone but were allowed by the East Indian Company to indulge in private business activities. He was clearly successful at this because he resigned to become a ‘free merchant’ before returning to Britain, where he rejoined the Army, then returning to India on half pay. He married twice, producing 19 children. Ann’s aunt Mary de Morgan married Robert Turing above. John Alexander Bannerman died from cholera in Penang and was buried in the cemetery of the Church of St George the Martyr, where he has a memorial.
(L) St George's Church, Penang (1.15) (R) Bannerman Memorial at St. George’s Church, Penang, Malaysia.
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 19
One other descendant of John Turing and Jean Dunbar had a serious effect on the East India Company. Helen Turing, born in 1716, married her cousin Henry Turing. Their son William spent his career with the East India Company and had a child, also William, by his Indian wife to whom he bequeathed 200 Star Pagodas to ‘the Girl Nancy or Roja Horstain’. William Junior was accepted as a Company Cadet but after a complaint he was inspected in 1791 in person by the Board of Directors and proved to be too darkskinned. He was dismissed from the Company. This led to the passing of the historic regulation that no Anglo-Indians could be employed in the civil, military or marine services. This had profound implications for other ‘Gibbons’ as can be seen clearly in Chapter 9. There is now little trace of the Turings at Foveran as the medieval church fell into ruin and was replaced by the existing building in about 1790. An incised stone that had covered an interment in the old church now sits in the new church. Dating perhaps from around 1411, it depicts two men in armour, probably Turings who had been killed at the very bloody battle of Harlaw near Inverurie33. In the Turing papers held in the West Sussex Record Office there is a voluminous, occasionally vituperative, correspondence from the early 19th Century about the stone and whether the Turings can really claim it as theirs. The church also contains a marble bust of a Judge Turing in the dress of the time of Charles I. The Turing story is told in verse in the Lay of the Turings10, published in 1849, and in The Thanage of Formartine11, Formartine being the area between the rivers Don and Ythan. (L) Lay of the Turings, the story of the Turings told in verse (R) The Turing Stone, Foveran
BOX 1.3
THE ‘TURING’ TEA SET The two Duff ladies Grace, born in 1789, and Jessie, born in 1796, both unmarried, lived together in a house on the High Street in Banff. Together they acted as the executors for their cousin Mary Turing, the widow of Frances Aiskell (or Aiskill), a Major General in the East India Army. Mary Aiskell née Turing, born in 1780, left various items to the two Duff women, and although not specifically mentioned in her will, it is highly likely that the ‘Turing tea set’ was gifted by her before she died. The set with its teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl, has been passed from Grace Duff to her eldest nephew Charles William Gibbon, from him to Alice Barbara Gibbon and from her to Sally Wyllie. The teapot is inscribed ‘To Jessie and Grace Duff from a Friend’ and there is also an inscription in Persian which would have been one of the languages used by Major General Aiskell in the North West of India. The teapot is hallmarked Edinburgh 1832 (William IV) and made by Elder & Co. It is also hallmarked Aberdeen where it was presumably inscribed and was sold through William Jamieson of Aberdeen. Mrs Aiskell also gave four silver gilt communion cups to Banff Parish Church in June 1836, nine months before she died25.
20 THE TURINGS : CH 1
GIBBON LOCATIONS IN INDIA
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 21
BOX 1.2
THE AISKELLS & THE ‘FIRST WHITE MUTINY’ Francis Aiskell (or Aiskill) was born about 1761, possibly in Malaga, where his father was a merchant and the British Consul12. He joined the 13th Native Infantry Regiment of the East India Company Madras Army as a Cadet in 1779, becoming Major-General in 181413. He was apparently invalided out when he was a Lieutenant Colonel in 1804, although his promotions seemed to have continued, a common practice with the East India Company. His first marriage in 1777 was to Sophia Stephenson, born in 1759, at Tynemouth, Northumberland. Whether she was related to the engineering Stephensons, also from Tynemouth, is not clear. His second wife was Mary Turing, born in 1780, the daughter of Sir Robert Turing and Anne Campbell. Francis and Mary were married in 1800 at Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India. As did so many young women who had relatives there Mary visited India in about 1799. An uncle, Arthur Turing, was a Captain with the 4th Battalion Madras Native Infantry, but he had died in 1793. She may well have gone out to visit her brother John, also a soldier in India, who died ‘of an apoplectic fit at Waltair, near Vizagapatam, Madras’ in 1809. Francis died in Madras in 182114 and there is a memorial to him in St Thomas’ Mount Cantonment Cemetery32 with the following inscription: 24th Nov 1821 FRANCIS AISKELL Major General Francis Aiskill, aged 66 years and 5 months. He entered the service of the Honourable East India Company on the 10th April 1779 and fulfilled the period of 42 years and upwards with the highest respectability as an officer. In every relation of life he performed his duty to the utmost and is now gone to reap the reward due to his excellent conduct in this world at the hand of his Father and God, his Saviour and Redeemer. An account book of his father in law Sir Robert Turing3 shows that he lent Francis over £600 with various houses in Cork and Dublin, Ireland as security. Mary returned to Scotland and lived in Aberdeen but died in Edinburgh. She was close friends with her unmarried Duff cousins and gave them the tea set described in Box 1.3. Francis had a son by his first marriage, Francis Kirkpatrick Aiskell, born 1778, who also joined the Madras Army as a Cadet in 179315. By 1802 he was a Captain with the 15th Native Infantry. He was still with them in 1809 when he became involved in one of the most bizarre incidents in British military history, known as the ‘White Mutiny’ 16,17,18,19. A large number of white officers in the Madras Army withdrew their support for the Governor General and the administration in Madras. Only 150 out of a total of 1,450 officers signed the test of loyalty and those that did were all Lieutenant-Colonels or above. Several officers actually marched with their sepoy regiments in an attempt to overthrow the administration.7 Among these was Francis K. Aiskell, who despite a direct order from headquarters led the 15th Native Infantry from their Chittledroog (now Chitradurga) garrison towards Seringapatam. Apparently they were allowed to loot native villages along the way. According to one report the troops advancing on Seringapatam were intercepted by King’s Dragoons. The European officers fled but around 400 sepoys, who had no real interest in the mutiny and were merely obeying their European officers, were massacred, an action later hushed up as a mistake. The mutinéering officers rapidly came to their senses and an example was made of 21 of them through court martial or dismissal. The rest were pardoned in an attempt to restore good relations between sepoys and Europeans and between the Madras Government and the Madras Army20. Many of those pardoned later had very distinguished careers in the Army. Trouble had been building up for some time over changes in pay and conditions. For example, Madras officers were paid less than those in the Bombay and Bengal Presidencies and officers in the King’s service monopolised favours such as staff appointments from local government. One final trigger was the changes announced in officers’ active service allowances and various perks such as where officers were allowed to cream off a percentage of contracts for tents or camp equipment. Another factor was the particularly ignorant and arrogant Army Commander-in-Chief General Macdowall, who had quarrelled with his superiors and openly spoke sedition on a tour of garrisons. After stirring up trouble, General Macdowall left for home leave but was, conveniently for the authorities in India, drowned in the ship Lady Jane Dundas on 14 March 1809 (the same night as James Duff, born in 1786, died on The Duchess of Gordon - see Box 2.1).
22 THE TURINGS : CH 1
Since the defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799 the Madras Army had been largely idle and its officers had many hours to brood on imaginary slights21. A large part of the problem was isolation and the hardship of garrison life, with garrisons scattered over thousands of square miles. As one officer put it: ‘the want of amusement, the want of employment, the want of books – the practice of passing long hours at the mess and billiard table, the little change in the narrow circle and particularly the want of female society. All this created a savage spirit’. So much for the romantic image of life in the Indian Army. In reality it was a life of loneliness and boredom as well as of large debts until one reached the rank of Major and could pay them back. It was also a precarious life: between 1796 and 1820 only 201 officers made it back to Britain with their pensions; another 1,243 were either killed or died in-service. Francis K. Aiskell was dismissed from the Madras Army 21,22 and in 1811 sailed to England on the vessel Ann as plain Mr Aiskell. In England he married Ann Haynes and had five children. In 1826 his widow appeared in court as an insolvent debtor in London23, but she later married a wealthy man whose money was in Government Funds and London houses. A son of Francis K. became a grocer’s assistant, brush salesman and then brush maker.
This portrait by Raeburn in classic ‘strutting’ pose probably sums up Major-General Macdowall (1.16)
The Adjutant General of the Madras Army at the time of this mutiny, who had to administer the mutineers’ complaints, was Christopher Fagan, born in 1776 (see Chapter 10). He married Maria Gibbon, the daughter of Charles Gibbon of Lonmay and another Turing descendant. The Judge Adjutant General, the senior legal figure for the Madras Army at the same time, was James Leith, born about 1764 (see Chapter 5), who was centrally involved in dealing with the white mutiny. There was another, better known, White Mutiny in 185916 (see Chapter 19).
The Mess at the Third Goodicotta Light Whistlers from W.S. Hunt’s comic Brown’s Sporting Tour of India published in 1865. It illustrates the general impression held about what an Indian Army Mess might be like16.
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 23
BOX 1.4
THE BRITISH IN INDIA From early in the 18th Century the Honourable East India Company, as it was known, was a crucial source of opportunity and employment for many in this book28,29,30. While most ended up in the Company Army as soldiers or as surgeons, a large number worked in a wide variety of civilian positions. Even those who went out to India as independent merchants had to operate within the rules of the Company. Adam Smith, a free trader, writing in the mid-18th Century summed the Company up as a ‘blood stained monopoly’ although after 1813 independent trade was allowed but under strict rules. Right from its beginnings the Company was a source of criticism from a sector of the public although they were largely immune from it. Founded in 1600 as a trading venture, the Company survived through various ups and downs. The British predisposition to violence as the easiest way to solve problems, and to a feeling that they could only be secure inside secure forts or where the area could be tightly controlled meant that the Company rapidly ceased to be just a trading company38. Frequently this was against their own interests, the Company showing a consistent inability to converse or negotiate with the Indian rulers in the ways to which they were accustomed. The collection of taxes from the rural population and the maintenance of a standing army became increasingly important. A major milestone was the ending of French ambitions in India by Robert Clive, who initiated the policy of exerting control through puppet governments - a policy which became standard for the later British Empire. A treaty of 1765 gave the Company control of the administration of Bengal, which at that point many claim was the richest country in the world. Revenues from Bengal were then used for trade and for personal enrichment. Widespread corruption and extortion by the British enabled them to return to Britain as ‘nabobs’ and purchase huge estates. This exploitation was checked somewhat in 1773 by the passing of an Act by which the Governor-General of Bengal (whose appointment was subject to government approval) was given charge of all the Company’s possessions in India. There followed a period of consolidation, during which the government assumed more direct responsibility for British activities in India, although the Company continued to control commercial policy and act as a private trading company. One of the attractions of a post in India was that employees could trade on their own account, often very profitably. Through an aggressive policy of expansion involving deceit, bribery and corruption to gain political ends, and through countless small wars and annexations, the Company eventually occupied most of India. The expansion was achieved by three means: conquest, treaties and grants26. A Subsidiary Alliance system was devised whereby a Company armed force paid for by the ruler would be placed in a territory for its ‘protection’. Trade and further control followed. A major step in acquiring territory was through annexation - effectively invasion. Various justifications were proffered such as a ruler having no obvious male successor, or being seen as weak. The Company eventually experienced financial difficulties in controlling all this territory and raising revenue and administration began to replace commerce as the main concerns. The first people in place in a newly annexed state were now the revenue officers whose task was to set and collect taxes. Unfortunately, many of these taxes were unrealistically high and rigidly set in that they had to be paid in full when due, whatever the weather or conditions, and this could lead to famine. Under the old Indian system payment was more flexible and rational, allowing people to survive bad times. The Company eventually accounted for half the world trade in basic commodities such as cotton, silk, indigo, saltpetre, tea and opium27. The Industrial Revolution in Britain stimulated an ever-increasing demand for Indian commodities, often at the expense of Indian manufacture. For example, the local textile industry was allowed to collapse in favour of textiles woven in Britain. Agriculture was diverted away from food staples like rice towards cash crops such as indigo, opium and cotton, creating famine conditions much more readily. In the famine of 1770 ten million people, a third of the population, died in Bengal. Following this the Governor General Warren Hastings ordered a series of huge granaries to be built. But only one, the wonderful Golghar at Patna was finished and in order to save some money
24 THE TURINGS : CH 1
many future famines were left to run their course. Later however, smaller granaries were built and there are some impressive accounts of colonial civil servants attempting to alleviate famines43. The British were less impressive during the Bengal famine of 1943 when about three million Indians died. Winston Churchill refused to help, saying ‘famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits’. He was a keen follower of Eugenics. As revenue collected locally failed to meet the increasing costs of paying for the military, the Company suffered increasing financial problems. Periodically they had to ask for help from the British Government who, in turn, asked for more control. Financial pressures in the first half of the 19th Century led to reductions in the military budget, leading in turn to deep unrest. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58 the Company was nationalised by the British government and India became a colony of the British Empire under direct control from London. The Company went out of business in 1874. Money was then invested in infrastructure and the Indian economy became increasingly colonial and focussed on producing industrial crops for export, thus hindering the growth of the local economy. Indians were excluded from participating in much of public life and racism was endemic. From 1900 to independence in 1947 the net per capita income growth was near zero and the British left a society with 16 per cent literacy, practically no domestic industry and a life expectancy of 27. There was no serious effort made to prepare for independence except when it finally could be resisted no longer. Today the literacy rate is up to 75 per cent, life expectancy is nearly 70, and net economic growth around eight per cent39. There can be no doubt that the British left many fine achievements as part of its legacy, such as initiating civil administration and infrastructure and maintaining order. There was much altruism and a desire to do good in a complexity of motive. But the exploitation and endemic coercion and violence that marked the British reign is viewed differently by more modern eyes38. William Dalrymple47, the writer, said that when the British conquered Bengal it was the richest country in the world, but that they left it as a third world state. Discuss.
The grain store or Golghar at Patna in an 1888 pencil and watercolour painting by de Fabek (1.17)
CH 1 : THE TURINGS 25
Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, is the most illustrious of the Duff relations (see Box 2.4). Painting by Margaret Sarah Carpenter in 1836 (2.1)
CHAPTER 2
THE DUFFS Much as the early Duffs would have liked to be descended from, or related to, the Thanes of Fife and Scottish Royalty, there is no evidence for this. What does emerge clearly from the detailed, reliable yet readable, The Book of the Duffs, published in 1914, is that the Duff connection with the Gibbons can be securely traced back to 1404, when the estate of Muldavit near Cullen in Morayshire was inherited from Agnes Chalmers by a Duff1. Other genes were introduced through marriage with neighbouring gentry including Innes, Hay, Abercromby and Gordon, all names which feature frequently in the wider Duff tree. Until the early 17th Century the Duffs were very minor land owners. But then one branch became successful merchants, involved in wider export trade and business. In what was for most Scottish landowners an economically desperate time, they were able, by using accumulated ready money and knowledge of the law to build up vast estates with great rapidity. They would lend landowners money and then take the land when the debt was not paid in time (see Box 2.3). For four generations, from Adam of Clunybeg (at Dufftown), born in 1590, to William of Braco, born in 1685, the story is of a family trying to navigate their way through the difficult and violent times of 17th Century Scotland when being on the wrong side of whatever particular unrest could spell ruin. These troubles stemmed from conflict between Catholicism and Presbyterianism. Later some of the Duffs chose to support the Hanoverian side, while others adopted the Jacobite cause - and suffered the consequences to varying degrees3. Adam Duff of Clunybeg and his sons' zealous and violent support of the Catholic cause should have had serious repercussions. However, he was helped to make his peace largely through his connection with the Duke of Gordon who, although himself implicated, ended his life in a stable and prosperous situation. The fact that Adam’s grandson William of Braco held Balvenie Castle for the Hanoverians may also have helped. Adam's son Alexander of Keithmore fought with the Duke of Montrose for the Royalist cause, then switched sides, and, like his father and brother, was pardoned. He carried on a successful trade in corn and meal. He was fortunate in marrying Helen Grant (from a well-connected north east family) who not only brought inherited money, but also proved to be very shrewd at business in her own right, for example in the wool industry. She and Alexander were able to amass an all-important store of ready cash. The Book of the Duffs includes the following description of Helen Duff:
Helen Grant (2.2)
Keithmore was a judicious, frugal, honest man; and, tho' abundantly active and diligent, a great share of his success in acquiring money is ascribed to his wife, one of the most industrious, painstaking women of the age in which she lived, or perhaps of any other. She was a sturdy, big-boned woman, and at last became so fat and bulky that it is said it required an eln of plaiding to make her a pair of hose, and that one time when she threw herself hastily into her chair, without taking notice that the house cat was lying squat upon the seat, she prest puss so effectually to death with the weight of her body, that it never wagged a foot more, and she was so broad that no armed chair of the common size could admit of her sitting in it.
Keithmore's ready money enabled him to purchase various estates, considerably increasing his land holding. In 1676 he had his coat of arms approved – suggesting that he felt his branch of the family was on the way up. There is a monument to him and his wife at Mortlach Church at Dufftown.
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 27
CHART 2: THE DUFFS
Adam Duff of Clunybeg 1590 - 1674
(SIMPLIFIED CHART)
-M-
Beatrix Gordon
Alexander Duff of Keithmore 1623 - 1696
William Duff of Inverness 1632 - 1715
-M-
Helen Grant
Alexander Duff of Braco 1652 - 1705
William Duff of Dipple 1653 - 1722
- M 1748 -
Margaret Gordon William Duff of Braco 1685 - 1718
William Duff 1697 - 1763
- (M) - Bessie Whiteford
[1st Earl Fife]
- M -Helen Taylor
William Duff c1700 1783
Margaret Duff 1710 - 1793
[Minister, King Edward]
[SEE ALSO CHART 1]
-M-
Anne Turing 1708 - ?
-M-
Peter Duff
Robert Duff 1739 - 1825
William Duff 1741 - 1773
John Duff 1745 - 1779
[Minister, King Edward]
[Minister, Glenbucket]
[Minister, Grange]
-M-
[Soldier, India]
[Jamaica]
-M-
[Minister, Glenbucket]
Ann Duff 1787 - 1867 -M-
Charles Gibbon 1789 - 1871 [Minister, Lonmay]
SEE CHART 10
28 THE DUFFS : CH 2
Patrick Duff ? - 1770
James Douglas ? - 1823
Janet Turing c1750 - 1826
James Duff 1786 - 1809
Ann Elizabeth Duff 1747 - 1822
Grace Duff 1791 - 1867
Robert Duff 1791 - 1819
William Duff 1793 - 1842
[Sailor]
[Doctor, India]
Helen Duff 1794 - 1796
Janet Duff 1796 - 1854
Patrick Duff of Craigston 1655 - 1731 - M1 - Anne Innes
? - 1700 - M2 1701 -
Mary Urquhart ? - 1764 14 children
Margaret Duff 1720 - 1801
2 others
-M-
Alexander Gordon of Gight 1716 - 1760
George Gordon of Gight -M-
Catherine Innes
Helen Duff
Jean Duff Catherine Gordon ? - 1811 -M-
John Byron (Mad Jack) 1756 - 1791
Robert Douglas 1785 - 1831
Helen Douglas 1786 - 1850
George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) 1788 - 1824 - M 1815 -
-M-
Anne Esabella Milbank-Noel 1792 - 1860
Ann Forbes 1804 - 1880
James Sholto Douglas 1823 - 1858
Alexander Forbes Douglas 1824 - 1890
[Captian, Indian Army]
-M-
Robert Douglas 1827 - 1846
Ada Lovelace 1815 - 1852
[Estate Factor]
Agnes Liston 1837 - 1919
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 29
Balvenie Castle, near Dufftown, home of William Duff of Braco
Of Keithmore’s three sons we are primarily concerned with the eldest, Alexander Duff of Braco, a man of affairs. Like his grandfather, he seems to have been prone to violence and flying close in the face of the law. His aggressive pursuit of land brought him a most unsavoury reputation. A typical example was the acquiring of the Castle of Balvenie. Keithmore's father and grandfather had begun to lend small sums of money to its owner Arthur Forbes. Alexander bought up a great many of his debts, and then used the power of the law to remove him from his lands (see Box 2.3 for more detail).
According to The Book of the Duffs, gazing one day upon the number of little homesteads lying in a valley, Alexander remarked, ‘I’ll gar a’ that reek gae thro’ ae lum yet’ (eventually I will own the whole valley). Baird2 writes: All those Braco deprived of their heritage at as little expense as he could. And it is too well known and much to be regretted that he was not very ceremonious either as to the Legality or Equity of the method; and I really believe his severe and oppressing treatment of these little Proprietors who were not able to defend themselves brought a great deal of Odium upon his name, and made John, Earl of Kintore, add a new petition to his Prayers, ‘Lord, keep the Hill of Foudlin between me and Braco’. Keithmore’s second son, William of Dipple, a very successful businessman, seems to have been a steadier and more attractive character than his elder brother Alexander. He served an apprenticeship in Inverness with his uncle William Duff, who acquired a fortune by trading in Holland, France and Spain in general goods including wine, hemp, iron, gin, brandy, tallow and butter. He owned several ships and was also a major dealer and exporter of salmon, meal, grain and malt. Much of the early correspondence quoted in The Book of the Duffs shows William actively buying and selling grain and meal. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the trade restrictions on Scotland were lifted, enabling William of Inverness to trade outside Europe. William of Dipple became a business partner with his uncle and wasted no time in building up his own trading activities and using his wealth to expand his land holdings. His son William became the first Earl Fife (sic) and the upward progression of the Duffs continued in 1889 with the 5th Earl's son Alexander marrying the eldest daughter of the future Edward VII. The Duffs had finally arrived.
The Duke of Fife, his wife Princess Louise and their two daughters. Princess Louise was the daughter of King Edward VII.
30 THE DUFFS : CH 2
Admiral Robert Duff by Joshua Reynolds, 1764 (2.3)
William of Dipple's younger brother, Patrick of Craigston, also made money from trading in corn, meal and other commodities. He had 36 children (not shown on the chart), 23 of them by his second wife Mary Urquhart. The Book of the Duffs says that ’this Duff would appear to be responsible for about half of those of the name now existing in the north’1. These descendants are described in great detail and the many who lived very interesting lives make it well worth reading (see an example in Box 2.4). One of Patrick’s children, Robert Duff born in 1721, an Admiral in the Royal Navy, had a very illustrious career marred by his extremely cruel treatment of Jacobite prisoners in 1746. He is well known for a remark he made to his father, who encountered Robert in the garden and asked ‘And wha’s laddie are you?’ to which Robert replied ‘Dinna ye ken your ain son Robbie ye auld fool!’1.
Robert’s grandnephew George Duff was Captain of the Mars and was killed at Trafalgar, while George's son, Norwich Duff, also became an Admiral. A great grandson, Sir Robert Duff, was the Governor of New South Wales from 1893 until his death in Sydney in 1895. Patrick Duff of Craigston was the ancestor of the Duffs of Fetteresso Castle at Stonehaven, where Mary Duff was the girl fancied by Lord Byron as a small boy when he came to stay at Stonehaven. The most famous descendents of Patrick of Craigston are Lord Byron and his daughter Ada Lovelace (see Box 2.4). The Book of the Duffs sums up: Keithmore and his three sons all abounded in money at a period of time when money was scarce, land charges and interest high, rents low and most of the landed families around them sunk in debt by means of the civil wars and other public commotions. In addition, the seven years of famine from 1694 to 1700 had drastically reduced the value of land, much of which was laid waste. This made it easy to purchase land, giving the Duffs command of the market. William Duff of Braco inherited a fortune from his grandfather Alexander Duff. In marked contrast to his father he seems to have had a more generous nature. He studied law, including at Leiden in Holland, acquired a taste for literature and amassed a large library. Unfortunately, he had an eccentric and unstable streak, attempting suicide several times. For some time before his death in 1718 at Balvenie Castle he seems to been regarded as half mad. At the age of about 21 William married Helen Taylor. Baird2 says: She keepit the sheep at Cook in the Parish o’ King Edward. Before her marriage she wrought a harvest with John Durno at Mill of Likhiehead, in Premnay, for which she got 4 merks and a pair of shoes. She served John Hay, sacrist at King's College and Margaret Tamiell his wife, where her acquaintance with Bracco begun. Baird implies that William treated Helen in a strange way, insisting that she wore: plain and low mutches. She lay not on feathers, but on a hard bed of Bitken hair called a pallet. She ate oat buttered bannocks. William seems to have let her manage his affairs while he spent much time away, including at the siege of Belgrade in 1717, so the relationship may not have been as ill-matched as Baird implies. After William's death his only daughter Margaret, born in 1710, was ‘married’ in 1721, aged eleven, to her cousin Peter Duff, who was managing her affairs. This blatant appropriation of her money seems to have been regarded as acceptable by the rest of the family. The couple had no children.
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 31
William of Braco also had an illegitimate son William, born around 1700 to a servant girl called Bessie Whiteford, who was left to bring him up in Edinburgh. As often happened at that period, William was freely acknowledged as a natural son, although his father seems to have taken little interest in him. In a letter written to Helen Taylor after her husband’s death, Bessie writes: Edinburgh June 20 1718. Madam. This is to let you know that Braco his natural son William Duff is in good health. I have keeped him at the school and he hath been great expenses to me; he is desirous to stay at the school some [time] longer, and I am not able to keep him for Braco never gave me anything to maintain and educat him, so I confide in yr Ladyshuip that you will get me some money to help educat him to a tread (sic) when your Ladyship will do me the favour to send some money for I want it greatly. William is an excellent scholar, he gives great promise. He is hopeful you will send him some money. Your Ladyship's humble servant. Pray send me an answer. Bessie Whiteford1. Braco’s widow appears to have responded favourably because the boy continued at school and eventually trained as a Minister at Kings College, Aberdeen. In 1739 he was presented to the living of King Edward, where he ministered for 32 years. This parish lying midway between Banff and Turriff contains no village of any size and the church and manse stand in the middle of nowhere. William was esteemed by his parishioners, and when he moved to Rothiemay after 31 years, his son Robert was asked to take his place. Robert was minister of King Edward from 1765 to 1825, so that he and his father covered 92 years. At Rothiemay William was befriended by his relatives at Rothiemay House, including his second cousin and close friend, James, the second Earl of Fife, and his death is mentioned in several Rothiemay family letters.1 William Duff married Anne Turing (See Chart 1), the daughter of the Minister of Drumblade and sister of the Minister of Oyne. They had four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Robert, married his cousin Janet Turing, the daughter of Alexander Turing, Minister of Oyne, and Anna Brown (See Chart 1). It was he who, having previously been a schoolmaster at Turriff, succeeded his father as Minister of King Edward parish. The Book of the Duffs describes: the Rev. Robert Duff as a courtly mannered gentleman who followed the practice of asking after performing the marriage ceremony, the leave of the bridegroom to kiss the bride. Upon one occasion, in putting the question in his usual dignified manner, he got the nonchalant answer, ‘Help yourself’. There are several letters to and from the Rev. Robert Duff among the manuscripts in the British Museum, among the Rose correspondence and in the Duff House papers. They had seven children. Two sons were drowned at sea. James, the eldest, joined the East India Company Army as a Cadet in 1802 and became a Lieutenant in the Madras European Regiment. He was drowned in 1809 when returning on leave to Scotland (see Box 2.1). A younger brother, Robert Duff, became a sailor and in August 1819 lost his life when his ship went on fire as written on the family tombstone at King Edward (see opposite). Initially we assumed that he was the First Mate Gibbon who had accidently set the Abeona on fire in December 1820 as it headed for South Africa with a cargo of settlers. However, a letter written by Sir Robert Turing, the surgeon, to his daughter Mary Aiskell and dated 1 June 1820 gives a different story. The poor family of King Edward are again sunk in deep sorrow in consequence of the eldest, Robert the Sailor, having lost his life on board the Madras country ship in August last at Saugur roads in the Ganges – they now have no son but William who goes out as Surgeon for Bengal in one of the ships of this season. Mr and Mr Gibbon and their two daughters Jessie and Mary are at King Edward just now on a visit of consolation to Mrs and Mr Duff. Grace is likewise there and Jessie with us in Banff. We see them every other day; Robert Duff like myself fails fast and I have been persuading him to get an assistant to preach for him and come and stay with us, but he prefers being useful as long as he can. His sister Helen is still alive and spirited, but nearly blind. The country ships mentioned above were licensed by the East India Company and plied their trade round the Indian coast.
32 THE DUFFS : CH 2
The Loss of an East Indiaman as imagined in this watercolour by the painter Turner around 1818 (2.4) (R) Fire at sea was a constant nightmare in the days of wooden sailing ships. This image is by William Daniell is of the East Indiaman Kent which went on fire in 1825 in the Bay of Biscay with 641 people on board. Luckily a small brig happened to be nearby and only 81 lives were lost. One can imagine the terror of the fire on Robert Duff’s ship. The famous Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall wrote a memorable poem about the sinking of the Kent (2.5)
The Duff tombstone at King Edward Parish Graveyard. The inscription reads: In memory of WILLIAM DUFF minister at King Edward AD 1733 to 1765 when he was translated to Rothiemay where he died 19 Aug 1786. Also his son ROBERT DUFF DD his successor Born 25 Sept 1739 ordained 18 Sept 1765, d 31 Oct 1825; JANNET TURING wife of said Robert Duff d 3 Feb 1826 aged about 74; their children buried here with them HELEN b 23 Jun 1794, drowned in the burn 5 Oct 1796; JANNET b 15 Oct 1796 died at Banff 7 Jan 1854; GRACE b 20 Apr 1789 died at Banff 13 Feb 1867. Their eldest son JAMES b 2 Aug 1786 was supposed to have been lost at sea; ROBERT b 17 Apr 1791 was drowned at sea, the ship being burned; WILLIAM b 7 Jan 1793 killed in the retreat from Cabool (sic) 1842; ANN b 17 Jan 1787 married to Charles Gibbon Minister of Lonmay d there 11 Dec 1867.
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 33
The Retreat from Kabul as imagined in Britain (2.6)
William, the third brother, was killed in 1842 during the retreat from Kabul (see Box 2.2). There is no record of a marriage for him or of any children.
Ann, eldest of the four daughters, married Charles Gibbon, the Minister at Lonmay, whom we shall meet again in Chapter 10. The next daughter, Grace, never married and lived latterly in the High Street at Banff with her youngest sister Janet, or Jessie, who also never married (see Box 1.3). The third sister, Helen, was ‘drowned in the burn’ aged two. Returning to the children of William born c. 1700 and Ann born in 1708, their second child, also called William, continued the long line of church Ministers. He was English master at Banff Academy and succeeded his namesake and remote cousin in the living at Glenbucket, the third minister of the name to hold the living. He was translated to the parish of Keig but died almost directly after his arrival1. John Duff, the third son, was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, and served as a minister at Turriff and then at the parish of Grange, where he died1. Ann Elizabeth married yet another minister, James Douglas, Minister of Glenbucket. Their son Robert became Minister at Ellon. Robert’s eldest son, James Sholto Douglas, born in 1823 at Ellon, broke away from this pattern. He became a Captain in the 4th Madras Light Cavalry and died of a wound received while leading a charge at Kheree, India, during the Indian Mutiny. He was buried at Buxar and has a memorial at St Cuthbert's Cemetery, Edinburgh. James' brother Alexander Forbes Douglas trained as an accountant and became an estate factor in Perth, Lancashire and then in Aberdeenshire. He married Agnes Liston, a Minister's daughter from Redgorton, Perthshire, and they had various descendants. We have no information about Jean, daughter of William Duff and Ann Turing, but we know that Helen and Ann were both alive in 1770 when their brother Patrick died in Jamaica leaving money to them, as well as his father and his brothers Robert and William. 34 THE DUFFS : CH 2
BOX 2.1
JAMES DUFF DISAPPEARS WITH JANE DUCHESS OF GORDON James Duff, born in 1786, Lieutenant in the Madras European Regiment,16,17 left Madras on leave to Britain on 26 January 1809, having just completed his first tour of duty in India. He was a passenger on the ship Jane Duchess of Gordon, one of nine East India Company transports to leave that day. Part of the Fleet’s cargo was saltpetre, needed for the manufacture of gunpowder. They were to sail in convoy under Royal Navy escort, because of the risk of capture from French frigates. Other ships joined them off Ceylon and on 15 February a total of eighteen ships set sail for England under the escort of Captain Pellew in HMS Culloden. Ten days later they started to experience bad weather, which developed into a severe hurricane on 14 March, scattering the fleet. The following is taken from Storm and Conquest by Stephen Taylor,18 which gives a vivid account of life in, and voyages to, India at that time: Four Indiamen had been close to Culloden at the onset of the storm and had tried to keep up with her. The Calcutta was sailing alongside to windward with the Bengal in her wake. Some way behind were the Lady Jane Dundas and the Jane Duchess of Gordon. All had up close-reefed main topsails and foresails and were going along fast. That was on the evening of 14 March, and it was the last that was ever seen of them. Taylor hypothesizes that the last-named ships collided and broke up. On the Jane Duchess of Gordon about a hundred and fifty souls were lost including twenty-seven cabin passengers. Captain Pellew was accused of seeking glory and prizes by pursuing an obviously dangerous route in the hurricane season. There were other losses too: between 1807 and 1809 14 ships sank, all richly laden. The value of these ships and cargoes had they reached England would have been enormous. 1,500 seamen were also lost.19 The Court of Directors assembled a joint committee to inquire into the causes of such repeated disasters. It attributed the loss of these ships to three causes: firstly, the practice of Royal Navy captains legally removing or impressing many of the Company seamen to make up numbers for their own crews. This left the Company ships dangerously short-handed leaving them unable to shorten sail and prepare for bad weather, or to keep up with the convoy when a press of sail was required; secondly, going from port to port to join convoy wasting valuable sailing time; and lastly, sailing at improper seasons, and not going far enough to the eastward to avoid the hurricanes so prevalent near Mauritius 20.
A Fleet of East Indiamen - one of the great sights of the time (2.7) ‘Sudden Lurch’ (2.8)
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 35
BOX 2.2
WILLIAM DUFF IN AFGHANISTAN William Duff was born in 1793, at King Edward in Aberdeenshire where his father was the minister. We know nothing of his early education, but in 1812-13 he joined the ship Devonshire as a Surgeon’s Mate. He obtained his MRCS in 1816 and the following year was accepted by the East India Company as an Assistant Surgeon, joining the 22nd Native Infantry Regiment7. Entry to the East India Company depended on obtaining the all-important recommendation from an East India Company Director. Luckily this was forthcoming from his first cousin once removed, Colonel John Alexander Bannerman from Aberdeenshire, who eventually became Governor of Penang. Bannerman’s father David had married Janet Turing, whose sister Anne Turing married William Duff's grandfather (See Chart 1). The account book of Sir Robert Turing of Banff Castle24 has an entry ‘Advanced cash to fit Robert Duff and his brother William to the East Indies £290’. This was a considerable sum for the time, showing how much he helped his two nephews get started in life. In 1828 William was promoted to Surgeon, spending the next ten years with the 38th Native Infantry Regiment. An official reference dated November 1838 reads ‘Surg. W. Duff, 38th N.I., to afford medical aid to detachment of 5th L. C., recruit depot, and staff at station of Kurnaul’8. Kurnaul, or Karnal, a large military base 123 km north of Delhi, was suffering from epidemics of malaria owing to its situation in a badly drained plain. This became such a problem that the cantonments were abandoned between 1841 and 1843. It was not until 1898 that Sir Donald Ross showed that malaria was caused by mosquitoes although the use of quinine as a cure had come from Peru in the early 17th C. Other major killer diseases in India such as typhoid and cholera also had to wait for their causes to be discovered. Diary entries from the Annals of Karnal by Major C. H. Buck9 show glimpses of the life in a large garrison town during this period. One describes it as ‘a great, ugly, scattered cantonment all barracks and dirt and guns and soldiers’. Others appreciated the attractions of the social life in a cantonment with a large European population.4
Afghan Soldiers 1839 (2.9)
36 THE DUFFS : CH 2
Buck also includes a view of Karnal town by M. Jacquement, a Frenchman writing in 1831. I alighted at the house of a young officer of my acquaintance whose regiment was to give a ball next day to the whole station. I was pressed to stay four and twenty hours. I was promised that I should see some very pretty girls at the ball. Now it is nearly two months since I saw a European female, and yet I continued my course and refused to heave to.
Entrance to the Bolan Pass. This was one of several narrow passes which had to be negotiated by the invading Army of the Indus on their way to Kabul in 1839. The watercolour was one of many painted by Dr James Atkinson who preceded Dr William Duff as the senior doctor in command (2.10)
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 37
BOX 2.2... His reason for not staying is clear from his description of the town: In the interior, an infamous sink, a heap of every sort of uncleanliness. Amongst heaps of dung, brick-rubbish and concourse of beast are winding paths scarcely passable for horses, and having here and there a few miserable huts. I have seen nothing so bad in India; and it is fair to mention that amongst the natives its filth is proverbial. By 1839 William Duff was attached to the 54th Native Infantry Regiment, part of the Army of the Indus, which invaded Afghanistan that year. In January 1840 he was appointed by General Elphinstone as the Superintending Surgeon for the Army of the Indus7 replacing Dr James Atkinson, the famous orientalist and painter who wrote an interesting account of his march into Afghanistan. He was lucky to have been recalled to India. Although Afghanistan in the early 19th century was economically insignificant, it was perceived as a vital gateway for invasions into India by its neighbours such as the Persians. The British, with little real evidence, suspected that there was increased Russian interest in using that gateway. This coincided with the rise of a Russophobe lobby both in Britain and in India. And so began the ‘Great Game’. As Mount23 said, 'paranoia is a secondary symptom of imperialism'. Together with a toxic cocktail of ambitious individuals, weak leaders, factionalism, and the naivety of many of the key players, this led to the humiliation that was to follow the invasion of Afghanistan6. The Army of the Indus which set off in 1839 for Afghanistan was massive, yet strangely remote from reality and ineffective as a fighting force in mountainous terrain. Lacking even modern guns and rifles, it lumbered off with around 1,000 Europeans, 14,000 East India Company sepoys, 6,000 local irregular troops, 38.000 Indian camp followers and 30,000 camels (300 for the wine alone), plus a pack of foxhounds for hunting. There are records of junior officers being attended by forty personal servants and up to fifty camels each to carry their personal baggage. The force took Kabul with relative ease, but quickly proved unpopular. The dysfunctional British leadership made blunder after blunder and within a year open hostilities began10,11. On 2nd November Alexander Burnes, born in 1805, the Assistant British Envoy to Kabul, was murdered along with his brother Charles (see Chapter 6). The first mention we have of William Duff in Afghanistan comes from Lady Sale's fascinating account of her time with the army and as a prisoner of the Afghans. In her diary for 8 December 1840 she writes: There is a report that the Wallee of Khoolloom is coming to our assistance. Today there has been much firing in the city; and Dr Duff says he saw with a glass the people in the Kuzzilbash quarter fighting from the tops of the houses1,2. The Roll of the Indian Medical Service says that William Duff had been wounded and had an arm amputated and was permitted to retire from 15 Oct 1841 but was then unable to leave Kabul7. Eventually it was decided to withdraw the remainder of the army to India. Unfortunately, the British had suddenly stopped the usual subsidies to the tribesmen manning the passes which normally kept them from open hostilities. In the infamous and disastrous retreat that followed, as many as 18,000 East India Company troops and maybe half again as many Indian camp followers (estimates vary) were slaughtered by Afghan tribesmen waiting in ambush as they trudged through the depths of the Afghan winter15. William Duff retreated with the 54th Regiment of Native Infantry. At some point he appears to have been wounded in his remaining arm. This was amputated at the wrist by his colleague Dr Harcourt with a penknife, which left him very weak. He died in the Tezeen Pass. According to Lieutenant Eyre: Dr Duff, the superintending surgeon of the force, experienced no better fortune, being left in a state of utter exhaustion on the road midway to Seh Baba13. Dr William Brydon wrote: Amongst those wounded I saw Drs Duff and Cardew placed on a gun-carriage, but they did not long survive14.
38 THE DUFFS : CH 2
A present-day Afghan journalist claims, with no evidence, that ‘when the British Army reached Seh Baba, the British Surgeon, Duff, cut his blood vessel and committed suicide because of the fright of this battle’. Lieutenant Eyre, who was among a handful of British taken captive, gives a graphic description of the return up the pass: Between Tezeen and Seh Baba we encountered the same horrifying sights as yesterday; we passed the last abandoned horse-artillery gun, the carriage of which had been set on fire by the Ghazees, and was still burning; the corpse of poor Cardew lay stretched beside it, with several of the artillerymen. A little further on we passed the body of Dr Duff, the superintending surgeon to the force, whose left hand had suffered previous amputation with a pen-knife by Dr Harcourt! Numbers of worn-out and famished camp-followers were lying under cover of the rocks, within whose crevices they vainly sought a shelter from the cold. By many of these poor wretches we were recognised, and vainly invoked for the food and raiment we were unable to supply. The fate of these unfortunates was a sad subject of reflection to us, - death in its most horrid and protracted form stared them in the face; and the agonies of despair were depicted in every countenance. One of the very few survivors of the retreat was Dr William Brydon, another surgeon, who reached Jallalabad on 13 January 1842, wounded and exhausted but alive, to report the historic destruction of the British Army. He wrote: There were four doctors killed in the Huft Kothul. Poor old Duff, Magrath, Bryce and Cardew.… Time will, doubtless, reveal the true History of all that took place at Cabool. At present, we at least, know, for certain, that a most blind confidence, totally unwarranted, brought about the danger, and that imbecility, unprecedented, completed the catastrophe14. Dr Brydon had the misfortune to be trapped with his family at the siege of Lucknow (see Chapter 21) but again he survived.
The Remnants of an Army by Lady Elizabeth Butler who painted many other 19th century historical scenes. It shows Dr Brydon's imagined arrival at Jalalabad on 13th January 1842 with news of the massacre of the Army of the Indus (2.11)
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 39
BOX 2.3
'SUCCESSFUL PETTY KNAVERY' OR 'LUCKY DUFFS' In 1909 Tom Johnston, who later became Secretary of State for Scotland, wrote a wonderfully refreshing and polemical book called Our Scots Noble Families21,25. He described the rise of the Duffs as 'successful petty knavery' or 'Lucky Duffs'. He wrote: … they have specialised in cunning, in legal trickery, in underhand dodgery, in the calm and determined appropriation of common lands and church lands. Successful marriages have been a decided feature of the family history, and the present Duke has only gone one better than his ancestors, when he married into the Royal family. The Duffs were originally petty lairds on the Aberdeenshire and Banffshire borders and the founders of the house are declared in Burke’s Peerage to have been wonderfully diligent in the adding of field to field. In due course the Duffs amassed great wealth; they bought up many lands (they also got many lands without due emphasis being laid on the buying up); they raised themselves to the peerage with the title of Lord Braco; they were never attainted for rebellion – they were too cunning for that; when estates were forfeited, the Duff lands were never among them; when ‘Bloody Cumberland’ went north after the rebellion a Duff was ready to do ‘anything’ that was desired, possibly with a keen eye on the forfeited estates of the Jacobite nobles. Johnston gives examples of what he saw as Duff rapacity, such as securing for themselves publiclyowned fishings and lands in the town of Keith as well as church lands in various parishes. They acquired most of the public lands of Banff town: … and at least two of their methods of acquisition will hardly bear scrutiny. The first method was the old dodge of shifting forward a boundary wall and sneaking all the new land thus enclosed. The other method was the acquisition of lands by the noble Duff through the medium of his factor and relative, one Archibald Duff, who had managed to get himself elected as Provost. This worthy induced the needy burgesses to sell out, and of course, the ‘Noble’ Duff was always behind his kinsman. The Taylers in The Book of the Duffs1 say: For several generations the Duff family was composed of shrewd, calculating business men. They turned themselves successfully to trading and merchandising at a very unfortunate period in the history of the country and had the command of ready money when very few in the north had it. The country was exhausted by the long civil wars of the 17th Century. The nobility and gentry were generally poor and were anxious to get loans and to mortgage their lands. The long succession of bad harvests in the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th Century also depreciated the value of land and the Darien scheme (1695–99) nearly ruined Scotland. In these various depressing circumstances there was a fine opportunity for acquiring land and the Duffs did not lose the chance. They dealt largely in wadsets and other mortgages which were never redeemed and they readily foreclosed them or purchased up the rights of reversion for very small sums and entered into absolute possession. The sasine records for over 100 years are littered with Duff land acquisitions and the various court records show the various Duffs involved in countless legal actions.
40 THE DUFFS : CH 2
BOX 2.4
THE GORDON CONNECTION AND LORD BYRON One of the names which occurs frequently in the Duff tree is Gordon. From a very early date right up to the end of the 17th Century the Gordons, fervently Catholic, played a central and bloody role in Scottish history where violence and fighting were endemic. Out of this snake pit some of the Gordon family rose to become the predominant power in the northeast of Scotland, most evidently in the persons of the Dukes of Gordon, who were also Marquesses of Huntly. The Gordons increased rapidly in power and eventually by the 18th Century there were around 150 other landed estates owned by their relatives. There was frequent intermarrying between Gordons and Duffs. Possibly the most significant connection for the Duffs was made when John Duff, born in 1590, married Margaret Gordon. John Duff was ‘servitor and tackman' to the Earl of Huntly, in other words he helped look after Huntly's business affairs. Margaret Gordon had a very illustrious family tree and for the first time we see a Duff rising from being simply a minor laird to involvement in the affairs of the powerful. John’s son Adam of Clunybeg, who also married a Gordon, shows this by his confidence in building up his wealth. Somehow Clunybeg, who supported the losing side in the Civil Wars, managed to be reinstated, as did his powerful kinsman the Duke of Gordon. Two of Clunybeg’s grandsons, Alexander and William, also married Gordon women. Another Duff-Gordon link occurs through Margaret Duff of Craigston, born in 1720, marrying Alexander Gordon of Gight. Their great grandson was the poet George Gordon Lord Byron, born in 1788 in London. Although Lord Byron's mother Catherine was born into a wealthy family, she married the dissolute, ‘Mad Jack’, who gambled away all her money, sold off her family home of Gight Castle, and went off to France with a lover22. Catherine moved to Aberdeen in 1790 to be closer to her relatives, living in lodgings on a meagre income. Young Byron attended the grammar school, where he apparently developed an idealized love at the age of eight for his distant cousin Mary Duff, whom he occasionally visited at Fetteresso, Stonehaven. In 1798 at the age of ten Byron inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle and moved to England, never to return. He married Anne Isabella Milbanke, whose wide education had, unusually for the age, included science and mathematics. Lord Byron called her ‘the princess of parallelograms’. The two separated after a year. Anne educated their daughter Ada Lovelace with an emphasis on science and mathematics and with little literary study in an attempt to counter any excesses she might have inherited from her father. Ada excelled at her studies and became a close collaborator of the inventor Charles Babbage, who was credited with inventing the first programmable 'computer'. Ada developed the first computer programs and wrote the first algorithm and her work stands on a par with that of Alan Mathieson Turing (see Chapter 1). Ada Lovelace Day, the annual commemoration of her and her achievements (as well as other women in science) falls in October.
(L) Lord Byron in Albanian dress painted by Thomas Philips in 1813 at the British Ambassador's residence in Athens (2.12) (ABOVE L) Anne Milbanke (2.13) (ABOVE R) Watercolour portrait of Ada Lovelace, c.1840, possibly by Alfred Edward Chalon.
CH 2 : THE DUFFS 41
Roy’s Military Map of the 1750s shows that virtually all the land around Stonehaven was unimproved with ridge and furrow predominating. One large plantation has been planted by Barclay of Ury but otherwise the land is largely treeless. (3.1)
CHAPTER 3
THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS The earliest Kincardineshire Gibbons were millers and farmers. Box 3.1 gives a snapshot of life at these early water mills in the 17th and 18th Centuries, while Box 3.2 shows what agricultural life was like and Box 3.3 describes early Stonehaven. Church records, whether Episcopal or Presbyterian, for these early Gibbons are frustratingly elusive with many births and deaths unrecorded as was normal for the period. Some information can be gleaned from other sources including legal records and, particularly useful, the notes left by two keen Stonehaven antiquarians, Dr W. A. MacNaughton1 and the Rev. W. L. Christie, an Episcopal Minister2. The first Gibbon recorded in the surviving church records of Stonehaven is William of the Mill of Elsick. He may be the William Gibbon who was at the Mill of Torry in 1638, and could possibly be the William born in 1614 to William Gibbon and Elspet Big, and thus grandson of Wilzam Gybbone, who married Janet Bachone in 1570. A son of William Gibbon of Mill of Elsick, also William, was baptised at Fetteresso in 1643. Another son, Alexander, joined William at Mill of Cowie in 1674. His descendants will be explored in Chapter 4.
Map showing the Mill of Elsick to the north of Stonehaven (3.2)
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 43
CHART 3: WILLIAM GIBBON
William Gibbon 1613 - ? [Miller]
John Gibbon
Alexander Gibbon
William Gibbon 1643 - ?
[Miller]
[Miller] -M-
Marie Kerr ? - 1700
William Gibbon 1663 - ?
William Gibbon 1666 - ?
SEE CHART 4
Margaret Gibbon 1670 - ?
[Maltster] -M-
Margaret Wyllie
-M-
William Mowat [Farmer]
SEE CHART 5
William Gibbon 1693 - ?
Margaret Gibbon 1716 - ?
Alexander Gibbon [Miller]
Elizabeth Gibbon 1718 - ?
- M 1736 -
William Teviotdale
44 THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS : CH3
Elspet Gibbon 1695 - ?
SEE CHART 6
John Gibbon 1699 - ?
Francis Gibbon 1708 - ?
- M 1719 -
- M 1741 -
John Thomson
Ann Guthrie
John Gibbon 1720 - ?
William Gibbon 1722 - ?
Robert Gibbon 1724 - ?
Alexander Gibbon 1672 - ? [Miller & Publican] - M 1712 -
Janet Gibbon
Agnes Gibbon
Elizabeth Gibbon
- M 1697 -
- M 1717 -
-M-
James Strachan ? - c1746
Alexander Young
George Falconer
[Farmer]
[Mariner]
SEE CHART 7
SEE CHART 8
[Lawyer]
Christian Thomson 1685 - 1749
Andrew Strachan [Mariner]
Andrew Gibbon
James Gibbon [Lawyer]
Christian Gibbon - M 1765 -
William Meldrum [Royal Navy]
Jean Meldrum 1766 - ?
Robert Meldrum 1768 - ?
Arthur Meldrum 1771 - ?
William Meldrum 1771 - ?
Andrew Gibbon Meldrum
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 45
Map showing the Mill of Cowie lying at the edge of Stonehaven (3.3)
John Gibbon, born around 1640, a miller at Catterline, was probably another son of William of Mill of Elsick. He is an ancestor of the Catterline Gibbons, who for several generations worked the Mill at Catterline, a coastal hamlet just south of Stonehaven. The Mill is first mentioned in 1225 as owned by a Norman family brought to Scotland by King David in the 12th Century. The site of the mill can still be seen on the burn nearby. The records show that John’s son William was born 1663 and there is a deed of 1698 between William and the Rev. James Reith the Minister of Bervie. It is possible that the William Gibbon at the Mill of Barras about 1739 was from this family. William had at least five children. His son, also William Gibbon, born in 1693, had five registered children. Daughter Margaret, born in 1716, married William Teviotdale from the parish of Benholm in 1736. We have no information on any other siblings. Of the other children of William (b. 1663), Alexander, the next son, was the miller in Mill of Catterline in 1733 and Elspet married John Thomson in 1719. Of the fourth child, John, we have no information. Francis Gibbon, born in 1708, married Ann Guthrie in 1741. It is possible that Francis was the Jacobite prisoner captured after Culloden. He had been a member of Balmerino’s Horse, was sent to Tilbury and at Southwark on the 24 April 1747 was sentenced to be transported. It is not known whether the sentence was carried out. The interrogator’s notes describe him as ‘a private man’3.
Map showing Catterline and the Mill of Catterline. The ruin of the mill still sits down by the side of the burn (3.4)
46 THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS : CH3
In the graveyard of St Catherine’s Chapel at Catterline there is a flat Gibbon gravestone, surmounted by a winged soul. The inscription is only partly decipherable: 1725 AG MM WG IM ALEXANDER GIBBON … Spou … departed this life at … of age 43/9? … of Caterlen … years … in the year of God 1709 they … FRAs GIBBON being about … d in 1779 … the age of … aged 31? … 70 years
The Gibbon gravestone in Catterline Churchyard
Returning to William Gibbon, born in 1613, his son William Gibbon, was born in 1643. The entry in the church register of Fetteresso Church says: 8 Jan 1643 B Wm gibbon at Mill of Elsick his bairn baptized calld Wm Witnesses henri tailyour yr and robert farm[er] in strontiam 40d [or ‘Wm Tailyour there and Robert Trimin Skaitin’?].
(ABOVE) Fetteresson Church Register showing the birth of William Gibbon in 1643. (LEFT) The signature of William Gibbon, taken from a deed.
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 47
William married Marie Kerr probably between 1660 and 1665. He was the entering tenant at Mill of Cowie in May 1674, the same year the estate of Ury, on which Cowie sat, was bought by Col David Barclay. Col Barclay may well have known William previously. An excellent picture of the life at that time is given in the Court Book of Urie [see Box 3.4], a record of the local Baron Court in which the early Gibbons feature4. William was the miller from 1674 to no later than 1720, when he was succeeded by two Alexander Gibbons, the first probably his son, and the second possibly his nephew. William and Marie’s gravestone, in Dunnottar Graveyard in Stonehaven, is inscribed: WG and MK Heir aine honest and virtuous woman lyes MARIE KERR spouse to WILLIAM GIBON at Mill of Cowie departed this life May 17 1700 Aged [?] During his time as a miller William was sufficiently prosperous to build up a portfolio of houses in Stonehaven. When he died he left 5000 merks to be divided equally between his four daughters or their children and the rest to the two brothers.
The gravestone of William Gibbon and Marie Kerr at Dunnottar Churchyard being examined by one of the authors.
48 THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS : CH3
William Gibbon and Marie Kerr had six children, William, Margaret, Alexander, Janet, Agnes and Elizabeth. William, born in 1666, is described in Chapter 5 and Margaret, born in 1670, in Chapter 6. Alexander, born in 1672, lived at Mill of Cowie before moving to nearby Stonehaven. He may well have been the maltster at Mill of Cowie responsible for drying the grain prior to grinding and for producing malt for beer. He possibly became the miller on the death of his father followed by his cousin Alexander. But in Stonehaven he is described as a vintner and was probably a maltster as well. In Scotland at that time the term vintner generally means publican. While the poorer folk preferred to drink ale, he may also have supplied casks of wine to the better off, as in every public house apart from the Highlands at this time, claret-type French wines were available from the cask. A great deal of wine, mainly from Bordeaux, was imported to Scotland, a longstanding result of the Auld Alliance with France and the trading links built up, with many of the wine merchants in both France and Portugal being of Scots origin. In 1712 Alexander married Christian Thomson, the second daughter of Alex Thomson from Mill of Forest, near Stonehaven. In 1744 Christian was involved in a legal case brought by a neighbour who claimed that her husband had failed to repay a bond (i.e. a loan) while he was alive (he had died some time before 1731). Christian successfully disputed this, saying that Alexander had died some years ago leaving her with a ‘numerous young family of children and nothing to support, maintain, or bring them up with but the small rents of some few old houses in Stonehyve to which I was provided by contract of marriage’ 5. A deed of 1731 refers to the children of Christian still alive. One was a daughter, Christian, who appears, on good evidence in the records, to have been born after 20 years of marriage when her mother was aged 51 years. She married William Meldrum who became a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1759. He may have been in the Coast Guard as he seemed to spend most of his career in Stonehaven, where he was Master of the Freemasons Lodge from 1770 – 177414. When Arthur Gibbon, carpenter in Aberdeen, died in 1798 he was owed £158 by Lieutenant Meldrum of Arduthie, Stonehaven a connection made possibly through Arthur’s wife Jean Meldrum. William and Christian had four children registered in the Dunnottar church records and there was probably another son Andrew Gibbon Meldrum15. Alexander and Christian also had a son, Andrew, who is probably the Andrew Gibbon who witnessed a deed in 1745. A third child was James Gibbon who in 1734 is mentioned as a ‘writer in Stonehaven. Servitor to John Young, Sheriff Clerk’. He described himself in a deed written by himself in 1736 as a ‘son of Alexander Gibbon at Mill of Cowie’. Janet Gibbon, the sister of Alexander, above, married James Strachan, a lawyer in Stonehaven. She died before him and he seems to have been living alone when he died in 1746. The inventory at his death reveals how few possessions even a lawyer had in those days – although his next of kin may already have removed some. They had a son, Andrew. The remaining two daughters of William Gibbon and Marie Kerr were Agnes, for whom see Chapter 7, and Elizabeth in Chapter 8. There was another family called Gibbon at the Mill of Bleredryn (or Balladrum) in Durris parish next to Fetteresso but the connection with these others is unclear. There are two deeds for this family in 1670 which show Alexander Gibbon, his sister Margaret Hog, and his son John Gibbon. The few other Gibbons in Stonehaven are almost certainly related but how is not clear.
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 49
BOX 3.1
EARLY GRAIN MILLS The earliest mills would have been querns (hand mills) or small, inefficient water mills with the water wheel arranged horizontally. A horizontal mill still existed in Angus in 1683 so it is not impossible that some of the remoter mills in Kincardineshire were also still horizontal at that date. While specific details of the mills worked by the Gibbons are sparse, we can obtain a picture by looking at the rest of Scotland, excluding the Highlands. In 1674, the date of William Gibbon’s entry as a tenant, a Kincardineshire water mill such as the Mill of Cowie would have been a relatively simple building, possibly of two stories. It would have been built of rubble or turf and thatched with turf or heather. Grant of Monymusk, an early agricultural improver, wrote of this time in Aberdeenshire: The farmhouses and even the corn mills and the manse and the school were poor leaking huts which were pulled to pieces for manure, or fell themselves, almost each alternate year. The water for the mill would be fed from the river by means of a lade and the water wheel with simple flat boards would be ‘undershot’ in that it would be pushed round at the bottom by the water. Probably in 1700 there would only be one set of millstones which could be used for most purposes9. Attached to the mill would be a kiln to dry grain before grinding and to produce malt for making beer or whisky. Figure 3.5 shows the likely arrangement within the mill at this time with all the parts being wooden and the stones driven by a single gear10. The Mill at Cowie was probably rebuilt in the 18th Century and is part of the building visible today. Estate tenants were ‘thirled’ to the Mill of Cowie, i.e. they were not allowed to take their grain anywhere else to be ground. This maximised the landlord’s income but put the Miller in an awkward position between the two. The tenants were also bound to assist the miller at certain times, such as to clear the mill race or transport new millstones. Much of the work in the mill was actually done by the miller’s assistant, or ‘pecaman’ or ‘pickieman’. The miller presumably busied himself with keeping the extensive records required by the landlord of which tenant milled what and how much. Victual rents were set on an assessment of what grain passed through the mill, and were collected by the miller on behalf of the landlord. As a result the miller tended to be distanced from the other tenants as the miller and mill effectively operated as part of the factoring of an estate. (This made them more socially prominent and helps to explain the advantageous marriages made by the early Gibbon girls). Gauldie10 called this ‘the isolation of the mill’. An example of the miller becoming unpopular is shown at the Barony Court of Ury4 in 1730 where Alexander Gibbon (b. 1672), tacksman (collector of the Laird's taxes) of the mill of Cowie, summoned all the tenants of the barony to agree the traditional multure payments. It turned out that ‘the haill sucken’, that is, all the tenants, were protesting against the claims of this new miller because the former ‘gudeman of the mill’ had been lenient with them. The previous ‘gudeman’ was probably William Gibbon, Alexander’s uncle. The most common food for Scots at this time was a mixture of barley (‘bere’), peas and beans. Wheat was seldom grown. Bere, a primitive, indigenous one-sided barley, gave low but reliable yields on poor soils, and the long straw could be used for thatching or for feeding animals. Oats were grown as a rentpaying crop which the landlord could sell to be shipped elsewhere. Oats did not become the most common Scottish staple until the late 18th Century when new varieties were developed as part of the agricultural improvements. Agriculture at this time was so poor that even in a good year only four times the amount of seed sown could be harvested. The resulting poor diet was reflected in the health and physique of the population, as shown by the Jacobite prisoners awaiting transportation as slaves to North America, whose average height was only 5ft 4 inches3. (So much for the huge fearsome Highlanders.) With the emergence of Highland regiments, recruited after the 1745 rebellion, a new myth-making began of giant kilt-flying Highland soldiers leading the charge. Historian Jenny Uglow describes soldiers returning from the successful Egypt campaign in 1801: The image of the dashing Highlander was so strong that the crowds who came to see the King and the Prince Regent reviewing the Black Watch at Ashford, expecting striding giants, were taken aback to find small, wiry men in bonnets and kilts, sunburned and exhausted12.
50 THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS : CH3
The mills could grind oats as well as bere and pulses, either separately or as a mixture. The most common diet would have been bere meal porridge at morning and night and bere meal with a few greens such as kale added at midday. Bread could be made of a mixture of peas, bere, beans or oats. Bere was used for making malt; home brewing being common, the miller would be accustomed to grinding small quantities of malt. He would also be used to grinding small quantities of everything, including fresh straw for animals. The grain still on the straw would be stored in a stack in bunches or sheaves. When required, a sheaf would be threshed using a flail and the grain would be ground. Before grinding the grain would be dried in the mill kiln which was probably fired by peat from the nearby moorland. Until the mid-18th Century malt was produced under the old thirlage system, where locals were forced to have their malt for home use produced in their local mill. The later growth of large towns broke the system, but until then there were tax advantages to the Gibbons, as at Mill of Cowie, from being associated with milling, malting, brewing and the selling of alcohol. Malt from bere could also be used by individuals for whisky production. Traditional malting involved laying the steeped and aerated grain on a smooth floor until the grain germinated, when it was dried slowly and gently in a grain drying kiln. A flue would take warm air from the kiln fire, which was set well to the side to avoid fire11. The animals kept would have been small horses, small black cattle, a few large oxen and some sheep and goats. The number of grazing animals would be limited by the difficulty of maintaining them over the winter - often they had to be carried out in the spring because they were so weak. Some millers kept pigs, which allowed them to accumulate capital, although not in the Highlands where pigs were rare and commonly seen as agents of the Devil. Despite the wide availability of ale, many better off Scots drank large quantities of wine, freely available by the glass or by barrel owing to the long-established importation of French wines. By the latter half of the 18th Century most Scottish towns had at least a handful of wine merchants.
Early Grain Mills. The diagram shows the basic workings of a water-driven mill which would have been typical for all the Gibbon mills (3.5) 1: hopper. 2: shoe. 3: clapper. 4: rind. 5: upper stone. 6: nether stone. 7: mill eye. 8: spindle. 9: trindle. 10: inner wheel. 11: bridge tree. 12: inner headstock. 13: axletree. 14: outer wheel. 15: outer headstock. 16; mill stool. 17: hoops. 18: crub.
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 51
BOX 3.2
17TH AND 18TH CENTURY AGRICULTURE IN THE STONEHAVEN AREA When William Gibbon and his brother Alexander started at the Mill of Cowie in 1684, they were also farming members of a ‘fermtoun’. This was the term for the way in which an area of land would be farmed, a system which continued around Stonehaven as late as 1760. On average a fermtoun would have from two to six tenants, who in turn might have sub tenants or cottars, who provided labour in return for a portion of land. Farmland would have been laid out in broad raised ridges to allow drainage, and crops would have been planted on top of the ridges. The ridges or ‘rigs’ would occupy the most fertile land close to the fermtoun houses and each tenant’s rigs would be scattered throughout the cultivated area. This arrangement, called ‘runrig’, was originally designed to spread the good land more equitably. Tenants may, or may not, have had their rigs changed periodically. Each tenant would need cattle for ploughing. The heavy wooden plough then in use needed up to 12 oxen; a feature of the fermtoun was their cooperation under a strict set of regulations controlled by the Barony Court. These regulations would also control the annual cycle of stock movements throughout the different sectors of the fermtoun - the infield, outfield and common pasture. Most commonly, tenants maintained a single common herd to which each landholder would contribute a fixed number of stock. As there would be no good roads or even wheeled traffic, everything would be transported by horse using panniers or sledges. A summary of the medieval fermtoun system in the preface to the published proceedings of the Court Book of Urie4, written by D. G. Barron, shows that the social conditions of the tenantry were far from perfect: Even the husbandmen, though technically raised above the other members of the agricultural community, were little in advance in comfort or intelligence, or in that stimulating sense of growing freedom from indebtedness which leads to both. Notions of agriculture were notably crude and faulty. Those lands lying nearest to the tenants’ hand were subjected to some rough and ready system of rotation, and were manured with farm offal mixed with turf. The ‘out-field’ was simply cropped until exhausted, and then permitted to rest for an indefinite period till it might reasonably be expected to yield a harvest to the plough. ‘Run-rig’ lands were treated as ‘in-field’. They were for the most part narrow patches disjoined from the remainder of the tenant’s holding, and often situated at a considerable distance from it. The staple crops were bere (a rough species of barley), oats, a little wheat, and peas. Rye is mentioned in 1730 as being grown at Urie. Barron4 also wrote that: tenants were responsible for the up-keep of their farm premises, of which the stone-work only was provided by the laird. Erections little more than mere huts must have sufficed for dwelling houses, and the four bare walls of these the tenant was required, on entering, to roof and furnish, his predecessor having stripped them to regain the beams and rafters which he had previously provided at his own expense. In circumstances such as these we can scarcely be surprised that a tenant of Montquich (part of the enlarged Urie estate which also had a mill), finding himself domiciled in the mansion house of that estate, was so regardless of the decency and comfort it afforded him, as to introduce his cattle to the ‘hall and chalmeris’, rather than repair the byres and stables which had been thus dismantled and destroyed. The lack of timber is shown by the Baron Court meeting of 13 February 1733 when all the tenants are ordered to plant trees in ‘their yards and possessions’ because ‘the whole Barony of Ury is now entirely destitute of planting’. Dr Johnson on his famous trip to Scotland wrote in 1773 after coming up the east coast ‘I have now travelled 200 miles in Scotland and seen only one tree not younger than myself’. And again, ‘A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice.’ This was the bare and miserable nature of much of lowland and upland Scotland. The longstanding system of agriculture was very vulnerable to the weather, and had little margin of safety. The climate, unfortunately, changed markedly during this period, becoming colder and wetter, culminating in the famine years of 1695-1699. It is estimated that between 1685 and 1705 one in five of
52 THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS : CH3
the Scottish population died or emigrated to Ulster or elsewhere7. According to an account by Captain Barclay of Ury, even in 1761 agriculture was at a very low ebb: My grandfather, although a most respectable man, had no turn for improvement, nor had any of his predecessors; indeed, the pursuit of agriculture was generally despised through the country. At that time the tenantry were little better than the boors of Germany and Russia, and the lairds were more inclined to break each other’s heads than to break up the treasures of the earth8. Captain Barclay goes on to show how his father had transformed the area by employing surveyors to lay out fields and effectively create the landscape we see today. This involved enclosure, tree planting, drainage, liming, rotations involving new crops, and improved livestock breeds. No doubt his enclosures also entailed the eviction of large numbers of tenants who were forced to migrate to towns such as Stonehaven, or further, as described by the Minister of Dunnottar in the First Statistical Account6. This movement became known as The Lowland Clearances. Unlike the later Highland Clearances it caused little civil unrest as it took place over a longer time period and there were more options for the displaced, such as industrial jobs like weaving in new planned villages or in the larger towns13,16.
(TOP) Ridge and furrow remnants in the Lammermuir Hills. Similar traces can be seen all over the Scottish uplands and are typical of Stonehaven until the mid-1700s (3.6); (L) An early heavy wooden plough which would be pulled by several oxen (3.7); (R) Typical rig (or ridge) and furrow cultivation at Haddington, East Lothian as depicted in 1693.
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 53
BOX 3.3
EARLY STONEHAVEN For most of its existence, Stonehaven was a small fishing village standing at the mouth of the Carron Water in Dunnottar Parish. To the north over the Cowie Water was the village of Cowie, which had a surprisingly small harbour given that it was declared a royal burgh in 1542. Most of the houses were destroyed by the Marquess of Montrose in 1645 during the religious wars. The village never recovered, although the mill run by the Gibbons flourished. The remaining houses to the south constituted Stonehaven, or Stonehyve, where growth depended on the local lairds, the Keiths (known as the Earl Marishals) who would see the expansion of Stonehaven as a source of revenue. They had the town created a ‘burgh of barony’ in 1587 and probably built a small pier and storehouse. In 1600, after the destruction of Kincardine Castle, they had Stonehaven declared the county town of Kincardineshire. The town was transformed after 1759 when the Links of Arduthie by the seashore was purchased by Robert Barclay of Ury. His son laid out a new town on a grid pattern with many streets named after family members. This is the Stonehaven that we largely see today. Growth was slow and in 1791 there were only seven fishing boats, with another three at Cowie. However, because it was the county town, out of a population of about 750 there were four procurators or attorneys, a fact with no small significance in the story of the Gibbons. With late 18th Century agricultural improvements and the introduction of other occupations such as weaving and herring fishing, the town steadily grew in prosperity and population, but by then most of the Gibbons had gone. The creation of a new harbour in 1826 brought the biggest transformation, especially with the growth of seasonal herring fishing.
Stonehaven in 1842 (3.8)
Stonehaven and the surrounding area encompass two parishes: Dunnottar to the south and Fetteresso to the north. We find Gibbons in both parishes, either in the graveyards or in the records. Several Stonehaven Gibbon families were buried along with their fellow Aberdeen Gibbons at St Fittocks Church to the south of Aberdeen, the parish church of the village of Torry, where the early Aberdeen Gibbons lived. Stonehaven Gibbons also used the two main Aberdeen churches, which were Episcopalian in nature although officially under the control of the Church of Scotland. Most people in Stonehaven, as in much of the North East, were Episcopalians and worshipped in the Episcopal Chapel. The history of the town was affected by this. In 1715 it was seen as a safe Jacobite town, and the Old Pretender landed there from France. However, in 1745 most people were reluctant to come out openly for the Jacobites - wisely as it turned out. Once it was safe, Stonehaven continued to have large Episcopalian congregations. The Episcopalian Church was crucial to the early Gibbons because of the contacts it gave them with the local professional and propertied classes. They not only married into them but used them as a source of influence to obtain positions in the professions or other employment.
54 THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS : CH3
BOX 3.4
THE BARON COURT OF URIE Baron Courts were an important element in the 11th and 12th centuries of the feudalism introduced to Scotland by Kings Malcolm III and David I as they attempted to gain some control over their subjects. Initially they were important as a means of supplying soldiers when needed. By the late 17th and early 18th centuries they had evolved to be one tier in the legal system which allowed major approved land owners to have a Baron Court, giving them local control of the law. The Court would consist of the landowner and a few trusted tenants. In 1674 Colonel David Barclay bought the estate of Urie (now spelled Ury) plus some other lands near Stonehaven, although it took until 1679 to receive his formal charter. Barclay, an impecunious younger son, had served as a mercenary abroad and returned to fight for the Parliamentary side in the Civil War. Their victory, together with a judicious marriage, quite restored his fortunes. He was imprisoned after King Charles was restored to the throne, but was released in 1666. During his time in prison he was converted to Quakerism and the later Barclays became important figures in that movement. In 1674, William Gibbon, born in 1643, was given a lease by David Barclay to be the miller at one of the watermills on the estate, the Mill of Cowie, on the Cowie Water. William had previously been at the Mill of Stonehaven, presumably as a miller. In the past Cowie had been a large village stretching down to the sea, but by this time the place was in decay. The rental of the estate for 1634 given in Barron4 shows over a dozen names of landholdings, which probably acted more as fermtouns in which tenants and subtenants lived and worked in collaboration. Some of the land was held by fishermen. The mill is listed as ‘Milne and Milne land of Cowie’ and paid by far the greatest rent on the estate. There was also a waulkmill which would have processed wool. The Baron Court records for Urie run from 1604 to 1639. The Court did not meet for the following 30 years, but was reconstituted by David Barclay in 1667. He died in 1686 and was succeeded by his son, Robert Barclay. The records of the Court’s meetings last until 1747, by which time any Gibbons have disappeared from their pages. Some Gibbon entries are shown below. The Baron Court records for 18 May 1674 show William being present and the agreement of payments to be made to his assistant or ‘pickieman’, who would do most of the actual work at the mill. At the next meeting several tenants, including William and his two sons William and Alexander, were fined ten pounds Scots each for killing game illegally and their guns were confiscated. This was clearly not seen as too serious a matter as William Senior appears at the next meeting having been appointed the Baillie, the person whose role it was to ensure that the Court’s decisions were enforced. William Junior had been appointed as the Court’s Procurator Fiscal. The holders of those different Court roles rotated over time. In May 1698 William Senior obtains an order forcing the tenants to ensure that all their grain is ground at the mill. In 1721 Alexander Gibbon Junior, now miller at Mill of Cowie, confesses to having killed a pair of partridges. In 1726 Alexander Gibbon Senior, born in 1672, tenant, and his son Alexander, miller, both at Mill of Cowie, confessed to the shooting of game on the landlord’s land. On 9 February 1730 Alexander Junior appears as the miller with a claim against a list of tenants who had been trying to escape milling their grain at the mill. On 16 November the same year Alexander Gibbon, probably Senior, is fined forty pounds Scots for allowing the Cowie burn to overflow on to his neighbours’ land because he hadn’t properly maintained the banks. The Baron Court records also contain numerous mentions of local families who married into the Gibbons, especially William Mowat of Rothnick and the Wyllies of Polbair.
CH3 : THE EARLY STONEHAVEN GIBBONS 55
Cowie Churchyard sits above Stonehaven, with several Gibbon gravestones.
CHAPTER 4
ALEXANDER GIBBON AND ISOBEL CHALMERS Unlike the Duffs and Turing connections many of whom were making their mark and their fortunes throughout the world, most Stonehaven Gibbons featured in this chapter stayed much closer to home and achieved little prosperity. They were predominately millers, small farmers and weavers. Few moved beyond Stonehaven or Aberdeen. William Gibbon, born in 1643, lived at Mill of Cowie, in Cowie, a village on the edge of Stonehaven. He was joined there in 1674 by his younger brother Alexander, who would have been a sub-tenant and may well have been the maltster as well as a farmer. He had two sons, Alexander and John. With so many Alexanders there is some confusion as to who married whom1. What is certain is that an Alexander Gibbon, Younger, Mill of Cowie, married Isobel Chalmers in 1716, when the two cautioners (witnesses) were Alexander Gibbon in Mill of Cowie and Alexander Chalmers of Glenton. These were probably the two fathers. Whether there was another Alexander between the first two is not clear, although this fits the gap in the dates better. The Court Book of Urie2 tells us that in 1726 an Alexander Gibbon was the miller in Mill of Cowie; that an Alexander Gibbon, tenant, was also there; and that James Strachan was the brewer. There is an entry in the Episcopal ledger which probably implies that Alexander died in 1743. Alexander and Isobel are recorded as having had three children, all born at Mill of Cowie, the last in 1735. The eldest Jean, born in 1727, is probably the Jean Gibbon who married in Dunnottar Parish in 1755 an Arthur Gibbon from Nigg parish but it is unclear who he is. John, born in 1729, became miller at Mill of Tewel, Fetteresso, just outside Stonehaven, also known as New Mill of Turntewel or New Mill of Aquihirie. We have no information on Robert, the third child.
CH 4 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS 57
SEE CHART 3
CHART 4: GIBBON / CHALMERS
Alexander Gibbon
Alexander Gibbon - M 1716 -
Isobel Chalmers
Jean Gibbon 1727 - ?
Robert Gibbon 1735 - ?
John Gibbon 1729 - ? [Miiler, Mill of Tewel] -M ? -
Katherine Gibbon 1751 - ?
Une Cameron Gibbon c1792 - 1799
Jane Gibbon 1792 - ?
Francis Gibbon 1754 - ? (died young)
Christian Gibbon 1756 - ?
Elizabeth Gibbon 1758 - ?
Francis Gibbon 1795 - 1812
James Gibbon 1793 - ?
- M 1816 -
John Johnston [Rope & Sail Maker]
Ann Knight Forrest c1829 - 1857
Margaret Forrest 1832 - 1918
Alexander Forrest c1838 - 1863
- M 1853 -
- M 1855 -
-M-
William Turriff c1809 - 1895
George Adam 1831 - 1895
Jane Tavendale c1842 - 1917
[Farmer]
[Sailor, Stonehaven]
Christina Turriff c1852 - 1915 [Domestic Servant] - M 1883 -
James Duncan c1844 - 1899 [Blacksmith]
Elspet Turriff c1854 - 1937 - M 1885 -
William Samson 1854 - 1906 [Bleachfield Worker]
James Turriff 1856 - 1880 [Coachman]
Ebenezer Forrest 1839 - 1902 - M1 1866 -
Burnett Forrest c1842 - 1900 [Mason & Slater]
Margaret Evans - M2 1889 -
Elizabeth Davies c1840 - ?
-M-
May Davidson c1846 - ? [Housekeeper]
Christine Gibbon Adam 1866 - 1937
Margaret Ann Eliza Adam 1875 - 1937
Alexander Tavendale Forrest 1862 - 1950
- M 1891 -
- M 1897 -
-M-
Andrew Davidson 1865 - 1934
William Pirrie Currie 1869 - 1940
Elspet Steven
[Plumber]
[Stonemason]
John Gibbon
John Gibbon 1760 - ?
Francis Gibbon 1761 - 1803
James Gibbon 1763 - ? (died young)
[Miller at Mill of Tewel]
James Gibbon 1766 - ? [Miller & Carter]
-M-
- (M) -
Ann Walker
Isobel Henderson 1763 - 1803
- M c1795 -
Elspet Angus
James Gibbon 1796 - ? [Post Office Messenger] -M-
Ann Grant c1800 - 1860
Christian Gibbon 1798 - 1871 James Forrest c1783 - 1860
Mitchell Gibbon c1839 - 1871
Jean Gibbon 1806 - 1878
[Linen Weaver]
- M 1829 -
[Sawyer]
George Gibbon 1803 - 1879
Alexander Gibbon 1788 - 1874 [Weaver]
-M-
-M-
- M 1827 -
Thomas Todd c1820 - 1869
Helen Henderson c1818 - 1854
John Gibbon c1847 - 1854
Francis Gibbon 1811 - ?
Margaret Wood c1804 - 1866
[Linen Weaver]
James Gibbon c1852 - 1937
Jane Stewart Todd 1839 - 1909
[Tailor] - M1 1882 -
William Todd c1840 - 1849
Mary Todd c1850 - 1933
[Laundress]
Jane McKechnie c1852 - 1910 - M2 1914 - Jane Fyfe c1870 - 1957 [Mill worker]
Christina Forrest 1869 - 1938 - M 1895 -
Charles Stone 1874 - 1954 [Groom, Coachman & Brickfield Worker]
Margaret Ann Forrest 1871 - ?
Elizabeth Forrest c1875 - ?
Mary Jane Forrest 1871 - 1892
Christina Forrest 1873 - 1964
[Fish Cleaner]
[Spinner]
- M 1888 -
-M-
John Williams c1866 - ?
Alexander Desson ? - 1924
[Fitter]
[Slater]
James Gibbon Forrest 1879 - 1939 [Tannery worker] -M-
Christina Craig 1883 - 1964
1864 map showing the Mill of Tewel just outside Stonehaven and now next to the main railway line to Aberdeen (4.1)
John had several children. The first was born at Mill of Cowie, which suggests that John probably moved in about 1753 to the nearby Mill of Tewel, where the rest of his family was born. This first child was Katherine, daughter of John and Isobel Silver. She was conceived out of wedlock and the following entry from the Fetteresso Kirk Records is worth quoting in full to remind us of the oppressive power of the Church of Scotland, which would publicly humiliate such young people by getting them to stand at the front of the church during the service. Not long before this they would have been chained to the wall at the church door during the service.
19th May 1751 Same Day appeared Isobel Silver an unmarried woman servant to Robert Edward in Mill of Cowie and dually confessed that she was about six months gone with child begat in fornication by John Gibbon under Miller at Mill of Cowie whom she gives up as the father. Being suitably spok to and exhorted she was summoned to appear next Lords Day after Sermon before the Session who appointed their Officer to summon to appear before them at the same time the said John Gibbon.
26th May 1751 Appeared John Gibbon named in the Minutes of the former Sederunt in obedience to the Summonds then ordered to be given him to this did and judicially confessed and acknowledged that the likewise above named Isobel Silver was with child to him according to her (statement) and being suitably spoke to and exhorted submitted himself to the Discipline of the Church. The session therefore appoint the said Parties to pay the Penalties normal in such cases before they be absolved and dismissed from the Scandal and the said Isobel Silver to make her first Appearance in the ordinary way next Lords Day and in consideration of the said Isobel Silver being at a very great Distance that she come and make a genuine and voluntary confession of her sin and professes her willingness to give all satisfaction the Session have dispensed with one of the three ordinary appearances and are willing the Moderator dismiss her when she shall have appeared for the second time and the Session further appoint the said John Gibbon to make his Appearances as usual the third Sabbath of June next and the two subsequent Sabbaths till he be dismissed.
60 ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS : CH 4
Francis Gibbon, John's second recorded son of the same name, born in 1761, married Isobel Henderson and had four recorded children, all born at Mill of Tewel, where Francis succeeded his father as miller. Francis died in 1803, aged 43 years, and Isobel in the same year, aged 40. There is a family gravestone in Fetteresso Kirkyard.
The gravestone of Francis Gibbon, born in 1761, in Fetteresso Churchyard. The original inscription read: Francis Gibbon, miller at Mill of Tewel, died 31 October 1803, aged 43 years, wife Isobel Henderson, died 1 October 1803, age 40 years. Daughter Uni [sic] Cameron 3 December 1797, aged 7 years, son Francis, died 17 August 1812 aged 17 years.
The first daughter of Francis and Isobel was Une Cameron, born around 1792, who was named after Robert Barclay of Ury's wife or daughter. She died aged seven. The next daughter, Jane, born in 1792, married John Johnston in 1816 at Aberdeen. He was a rope and sail maker in Stonehaven. There were two more boys registered: James, born in 1793, about whom we know nothing, and Francis, born in 1795, who died aged 17. The next surviving son of John Gibbon born in 1729 was James, born in 1766. James became a carter, and also a crofter, farming a small area near Stonehaven. The Fetteresso Kirk Session Records1 for 1788 include the following:
Compeared Ann Walker a young unmarried woman in consequence of a summons given her at the ? of the Session and being asked if she was with child answered yes. Being asked who was the father of her child behoved that it was James Gibbon a young unmarried man and the said Gibbon being present acknowledged himself the father of said Ann Walker's child whereupon they were suitably exhorted by the Moderator and having paid the penalty of £12 scots they were dismissed from discipline.
Note how the punishment was less severe than the one involving John Gibbon above in 1751, showing how the Church of Scotland had already begun to lose its power over the population. Ann and James did not marry. Their son, born in 1788, was christened Alexander Gibbon. He became a weaver in Stonehaven, married Margaret Wood, the daughter of a farmer, and died in 1874. Ann later married a man called Falconer. Around 1795 James married Elspet Angus and they had five recorded children. Their eldest son James, born in 1796 at Mill of Tewel, married Ann Grant, the daughter of a linen weaver. He worked as a Post Office Messenger in the village of Fordoun, 14 miles south west of Stonehaven. James and Elspet's daughter Christian married James Forrest, a sawyer at Stonehaven. James and Christian had five children.
CH 4 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS 61
The eldest, Ann Knight Forrest, born about 1829, was the third of four wives of William Turriff. In 1841, William was a miller at Mill of Prather, Rathen, south of Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire. In 1851 he was the miller at Mill of Philorth, just north of Rathen. By 1861 he had moved to Mowtie Farm, Rickerton, near Stonehaven, where he was a miller and farmer of 74 acres; later he gave up the mill. In 1881 he had moved again, this time to farm Haugh (or Heugh) Farm, in Kincardine-O'Neil parish, again in Aberdeenshire, which had 60 acres and employed one man and one woman as workers. William married four times, and had at least 13 children, three with his third wife, Ann, whom he married in 1853. Ann died in 1857 after childbirth complications.
(L-R) Map showing Mill of Philorth and the Mill at Rathen published by Thomson in 1832 (4.2); 1832 map by Thomson showing Glenton and Mowtie Farm (4.3).
The eldest child of William and Ann, Christina Turriff, was living at Heugh Farm in 1883 when she married James Duncan, a blacksmith from Aberdeen. They had four children, all born in Aberdeen. Christina died in 1915. Her sister Elspeth Turriff, born in 1854, was in 1871 a domestic servant for a farmer's family at Snob Farm, Fetteresso, a poor upland farm in a valley on the edge of the moors further up the Cowie Water from Stonehaven. She moved to Brechin, Angus, where she had a daughter, Mary Jane, in 1880. She worked there as a linen weaver, probably as a powerloom weaver as there were several hundred such looms in Brechin located in a few large works. In 1881 she was still in Brechin, but shortly afterwards she moved to Dundee, again as a powerloom weaver. The booming jute industry in Dundee was predominant although there were also factories weaving with flax or wool. At this time the city boasted around 60 jute mills and more than 50,000 workers, the majority being married women. In 1887 Elspeth married William Samson, a Dundee bleachfield worker (he was illiterate, and signed his name with a cross). Historically, linen was bleached and laid out on the ground. After the late 18th Century bleaching was done with chlorine, but many of these factories continued to be called bleachfields. This use of chlorine caused widespread water pollution around Dundee well into the 20th Century. William Samson died a pauper in Forfar Poor House. Elspeth died in Brechin in 1937, aged 83. Her brother, James Turriff, became a coachman in Kincardine O'Neil and died in 1880, aged 24, from peritonitis.
(L-R) 1774 map by William Garden showing Snob Farm which was just inland from Stonehaven towards the hills. This early map shows that there had been little agricultural improvement and shows the rigs or ridges used for cultivation on the better land (4.4); A 17th Century painting depicting a bleachfield in Holland. Note the bleached cloth laid on the ground to dry (4.5)
62 ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS : CH 4
Jute weavers in Dundee working with power looms. The jute industry provided thousands of valuable jobs although the downside were the respiratory problems arising from the jute dust in the air (4.6)
The second daughter of Christian Gibbon (born 1798) and James Forrest was Margaret, born in 1832. She married George Adam, born in 1831, son of a handloom weaver in Stonehaven. George became a sailor, rising to captain, and later worked as a stevedore's storekeeper in Glasgow. He died in 1895, of injuries from an accident at Queen’s Dock when he was fixing a derrick on SS Kentigern and fell, probably having had a stroke. The couple's gravestone is in Cowie Kirkyard, Stonehaven. Their daughter Christian Gibbon Adam was a dressmaker in Edinburgh, where she met Andrew Davidson, a plumber. They married in 1891 in Glasgow, where they continued to live. Her sister Margaret Adam, born in 1875, married William Currie in 1897 in Stonehaven. Born in 1869 at Turriff, he worked as a stone mason in Aberdeen and then in Stonehaven.
Gravestone of George Adam and Margaret Forrest in Cowie Churchyard, Stonehaven.
Cowie churchyard is a romantic spot above the cliffs at Stonehaven (4.7)
CH 4 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS 63
Alexander, the third child of Christian Gibbon and James Forrest, was a merchant seaman. He married Jane Tavendale, also from Stonehaven. He died aged 24 in Aberdeen, leaving a son, Alexander Tavendale Forrest, born in 1862, who married Elspet Steven and had family. Jane married again, to a fisherman, George Christie, and had five more children. Ebenezer, the fourth child, born in 1839, moved to Swansea, married twice and, by his first marriage to Margaret Evans, had several children, probably including a son. The eldest, Christina Forrest, born in 1869, was working at a ‘Copper Nailery’ at Swansea in 1891. She married Charles Stone and in 1901 the couple were living in No 5 Hut, Brickfield, Boreham Wood, Elstree, where Charles was a labourer in the brickfield. In 1911 Charles was a groom and coachman back in Wales. The second daughter, Margaret Ann Forrest, born in 1871 at Swansea, married John Williams, a fitter in a steam engine works and then a turner and fitter in tin plate, both in Swansea. Burnett Forrest, the fifth child of Christian Gibbon and James Forrest, born around 1842, was a mason, then slater, in Stonehaven. He married May Davidson, whose father was a stonemason, and they had three children. Mary Jane Forrest, born in 1871, was a fish cleaner in Stonehaven and died, aged 21, of encephalitis. Christina Forrest, born in 1873, had two children in Glasgow with Alexander Desson. In 1901 she was back in Stonehaven without him, working as a spinner. She died in 1964. Her eldest son, Alexander Burnett Desson Forrest, an able seaman in the Royal Naval Reserve, died 'from disease' in September 1918 while serving on H.M.S. Vivid, a shore training establishment. He is buried in Cowie Churchyard, Stonehaven. The younger son, James Desson, became a railway porter. Christina's brother James Gibbon Forrest, born in 1879, worked in a Stonehaven tannery and married Christina Craig, a local whitefisher's daughter. He died in 1939 after a gall bladder operation. Christina died in 1964.
(LEFT) The two Forrest gravestones in Cowie graveyard with Stonehaven in the background. On the right is that of Alexander who died in 1918 while in the Royal Naval Reserve. (BELOW) Women cleaning and packing herring in Aberdeen in 1900. The herring industry was slow to take off in the north east of Scotland but eventually became a huge seasonal industry. Thousands of Scottish women would follow the herring to ports from Shetland to the south of England returning to their homes at the end of the season. The herring would be salted and exported to Baltic countries such as Russia. Mary Jean Forrest may have been less involved with herring as there would have been other fish landed at Stonehaven throughout the year.
64 ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS : CH 4
Returning to the children of James Gibbon and Elspet Angus, George, born in 1803, was a linen weaver in Aberdeen until at least 1852. He married Helen Henderson from Bathgate and his mother-in-law, a parish pauper, lived with them. Helen died in Aberdeen in 1854 from cholera, aged 36. The usual funeral fee was remitted because they were so poor. In 1861 George was living with Margaret Anderson, a fishmonger, and working as her porter. George and Helen had three children. The eldest, Mitchell Gibbon, a daughter born in 1839, died unmarried in the Aberdeen Poor House, aged 30, from syphilis [The death certificate lists her grandmother as her mother]. John Gibbon died aged 7 from cholera in the same outbreak as his mother. James Gibbon, the youngest, born in 1852, became a tailor in Arbroath and married Jane McKechnie in 1882. They had several descendants. After Jane's death in 1910, James remarried in 1914 to Jane Fyfe, daughter of a tailor. James died in 1937 in Arbroath and Jane died in 1957. James and Elspet's next child was Jean Gibbon, born in 1806. She married Thomas Todd, born around 1820, a handloom linen weaver in Aberdeen, who later became a farm servant. They had three children. Jane Todd, born in 1839, was working as a house servant for her uncle James Gibbon and later worked as a laundress while living with her sister Mary in Stonehaven. Both were unmarried. Jane died in 1909 and Mary in 1933. Their brother William Todd died aged 7. The family gravestone is in Fetteresso Kirkyard, the reverse side of that of Thomas' uncle Francis Gibbon, born in 1761, the miller at Mill of Tewel.
Gravestone of Thomas Todd and Jane Gibbon in Fetteresso Graveyard on the reverse side of that for Francis Gibbon, born 1761.
CH 4 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & ISOBEL CHALMERS 65
Memorial in Latin in Kinneff Church to John Young of Stank born about 1698, son-in-law to William Gibbon born c1666.
CHAPTER 5
WILLIAM GIBBON AND MARGARET WYLLIE The eldest son of William Gibbon (born in 1643), and Marie Kerr, also called William, grew up at Mill of Cowie. He married Margaret Wyllie, the daughter of Robert Wyllie of Polbair, a long-established tenant on the Ury estate. An application to the court by John Young, William's son-in-law who married Agnes Gibbon (see Chapter 3), on behalf of his wife’s four sisters shows that William’s father helped establish him as a ‘merchant’ in Stonehaven, with the proviso that he provide 5000 merks Scots equally divided between the sisters1. William was a maltster, probably the one attached to the Mill of Stonehaven and/or to the public house at Mill of Stonehaven. A deed of 171012 describes him as ‘sometyme at Mill of Stonehyve now merchant in Stonehyve’. Presumably he worked together with his brother Alexander, the publican. A receipt of 1709 shows ‘Wiliam Gibbone, David Wallace, and John Scott, managers of the ‘Publick of Stonhyve’.1 Clearly he not only brewed the beer but helped to sell it. Later he moved to Nether Kirkland, an area of Stonehaven. He was a prominent citizen, an elder of the Dunnottar Church before 1709 (when it was still Episcopalian) and by 1711 the treasurer of the Church showing that he decided to stay even though Dunnottar had become Church of Scotland. Another deed in 1714 shows William negotiating two bonds for which one of the witnesses was ‘Wm Gibbon at Mill of Stonehye’. The other deed concerned ‘money properly belonging to the poor of the parish’ and may have part of the problem of splitting the church. He was also a magistrate, long known as Baillie Gibbon. A deed of 17201 shows a typical agreement regarding a commercial voyage, in this case between William Gibbon and four others who hire John Falconer and his ship to take goods between Stonehaven, Norway, England and France. John Falconer is paid £20 per month. A deed of 1732 has William gifting property in Stonehaven High Street to his wife Margaret and son Robert2. William probably died soon afterwards. Margaret survived him at Nether Kirkland. These Gibbons were not isolated rural millers, but lived and worked surrounded by others in a small town and so had a life, social circle, and probably expectations, very different from most other millers at that time.
Map published by Thomson in 1822 showing Polbair, or Poubare, Farm where Margaret Wyllie was brought up. There were several families of Wyllies around Stonehaven and many more up the east coast (5.1)
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 67
SEE CHART 3
CHART 5: GIBBON / WYLLIE
William Gibbon c1666 - ? [Merchant & Maltster] -M-
Margaret Wyllie
Janet Gibbon 1698 - ?
William Gibbon 1695 - 1776 [Merchant & Maltster]
[Ship Carpenter]
-M-
-M-
Margaret Young c1724 - 1783
[Army Doctor] -M-
Anna Gordon ? - c1795
John Young
James Gibbon 1741 - 1806
[Lawyer]
[Ship Captain & Merchant]
Marie Cranmer 1746 - 1825
SEE CHART 25
SEE CHART 9
Charles Young 1774 - ?
William Young 1776 - 1850
Thomas Abernethie Sims 1822 - 1899
Mary Young 1779 - c1792
Mary Logie ? - 1838
Isabella Torry 1802 - 1836
John Torry 1800 - 1879 [Bishop of St Andrews]
Margaret Adam Ogilvie 1809 - 1879
Amelia Isabella Sims 1825 - 1839
Thomas Gordon Torry 1805 -1856 - M1 1828 -
James Smith c1800 - ?
Ann Anderson 1797 - 1837 - M2 1838 - Elizabeth Sutter - M3 1854 - Mary Hemsleigh
[Surgeon, East India Co]
Patrick Torry Sims 1826 - 1867 [Indian Army, Madras]
[Patent Office, London]
- M 1856 -
[Captain, Royal Marines]
- M 1869 -
Anne Amelia Drake-Brockman 1840 - 1903
Ann Gregory c1852 - 1935
Emily Louisa Tyrell 1844 - 1901
Patrick Torry 1838 - 1861
[Farmer in Australia]
[Farmer in Australia]
Mary Ann Murray Torry c1840 - 1916
68 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
Henry Adam Torry c1842 - 1923
Mary Ellinor Christian Sims 1838- 1920
- M 1869 -
[Farmer & Surveyor]
William Young Torry 1844 - 1866
- M1880 -
[Coffee Planter, India]
Janet Lang Stuart 1844 - 1934
2 children died young
[Dean of St Andrews]
- M 1831 -
Vernon William Sims 1836 - 1870
John Smyth Torry 1833 - 1874
John Young
- M 1799 -
- M 1830 -
Patrick Sims 1824 - ?
- M 1770 -
[Doctor]
[Bishop of St Andrews]
[Commander Royal Navy]
[Ship Captain & Berthmaster]
James Leith c1714 - 1788
Patrick Torry 1763 - 1852
Andrew Sims 1792 - 1862
William Gibbon 1747 - 1821
- M 1766 -
Jean Young 1772 - 1815
Christian Torry 1799 - 1869
Sophia Gibbon 1745 - 1801
-M-
- M 1791 -
- M 1821 -
Sophia Watt
[Sheriff Depute]
William Young 1723 - c1780
Mary Ann Torry 1797 - ?
- M 1742 -
John Young
Ann Reid
Thomas Young 1771 - ?
Alexander Gibbon 1700 - ?
- M 1864 -
Henry Julius Drake-Brockman 1834 - 1869 [Lt. Col., Indian Army]
James Ramsay Torry 1848 - 1886
Adam Ogilvie Torry 1850 - 1891
Margaret Gibbon 1701 - ?
James Gibbon 1703 - ?
Mary Gibbon 1705 - 1744
Rebecca Gibbon 1707 - 1791
- M 1732 -
Robert Gibbon 1709 - 1738
- M1 -
John Mearns
James Mitchell ? - 1734
[Watchmaker] - M2 -
[Minister]
James Fraser
William Mearns 1745 - ? [Watchmaker]
Alexander Leith c1751 -1805
Janet Leith c1753 - 1827
John Leith c1756 - 1805
Margaret Leith c1758 - 1835
[Surgeon, British Army]
- M c1789 -
Elizabeth Leith c1760 - 1841
James Leith c1764 - 1829 [Judge Advocate General, India]
James Arnott 1754 - 1799 [Lawyer]
Margaret Arnott 1790 - 1866
Jane Young 1800 - 1834
James Arnott 1791 - 1866
Charles Arnott 1794 - 1841
[Lawyer]
[Solicitor, London]
- M 1823 -
- M 1835 -
Charles Fellows Grice Emily Sophia Fletcher ? - 1850 [Captain, Bombay Marine] 1814 - 1874
Elizabeth Arnott 1796 - 1847 - M 1827 -
Philip Maugham 1784 - 1863
- M 1863 -
Robert Herbert Storey 1835 - 1907
Philip Maugham 1830 - 1897
[Episcopal Minister] - M 1861 -
Margaret Georgina Crafer 1835 - 1916
Helena Arnott 1842 - 1899
- M 1863 -
- M 1877 -
Samuel Benoni Gobat c1837 - 1873
Frederick John Rowan 1842 - 1899
[Episcopal Minister]
[Engineer]
[Major, Indian Army]
James Arnott Maugham 1832 - 1841
William Charles Maugham 1836 - 1914
[Insurance Agent]
Margaret Louisa Arnott 1844 - 1907
[Banker] - M 1889 -
Katherine May Burns 1846 - 1920
[Principal, Glasgow University]
Dorothea Arnott 1840 - 1905
Helen Arnott 1800 - 1807
[Naval Captain, India]
Janet Maugham 1828 - 1926
Arthur Philip Arnott 1838 - 1911
David Leith Arnott 1797 - 1840
Bertram Arnott 1850 - 1906 [Commercial Agent, USA]
Charlotte Arnott 1854 - 1945
4 children died young
- M 1882 -
William Johnston 1843 - 1914 [Colonel, Indian Army Medical Staff]
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 69
A typical malt kiln similar to that used by the maltster Gibbons. A peat fire would be lit under a floor containing the grain (5.2)
William and Margaret had eight children whom we know about. The eldest, again William, baptized in December 1695, was a maltster like his father, with a ‘maltbarn’ at Mill of Stonehaven. A maltster prepared malt by sprouting barley and drying the grain to produce malt for beer or whisky. He was a strong Episcopalian and supporter of the Jacobite cause, as were so many Episcopalians in the North East (see Box 5.2). Unfortunately for him, and unlike many others, he made no secret of his beliefs.
Dunnottar Castle in 1790 (5.3 )
For example, he was a witness to a charter for the Earl Marischal, of Dunnottar Castle, a prominent Jacobite, and in 1720, he was called as a witness to an incident dating from 1716 in Dunnottar Castle2, concerned with Jacobite activities following the 1715 Rebellion. He had been there taking out the meal of the Countess Marischal, the wife of Earl Marischal who had fled to the Continent leaving his wife still living in the castle. She was Mary Drummond, the daughter of the Earl of Perth and a committed Jacobite who died the same year.
William joined the Jacobite army aged 50 in 1745 although he was still in Stonehaven on 28 August 1745, acting as a witness at his niece Sophie’s christening. He was captured at the battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 and imprisoned first in Inverness and later in London. As a prisoner, as on the battlefield, William was lucky to escape death. On the morning of the battle Cumberland’s troops were circulated with an order that said: ‘Officers and men will take notice that the public order of the rebels yesterday was to give us no quarter’. This was a lie but encouraged Cumberland’s troops to commit widespread atrocities, killing hundreds of wounded, surrendering and fleeing Jacobites, as well as bystanders and residents.
70 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
The battle of Culloden marked the end of the 1745 rebellion, which was probably always a lost cause, despite the brief successes, given the lack of enthusiasm for active rebellion from the majority of the Highland population. Presbyterian lowland Scotland was firmly opposed to this ‘Highland’, ‘Catholic’, adventure. The defeat at Culloden was not inflicted by England but rather by a combination of lowland Scots, German and English regiments in the pay of the British state. Their use of technology and disciplined military techniques meant that the individual bravery of clan society was not enough. A period of repression and brutal cruelty throughout the Highlands which followed was effective in crushing the clan system and opening up the north to other influences. This period is often blamed on the ‘English’ but some of the worst atrocities were carried out under the command of lowland Scots officers17. Many of Cumberland’s officers later in their careers showed that they had learned the lessons of Scotland and carried out equally brutal pacification and racist campaigns of their own but with mixed results22. Captain Robert Duff (see Chapter 2) behaved with particular brutality when shipping Jacobite prisoners in his sloop.
(L-R) The Duke of Cumberland or 'Butcher Cumberland' as he became known in Scotland after the Battle of Culloden. The portrait was painted by Joshua Reynolds around 1758. Culloden was the only battle that the Duke won although he was admired by his officers and troops (5.4); A revealing portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie by William Mosman (5.5)
On 10 June 1746 William Gibbon was taken from Inverness by the transport ship Wallgrave to Tilbury Fort, on the Thames estuary. There were seven transports, with 564 prisoners; the Wallgrave carried 102. The prisoners were brutally treated, both on the ships and at the fort; the death rate was deliberately high, from starvation, overcrowding, insanitary conditions and typhus. William is listed3 as ‘Servant to Wm Menzies of Pitfoddel’ and as ‘Pitsligos’. The Menzies were a fervently Catholic family with six brothers fighting for the Jacobites, while Lord Forbes of Pitsligo founded a regiment of cavalry. William’s prison records describe him as ‘William Gibbon, Merchant, Stonehaven. Assisted in proclaiming the Pretender at Stonehaven, joined the rebel army. Went to England, was at Falkirk Battle and went North with them’.
(L-R) Tilbury Fort where Jacobite prisoners including William and Francis Gibbon were imprisoned. This image is from 1792 (5.6); Memorial stone to the Jacobites at Tilbury Fort. Behind is the Water Gate on the riverside built in the 17th Century and designed to impress as most visitors would arrive by river (5.7)
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 71
Somehow, William escaped slavery through transportation to North America and was released some considerable time after the Act of Indemnity was signed in 1747. In a letter to his wife4, Ann Reid, dated 9 July 1747, and officially passed on through lawyers, he writes:
[At Stonehaven 31 July 1747 in presence of John Young of Stank compeared Jas Young as Pror for Ann Reid spouse to Wm Gibbon merchant in Stonehaven and gave me the missive letter underwritten] London 9 July 1747 Dear Wife I wrote you last post wherein I acquainted you of my being set at Liberty. Ye wrote me some time ago you would come here. I believe your living is not so good as it has been at Stonehyve and wold have you come up here as soon as possible - ye can sett your business in order. I would have you put yr house to a Roup [auction] and take what money you can and of the plenishing. Let me have yr ans by first post - that I may provide accordingly. I had a letter from George Logie acquainted me William Garden was doing diligence on a Bill he has of mine. Please tell him I shall settle a factor on my land and houses and shall let the rents go for his payment until he be fully satisfied. W. Gibbon
This plan was obviously revised as he writes to Ann again on 6th June 1748:
Factory Wm Gibbon mercht in Stonehaven to Ann Reid his spouse At Stonehaven 6 June 1748 In presence of Mr Francis Garden adv. Sheriff Depute of Kincardine. Compeared John Duncan writer in Stonehaven prior fro the after designated Wm Gibbon etc. Know all men by these presents that I William Gibbon merchant in Stonehaven presently Residenter in London cannot at such distance manage my affairs in Scotland and having entire confidence in the integrity and capacity of Anne Reid my spouse to execute the trust underwritten do hereby make constitute and ordain the said Anne Reid be my Factor to the effect underwritten giving granting and commuting to her my full power warrand and com. for me and in my name. To lett and sett in Tack my houses and lands lying within and about the Town of Stonehyve such rents as she can procure Tenants to take the same at, And to sell and dispose of the household plenishing and other moveable goods pertaining to me etc. Witnessed at London 28 March 1748. Before Geo cattanach merchant and Wm Cattanach his servt.
Accordingly an advertisement appeared in the Aberdeen Free Press: ‘Gibbons, William, Merchant, Stonehaven. House for sale, 4th July, 1749’5. However, on 19 March 1750 Ann is still in Stonehaven and William is still in London, Another letter4 in which he describes himself as ‘now residenter in London’ gives Ann Reid the right to sue Robert Fiddes, for what we don’t know. In 1748 he was still faithful to his Jacobite friends, acting as a witness to the will of Alexander Garioch, from Mergie in Fetteresso Parish, who was tried for High Treason7 (Garioch wrote an interesting description of Fetteresso Parish in 172221). By 1751 William was back in Stonehaven, pursuing a tenant for non-payment of rent. In 1754 he borrowed money from the Freemasons Lodge on the security of Arthur Gibbon, carpenter, Aberdeen. In 1761 a tailor in London sent him a bill for ‘a paire of Manchester shage breches [rough woolen trousers] and a frock coat of Yorkshire coarse Cloath’ that he had made for William in 1747, while he was a prisoner7.
72 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
Box 5.1 shows the record of the proceedings when William was required to appear in the local court for the non payment of the bill.
Joseph King, Taylor, London 1.
To making a pair of shagg breeks
-
3
?
2.
To 2 yards and a quarter of shagg @ 4/6
-
11
?
3.
To breek lining and pockets
-
5
?
4.
To buttons and garters to the breeks
-
3
?
5.
To all other trimmings of the breeks
-
2
?
6. To making a Coat - 10 ? 7.
T0 3 yeards cloath at 8/-
1
4
?
8.
To 5 yeards of shaloun [?] at 1/6
-
7
-
9.
To sleeve linings and pockets
-
2
?
10.
To buttons and all other trimmings
-
7
?
11. To postage of letters - 2 ? 3 19 6 Mock-up of the bill from Joseph King, Taylor in London, to William Gibbon in Stonehaven 1763
William finally paid in 1763. He spent his last days with his nephew William Young and his sister at Falside in Kinneff and Catterline parish, and was buried there in 1776. He had no children and left his property to William Young. In 1777 an advert appeared: The whole houses, gardens and maltbarn lying within the Town of Stonehaven and late pertaining to Mr William Gibbon late merchant there either altogether or in different lots as purchasers incline. The articles of roup and conditions of sale will be seen in the hands of James Young Writer in Stonehaven5. William’s sister Janet Gibbon, born in 1698, married John Young of Stank, born around 1698 in the parish of Dunnottar, who became the Sheriff of Kincardineshire. He was the son of Robert Young in Mergie and Margaret Forbes, whose now neglected gravestone in Fetteresso churchyard reads: To the memory of Robert Young in Mergie who died 19 Sept 1714 aged 50 and of Margaret Forbes his spouse who departed this life 8 Feb 1734 aged 66. John Young Sherriff Clerk of Kincardine their eldest son caused this stone to be erected. They had six children viz. the aforesaid John, James and David who died 5th April 1724 aged 16. William who died very young and was buried at Aberdeen and Margaret who died in Childhood. Dust must return to dust so necessity requires. [Translated from the Latin]20 Gravestone of the family of Robert Young and Margaret Forbes, a flat stone near the end of the ruined church.
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 73
Map by Thomson published in 1822 showing Stank and Fawside to the south of Stonehaven near Kinneff (5.8)
John Young, whose uncle Alexander Young, married Agnes Gibbon (see Chapter 7) was clearly an enterprising man. In the papers of Innes of Cowie18, a local laird, there is a copy of a petition giving ‘Reasons why John Young of Stank should not continue in the office of sheriff of the county of Kincardine’ because he is ‘in a word possest of all the public offices within the county (except the town clerkship of Bervie which is of no worth.’ John Young was apparently sheriff, collector of cess, clerk of supply, admiral depute, and postmaster. In 1747, three years before he died, he bought Falside (later called Fawside). Robert Burnes (see Chapter 6) had a tenancy of land at Falside which he gave up the same year but whether he was forced, or decided that the life was too hard financially, is not clear. In 1772 Falside had only 114 acres, mostly arable showing how few of these minor lairds possessed large estates. The Black Book of Kincardineshire8 says that when Cumberland’s army came through Stonehaven on 24 and 25 February 1746 he ordered his soldiers to set fire to Mr Greig’s (Episcopal) chapel: because the minister and the greatest part of his hearers had embraced the cause of Prince Charles; there being very few who attended the (Presbyterian) Parish Church at Dunnottar, and not above a dozen of Presbyterians in the Old Town at this period.
A Baptism from a Stonehaven Jail painted in the 19th Century by George Washington Brownlow who specialised in highly romantic and sentimental paintings. Nevertheless the Episcopalian Bishop had a copy sent to every Episcopal Chapel in Scotland to act as an inspiration to them (5.9)
74 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
The Chapel however, was said to have been spared at the intercession of Sheriff Young, and converted into a stable for the Duke’s dragoons, though the pulpit and pews were taken out and burned in the High Street. Other reports say that the chapel was destroyed and that services continued to be held in a house in the High Street until a new chapel was built in Cameron Street. All over the north of Scotland Episcopalian chapels were burned and life made difficult for those who continued to follow the Church and particularly for those who refused to acknowledge the Government. Even two years after the rebellion, in the winter of 1748-49 three local Episcopalian priests were imprisoned in the Tolbooth at Stonehaven for six months for holding services for more than nine people. Sheriff John Young seems to have had a shrewd political head: he entertained Cumberland while his army passed through Stonehaven in February 1746, but shortly afterwards was advising Lord Arbuthnott, a well-known Catholic and Jacobite, on how to dispose of various incriminating papers9. At the same time he was supposedly collecting evidence to convict Arbuthnott25. Another way in which Stonehaven was affected by the rebellion was that all fishing boats on the north-east coast were embargoed during the summer of 1746 and sent to either Aberdeen or Stonehaven to stop rebels escaping14. John Young and Janet Gibbon had three children who reached adulthood. William became a doctor and a military surgeon. In 1750 he was serving with a regiment stationed in Ireland. He married Anna Gordon, the daughter of an Aberdeen merchant and one of the Gordons of Buthlaw and later Cairness (see Chapter 10)19. In 1750 William was involved in a court case in which he accused his sister Margaret and her husband James Leith of trying to cheat him of various moneys and furnishings10. He claimed that his sister had: used every art to spoil his mother’s love for him, and may have been induced to this conduct from selfish or pecuniary motives influenced by the avaricious desires of a husband. Mr Leith being unfortunately for the Doctor [i.e. William] by profession a Lawyer had an ample field for displaying his talents in that capacity. William also said that his sister was: captivate with the thoughts of quartering the arms of Stank with those of Whiteriggs at the expense of her brother. The Doctor only wishes his sister would employ some of the time she spends before her mother’s mirrors in viewing the state of her mind.
Early 18th Century map by Moll showing Whiteriggs near Fordoun to the south of Stonehaven (5.10)
The year after William’s death in 1780, Falside was rented out. It is described as having ‘six fine rooms, closet and kitchen with brew house, and cellars.’ William and Anna appear to have had six children. The will of his aunt Rebecca Fraser née Gibbon, dated 1792, shows five children still alive in 1792, namely Jean, Charles, William and Mary. Mary died that year aged 13. Dr John Young, of the island of Montserrat, is named as an executor. He was also the son of William and Anna, who is mentioned in the records as living there in 1784.
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 75
Jean Young married Patrick Torry, as his second wife. His father was a woollen manufacturer and his mother the daughter of a farmer. Patrick became the Episcopal Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane13.
Bishop Patrick Torry born 1763 and the frontispiece from his biography written by his son, published in 1856.
Mary Ann, their eldest daughter married Andrew Sims, who became a Commander in the Royal Navy. They had six children, of whom two probably died young. The eldest son, Thomas Abernethie Sims, started his career as a farmer at Downiehills Farm, Peterhead, but by 1871 was a clerk in the Great Seal Patent Office in Chancery Lane and by 1881 had been superannuated. In 1869 he married Emily Tyrell, a grocer’s daughter, twenty years younger than him; they do not appear to have had children. Thomas’ brother Patrick went out to India as a cadet in 1843 and became a Major and Superintendent of Police in the District of Bellary (now Ballari, Karnataka). He was a Captain in the 6th Regiment, Madras Native Infantry. Unlike the Bengal Army, all 52 of the Madras Army infantry regiments remained loyal to the British during the Indian Mutiny. Patrick married Anne Drake-Brockman, the daughter of a Madras Lieutenant-Colonel one of a prolific military family. He retired aged 40, and died ten years later in London. There is a memorial to him in Brompton Cemetery. Patrick’s brother, Vernon William Sims joined the Royal Marines Infantry, and in 1867 was made a Captain in the Second Division based at Portsmouth. He retired, married Ann Gregory in 1869, and died eight months later. Ann was 17 years old and had been born in Gibraltar her father having been in the Royal Navy. Vernon’s sister Mary Sims married, in London, in 1864, Henry Julius Drake-Brockman, the brother of Anne above, who started as an ensign in the Indian 20th Native Infantry and became a Lieutenant-Colonel. Henry died in London aged 34; Mary in Folkstone, Kent in 1920. They left one son, Henry Vernon Drake-Brockman, who had a very distinguished legal career in the Indian Civil Service which he entered in 1886 after studying law. His final post, which he held from 1906 until he retired in 1921, was Judicial Commissioner of Central Provinces and Behar. He was knighted in 1913. He married Isabella Faichnie, daughter of the Deputy Postmaster-General for the same area. They too left descendants.
76 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
The eldest son of Jean Young and Patrick Torry, John Torry, followed his father as an Episcopal minister and rose to be Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane. He married Margaret Ogilvie, the daughter of a landed proprietor in the Scottish borders. They both died in 1879 and there is a memorial to them at Couper Angus. They had six sons and one daughter. Their two oldest boys, John and Patrick, both became farmers in Victoria, Australia. The next son Henry, went to Australia in 1862 and joined his eldest brother in the part-ownership of Sandy Ridges on the Murray River. However, the drought of 1873 caused the brothers to sell up and Henry ended his career as a surveyor. He married Janet Lang Stuart the sister of the famous Australian explorer John McDouall Stuart, who led six expeditions into the Australian interior15 without losing a man. These included the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from north to south and return overland allowing the creation of the Northern Territory. The explorer is buried in Kensall Green Cemetery in London, where there is a splendid obelisk. He also has a statue in Victoria Square, Adelaide.
(R) John McDouall Stuart (5.11 (BELOW) A print celebrating the Stuart party successfully arriving at the north coast of Australia on 24th July 1862 (5.13))
Map showing John's various explorations (5.12)
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 77
William Torry, the next son, became a coffee planter in India, and died aged 22. James was a schoolmaster in London and the youngest brother Adam had a brief spell as a farmer in Iowa, USA, but died back in Scotland, aged 40. The next child of Jean Young and Patrick Torry was Isabella, who married her cousin James Smith, a surgeon in the East India Company with the 61st Regiment of Foot. He was the surgeon of the garrison at Bellary (or Ballari) when Isabella died, aged 34. James died, aged 60, at Ambala where he has a memorial stone. James and Isabella left descendants. Next comes Thomas Gordon Torry, born 1805, yet another Episcopalian minister. He officiated at Portobello, Edinburgh, then in Dundee and became the Dean of St Andrews. He married three times, firstly to Mrs Ann Gaskin Anderson of Tushielaw, near Selkirk. She came from a long-established Barbados slave-owning family and was the daughter of General Benjamin Gaskin, the CommissaryGeneral for Barbados. Thomas took her name in 1829 to suit the requirements of an entail. She had set up a trust fund as part of an ante-nuptial marriage contract, which she tried to alter after her marriage. This led to a celebrated legal case in the Court of Session6. Ann died in 1837 and the following year Thomas married Elizabeth Sutter, daughter of a Royal Navy surgeon. His third marriage was to Mary Hemsleigh, the daughter of a London doctor, and widow of William Hill of the Royal Navy. When Thomas became ill, he resigned his incumbency; he died in Aberdeen in 1856. One of his interests was composing the words and music of songs, several of which achieved widespread popularity. Returning to the children of William Young (1723) and Anna Gordon, William Young (1776), like his father, became a doctor. When he was aged 4 his father died and he succeeded to Fawside. He married his cousin Mary Logie and they had one daughter who died young. On the death of General Thomas Gordon of Cairness (see Chapter 10), his entire estate was left to his natural son. However, William Young and Mary Logie and her sisters challenged the will, and because of a legal technicality one half of the estates of Buthlaw and Newtyle came to Dr Young of Fawside, in right of his mother, and the other half was left in three equal portions to the sisters, as heirs-portioners in right of their mother. In 1792 William was a beneficiary of Rebecca Gibbon, his great aunt. Mary died in 1838 and William in 1850. There is a memorial to them both in Kinneff Kirkyard.
Memorial in Kinneff Churchyard to William Young born around 1776. It reads: 'In memory of William Young M.D. of Fawsyde who died 9th March 1850 and his wife Mary Logie who died 18th Novr 1832. Also of their only child Jane Young who died 2nd March 1834. This Tablet of Affection is erected by Mary Young.'
78 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
The second child of Janet Gibbon (born 1698) and John Young was Margaret. She married James Leith, a lawyer and landowner. A gravestone in Fordoun gave details of their family but appears to have been moved. They had three sons and three daughters. Of the eldest son, Alexander Leith, we know only that he died at sea in January 1805. His brother John died in Surinam (now Suriname) as a surgeon with the 16th Regiment of Foot of the British Army. Surinam was occupied by the British in 1799, after the Netherlands was absorbed by France, but was returned to the Dutch in 1816 after Napoleon was defeated. The last son James Leith had a distinguished career in the East India Company. He joined as a cadet in 1781 and was the first non-civil servant to be appointed Judge Advocate General of the Madras Army, the senior legal position. He played a crucial part in the so-called ‘White Mutiny’ of British officers in 181011, which is explored in Chapter 1. He died in 1829 in Madras where there is a memorial to him in St Mary’s Cemetery. He bought Whiteriggs, his family home, and renamed it Leithfield. In his will, apart from a few minor bequests to friends and servants, James left his money to his friend Major Bryce and his children, or, on failure, to a Mrs Bernard living in Scotland. This was disputed by his two spinster sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth, who claimed that he was insane and should have left money to them and his nephews and nieces. According to a report in the Asiatic Journal of 1831 the case was firmly rejected by the court. It appeared that the sisters and family had antagonised him over twenty years in their keenness to see Whiteriggs and moneys come to them. The eldest daughter of Margaret Young and James Leith, Janet, married James Arnott, a lawyer who lived at Arbikie near Forfar. They had several children. The eldest, Margaret, married in 1823 at Calcutta, as his second wife, Charles Fellowes Grice. He was in the East India Company (a Bombay Marine), retiring as a Captain to Edinburgh. The eldest son, James Arnott, succeeded to Leithfield and was a lawyer in Edinburgh. He married Emily Fletcher and they had ten children. The eldest to survive to adulthood was Arthur who became an Episcopal curate in Barrow in Furness and in London. His sister Dorothea married Samuel Benoni Gobat, another Episcopal minister. He was born in Egypt and became the vicar of Isycoed, Denbighshire, dying there aged 37 years. Helena Arnott married Frederick Rowan, a consulting engineer in the Glasgow area. Bertram Arnott never married. He trained as a lawyer in Edinburgh, worked in London, then went out to Kansas City and Wichita in the USA, where he described himself as a foreign and colonial commercial agent. His sister Charlotte Arnott married William Johnston, the son of an Aberdeen merchant and ship owner. He went to Marischal College and Edinburgh University, where he trained as a doctor. In 1865 he joined the Indian Army as a Surgeon. In 1878 he went to South Africa and was the Senior Medical Officer in the Sekukumi Campaign, at Toyana’s Stadt and during 1879 in the Zulu War. In 1881 he commanded a Bearer Company during the Transvaal Boer Campaign. He retired in 1892, but was re-employed at the War Office as Assistant Director of the Army Medical Service. He became a Lieutenant-Colonel and was awarded the CB. During his retirement in Aberdeen he produced a wide range of historical and genealogical publications16. The third child of Janet Leith and James Arnott, Charles Arnott was a solicitor in London although he died at Leithfield. His sister Elizabeth married, as his second wife, Philip Maughan, a naval Captain for the East India Company. They had four children. The eldest, Janet, born in 1828, married Robert Herbert Story, whose father was the Minister at Roseneath, Dunbartonshire. He studied at Edinburgh, Heidelburg, and St Andrews universities and travelled widely on the continent. He worked in Montreal, Canada for a brief period before returning to the parish of Roseneath. He was appointed to teach at Glasgow University, where he eventually became Principal. Janet’s brother Philip became an Insurance Agent in London, Southampton and Glasgow.
Robert Herbert Story the Principal of Glasgow University as painted by Sir George Reid in 1905 (5.14)
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 79
Her other brother William was a chartered accountant who married, late in life, Katherine May Burns, the daughter of a Glasgow lawyer. There is a memorial to Philip and Elizabeth Maugham and their children in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh. The remaining child of Janet Leith and James Arnott who reached adulthood was David Leith Arnott who became a Cadet in the East Indian Army in 1818 and was sent to Madras to the 14th regiment of Native Infantry. He was a Major with the 26th Madras Native Infantry when he died at Belgaum (or Belagavi, Karnata) in 1840. We now go right back to the children of William Gibbon and Margaret Wyllie. The second son Alexander, born in 1700, was a ship’s carpenter. He seems to be the Alexander Gibbon who signed the first minute of the Stonehaven Masonic Lodge No 65 as a Warden of the Lodge in 1738. Unfortunately, the records of the Lodge become silent for 14 years23 after that presumably because Masonic Lodges in the north east of Scotland were seen as hotbeds for Jacobites and forced to keep a low profile. He may have moved briefly to Catterline before he married Sophia Watt from Dunnottar in 1742. [At first sight it would seem that he was the Alexander from the Mill of Catterline but other evidence shows that he was the Stonehaven Alexander]. Like his brother, Alexander declared for the Jacobites and suffered accordingly. His name appears, among others, in a summons of 7th October 1745 for not turning out to clean Stonehaven harbour, a routine civic duty, when ordered. The recalcitrants were ordered to appear for a later work detail. Possibly he was off with the Jacobite army at this point. His government record states: Alexander Gibbon, ship carpenter. Carried arms and went north with the rebels and mounted Guards for the rebels. Where now: at home. Alexander was clearly lucky in that he was pardoned early, presumably because he did not take part in any fighting and did not suffer the dreadful imprisonment imposed for too long. He returned to his life at Stonehaven and in 1751 had a seat in the West Loft of Fetteresso Church although he may have moved to Aberdeen as his brother William borrowed money in 1754 from the Stonehaven Masonic Lodge on the security of Alexander Gibbon, carpenter, Aberdeen. Alexander and Sophia had two children: Sophia Gibbon who married James Gibbon from Aberdeen (see Chapter 25), and William Gibbon who married Marie Cranmer (see Chapter 9). Alexander’s sister Mary, or Marie, born in 1705 at Mill of Stonehaven, was the third wife of James Mitchell, the Minister of Dunnottar from 1710 to 1734. He was the son of James Mitchell, a Presbyterian religious fanatic who was executed in 1678. The marriage contract in the Sherriff Court Book at Stonehaven is dated 10th April 1732. Mary was then about 26 years old, while James was about 52. The tocher, or dowry, was 1000 merks Scots. James died in 1734. In 1735 there is a record of Mary lending 1000 merks to Sir Alexander Bannerman of Elsick1 near Stonehaven. He was a very active Jacobite tried for High Treason after the rebellion of 1745 The next sister Rebecca married John Mearns a watchmaker in Aberdeen. They had a son, William, also a watchmaker who must have died before 1791. After John died Rebecca remarried to John Fraser a hosier in Aberdeen. She died without leaving a will in 1791 and the very long inventory of her possessions which were sold at auction reveal an impressive and comfortable lifestyle. Included were a good number of books on a wide variety of subjects, some religious but also volumes of the Tatler and Gentleman’s Magazine.
80 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
BOX 5.1
WILLIAM GIBBON’S SUIT: THE COURT PROCEEDINGS The following appears in the Stonehaven Court Records: Defences for William Gibbon 19 July 1763. The Defender denys the lybell as laid. Your Lordship will please be informed that the Defender had the misfortune to be taken up on suspicion of being concerned in the troubles in the years 1745 & 1746 & was carried to a Prison in London. Some people of Character and Fortune impressed money into the hands of Tradesmen for supplying the wants & necessities of the Defender & his fellow prisoners. Accordingly different tradesmen came into the Prison & without makeing any bargain or terms, furnished such necessary cloathing as the prisoners had use for out of the common Fund; among the rest, This pursuer, Joseph King, was one, and seeing the Defender in need he furnished him with a pair of coarse worsted shagg breeches & a frock coat, without as much as asking the Defender's name, or making any bargain for it, and the Defender looked upon it as a gift, furnished to him by the charity of others. The Drawer Joseph King's circumstances having turned worse he, in the year 1761, and not sooner (for till then the Defender never heard a demamd for payment of the same cloathes) wrote a letter to John Gibbon in Stonehaven craveing payment, so far was he from knowing the Defender's name. &c. &c.' The record shows a copy of a letter dated 24 June 1761, addressed by William Gibbon to Joseph King, the London tailor:
In answer to yours of 21st Febry last directed to John Gibbon I told you ye had charged him with £3 : 19 : 6 without letting him know for what he was due you that sume. I tould you I beleived the letter was designed for me on acct. as I had from you when prisoner att London on the affaire of '46 a paire of Manchester shage breeches and a frock coat of Yorkshire coarse cloath. I tould you when you gave me that cloathes ye did not say I was to pay them nor what they cost, so that I lookt upon them as a complyment. I wrote you it would be difficult to me to pay you at all - unless ye would take it from me att different times and that I would do my endevour to pay you all within the year after the date of your letter, Notwithstanding of my wrritting so to you, and with(out) letting me have a particular account of what I am due you, ye have drawen upon me att three days sight for £3 : 19 : 6. I do not think the breeches & coat can amount to near that sume, so that before I accept of any bill I must have a Bill of parsells sent to me that I may see what I am due you. I want to do everybody justice as far as in my power and especially you as I had thae cloaths in my necessity, but I cannot accept Bills nor pay money without knowing for what. If ye please to send any account. discharged to Jo. Duncan or any other person here, I shall transact with him, and accept a Bill for the one half of the account payable at Martinmas next and the other half at Candlemas thereafter, & because it is not in my power to pay sooner I shall add to the Bills interest from this time to the time of payment. I expect yell comply with the above terms and believe me to be sir, Your Most Humble Servant W. Gibbon.
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 81
BOX 5.2
THE GIBBONS AND EPISCOPACY The silliness of the religious strife of early Scotland as seen by present-day eyes need not concern us here. However, it helps to know a little about the religious situation in the early 18th Century in North East Scotland as it has a big bearing on our story. Why did the majority of the people there persist in maintaining their affection for the Episcopal Church when the rest of the country was strongly Presbyterian? Until 1688 the official church in Scotland had been an Episcopal one with bishops but after William and Mary came over from the Netherlands, expelled the Stuarts and jointly shared the throne, things changed. The Scottish bishops refused to renounce their allegiance to King James and were expelled from the Church of Scotland, and so began the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most Episcopal ministers were driven out of their parishes in the south and, although the Episcopal Church in the North-East started as the majority religion, it had to exist alongside the Church of Scotland. The Episcopal Church was not Catholic but Protestant but insisted on bishops and more control from above while the Church of Scotland was more democratic and governed by a local Presbytery and local elders. Even in the North-East many parishes had to leave their old church buildings to the Church of Scotland and build new churches although they continued to be buried in the old graveyards. In the end if minsters were willing to pray for William and Mary then they were left alone. For example, the parish church in Dunnottar, Stonehaven, became Church of Scotland in 1709 and Episcopalian services had to be held in Stonehaven Tolbooth before a meeting house was erected in 1738 in the High Street thanks to the leadership of William Gibbon. Very few of the people in the Stonehaven area went to the old church but stayed as Episcopalians, although they continued to be buried there. A commentator in 1843 said that ‘there was not a dozen Presbyterians in the old town at this period’ although this cannot be taken literally . All this mattered little except that within much of the Episcopalian following there was a strong affection for the ousted King James and hence many supported the idea of restoring his family to the throne. There were various Jacobite revolts before the one in 1745, all with strong support from the North East. However, by 1745 even the Episcopalian desire for a change of government was diminishing. Although several volunteer regiments were raised in the North East, especially in Angus where about 1,000 people enlisted, the population as a whole remained relatively passive compared to earlier times. Many aristocratic and landowning families had had a long history of Jacobitism during previous rebellions, and had been punished. Despite the punishment and generally diminishing fervour, a surprising number of members of these extended families emerged to use their power to enforce or persuade their followers or tenants to sign up as soldiers in 1745. This did not include the three Gibbons who were imprisoned after Culloden and who belonged to the group of tradespeople and workers such as those in agriculture or weaving who were driven more by emotion than pragmatism or common sense. Only two Episcopal clergymen went out in 1745 and both were hanged. An interesting picture of the situation can be seen in Figure 5.20. It shows the results of an analysis of the members of Freemason Lodges in the North East and shows that in Perthshire, Angus and Kincardineshire the members were predominately pro-Jacobite24. In large cities such as Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee where new industry was appearing bringing increased wealth and employment the members were divided. It is no wonder that Lodges were targeted by the Duke of Cumberland and effectively shut down until 1748. William Gibbon, the rebel from Stonehaven, was a very active Freemason and Alexander Gibbon the carpenter was the Warden for the Stonehaven lodge in 1738. The ‘Gibbons’ of the 17th and early 18th Centuries in both Stonehaven and Aberdeen were virtually all Episcopalians as were their social circle so that most tended to marry other Episcopalians. This was important in Stonehaven where some Gibbon girls married prominent local professionals whose descendants feature most in this account. As the 18th Century progressed and migration to industrial areas increased the old holds of religion became less strong and we see more mixed marriages and the rise of other denominations. However, many families, particularly the better off, continued to be Episcopalian and we can follow some families that the Gibbons married into, such as the Youngs and Farquhars, down many generations through their marriages and christenings, each generation
82 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE : CH 5
invariably marrying other Episcopalians. Until 1855 the registration of births and marriages was not compulsory and unfortunately many Episcopalian records, apart from Aberdeen town, remain separate and scattered. In Aberdeen Episcopalian records are better preserved, the records being copied into those of the Church of Scotland. The Aberdeen Gibbons were also Episcopalian, although apparently not actively Jacobite, and may well have benefited from Government trade as the harbour was not used by the Jacobites, unlike Montrose and Stonehaven. Aberdeen by and large took a canny line. Over time the Episcopal Church became increasingly identified with the landed gentry and there are several instances in this book of Episcopal ministers marrying upper class ladies from the congregation.
Lodges in 1745 Jacobite support in the North East as suggested by an analysis of the membership of Freemason Lodges around 1745 (5.15)
CH 5 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET WYLLIE 83
HMS Asia taking in her sails, painted by Rear Admiral Richard Beechey around 1824 (6.1)
84
CHAPTER 6
MARGARET GIBBON AND WILLIAM MOWAT Margaret Gibbon, born in 1670, the daughter of William Gibbon and Marie Kerr, married William Mowat, a tenant farmer living at Rothnick in Maryculter parish to the north of Stonehaven. Rothnick at that time was still an outlying remnant of the Ury estate. William’s landlord was Robert Wyllie, whose daughter Margaret was William Mowat’s sister in law. He is mentioned several times in the Court Book of Urie1. William and Margaret had at least five children though we have details of only two2,3,4. William Junior, a merchant in Stonehaven, married Margaret or Christian Stiven. The Stivens were a prominent family in the town, one of them marrying the Episcopal Minister George Selbie, and they feature frequently in the Dundee Episcopal archives. Margaret Mowat Junior married James Lawrence. Their daughter Margaret Lawrence married twice, first to Alexander Murray, tenant of land at Clochnahill, Dunnottar, and second to Alexander Keith, tenant in Upper Criggie, Dunnottar.
1832 map showing Rothnick where William Mouat or Mowat was the tenant farmer (6.2)
Map showing Clochmahill and Upper Criggie the two Burnes farms (6.3)
CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 85
SEE CHART 3
CHART 6: GIBBON / MOWAT (SIMPLIFIED CHART)
Margaret Gibbon 1670 - ? -M-
William Mowat [Farmer]
Margaret Mowat
James Mowat 1696 - ?
Alexander Mowat 1699 - ?
Robert Mowat 1701 - ?
[Merchant] -M-
- M1 -
James Lawrence [Farmer]
Margaret / Christian Stiven ? - 1749
- M2 -
Alexander Keith [Farmer]
James Lawrence
William Mowat
William Lawrence
Elizabeth Lawrence
Margaret Lawrence -M-
[Captain, Scots Greys]
Alexander Murray [Farmer]
James Burnes 1717 - 1761
Robert Burnes
[Merchant]
[Gardener & Farmer]
Agnes Craig c1730 - 1786
- M c1745 -
Margaret Grub 1720 - c1795
Elizabeth Burnes c1746 - ?
David Burnes 1749 - ?
James Burnes 1750 - 1837
- M 1768 -
- M 1777 -
- M 1777 -
- M 1792 -
George Hudson
Jean McBean
Anne Greig 1749 - 1796
Adam Armour 1771 - 1823
[Merchant]
William Burnes 1721 - 1784
-M-
3 other children
Frances Burnes 1771 - 1823
- M 1757 -
Agnes Brown 1732 - 1820
3 other children
[Poet & Farmer] - M 1788 -
Jean Armour 1765 - 1834
[Builder]
James Burnes 1780 - 1852
Robert Burns 1759 - 1796
7 other children
[Provost of Montrose] - M 1800 -
Elizabeth Glegg
James Burnes 1801 - 1862
Adam Burnes 1802 - 1872
Alexander Burnes 1805 - 1841
David Burnes 1806 - 1849
[Surgeon, Indian Army]
[Solicitor]
[East India Co.]
[Surgeon, Royal Navy]
- M1 1829 -
Sophia Holmes - M2 1862 -
Esther Pryce
- M1 1827 -
Horatia Gordon ? - 1834 - M2 1838 -
Isabella Scott 1818 - 1909
86 MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT : CH 6
- M 1833 -
Harriet Anderson
Anne Burnes 1808 - 1845 - M 1833 -
William Ward c1803 - 1845 [Captain, Indian Army]
Alexander Keith
Catherine Keith
Jean Keith
Isabella Keith -M-
Robert Burnes
Margaret Burnes c1723 - ?
Elspet Burnes 1725 - ?
Isobel Burnes 1730 - 1803
-M-
- M 1752 -
- M 1770 -
Andrew Walker
John Caird
[Farmer]
[Farmer]
William Brand c1725 - ?
4 other children
[Dyer]
Gilbert Burnes 1760 - 1827
5 other children
James Walker c1750 - ?
[Farmer]
[Farmer]
-M-
-M-
Jean Breckenridge
Isabella Walker
2 other children
Anna Caird 1762 - ?
Robert Caird 1764 - 1818
3 other children
-M-
-M-
- M 1804 -
Henry Watson c1760 - ?
Margaret Melvin 1774 - 1842
Rachel Guthrie 1772 - 1814
Elizabeth Burnes 1809 - 1889
Jane Glegg Burnes 1810 - 1894
Charles Burnes 1810 - 1841
Cecilia Burnes 1815 - 1840
- M 1831 -
- M 1833 -
[Lieutenant, Indian Army]
- M 1839 -
Richard Whish c1785 - 1854
James Holland c1805 - 1889
John Major c1815 - 1840
[General, Indian Army]
[Colonel, Indian Army]
[Indian Army]
James Brand 1773 - 1849
Peter Brand 1776 - ?
7 other children
CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 87
Again we have information on only one daughter, Isabella Keith, born about 1695, who married Robert Burnes, originally tenant of the farm of Upper Kinmonth in Glenbervie. A carefully researched article by Dr MacNaughton of Stonehaven, using unpublished private papers, gives a very detailed account of Robert Burnes’ origins and life2. Around 1724, following Alexander Murray, Robert became tenant of Clochnahill, a neighbouring - and better - farm to Upper Criggie. The tenancy of Clochnahill had changed because that part of the Ury estate had earlier been sold by Barclay of Ury to the Earl Marischal, also a Keith. The senior peerage in Scotland was held by this Keith family and a key responsibility was the custody of the Scottish royal regalia, the crown, sceptre, and sword of state. During Oliver Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland in the 17th Century, these were hidden, first in Dunnottar Castle and then in Kinneff Church. The Earl Marischal unwisely declared for the Jacobites in 1715 and lost his title as well as his estates, which were forfeited to the Government and run (disastrously on the Government’s behalf) by the York Buildings Company. Robert and Isabella thus became tenants of the York Buildings Society. Although there is no direct evidence, there seems to be a consensus that two of the Burnes family turned out in the 1715 rebellion, but somehow managed to hide the fact. Being tenants, they probably had little option other than to obey the laird. In 1745 Robert took a seven-year lease of the smaller farm of Falside in the parish of Kinneff, but in 1747 financial difficulties forced him to give up farming. He seems to have retired to a cottage at Denside, near Stonehaven, with three unmarried daughters. Robert and Isabella Burnes had four sons and six daughters. The eldest son, James, was born in 1717. He settled in Montrose in 1732 and became a successful merchant, burgess, town councillor and kirk elder. He married Margaret Grub, with whom he had three sons and three daughters. According to MacNaughton2 one son and two daughters died young. Elizabeth, the only surviving daughter married George Hudson of Bervie who was born in Gibraltar. His father and grandfather had come north in 1745 with the Duke of Cumberland and stayed on in Montrose afterwards. Acccording to his testament dative, he became a merchant and manufacturer and eventually provost in Bervie. Elizabeth and George had three sons and eight daughters, of whom two sons, George and William, and four daughters, Elizabeth, Margaret (first), Margaret (second), and Sarah Anne, died unmarried or without issue. John, the eldest son, married Jean Forester; Christian married Alexander Guthrie; Anne married J. Pirie, without issue; Elizabeth married Dr George Douglas, surgeon in Elie, Fife; and Sarah married Dr David Davidson, physician, Edinburgh. A view of Montrose by Slezer in 1678.
88 MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT : CH 6
James Burnes and Margaret Grub's eldest son, David Burnes, married Jean McBean and they had three children. The next son, James, married Anne Greig from Montrose. James spent some years as schoolmaster at Montrose; he then studied law, and became a solicitor. He maintained a friendly correspondence with the poet Robert Burns, received a visit from him in 1787 and, on the poet’s premature death, offered to aid in the upbringing of his children. James Burnes was father of four sons and four daughters. Only the second son James seems to have left descendants, by his wife Elizabeth Glegg. Articled to his father in Montrose, he studied law, became a solicitor and served as chief magistrate, provost and town clerk. As MacNaughton2 says: He evinced a deep interest in municipal affairs, and, he has been described as the father of Scottish burghal reform. A zealous agriculturist, he was appointed a J.P. for Forfarshire, in recognition of his public services. Elizabeth Glegg’s father was also a provost of Montrose and came from a distinguished line of blacksmiths, famous for making Jew’s Harps, or Jew’s Trumps as they were also known, in Montrose. Her wider family were strong Episcopalians and included a number of well-known clergy. One of Elizabeth’s nephews became a Captain and Recruiting Officer in Scotland for the East India Company Army.
(ABOVE) James Burnes the Provost of Montrose (6.4) (R) Boy Playing a Jews Harp by Sir Peter Lely, painted about 1648 (6.5)
James and Elizabeth raised a fascinating family. Their eldest son, James Burnes, had a varied and distinguished career in India and was very active in the Masonic movement. He is described in Box 6.1. His first marriage, in Bombay, was to Sophia, second daughter of Major-General Sir George Holmes of the Bombay Army. His second wife was Esther Price, daughter of a landowner in Wales. Sophia had seven sons and two daughters (not shown on the chart). George, the eldest son, was Adjutant to the 10th Oude Irregular Infantry when it mutinied in 1857. He fought at the siege of Delhi with the 1st Bombay Fusiliers and was murdered on 19 November 1857 while a prisoner at Lucknow. Another son, Fitz-James, joined the Indian Army with the 33rd Madras Native Infantry. He was promoted to Brevet Captain in 1866. The third son, Holland, joined the Indian Navy and died in Calcutta in 1873, aged 40, when in command of the Feroze, the yacht of the Governor-General. The next son, Hamilton, became a Captain in the Indian Army after joining his brother in the 33rd Madras Native Infantry. His brother Dalhousie Holmes Burnes became a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1857 but resigned his commission in 1859. He went to Australia where he died unmarried in Melbourne in 1873. The sixth son Sidney, born in Bombay, was a Lieutenant in the 26th Bombay Native Infantry at Poona in 1861, where he was initiated into the Orion in the West Masonic Lodge. He retired as a Captain and died in 1871 at the Smallpox (or Highgate) Hospital, at Holloway in London. Alexander, the seventh son, entered the Bombay Army and retired in 1867. He died in London. CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 89
Adam Burnes, the second son of James and Elizabeth, born in 1802, was a solicitor in Montrose. He married twice, firstly in 1827, to Horatia Gordon. Their younger son Alexander Horatio Burnes emigrated to New Zealand, where he died in 1906 at Hawera. Adam’s second wife was Isabella Scott, whom he married in 1838. A daughter Ann married a solicitor in Londonderry, Ireland. Adam Burnes, Procurator Fiscal and solicitor in Montrose. He stayed behind when his more adventurous brothers went off to India (6.6)
The third surviving son, Alexander Burnes, born in 1805, went to India with his brother James and excelled through his skills as a linguist. His experience is described in Box 6.2. David Burnes, the fourth surviving son, studied medicine. In 1826 he entered the Royal Navy as a surgeon and for several years he served on board the Asia on the Mediterranean station where he may well have served at the same time as Arthur Farquhar (see Box 7.4). However, in 1835 poor health forced him to quit the service. He subsequently became a practitioner in London, but an enfeebled constitution prevented him from practising his profession. He retired to Montrose, where he died in 1849. He married Harriet, second daughter of Alexander Anderson, also a surgeon in the Royal Navy, by whom he had a son and daughter. His son was a banker in Calcutta. David’s sister Anne married William Ward in 1833 at Bhooj (or Bhuj, Gujurat) in India. A Captain in the Indian Army he died at Tanna, near Bombay. They had no children.
Trevenen James Holland (6.7)
The next sister Elizabeth, born at Montrose, married at Bombay in 1831 Lieutenant-General Richard Whish, brother of General Sir William Samson Whish of the Bengal Artillery and son of a Norfolk rector. They had eleven children. Frederick was a Captain in the Royal Artillery, Matilda married a vicar in London, Elizabeth married a Major in the Royal Engineers, Flora married a Major in the Indian Army, Albert was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Coast Guard at Montrose, Arthur became a bank manager, and Ernest sailed in 1866 to Buenos Aires, where he managed the ranch Estancia Las Rosas on the Rio Negro. He married in 1894 in Somerset and returned to Argentina, where he had at least two daughters. His brother Cecil was a Commander in the Royal Navy. Jane Glegg Burnes, the next sister married Lieutenant Colonel James Holland, Quartermaster-General of the Bombay Army. Their eldest son, Trevenen James Holland, had an interestingly varied career which included invading both Ethiopia and Persia. He joined the Bombay Army in 1852 and served in China and the Crimea. He was Assistant Quartermaster General to Havelock in the Persian Campaign, and held the same position while suppressing the Indian Mutiny in General Rose’s Central India campaign. He was the Quartermaster General for Lord Napier during the extraordinary 1868 campaign launched against Ethiopia. He co-authored the official account of this known as Record of the Expedition to Abyssinia published in 1870. He was four times mentioned in despatches and was made a Companion, Order of the Bath (CB). On retiring from the Army in 1871 he managed a hotel in London, sponsored tramways in Kingston on Hull, was a Director of a travel and life insurance company, sold tunnelling and mining machinery, and managed a large paper mill at Snodland in Kent, which made writing paper from straw. Edward Burnes Holland, the second son of James and Jane, was a Major in the Royal Engineers in the Indian Army. The third son, Charles became a stockbroker in London and his sister Cecilia married a stockbroker. Jane’s sister Cecilia Burnes married John Philip Major, a Captain in the 11th Bombay Native Infantry in the Bombay Army. John died during a voyage from Guzerat to Bombay, and Cecilia in her 25th year, just after reaching their destination leaving an infant boy, Francis who became a Major in the Bombay Staff Corps. Going back three generations to the remaining children of Robert Burnes and Isabella Keith, the second son Robert Burnes married Agnes Craig. Their daughter Frances married Adam Armour, a builder in Mauchline, Ayrshire. He was a brother of Jean Armour, who married Robert Burns, the poet, and who apparently regarded Agnes as the smartest of his kinsfolk.
90 MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT : CH 6
The next son was William Burnes born in Glenbervie, shortly before his father moved to Clochnahill in Dunnottar Parish. Financial difficulties, largely caused by the dreadful weather, forced his father to give up farming in 1747, William and his elder brother Robert left Kincardineshire in 1748 to seek work elsewhere. William went initially to Edinburgh, where he worked for two years landscaping the gardens now known as the Meadows. In 1750 he moved to Ayrshire, where he worked in various other gardens. Having ambitions to become a market gardener, he leased seven acres of land at Alloway. Here he laid out a market garden and built his own cottage, which was later the birthplace of his son Robert Burns. In 1757 he married Agnes Brown, and they had four sons and three daughters. In 1765 he decided to become a tenant farmer and took a twelve-year lease of Mount Oliphant, a ninetyacre farm about two miles from Alloway. The family moved there in May 1766. When the lease at Mount Oliphant expired in 1777, William obtained a seven-year lease of the farm of Lochlea in the parish of Tarbolton. By 1782 disputes arose with his landlord over payment of rent and other debts. It was not a simple matter of William being unable to pay his rent but one over how much rent was due and whether the landlord had made the improvements agreed to. Eventually on 27 January 1784 the courts decided in William’s favour, but he died very shortly afterwards on 13 February 1784. William’s eldest son, Robert Burns (he changed the spelling of his surname) the poet, is well known and there is a huge body of literature about him, his family and many hundreds of direct descendants. A brief account of his life is given in Box 6.3. The poet’s brother Gilbert, born in 1760, grew up at Mount Oliphant and then Lochlea farms. The life was severe and exhausting for everyone and Gilbert later described his diet and life as ‘one of austerity with butcher’s meat non-existent’. Education was spasmodic, and had to be paid for, but what there was was thorough. For a time, Gilbert farmed together with his brother Robert at Mossgiel. However, they were forced to give up the lease in 1798 as they could not make a profit. From then on Gilbert’s life improved, with a two-year spell at a farm in Nithsdale before becoming the farm manager at Morham Mains in East Lothian. From there he became the factor of the Lennoxlove estates near Haddington. He lived near Bolton village where he became very active in the church. He and his family are buried there. Gilbert married Jean Breckenridge in 1791. One of his sons became a minister and was a founding father of Dunedin in New Zealand, where a suburb is called Mossgiel.
(L) Gilbert Burns' family gravestone at Bolton Churchyard, East Lothian. (BELOW) Mount Oliphant farm after Robert Burns was there as the tenant. The buildings have been improved and the original thatch roofs replaces by slates. Print published in Groome's Gazetteer of Scotland published in 1885.
CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 91
Returning again to the children of Robert Burnes and Isabella Keith, the eldest daughter Margaret married Archibald (or Andrew) Walker, a farmer. Of their children, James was a farmer at Gallowton, near Stonehaven. He had a son who was an ironmonger in Aberdeen, and a daughter who married a saddler in Stonehaven. Elspet, second daughter of Isabella and Robert Burnes, married John Caird, a farmer at Denside of Dunnottar, near Stonehaven. They had five children and numerous descendants. Elspet’s sister Isobel married William Brand, a dyer at a flax mill at Auchenblae in Fordoun parish, Kincardineshire. They also had children.
Mossgiel farm as imagined in Robert Burn's time. Burms usually ploughed with a four-horse team like this one (6.8)
92 MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT : CH 6
BOX 6.1
JAMES BURNES James Burnes was born in 1801 in Montrose, Angus, where his father, also James, was Provost6. After being trained for the medical profession at Edinburgh University and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals, London, he joined the East India Company Bombay Medical Service. He arrived at Bombay in 1821 in company with his brother Alexander (Box 6.2). After holding various minor positions, including one with the 5th Madras Native Infantry, whose three previous medical officers had died of cholera, he was posted in 1823 to the 18th Native Infantry, stationed at Bombay. He became distinguished as a linguist, one of the essentials for achieving promotion in India, and was then successful in open competition for the office of surgeon to the residency of Cutch. As a volunteer he accompanied the field force which, in 1825, expelled the Sindians, who had devastated Cutch, and had forced the British brigade to retire upon Bhuj. The Amírs of Sind then invited him to visit them as ‘the most skilful of physicians and their best friend, and the cementer of the bonds of amity between the two governments’.
Sir James Burnes (6.9)
On his return he was complimented by the British administration on the zeal and ability he had displayed. His narrative of his visit to Sind, submitted as an official report to the Resident at Cutch, was published in India in 1829, and later in expanded form in Britain, contributing to his literary reputation. This part of his career was summarised by one writer: Distinguished as a linguist, he was permitted to explore the countries on the Bombay north-west frontier and the vast dreary tract between Goozerat and the Indus. Burnes returned to Britain on sick leave in 1834, when the University of Glasgow conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and the Royal Society elected him a Fellow in the same year. He was knighted by William IV. In 1835 he was present when James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (see Box 20.1) was initiated at Edinburgh into the masonic Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No 2. In 1837 James Burnes returned to Bombay, surgeon to the garrison. He was elected secretary to the Medical Board in 1841, later becoming a full member. In 1846 was promoted to Superintending Surgeon and the following year he was transferred to the Poonah division with the rank of Physician-General. He took an active interest in the diffusion of medical training among the natives. He was a more than enthusiastic member of the Masonic order, both in India and Britain and held very high positions within it. He set up a Masonic chapter for native Indians, and wrote a history of the Knights Templars. He was also helpful in pushing forward his friends and relatives, a common practice then, but for which he was criticised. After twenty-eight years’ service with the East India Company James retired in 1849 and returned to Britain, where he was a Justice of the Peace for the counties of Middlesex and Forfar. He died in 1862. To this day the Burnes Dux medal, originally struck in 1849 by the Indian masonic lodges in honour of James Burnes, is still presented at Montrose Academy.
CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 93
BOX 6.2
ALEXANDER BURNES Alexander Burnes, son of Provost James Burnes and Elizabeth Glegg and brother of James Burnes (see Box 6.1) was born at Montrose in 18055,6,15. He did well at Montrose Academy and, aged 16, he was appointed to an Indian cadetship with the Bombay native infantry7. He achieved this through the influence of Joseph Hume, a Montrose-born MP and Indian Army surgeon who had also married the daughter of an East India Company director. He arrived in India accompanied by his brother James, and like him relished the opportunities offered to keen linguists and travellers in India. Immediately after his arrival in India he devoted himself to the study of the native languages, possibly on the advice of his sponsor whose own successful career had depended on this. While still an ensign he was selected for the post of regimental interpreter at Surat. Shortly afterwards he became an adjutant and his subsequent advancement was rapid. He was employed by the judges of the Suddur Adawlut to translate the Persian documents of that court. Early in 1825 he was sent to Bhooj with his regiment, the 21st Native Infantry. During the disturbances at Cutch, in April of that year, he was appointed quartermaster of brigade. A report on the statistics of Wagur, which he drew up and presented to Government in 1827, was well thought of, as was a memoir on the eastern branch of the delta of the Indus, published in 1828. The same year he was appointed assistant quartermaster-general to the army. In 1829 he was transferred to the political department as assistant to the political resident in Cutch, where he helped conduct a survey of the northwest frontier, an account of which he afterwards despatched to the Royal Geographical Society. In 1830 he was sent on a mission to Lahore, in charge of a gift of English horses sent by the King of England to the ruler of Lahore. At the same time, instructed to explore the countries on the lower Indus, he completed a survey of the whole delta. The journey was not accomplished without difficulty, for the rulers of Sind, quite correctly, distrusted its object as spying. In 1832 he was sent on another spying mission to explore the countries bordering upon the Oxus and the Caspian, an account of which was published in 18348. In 1833 Alexander returned to Britain, where he was feted and honoured and made a member of the Royal Society. In 1835, now a Captain, he was despatched on a mission to Hyderabad, and in 1836 he was sent to Afghanistan to assess the possible threat of invasion by Russia. He overreacted to the threat and was consequently expelled from the country by the ruler Dost Mohammad9,10. A series of British misjudgements now took place, spurred by the perennial British fantasy of a Russian invasion through Afghanistan. The administration in Calcutta rejected Dost Mohommad’s conditions for peace and invaded the country with a large army. They organised a coup replacing Dost Mahommad with the lightweight Shah Shoojah. Burnes, now knighted and a Lieutenant-Colonel, was appointed second political officer, junior to Sir William Macnaughton. From the latter part of 1839 he remained at Kabul, with but little to do, and with no power or responsibility, offering sensible advice which was seldom acted on, and thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of affairs. A combination of a desperately weak army leader, racial arrogance, egotistical, ignorant and narrow-minded officers, including the first political officer, led to a rapidly deteriorating situation. When rebellion against the British did break out, among the earliest to be killed were Alexander and his young brother Charles, a Lieutenant in the Army. This was rapidly followed by the slaughter of most of the army and its followers, a total of some 12,000 people in the retreat to India. While the vast majority of those killed were Indian, among the British casualties was Dr William Duff, born in 1793 (see Chapter 2). Sir Alexander Burnes died unmarried at the age of thirty-six. In his will among many bequests, he left the sum of £200 to an anonymous lady in London described as an ‘unfortunate, misled girl’. He had a record of entanglements with women, which did not help his reputation with the inhabitants of Kabul, and may have contributed to his death. A gravestone to his parents, since disappeared, was erected in Dalry Graveyard, in Edinburgh, which said: They were the parents of a numerous family of whom Sir Alexander and Charles fell at Cabool November 2nd 1841.
94 MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT : CH 6
(TOP L-R) Sir Alexander Burnes (6.10) ; The British Advance on Kabul. Watercolour painted in 1839 by James Atkinson the Superintending Surgeon of the Army of the Indus before he returned to India leaving William Duff in charge (6.11) (see Chapter 2) (L) Kabul by James Atkinson. 1840 (6.12) (BELOW L) The Tezeen Pass by James Atkinson. This was where William Duff was killed a year later in 1841 (6.13) (see Chapter 2)
CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 95
BOX 6.3
ROBERT BURNS The eldest son of an unsuccessful small tenant farmer, Robert Burns was born into poverty near Alloway, Ayrshire in 175911,12. He died in 1796, a national treasure, an icon who was given a grand military-style funeral attended by people of all classes, all keen to be associated in some way with him13. Burns’ childhood at Alloway and at Mount Oliphant, to which he moved aged seven, was harsh and somewhat isolated. Though most of his time was spent working on the farm, he did have periods of education at school or from his father and was keen to learn. Although he was a full-time labourer on the farm by the age of 15, his father encouraged him to learn and so he sought out reading material and made the most of what he had. He discovered and was influenced by earlier Scottish and English poets. He grew up in what was still largely an oral tradition, with story-telling vital for sparking the imagination. He wrote his first poem aged 16 and from then on gained confidence in his abilities in poetry and song. Burns had two short spells away from the farm: one to study surveying and a second running a flax dressing business. These showed him a wider, more exciting world, leading him into a wilder social circle where his reputation grew as a carouser and womaniser. This was in reaction to the stern, repressive Presbyterian upbringing of his father, with whom he quarrelled aged 20, although he remained on the farm until his father’s death in 1784. The excessive work load imposed during this period is thought to have induced the endocarditis which led to his death. Burns moved with his brother Giles and the rest of his family to the marginally better farm of Mossgiel, where the second part of his life effectively began. In 1786 he published his first volume of poems to great acclaim and his literary career never looked back. He started to travel within Scotland and was increasingly feted as the ‘ploughman poet’. He was befriended by all sorts of influential men and women with many of whom he corresponded. Scotland was much more egalitarian then and Burns could move easily between all classes of people. He was a keen Freemason, which also increased his network of supporters and admirers. When hard times almost forced him to emigrate, it was the masonic brotherhood that rallied to save him, printing, illustrating and promoting his first capital edition published in Edinburgh. Of the 612 copies printed of Burns’ first book, The Kilmarnock Edition, two thirds of the subscriptions were taken up by freemasons. In 1788, after numerous amorous and legal complications, Burns married Jean Armour. He continued to struggle as a farmer, at the farm of Ellisland near Dumfries until, through the influence of one of his new friends, he became an excise officer.
(L-R) Burns Centenary Dumfries (6.14); Portrait of Burns (6.15)
96 MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT : CH 6
Burns wrote in both Scots and English, on a wide and varied range of subjects He became somewhat of an actor, adopting different roles at different times: political radical; challenger of the Church and of sexual morality; general mocker of whatever came to hand or whoever gave him offence. He cultivated his image as a rake and heavy drinker, neither of which he really was by the standards of South West Scotland - although he did produce thirteen children by five different women. After his death Burns’ family received support from every quarter and Jean Armour was financially far better off than when her husband was alive. His three sons were placed in government sinecures, one in London and two in the East India Company14. Burns’ papers and letters were collected and given to the Rev James Currie, who bowdlerized or destroyed many to suit his cautionary Presbyterian message of a man struck down in his prime by debauchery and drink. Since then a more balanced view has emerged. Famous throughout the world, Robert Burns still means different things to different people.
(TOP) Mossgiel about 1850 (6.16); (BOTTOM L-R) A romantic print of Ellisland Farm and the River Nith about 1800 (6.17); Plaque at the site of Gilbert Burns' cottage at Grant Braes near Lennoxlove Estate, East Lothian.
CH 6 : MARGARET GIBBON & WILLIAM MOWAT 97
White-breasted Waterhen from the William Farquhar collection of natural history drawings (7.1)
CHAPTER 7
AGNES GIBBON AND ALEXANDER YOUNG In 1717, Agnes Gibbon married Alexander Young, who farmed at Aqulurie and later at Hyndwells, both just west of Stonehaven. They had several children. One of their sons, William was for many years the Sheriff Clerk of Kincardineshire, being first appointed in 1752. William married twice. By his first wife, whose name we do not know, he had three daughters.
Auchweary (or Aqulurie or Acquilurie) where Alexander Young farmed. The map is that of William Garden from about 1774 and shows that enclosure of agricultural land was progressing when compared to Roy's map of 1750, below (7.2) Map showing Hyndwells to the west of Stonehaven. This is General Roy's map of about 1750 when making good maps was part of the strategy to ensure that there would be no further Jacobite rebellions. It shows the pre-improvement agricultural landscape with few enclosures and cultivation taking place by 'rig and furrow' the raised ridges allowing drainage (see Chapter 3) (7.3)
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 99
SEE CHART 3
CHART 7: GIBBON / YOUNG (SIMPLIFIED CHART)
Agnes Gibbon - M 1717 -
Alexander Young [Landowner]
William Young 1717 - 1790
Mary Young
Alexander Young
[Sheriff Clerk] - M1 - ? - M2 -
Elizabeth Forbes 1724 - 1804
Christian Young 1740 - ?
Margaret Young 1743 - ?
Mary Young 1749 - ?
Jane Young Mitchell 1842 - 1881 - M 1873 -
Rodney Drake-Palmer 1818 - 1894 [Episcopal Minister]
Jane MS Drake-Palmer 1873 - 1954
Charles PR Drake-Palmer 1877 - 1943 [Farmer, Canada]
- M 1905 -
Richard Heard c1870 - 1950 [Surgeon, India]
Ellen Philippa Mary Farquhar 1852 - 1886 - M 1883 -
Robert Townley Duncan Caldwell 1843 - 1914 [Master, Corpus Christie College, Cambridge]
-M-
Emily Constance Wybourne c1844 - 1960
Jane Gertrude Farquhar 1854 - 1935
Arthur Murray Farquhar 1855 - 1937 [Admiral, Royal Navy] - M 1893 -
Helen Eva Forbes McNeill 1867 - 1960
100 AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG : CH 7
Eleanor E Drake-Palmer 1878 - 1965
Rose CM Drake-Palmer 1879 - 1964 [Nurse]
- M 1906 -
Frank Harrison Stanton c1876 - 1917 [Farmer]
Adeline St John Farquhar 1858 - 1937 - M 1877 -
Edmund Tudor St John 1848 - 1884 [Episcopal Minister]
Richard Bowles Farquhar 1859 - 1948
William Rickman Farquhar 1860 - 1952
[Admiral, Royal Navy]
[Commodity Trader]
- M 1882 -
Mary Reade 1800 - 1948
- M 1897 -
Marion Peck c1873 - 1950
James Young
Margaret Young
Jane Young 1760 - ? -M-
William Young 1762 - 1815
James Murray
- M 1809 -
Keith Young 1764 - 1827
Helen Young 1767 - ?
James Young 1769 - 1852
[Sheriff Clerk]
SEE CHART 18
[Merchant & Magistrate]
Jane Murray c1788 - 1816
Janet Young
James Murray c1793 - 1866
SEE CHART 19
Mary Murray c1802 - 1880
William Murray
[Advocate]
Arthur Farquhar c1772 - 1843 [Admiral, Royal Navy]
Hobart Farquhar 1811 - 1816
Jane Farquhar 1813 - 1842
Arthur Farquhar 1815 - 1908 [Admiral, Royal Navy]
- M 1841 -
- M 1851 -
John Mitchell 1818 - 1896
Ellen Rickman 1826 - 1898
[Landowner]
Moubray Gore Farquhar 1862 - 1948 [Colonel, British Army]
Albert Farquhar 1864 - 1935
Alice Farquhar 1864 - 1947
[Land Agent]
- M 1890 -
- M1 1887 -
Alice Jane Nicol 1858 - 1900 - M2 1908 -
Florence Muriel Lamb 1878 - 1956
James Augustine Harvey Thursby Pelham 1869 - 1947 [Landowner]
Stuart St John Farquhar 1865 - 1941 [Admiral, Royal Navy] - M 1913 -
Marguerite Ada Gilbey Riviere 1883 - 1950
Charles Gordon Darroch Farquhar 1867 - 1946
James Brooke Farquhar 1868 - 1961 [Assayer]
Hobart Brooks Farquhar 1874 -1916
[Inspector General, Punjab Police]
- M 1906 -
[Army Captain]
Theadora Humphreys 1878 - 1937
- M 1904 -
- M 1903 -
Leila Dorothy Stanier 1876 - 1961
Ida Violet Wolfe Barry 1880 - 1959
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 101
His second wife was Elizabeth Forbes, the daughter of the Minister at Stonehaven. Her first husband was George Logie, the previous Sheriff Clerk. Elizabeth came from a prominent landed and titled family, which may help to explain the confidence and success of her descendants. William and Elizabeth Young had three sons and two daughters. The eldest son William studied at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and eventually succeeded his father as Sheriff Clerk of Kincardineshire. He died unmarried at Mill of Forest, his home at Stonehaven. Along with the rest of the family he features on a gravestone in Fetteresso Kirkyard. His two brothers are dealt with separately: Keith, in Chapter 18 and James in Chapter 19.
Mill of Forest in 1865. This was a cluster of houses, including a mill, near Fetteresso church (7.4); Gravestone in Fetteresso Churchyard of William Young, born in 1717 and his wife Elizabeth Forbes. It also mentions William Young, born in 1762, Elizabeth Farquharson, Elizabeth Forbes' mother, and Joseph Gwilt Young, born in 1792.
The old church at Fetteresso, now a ruin, which stands in Fetteresso graveyard near the present church.
William and Elizabeth’s elder daughter Jane married James Murray, a factor for many years in Campvere in the Netherlands (see Box 7.1), with which the Murray family had had a long connection. Later he was a magistrate in Aberdeen. They had four known children. James Murray was an advocate in Aberdeen, where he became the President of the Society of Advocates1. He was also a Director of the Scottish Australia Investment Company, as well as of two Scottish banks. He was unmarried, as was his sister with whom he shared a house.
102 AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG : CH 7
The eldest child, Jane Murray, married Arthur Farquhar at Aberdeen. Born in 1772, Athur was the son of an Aberdeen merchant and stationer who married the daughter of the Provost of Aberdeen10. He entered the navy in 1787 on board the Lowestoft, and, after serving in several other ships, mostly near Britain, and having passed his examination joined an East India Company’s ship. He had scarcely arrived in India when news of the war with France led him to switch to the Hobart sloop. On his return to England as first lieutenant of the Heroine, he was employed in various ships on the Home, Mediterranean, Baltic, and North Sea stations, until promoted to commander in 1802. In 1804 he was appointed to the Acheron bomb ketch. In 1805 he was captured by two large French frigates, after a defence that was rightly pronounced by the court to be ‘highly meritorious and deserving imitation’. Farquhar was honourably acquitted, and a few days later made Captain. He commanded the Ariadne in the Baltic and North Sea, capturing several privateers, French and Danish, and then commanded the Désirée frigate in the North Sea, capturing many privateers, gunboats and armed vessels. He was a senior naval officer in the operations in the Weser, the Ems, and the Elbe in 1813, culminating in the capture of Glückstadt in 1814. Farquhar was made a knight of the Sword of Sweden, and also of the Hanoverian Guelphic order, and in 1817 he received the freedom of Aberdeen. He then commanded the newly-built frigate Liverpool of 40 guns at the Cape of Good Hope, and the Blanche in the West Indies. For his services there during a revolt of the negroes he received a vote of thanks from the House of Assembly of Jamaica, a sword valued at £150, and a piece of plate from the merchants. There are several watercolours held by the Greenwich Museum painted at that time by James Boxer, a member of Arthur’s command, including two showing the suppression of the slaves by the sailors of HMS Blanche. On his return home Arthur Farquhar was knighted. He was made KCH in 1832, and he became rear-admiral in 1837. He died at Carlogie, Aberdeenshire in 1843. His brother William spent many years in Malacca and Singapore, making many zoological discoveries and compiling a collection of natural history drawings (see Box 7.2).
Sir Arthur Farquhar, born 1772 (7.26); A watercolour by James Boxer a member of Arthur Farquhar's crew on HMS Blanche. Farquhar was ordered to suppress a slave revolt in Jamaica fomented by a Baptist preacher. The slaves thought that emancipation had taken place but were seven years too early and over 500 slaves were killed in total. The inscription on the engraving reads: ‘Destruction of the Boyne Estates by the rebel slaves in 1831. Boats of H.M.S. Blanche engaging. 72 killed, 230 prisoners.’ (7.27)
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 103
Jane and Arthur Farquhar had three children, Hobart, Jane and Arthur. Hobart Farquhar died aged 4 and was mentioned on his grandparents’ gravestone at Fetteresso, which has now disappeared14: Sacred to the memory of Mary, daughter of Robert Farquhar, Esq. of Newhall, who died May 1786, aged 23 years; and of Hobert, son of Capt. Arthur Farquhar, RN., C.B., and who died 14th Sept. 1816, in the 5th year of his age; and of Dr Peter Grant, sometime physician in Aberdeen, who died at Mansefield, 23d Feb. 1837, aged 76 years; and of Amelia Farquhar, his spouse, who died at Mansefield, 1st Dec. 1838, aged 69 years. Jane Farquhar married John Michell2. He came from a Devon family who had moved to Forcett Park, an estate near Darlington in Yorkshire. Interestingly he called himself Mitchell while at his estate of Glassel on Deeside, and Michell while in England. He seemed to spend most of his life hunting and fishing, and turning out for the local militia. Their daughter Jane Young Michell was the first wife of Rodney DrakePalmer, the Vicar of Broadway, Somerset, with whom she had four children before dying aged 39. There is a memorial in the graveyard there. Jane, the eldest child of Jane and Rodney, married Richard Heard at Simla, India. She was his second wife. Richard trained at Trinity College, Dublin and joined the Indian Army Medical Staff. He served on the North-West Frontier of what is now Pakistan at Waziristan in 1894-5, and at the Relief of Chitral in 1895. He wrote a book Feeding in Infancy and Childhood, published in 1906, and in 1909 he was appointed Professor of Midwifery at the Medical College in Lahore. During World War One he appears to have served in India as an Inspector of Medical Services. He became Inspector General of Prisons in Assam and then, from 1922, in Punjab. In 1924 he became Surgeon-General for Bengal before retiring in 1927 as a Major-General. He died in Peebles in 1950. In 1939 Jane arrived in California to stay with her sister Rose but was ‘unable to return because of the war’. Jane died in 1954 in Somerset. The second child of Jane and Rodney, Charles, took his mother’s surname, Michell. He became a farmer in Winona, Manitoba, Canada, and married Emily Wybourne from Wanganui, New Zealand, one of thirteen children. They had three children. The son, Charles, died in Wales. The elder daughter, Eleanor, married and settled in British Columbia and was a matron at Shawnigan Lake School on Vancouver Island, the largest boarding school in Canada. The younger daughter, Rose, was a nurse and went to California in 1907, becoming a superintendent in a hospital. Returning to the children of Arthur Farquhar and Jane Murray, their son, also Arthur Farquhar is featured in Box 7.3. He married Ellen Rickman and they had nine sons and four daughters, all of whom reached adulthood. Some of the children were born at the Farquhars’ estate, Carlogie, near Kincardine O’Neil in Aberdeenshire. Although four of the sons became admirals in the Royal Navy, a feature of this extended family is the way they continued to have roots in Aberdeenshire: there are various Farquhar memorials at the Episcopal Church at Kincardine O’Neil.
A modern map showing Glassel Estate, to the north of Aboyne, the home of John Mitchell (7.5)
104 AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG : CH 7
Carlogie House on a bend on the River Dee near the village of Kincardine O'Neil (7.6)
The eldest daughter of Arthur and Ellen Farquhar was also Ellen. She married Robert Townley Caldwell, a mathematician and lawyer who spent most of his life at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, becoming Bursar and, from 1906, Master. He died in 1914 at his home, Inneshewen, at Dess, Aberdeenshire, as a result of a car accident. Their son Keith fought right through World War One in the Royal Artillery, becoming a Captain. In 1919 he became an Aide de Camp to the Governor of Kenya. In 1922 he joined the Game Department where he energetically pursued ivory poachers. He retired in 1929 from ill health but he continued to be a powerful voice in the international conservation scene until his death in 1958 in London3,4.
Robert Townley Caldwell, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Painted by Hugh Riviere (7.7)
The second daughter, Jane Gertrude Farquhar, acted for some years as housekeeper for her brothers at Le Mars, Iowa (see Box 7.4). Two accounts of the community at Le Mars say she was rather austere and also, erroneously, that she was an ‘aunt’ of the boys. She may well have left Iowa after 1887 when Albert’s new wife Alice arrived. In 1901 she was back living with her father at Aboyne. She died there, unmarried, in 1935. Arthur and Ellen Farquhar’s first son, Arthur, became Admiral Sir Arthur Murray Farquhar. During his career he was captain of the battleships Renown and Magnificent, commanding the fourth cruiser squadron in 1909. When war broke out in 1914 he was Admiral in command of Coastguard and Reserves resigning in 1916. He was a keen and knowledgeable ornithologist and wrote many articles as well as corresponding with the Natural History Museum in London. He had two birds named after him: the Chestnut-bellied Kingfisher, ssp Todiramphus farquhari, and the Pacific Imperial Pigeon ssp Ducula pacifica farquhari. He married Helen McNeill, the daughter of Malcolm McNeill of the 78th Highlanders, Inspector for the Poor Law Board in Scotland, and one of the distinguished McNeill family from the islands of Colonsay and Gigha in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Arthur Farquhar died in 1937 at his home at Acheron, Aboyne.
HMS Renown was a small battleship built in the early 1890s and which was scrapped in 1913. Arthur Murray Farquhar was captain from 1902 to 1904 (7.8)
HMS Magnificent was launched in 1894 and scrapped in 1921. Arthur Murray Farquhar captained her from 1904 to 1906 (7.9)
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 105
(L-R) Chestnut-bellied Kingfisher / Todiramphus farquhari; Pacific Imperial Pigeon / Ducula pacifica farquhari.
The eldest son of Arthur and Helen Farquhar, also Arthur, born in 1894, became a Captain in the Royal Navy. He married Genesta Heath, the daughter of a major figure in the London insurance world. Genesta wrote a number of books including an account of life in a military hospital during the First World War5. They were divorced in 1924 and she married twice more, the third marriage being to Lord Claud Hamilton. The other two sons of Arthur and Helen both joined the Royal Navy, one becoming a Captain, the other a Lieutenant Commander. The next daughter of Arthur Farquhar and Ellen Rickman was Adeline. She married, at KincardineO’Neil, her second cousin Edmund Tudor St John, son of the 15th Baron St John of Bletsoe. Edmund was the Vicar of Bletsoe, Bedfordshire, and later of Christ Church, Kincardine O’Neil in Aberdeenshire. He died aged 36 in Bedfordshire. Adeline died at Kincardine-O’Neil, where there is a memorial stone to her. One of Edmund’s sons, Edmund Farquhar St John, a Captain in the Royal Artillery, had a very distinguished career in both the Boer and First World Wars, and served in the Home Forces during World War Two. He retired with a CMG and DSO.
Lady Genesta Farquhar née Heath (7.10); A 1922 Sketch magazine article about Genesta as she was about to leave for a shooting trip in East Africa; Christ Church Episcopal Church at Kincardine O'Neil, Aberdeenshire, where many of the Farquhar family have memorials.
106 AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG : CH 7
Another son of Edmund and Adeline, Beauchamp Tudor St John, joined the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers or ‘Fighting Fifth’, becoming a Colonel. He was involved in the earliest fighting of World War One with the British Expeditionary Force. His memoir16 gives graphic details of the retreat to the river Marne after the battle of Le Cateau, in a desperate attempt to avoid being encircled by the rapidly advancing Germans. A typical entry, for 28 August 1914, says: I had already several times gone to sleep while marching and had found myself in the ditch. I gave up trying to drive men back to the ranks. When they fell they knew what was in store for them by now as well as I did! And I knew the agony they must be suffering from their feet, many having raw heels and toes from the hard marching we had done. Not many gave in absolutely. Some would fall out but at the next halt they would come limping in again. The pace to begin with had been killing. I don’t know who was to blame for this but Gotte Strafe him whoever he was. We came to paved roadway along which we painfully hobbled. I can’t call it anything else. I don’t suppose we were doing more than two miles an hour. I myself was suffering from an abscess on my toe which felt like hot knives at every step. Beauchamp Tudor St John as a subaltern (7.11)
The daily account of the sufferings of St John’s Battalion for the rest of that year makes harrowing reading as the trained soldiers are steadily killed and replaced by raw untrained troops. On 1 November 1914, at Ypres, St John was shot in the throat: I began to cough blood through my mouth and nose and felt as if I was choking… I thought I was done for and wondered how my family would take the news and whether I would know how they took it. I felt aggrieved and angry at the thought of leaving this jolly old world …and it seemed hard lines having to leave without seeing Roger and Madge again. However I prayed to God to hurry the matter up as I was getting very uncomfortable. The cessation of the bleeding enabled me to breathe not only through the nose and mouth but also through both wounds in my neck. I lay there for I suppose about five hours and I remember having heavy fits of shivering either from cold or funk or both. Once they searched over the field I was in with shrapnel. I watched two salvoes burst in front of me and then I thought I would surely get my quietus but the third effort went over me and all was well again. By an extraordinary series of good luck, also recounted in his memoir, he survived, although forced to breathe through a tube in his throat for the rest of his life. In 1916 he retired from the Army through ill health and became a Principal Clerk at the House of Commons, a post he held until 1940. Two other sons of Edmund and Adeline, St Andrew Oliver and Richard, were Commanders in the Royal Navy, both mentioned in dispatches. From 1916 to 1919 St Andrew was in command of the monitor M23, a drill ship for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. In World War Two he was a Reserve Naval Officer. Edmund's daughter Eleanor married Herman Wayne, who retired from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers as a Lieutenant-Colonel after serving in Malta and South Africa.
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 107
The second son of Arthur and Ellen Farquhar, Richard Bowles Farquhar, became an Admiral in the Royal Navy. During his career he commanded the battleships Howe, Magnificent and Triumph. He specialised in gunnery and became President of the Ordinance Board. He married Mary Reade, the daughter of the British Consul in Corfu. He retired in 1918 and died at Bletsoe, Aboyne. Mary also died at Aboyne.
Richard Bowles Farquhar (7.12); HMS Triumph, one of the ships he captained. It was launched in 1903 and sunk in 1915 by a German submarine (7.13)
Richard’s brother, William Rickman Farquhar, born in 1860, went out to the Farquhar farm at Le Mars, Iowa on the Scythia, arriving in New York in April 1881 (see Box 7.5) along with brother Moubray and sister Jane Farquhar, who kept house for the family. In the 1885 Census William calls himself a ‘Gentleman of Leisure’, but brothers Moubray and Albert both call themselves farmers. Some time before 1896, William moved to Joliet, Illinois, where he was described variously as agent, merchant, stock broker and copper broker. He married Marion Peck in Chicago in 1897. Born in Chicago, she was the daughter of Harold Stoughton Peck, an extremely rich businessman who had earlier been in the US Navy. In the 1880 Census Harold described himself as a ‘Capitalist’. He died aged 36 in 1884. A curious incident occurred6 when, in March 1895, Marion’s mother commissioned a portrait of Marion, for $2,000, from the famous painter William Whistler. Whistler told Mrs Peck: It would be, for me, a rare delight to paint your daughter - seldom indeed has one this wonderful chance of daintiness and lovely colour combined! The painting was to be completed by June and the artist was paid, but a year later he was proposing further sittings. In 1896 the New York Sun reported that Mrs Peck’s daughter had given Whistler over 90 sittings (other newspapers said 19), but that he refused to send the portrait to Chicago. Sittings continued in London from July 1897 until interrupted by Whistler’s illness in October. In April 1898 Marion posed in Paris. Further sittings were proposed in 1899. On 7 April 1900 Whistler wrote to Marion: I always see you the same wonderful and beautiful lady surrounded with the gold and mystery of the Venetian gallery from which you have just stepped into my studio.
What the ‘missing Whistler’ portrait of Marion Peck might have looked like based on a description by an observer of the original (7.14)
108 AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG : CH 7
In June 1900 the family still did not have the portrait and Whistler was persuaded to return the money. The painting disappeared after his death. The Chicago Tribune later implied that there was a romance,13 but Whistler was a notorious perfectionist and at times worked very slowly. In their biography of Whistler17, the Pennells, who knew Whistler well, wrote: Another lost portrait was a large full-length of Miss Peck of Chicago, now Mrs W. R. Farquhar, which we saw in many stages, and at last, as it seemed to us, finished. She was painted standing in evening dress, with her long white, green-lined cloak thrown back a little, as he had painted Lady Meux. It was full of the charm of youth, and the colour was a harmony in silver and green. That posing for Whistler was difficult we know from these ladies and many of his other sitters, as well as from our own experience. Whistler also felt that he retained ‘ownership’ in some way of all his paintings. In this case Marion’s mother thought that he was unlikely to give up a painting that his wife, who had recently died, had admired so much15. In 1910 William and Marion were living in Hempstead, New York, and later they divided their time between Carlogie, Aboyne and Chobham, Surrey. They voyaged extensively, often with one or more of their three children. Two were twins born in 1910. Kenneth Royston Farquhar became a Major in the British Army and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1944 for service in France with the 13th Regiment of Royal Horse Artillery. William Stuart Moubray Farquhar died of broncho-pneumonia aged 12 while he was a day student at a school in Southborough, New York. Their sister Jean, born in 1908, married, in 1948 at Edinburgh, Colonel Jozef Zonczyk-Bohusz, who was born at Mogila, Krakow in Poland. During World War One he fought in the Polish Legions, taking part in the Battle of Kaniow. He was fighting the Bolsheviks from 1919 and thereafter occupied a number of positions in the Polish Army. In 1939 he made his way to Britain and served against the Nazis with several Polish units. In 1956 he described himself as an artist. He died in 1998 in Canada.
(L-R) DSO as won by Moubray Farquhar during the Boer war; Emblems of the Scottish Horse or Scottish Horse Yeomanry of which Moubray Farquhar was Lieutenant-Colonel during World War One (7.15)
The next son of Arthur and Ellen Farquhar was born and registered in 1862 as Moubray Gore Farquhar but was frequently known as Mowbray. In 1881 he joined in the Farquhar farming enterprise at Le Mars. Some time after 1887 he left Iowa to join the Canadian Mounted Police, although he seems to have been back at Aboyne for much of 1890 as various newspaper reports describe him catching salmon and attending local functions. From 1893 he was in Matabeleland with the British South Africa Company irregular volunteer troops; he was awarded a medal that year and a clasp in 1896. The First and Second Matabele Wars took place in what is now southern Zimbabwe from 1893 to 1894 and 1896 to 1897 respectively. The local Ndebele and Shona peoples rebelled against the intrusions of the British South Africa Company, and the hundreds of white settlers and prospectors. They were finally defeated by British relief columns helped by the power of the Maxim machine gun in 1897 after the siege of Bulawayo.
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 109
Moubray is mentioned in the 1896 account20 by the famous scout Selous of the nasty beginning of the Second War when many isolated white settlers were killed: Arrived at the Shangani, Mr Grey found seventeen Europeans in laager there, amongst them the men from the Eagle mine, who had been pursued on their way to the store. …. The garrison of the laager was augmented by the arrival of Messrs Farquhar, Weston Jarvis, Currie, and Mr Egerton (M.P. for Knutsford) and his son. These gentlemen had been on a hunting trip to the Sebake river and were returning to Bulawayo only just in time, as had they remained out in the veld any longer they would certainly have been murdered, for although they would doubtless have given a very good account of themselves, yet a few men cannot fight an army. On the following day two small patrols were sent out one of which, consisted of Mr Mowbray Farquhar and two companions. They visited Comployer’s camp and found the unfortunate man lying murdered in front of the door of his hut. On returning to the laager they found that a mule waggon had been sent from Gwelo … and the whole party reached (there) in safety. There is a record of Moubray later accompanying, ‘for the sake of sport’, a four-man team of prospectors engaged in the expansion of the mineral exploitation of North West Rhodesia and Katanga. Moubray again saw active service, this time with the British Army, in the South African War of 1899-1901 with Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry. He was involved in the debacle of Spion Kop, when he was mentioned in Despatches, and took part in many other encounters against the Boers. He received the DSO medal with seven clasps and was created a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. He resigned his commission in 1901, on the same day as his brother Hobart. In World War One he became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Scottish Horse Yeomanry. He was a skilled inventor, who held various patents for firearms, inventing the Beardmore-Farquhar Machine Gun and several automatic rifles, although one account says that he principally dealt with financing developments. One of his automatic rifle models was finally accepted in 1917 for service with the British Army and a large number were ordered, only to be cancelled when the end of the war was in sight. Ironically one of the reasons for the success of the German stormtroopers in their offensive of 1918 was that they were armed with automatic rifles which could give a devastating rate of fire compared to the traditional rifles of the Allies.
(L-R) The Beardmore-Farquhar Machine Gun developed by Moubray Farquhar and the Beardmore Engineering Co.; The Farquhar-Hill Automatic Rifle developed in 1908. World War One ended before it could be adopted by the Army; Book recounting the struggles of the early life of Charlie Chaplin and his family, including his aunt Kate, in the British Music Hall world before Charlie went to the USA and became famous (7.16)
Moubray’s career was not without scandal, however. He was accused of abandoning a woman whose stage name was Kate (or Kitty) Fairdale, aunt of Charlie Chaplin and a popular music hall star7. She later adopted the name Mowbray. The following story appeared in The Globe newspaper on 16 December 1911: Sobbing as she stood in the dock, Kate Mowbray, afterwards giving the name of Moore, a welldressed young woman, describing herself as an actress, was charged at Westminster with disorderly conduct at Cadogan Gardens. A constable stated that at half-past one this morning defendant apparently in an excited, and distressed condition, threw a stone at the windows of a house. She said to a witness, ‘I will break the window; I must see someone in the house for I am in great trouble’. The magistrate bound her to be of good behaviour or be fined forty shillings.
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When Kate appeared in Westminster court the following year on a fresh charge, the situation became clearer. This time she was accused of writing various pleading letters to Moubray’s sister, Alice Pelham, who lived in Cadogan Gardens and whose window she had broken previously. Mr Pelham said ‘It was recently announced that my daughter was to be married and she wrote threatening to come to the church but the neighbourhood was watched and she was not allowed to come near the church’. Major Mowbray Farquhar has ruined my life cried Miss Mowbray. I will kill him to save other women from him. My object in writing the letters was to find his address and to get him to help me. Kate promised not to annoy the Pelhams again and the case was adjourned indefinitely with Kate adding "I intend to compel Major Farquhar to help me". How the matter ended we do not know, but when Kate died of cancer in 1916 her death certificate was issued under the name of Mowbray7. Moubray died, unmarried, at Bridgend Cottage, Aboyne in 1948, aged 87. There is a memorial cross to him in Kincardine O’Neil churchyard. Moubray’s younger sister Alice married James Augustine Harvey Thursby Pelham, Deputy Lieutenant of Shropshire, who lived at Cound Hall and Harnage House. They had the London town-house at Cadogan Gardens whose window was smashed by Kitty Mowbray above. They had two daughters, both of whom had descendants. Alice’s twin brother, Albert, was educated at Clifton College. On leaving in 1884 he joined his brothers at the Farquhar farm in Iowa. He remained there until 1900 apart from a brief trip home in 1887 to marry Alice Nicol, the daughter of Alexander Nicol, a prosperous Aberdeen ship owner and Lord Provost of Aberdeen. When he left Iowa Albert sold over 700 acres of land which he had accumulated. In June 1900 he took up the post of Assistant Manager and Secretary at the Ivanhoe and Lake View Consols gold mines at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. In 1899 the Lake View Consols Mine was at the centre of a major scandal caused by Whitaker Wright, a company promoter who fraudulently manipulated the share price. He was later sentenced to seven years imprisonment but took cyanide as his trial ended. The manager was probably also implicated but it is unlikely that Albert was involved, arriving as he did after the scandal broke, though he was certainly there during the later stages. When Alice died of dysentery in November, Albert left immediately for London with their two children. He remarried in 1908 to Florence Muriel Lambe from Devon. Thereafter he lived and worked as a land agent, mostly in and around Durham and Darlington, and was on the boards of several coal and mining companies. Deemed too old for active service in World War One, he spent two years as a coastal watcher in Scotland, and from 1916-18 served in the Transport Department of the Royal Navy Air Reserve, finishing as a Captain.
Cound Hall in Shropshire, home of Alice Pelham née Farquhar (7.17); Lake View Consols gold mine near Kalgoorlie, Australia in 1900 (7.18); HMS Eden, a destroyer launched in 1902, in dry dock (7.19)
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 111
Albert’s son from his first marriage, Alastair, was born in Iowa and became a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He was in command of the destroyer Eden when it collided with the French transport SS France, during the night of 18 June 1916. The Eden sank with the loss of her commander and 42 officers and men; 33 others were rescued by the damaged transport. There is a memorial to Alastair at Kincardine O’Neil. Alastair’s sister Adeline, also from the first marriage, born in 1890, married, in 1914 in London, William Hogarth Todd, the son of a woollen manufacturer from Aberdeen. They went to India, where he was employed in the Public Works Department and wrote several books, two relating to life in India as an expatriate at the beginning of the 20th Century. Adeline remarried in 1945 to Lt Col. Bryan Mac Mahon CIE, DSO, MC. She died in California in 1984. Returning to the children of Arthur and Ellen Farquhar, the next son, Stuart St John Farquhar, born in 1865, joined the Royal Navy in 1879 and was made a Lieutenant in 1886. There was a brief hiatus in his career when he was admitted to Haslar Hospital, Gosport, with gonorrhoea, but he was promoted to Captain in 1905. In 1909 he captained the cruiser Kent on the China Station and from 1912 to 1916 he was in charge of the Scottish Coast Guard District. He then captained the battleship Britannia before becoming RearAdmiral in 1917. In 1913 he married Marguerite Riviere, a London wine merchant’s daughter eighteen years younger than him. The Riviere family were prosperous, judging by the ten servants to look after the family in London. Marguerite’s mother was a Gilbey of the famous wine and spirit firm well known for their gin. Charles Gordon Darroch Farquhar, the next son of Arthur and Ellen, born in 1867, studied like his elder brother at Clifton College, leaving in 1884. He joined his various brothers at Carlogie Ranch, the Farquhar farm near Le Mars in Iowa. Some time before 1906 he joined the Punjab Police, becoming, in 1922, their Inspector General. In 1903 he married Leila Stanier, daughter of Francis Stanier, of Peplow Hall, Market Drayton, Shropshire, a very wealthy iron and coal master who at one point employed 4,500 men and 17 domestic servants. They had four children. Their eldest son Charles became a Commander in the Royal Navy and an OBE.
Francis Stanier, the young iron and coal master posing as he wished to be seen. (L-R) James Brooke Farquhar (7.20); Sir James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak. This ex-East India Company soldier brought his ship to Borneo seeking his fortune and, after helping the Rajah of Borneo suppress an insurrection in 1841, was made Rajah of Sarawak in perpetuity. Supported by the British Government for strategic reasons he and his descendants were the Rajah until 1946. Painting by Sir Francis Grant (7.32)
The next son of Arthur and Ellen, James Brooke Farquhar, born in 1868, was probably named after James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, who had died that year. Arthur had fought alongside Brooke in Borneo. James Farquhar left Clifton College in 1886 and most of the next ten years were spent with his brothers at the Farquhar farm near Le Mars, Iowa. (He appears in the 1891 census as a visitor to his parents at Drumnagesk, Aboyne and travelled to the West Indies and South America in 1894). In April 1896 he left Iowa for Chicago to study minerology and assaying. He then moved to the new mining camp of Shoal Bay, British Columbia, where he opened an assaying office. In 1897 he was reported as working in Dyea in the Klonkyke gold fields but had returned to Shoal Bay by the following year. By about 1900 James was living in Vancouver still working as an assayer and by early 1906 was working in a government assay office. James continued to work as an assayer until about 1932. He then began a new career as an insurance agent for Confederation Life Association, staying with them through the mid-1950s. In 1906 he married Theodora Humphrys, a stenographer, who died in 1937. James died in 1961, at Ganges (or Gangos), Salt Springs Island, Vancouver, where one of his two daughters lived.
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The youngest child of Arthur and Ellen was Hobart Brooks Farquhar. At the age of 21 he went to South Africa serving as a gunner in the Rhodesian Volunteers in the Matabele Rebellion of 1896. He then joined the civil service in England, but interrupted this to serve in the Boer War until November 1901. He was with Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, a colonial unit raised in South Africa, as was his brother Moubray. By 1900, he was a lieutenant with General Plumer’s Force at the relief of Mafeking, where he helped guide his unit in darkness to the top of Spion Kop, only to endure the ghastly outcome of that battle - yet another instance of the stupidity then common among senior British Army officers. His brother Moubray was also involved in this battle. Both survived and from 1904 to 1912 Hobart was a local authority District Auditor in England, eventually becoming an Inspector of Audit. He was called to the Bar in 1909 and joined the Inner Templars. In 1914 he joined up again, this time with the 15th Battalion of the London Civil Service Rifles, becoming a Captain. He was at the Battle of Loos, fighting at the Double Crassier slag heap, and was killed in action at Vimy Ridge on 22 May 1916. He was a popular and capable officer and there is a long appreciative description of him in the Regimental History, including the following: He had done what he could to save his men from the awful disaster (at Vimy Ridge) but as a soldier he had to obey orders, and, having called his platoon sergeants together and told them all he knew, he bravely bade them good-bye, and, like the rest of his Company, went to his doom without flinching. His name is on the memorial at Arras, France, and also, along with most of this family, at Kincardine O’Neil, Aberdeenshire. He married Ida Violet Wolfe-Barry, daughter of Sir John Wolfe-Barry, the civil engineer who carried out many large projects including building the Tower Bridge in London. They had four children.
Hobart Farquhar (7.21); The victorious Boers just after the battle of Spion Kop.
(L-R) Hobart Brooke Farquhar, on the left, at the Double Crassie slag heap during the battles of Loos (7.22); The London Division, of which Hobart Farquhar was a member, advancing through a gas cloud at the Battle of Loos (7.23)
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 113
BOX 7.1
THE DUTCH STAPLE PORT AT CAMPVERE Camp Vere, or Veere, is situated on the island of Walcheren near Middleburg. On a recent visit there by one of the authors it seemed very remote, a small village with a large cathedral and a row of former merchants’ houses. Yet for many years it was a place of considerable commercial importance and crucial to the welfare of Scotland and her exports to Europe. Its small harbour once gave direct access to the North Sea, allowing an easy run south from Scotland. Scottish links with Flanders began in the 13th Century when a surplus of wool in Britain meant an export market was needed and the monks of Melrose Abbey received the right to export wool into Flanders duty free. Calais became the staple port (port with the import/export monopoly) for England, and Bruges for Scotland. Eventually the Scottish staple port was moved to Middleburg and in 1541 to Veere. From then on, a stable merchant community of east coast Scots arose. Wool was the main import, to be woven into fine cloth, but all goods had to pass through Veere. Exports included whatever cargo was available including coal, wines, spirits, arms and tiles. The clay tiles were used as ballast and in the River Forth especially, many houses were roofed with Dutch tiles until they started to be manufactured locally. Eventually, in 1670, the staple port was moved to Dordt, but by then the system was so leaky that most goods entered via Rotterdam or Antwerp. The Union of 1707, by opening up English markets to Scottish manufacturers, proved the final blow to the staple trade. Of all the Scottish ports which for centuries had been linked commercially with Campvere, Aberdeen alone remained faithful to her age-long mercantile ally. In 1726 the Conservator at Campvere stated that the Staple port was frequented only by a few ships from Aberdeen, and was practically unknown to the rest of Scotland. Even Aberdeen was inclined to waver from her old allegiance, and found London a better market than Holland or Zealand. By the end of the 18th century with the invasion of the Netherlands by the French, the Scottish community at Veere ceased to exist. The Gibbons made numerous voyages to Veere in the later 18th century although, as we have seen, it had ceased to be a major port by then. They would have been trading there much earlier although records are sketchy. Newspapers of the period record a William and a James Gibbon making various voyages to Veere and to Dordt on the Diligence between 1771 and 1792. The Providence, another Gibbon ship, made several voyages to Veere between 1784 and 1791 and in 1784 came to Aberdeen from Veere with a cargo of ‘flax, grass seed, almonds and other articles’. The importation of such goods from the Netherlands being prohibited the crew were arrested, but were allowed off after pleading ignorance of the law. After this, ships became larger and voyages to the Netherland were chiefly to Rotterdam where most trade existed.
(TOP L-R) A painting by Jan Van der Heyden of Veere around 1700 showing the large church (7.24); Veere in about 1660 (7.25) (LEFT) Modern map showing the position of Veere near Middleburg in the south-west of the Netherlands.
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BOX 7.5
THE GIBBONS AND SLAVERY How much were the Gibbons involved in slavery? The simple answer is perhaps ‘not much’, although many benefited from the commercial systems that used slaves. The Gibbons of Aberdeen shipped many products such as sugar, tobacco and rum from North America and the Caribbean produced using slave labour. There was little sustained objection to slavery until the evangelical movement in Britain persuaded the government to abolish the slave trade in 1807. It took another 26 years to free the actual slaves. Other European countries followed Britain’s lead but it took a considerable time before the trade across the Atlantic was stamped out. Thus, we find Admiral Arthur Farquhar (Box 7.4) intercepting slave vessels between 1830 and 1837, but also suppressing a slave revolt in Jamaica where the slaves mistakenly thought they had been freed. The Slave Compensation Act of 1837 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. This allowed slave owners to be compensated for their loss. The compensation paid to Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was equivalent to about £17 billion by todays values. The slaves received nothing and were supposed to work for nothing for another four years. The register of owners compensated shows that the Rev Charles Gibbon’s son-in-law received at least the equivalent of about £1.5 million (see Chapter 11). and the minister’s close friend Thomas Gordon received compensation for 266 slaves. John Turing, on his return to London from India, became a partner in two firms directly involved in the financing of slavery. A feature of the time was the massive flow of money from India that was invested in the slave economy in the Caribbean. Scotland’s connections to slavery were wider and deeper than England’s not because of any direct role in the trade itself, but because of the extent of ownership of slave plantations in the Caribbean and the number of Scots active there as managers and overseers. Scotland’s three dominant external trades at the time – tobacco, sugar and cotton – ultimately depended on a system where humans were regarded as property to be bought and sold like any other property. The impact of slavery to the Scottish economy benefited not just the middle classes but also gave work to countless Scottish linen weavers, cotton spinners, seamen, herring fishers and many other trades. Few parts of Scottish society in the 18th and early 19th centuries were insulated from the direct or indirect effects of black slavery. Scots, however, were at the forefront of the movement to abolish slavery23. A different aspect of slavery is the story of 600 boys and girls who were abducted over a long period from Aberdeen City, the surrounding rural area, and right up the west coast of Scotland. It started during the food riots of 1740 when parents would hand over youngsters to the shipmasters. These could be sold for £16 per head in the colonies – even more lucrative than the slave trade. The Town Clerk and three Baillies of Aberdeen were all local merchants with a share in the ship the Planter, which usually moored off the Gibbon shipyard at Torry and which shipped the children to America. The whole of Aberdeen, especially the Gibbons, must have known about this, but because no one objected it was probably seen at the time as a useful civic enterprise. When we consider history it is useful to reflect on the thoughts of George Eliot in Middlemarch as interpreted by Asa Briggs the historian: To live over other people’s lives is nothing unless we live over their perceptions, live over the growth, the varying intensity of the same – since it is by these that they themselves lived.
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 115
BOX 7.2
(7.28)
WILLIAM FARQUHAR William Farquhar was born in 1774 at Newhall, Kincardineshire11, the brother of Arthur Farquar who married Jane Murray. At the age of 16 William was nominated as a cadet in the Madras Army by David Scott, a local East India Company Director. He became an ensign in the Corps of Engineers, participated in the siege and capture of several hill forts in the battles against Tipu Nadu, and was present when his base at Seringpatam was stormed and captured in 1792 (See also Chapter 1). As an Adjutant to the Corps of Madras Engineers he helped capture the French settlement at Pondicherry and the Dutch colony of Malacca. In 1803 he became the Commandant, and then Resident and Commandant, of Malacca, a post he held for several years during which time he helped capture Java.
(TOP) The British invasion fleet on its way to Java in 1811 painted by Joseph Jeakes (7.29) (BOTTOM L-R) Malacca from the sea in about 1813 painted by J. Clarke (7.30); Singapore and the Singapore River in 1830 painted by Admiral Edmond-Francois Paris.
When Malacca was returned to the Dutch the British needed a base elsewhere in the region and the Island of Singapore was decided upon, with Farquhar as the first resident. Thomas Stamford Raffles, his immediate superior, drew up broad plans and objectives for the new colony and left Farquhar to implement them. Raffles did not reappear for three years and then immediately fell out with Farquhar for not having followed his plans to the letter. From this time Farquhar had serious problems with Raffles. Despite Farquhar’s obvious success he was harassed and reported on by Raffles in the most dishonest, petty and insensitive ways24. An analysis of the correspondence of the time by shows in detail how Raffles lied in his reports to Calcutta and to the Company Board in London22. Although the Administration obviously had some sympathy with Farquhar, they felt that they always had to support the senior man whatever the situation. Raffles saw Farquhar’s management style as too laissez faire. Fundamentally there was a great difference in their approach to people, with Farquhar being described variously as ‘patient’, ‘kind’, ‘equitable’. When Farquhar left Singapore for Britain, thousands of locals including Europeans waved goodbye.
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In Britain he continued to argue his case and defend himself against Raffles. However, Raffles had been in England for some time and could bend history more easily. Farquhar was not reinstated in Singapore, but retired to Perth, Scotland. He was made a Major-General in 1839, which must have eased his retirement. Raffles also deviously presented several of Farquhar’s drawings of wildlife as his own. In his time at Malacca and Singapore Farquhar became deeply interested in wildlife and actively collected specimens. He made many zoological discoveries and sent samples abroad, corresponding widely with similar enthusiasts. When he left for home he took with him his collection of 477 zoological and botanical drawings that he had commissioned from local artists. These are now in the National Museum of Singapore which, in 2010, published them in a magnificent volume11.
Colugo
Pineapple
Black-and-red Broadbill
William Farquhar Natural history Drawings published by the National Museum of Singapore. (BOTTOM RIGHT) Dark-handed Gibbon. The animals were supposedly named by the French naturalist Buffon who discovered them and named them after someone he knew called Gibbon, possibly Edward Gibbon the famous historian (no relation), who was an extremely ugly man.
Margaret Loban
William married twice: first in Malacca to Nonya Clement, a Malayan / French lady, with whom he had six children. His grandchildren from this marriage were educated in Scotland. He made provision for Nonya, but this was curtailed when he lost most of his money in both London and Calcutta in the financial crash of 1835. His second wife, whom he married in London, was Margaret Loban, age 19, from Fochabers, Moray. He called himself a bachelor and one of the witnesses was his brother Arthur. William and Margaret moved to a house near Perth and had six children. William died there aged 65.
Strangely enough Alan Mathieson Turing (see Box 1.1), born in 1912, had a great, great grandfather, Billington Loftie, an East India Company surgeon, living at Malacca at the same time as William Farquhar. When Billington’s wife died he married Leonora Raffles, Sir Stamford’s sister.
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 117
BOX 7.3
SIR ARTHUR FARQUHAR (born 1815) Arthur Farquhar, born in 1815 in Sussex, was the son of Rear Admiral Sir Arthur Farquhar (see Box 7.1)12. He entered the Navy in 1829, and served his time as Volunteer and Midshipman in South America and the West Indies on board various vessels. He passed his examination in 1835 and served as Mate of the Asia in the Mediterranean, the Thalia at the Cape of Good Hope, and Princess Charlotte, again in the Mediterranean. For his services on the Princess Charlotte during the operations on the coast of Syria, including the bombardment of Acre (now in Israel), he was awarded a commission as lieutenant, bearing date 4 November 1840, the day after the bombardment. The following year he was appointed for a time to the gunnery ship Excellent at Portsmouth, and was a Flag Lieutenant on several ships. He was promoted to the command of the barque Albatross, 16 guns, on the west coast of Africa, where he captured three slavers, and assisted in making prizes of three others. Lieutenant Francis Meinell of the Albatross produced a powerful painting of the harsh conditions on one of these slavers, the Albanoz (See 7.50). The Royal Navy sailors normally received head money from the Government for each slave rescued from slave ships. In 1849, when it was decided to despatch an expedition against the pirates in the Borneo Seas, Arthur was placed in command of the small force detailed for this work, having with him the Royalist, Nemesis, Ranee, and a small native flotilla under Rajah Brooke. On hearing that the pirates had left their bases and were off the coast, preparations were made for action. On 27 June the pirates were attacked and 80 prahus (boats) were destroyed and 70 others driven on shore. There were about 1200 casualties, all on the enemy’s side. Afterwards Farquhar destroyed a number of the pirates’ haunts in the neighbouring rivers. Sailors involved in killing pirates in such an operation received head-money for each of the natives of Borneo killed, a common practice which might account for the large number of casualties. Strangely, a grandson of Robert Burns (see Chapter 6) lived in Borneo around this time, having married a local lady. He was killed by pirates in 1851.
(LEFT) A painting by Lieutenant Francis Meynell of the slaveship Albanoz captured in 1845 (7.31) (TOP RIGHT) HMS Asia as painted by John Ward. (BOTTOM RIGHT) Drawing of a fighting prahu similar to the ones faced by Arthur Farquhar in the Borneo Seas.
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In 1854 Arthur commanded the Malacca, a corvette (a steamer of 17 guns) on the North American and West Indies Station, where he conducted trials of new high-pressure engines and where yellow fever at Port-au-Prince devastated the crew. In 1855 he took part in the Baltic campaign against the Russians (See also Chapter 21). He was sent again the following year to the Mediterranean to help protect British interests at Naples. In 1866 he was raised to flag rank and from 1869 to 1873 he was Commander-inChief in the Pacific. On his return home he was promoted to Vice-Admiral and in 1878 to Admiral. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth, which post he held until 1880, when he retired from active service. The Admiral was a strong Conservative politically and had a circle of aristocratic acquaintances. He was made a KCB in 1886 and wore the Syrian and Turkish medals with a clasp for Acre. In 1851 he married Ellen Rickman, the daughter of a London banker, and they had 13 children. Arthur established some of his sons in farming by purchasing 1,100 acres of land at Le Mars near Brunsville, Iowa (see Box 7.5). By this time travel was fast and easy with steamships and railways and he was a frequent visitor, journeying there every spring for a number of years. His sons seem to have been equally frequent visitors to their parents at Aboyne. Ellen died in 1898; Admiral Farquhar in 1908.
(LEFT) Medals awarded to Arthur Farquhar showing the neck badge and breast star of the Order of the Bath , the Naval General Service medal, a Syria medal and the medal St Jean D'Acre. (RIGHT) More medals awarded to Arthur Farquhar including KCB, KCH and the Order of the Sword from Sweden.
Photo taken the same day. The caption says:
A grainy newspaper photo taken in 1907 in an Aberdeen studio on the occasion of Arthur Farquhar becoming the ‘Father of the Fleet’ by length of service. The caption says: 'An interesting family group. Admiral Sir A. Farquhar KCB - the Father of the Fleet - with his two sons Rear-Admiral A. M. Farquhar CVQ and Captain Stuart St J. Farquhar. Besides his two sons and grandson who appear in the above group, Admiral Sir A. Farquhar has another son now serving in the Royal Navy, Captain Richard B. Farquhar, and two other grandsons, Lieutenant St. A. O. St John and Midshipman Alastair C.N. Farquhar.'
'Father and Son – Admirals Both. Admiral Sir Arthur Farquhar, KCB. ‘the Father of the Fleet’ who entered the Navy nearly eighty years ago, and his son Rear-Admiral Arthur Farquhar.’ It was published in The Bystander 13 March 1907.
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 119
BOX 7.4
THE FARQUHARS: GENTLEMEN ON THE PRAIRIE It was only after the authors began wondering why a Farquhar had been born in Iowa that a now littleknown British colony in the USA became known to them, together with the part that the Farquhars had played in it. The following is taken from the main sources, Van Der Zee18, Harnack19 and Pagnamenta21. For anyone not an eldest son in the middle and upper classes of Victorian Britain, a limited choice of careers was available, given the strictures of the Victorian class code: a commission in the army or navy, ordination as a clergyman, government civil service. Beyond that a few of the professions were acceptable, among them medicine and law, even high finance in the City of London. But commerce, trade or industry were beyond the pale. Little wonder then that an attractive alternative was to go overseas with a remittance of some sort, establish a ranch or plantation or farm, and pursue the life of a landed gentleman. For parents, this solved the problem of ‘What to do with our boys?’. The money available for the second, third or other sons was often scant, particularly since dowries had to be provided for daughters. If land was cheap abroad then these extra boys could perhaps be established successfully. Various parts of the world were attractive for British settlers, particularly parts of the Empire like South Africa or Australia. Parts of the United States such as Wyoming, Texas and Colorado already had large, moneyed British communities. Iowa would seem an unlikely choice, having few cosmopolitan centres and a dull landscape. However, in the late 1870s fertile land was newly coming on the market in Iowa, after being held for years by the railroads, which had received land grants from the Government. It took an enterprising young Cambridge graduate, William Close, in the 1870s to envision a colony of ‘like-minded men and women’ in north-western Iowa. The Iowa Land Company, which Close and his brothers controlled, shrewdly bought cheap land wherever they could, eventually becoming the largest foreign company operating in the United States, owning at one point about 400,000 acres in various states. The Close company bought cheap land in the north-west of Iowa next to the border with South Dakota. The soil was very fertile and being prairie land did not need extensive clearing. Small farms were established by dividing the land into quarter sections of 90 acres each which were rented out. Other land was sold to incoming British buyers. This caught the attention of British squires who had younger sons. The Iowa colony was marketed to the upper classes in Britain, who flocked to invest in farms that offered very profitable returns. This was at a time when the agricultural industry in Britain was very depressed. The spread of railways in the USA and easy access to markets had transformed the economics of mid-west farming. The colony was centred at the small town of Le Mars and over a period of about 10 years the area was changed beyond recognition as several hundred British settlers arrived. During the heyday from 1879 to 1885 many of Britain’s socially prominent families had one or more sons or relatives there. The immigrants introduced to the colony all the trappings of high-country living: cock fighting, polo, cricket, rugby, lawn tennis, horse racing and fox hunting were all very popular. They started their own British pubs and a gentleman’s club, the all-British Prairie Club, which over 300 members joined over 10 years. The British deliberately kept themselves from integrating into the local scene and their caste feeling was very strong. Balls were held in white tie and tails and prayers were offered for Queen Victoria at the Episcopal Church. Some of the married colonists brought over their housekeepers, butlers, nannies, overseers and maids as well as bathtubs, favourite horses, and hunting dogs. A local newspaper report described the arrival of one batch of these well-heeled immigrants: They descend from the recesses of the Pullman Palace cars dressed in the latest London and Paris styles, with Oxford hats, bright linen shining on their bosoms, a gold repeater ticking in the depths of their fashionably cut vest pockets … We recall last summer a single family that had 82 pieces of luggage. A feature of the colony was the training of young men straight from Britain who would spend several months to a year with a local family, paying for board and lodging while being trained in farming and stock raising - although many indulged in hell-raising as well. At the end of this period they would be encouraged to invest in a farm of their own. Over the years several hundred of these ‘pups’, as they were
120 AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG : CH 7
The grandstand as photographed in the 1880’s at Le Mars Fairgrounds and (inset) Carlogie Farm created by the Farquhars just to the west of Brunsville, Iowa. Photo taken in 1928 (both from Gentlemen on the Prairie).
known, came out and were introduced to manual labour. Surprisingly most of the colonists seem to have taken to practical farming, even though they had needed to do much of the manual work themselves as there was no pool of labour to be hired. From the early 1890s the colony started to dwindle, hastened by an economic depression which lowered land values and made most agriculture unprofitable. Because they tended to have assets behind them, the British could move easily back to Britain or to some other situation. By 1895 most British had packed up, leaving little trace, and the colony was largely forgotten. The few British who stayed became increasingly distant from their origins since nobody was left to view them as gentlemen or help shore up their fading image of themselves as part of ‘the better class’. For the German, Dutch and Scandinavian immigrants in the area the old country had been left behind of necessity and they accepted Iowa as their new permanent home. The Farquhars appeared on the scene after Admiral Arthur Farquhar had been encouraged to invest by his old Royal Navy friend Captain Moreton, who emigrated in 1881. The editor of the local newspaper was the son of another Navy admiral. Arthur purchased 1,100 acres of prairie land just west of Le Mars. He erected a fine house and over the years the land was cleared and farmed. The farm was named the Carlogie Ranch after their house at Aboyne. Sons William and Moubray and daughter Jane went out in 1881, Charles and Albert in 1884, and James in 1886, all to remain for some years. Father Arthur made visits over several years and daughter Ellen went out with her husband to visit19. The Farquhars became a mainstay of the colony and the local newspaper records their participation in various sporting events such as lawn tennis, cricket and horse racing as well as reports on their farming – the prices they got for livestock at the Chicago market, their introduction of special breeds such as the Clydesdale horse and their interest in racing stallions. The five brothers seem to have accumulated considerable capital in their time in Iowa. The local newspaper reported that Albert sold over 700 acres when he left and that the sale by ‘Farquhar Brothers’ in March 1889 fetched high prices for both stock and machinery.
CH 7 : AGNES GIBBON & ALEXANDER YOUNG 121
Empress of Japan II, captained by Henry Pybus, steams past the figurehead of Empress of Japan I at Vancouver (8.6) 122
CHAPTER 8
ELIZABETH GIBBON AND GEORGE FALCONER Elizabeth Gibbon, the youngest daughter of William Gibbon born in 1643 and Marie Kerr (see Chapter 3), was brought up at the Mill of Cowie, Stonehaven. She married George Falconer, a sailor from the same town. His exact parentage is unclear, there being several Falconers living near Stonehaven who may well be relations. James Falconer, a ship’s captain, for example, was probably a brother of George, being buried in Dunnottar graveyard in the next grave to George’s son William. At the same time a John Falconer was living at the Mill of Stonehaven. There are seven recorded children of Elizabeth and George, although they probably had more. George died before 1731 according to a legal bond, and he is described as ‘leaving children’1. According to W A MacNaughton, the Stonehaven historian, he left a will dated 7 Nov 1717, but there is no trace of this now2. George’s son William, born in 1713, married Elizabeth Wise and became a wheelwright and merchant in Stonehaven, listed in 1754 as a feuar. They had children but we have details only of the eldest son, William, born in 1750. He worked as a watch and clockmaker in Laurencekirk, a village fourteen miles south-west of Stonehaven. He seems to have been an enterprising man as we find him advertising in several newspapers. He married Barbara Wood in Edinburgh in 1778 and they had four children.
Advert in the Caledonian Mercury 4 August 1784. In it William Falconer of Laurencekirk says that he will be using, as well as selling to other watchmakers, materials which used to come from England. Customers should fill in one of his subscription papers to be found in various towns in Scotland. Gravestone of William Falconer, son of Elizabeth Gibbon, and his wife Elizabeth Wise, in Dunnottar Graveyard.
CH 8 : ELIZABETH GIBBON & GEORGE FALCONER 123
SEE CHART 3
CHART 8: GIBBON / FALCONER
Elizabeth Gibbon -M-
George Falconer [Mariner]
Robert Falconer 1705 - ?
Helen Falconer 1750 - ?
George Falconer 1706 - ?
William Falconer 1750 - ?
Jean Falconer 1707 - ?
Janet Falconer c1754 - ?
James Falconer 1754 - ?
[Watch Maker]
James Falconer 1755 - ?
- M 1778 -
Barbara Wood c1757 - ?
Elizabeth Falconer 1779 - ?
Janet Falconer 1781 - ?
James Falconer 1782 - 1857
Francis Falconer 1783 - ?
[Ship Owner & Captain] - M 1810 -
Elizabeth Samuel 1783 - 1855
James Falconer 1810 - 1813
James Falconer 1814 - 1851
William Falconer 1812 - 1877 [Captain, Ship Owner & Merchant]
[Surgeon] - M 1841 -
- M 1841 -
Isabella Sophie Leslie Macdonald 1823 - 1896
Ann Scorey c1823 - 1891
Ann Elizabeth Scorey Falconer 1844 – 1912
George Alexander Falconer 1816 - 1860
Janet Isabella Falconer 1846 - 1934
Elizabeth Matilda Falconer 1848 - 1935
Marie Sisson Falconer 1852 - 1918
Amelia Keith Falconer 1857 - 1951
- M 1870 -
- M 1871 -
- M 1875 -
- M 1876 -
- M 1890 -
William Robert Seelie 1845 - 1918
William Gallimore Hayden 1842 - 1909
William Trinder Smith 1844 - 1912
George Kebbell 1848 - 1911
Ada Marks c1865 - ?
[Wine Broker]
[Doctor]
[Merchant]
124 ELIZABETH GIBBON & GEORGE FALCONER : CH 8
[Solicitor]
John Henry Falconer 1858 - 1930
Arthur Sisson Falconer 1860 - 1905
Elizabeth Falconer 1710 - ?
William Falconer c1716 - 1783
John Falconer 1715 - ?
[Wheelwright & Merchant] -M-
-M-
Mary White
Elizabeth Wise 1728 - 1791
Elizabeth Falconer c1758 - ?
Jean Falconer 1760 - ?
Margaret Falconer 1723 - ?
George Falconer 1762 - ?
Arthur Falconer 1767 - ?
Elizabeth Falconer 1819 - 1895
Sarah Janet Falconer 1824 - 1899
-M 1837 -
- M 1861 -
Joseph Marie Boyer 1809 - ?
John Albert Holbeck 1819 – 1873
[Merchant]
[Clothier]
Anna Falconer
Mary Falconer 1747 - ?
Alberta Elizabeth Ann Holbeck 1862 - 1940
Duncan George Greenwood Holbeck 1864 - 1866
- M 1887 -
Walter John Croager 1837 - 1915 Florence Mary Falconer 1862 - 1950 - M 1887 -
Henry Pybus 1850 - 1838 [Ship Captain]
Edith Constance Falconer 1864 - 1944 - M 1886 -
Joseph Cocks 1854 - 1925 [Accountant]
[Salesman]
5 children died young
George Falconer 1842 - 1865
Isabella Merton Falconer 1846 - 1929
Matilda Fenton Falconer 1848 - 1882
Ada Falconer 1853 - 1895
Sidney Falconer 1857 - 1936
[Post Office]
[Stockbroker]
- M 1874 -
- M 1888 -
John Richard Down 1852 - 1932
Mary Elizabeth Harris 1858 - 1906
[Metal Merchant]
3 died young
James became a ship’s captain and moved to London, where he married Elizabeth Samuel as her second husband, at St George in the East, Stepney. She came from Begrum’s Farm, Mountnessing, Essex, where her family were tenant farmers and where Elizabeth and James later owned a cottage. They lived in Wapping Street, Stepney, London at the pub The King of Denmark, which Elizabeth had inherited from her first husband and where their six children were born. James was described variously as a victualler, teacher of navigation, ship agent, ship captain, and ship owner. He led a very active life and newspaper accounts show that he regularly sailed to the West Indies including Dominica and Demerara [or British Guiana as it became known] returning with cargoes of coffee, rum and sugar. His ships suffered several disasters, showing how risky voyages were and why James ensured that his cargoes were insured. A record of his ancestors, going back to Elizabeth Gibbon, was written in the flyleaf of a copy of a book on navigation that he owned, which was left by someone unknown, possibly a descendant, with the Minister of Dunnottar at Stonehaven.
(L-R) St George in the East, Stepney, where James Falconer married Elizabeth Samuel in 1810 (8.1); James Falconer; Elizabeth Samuel; William Falconer, born 1812.
James and Elizabeth’s son William Falconer served an apprenticeship as a mariner on his father’s ship the Ealing Grove, trading until the mid-1830s to places such as Demerara for cargoes of sugar, which would have been produced by slave labour. William Falconer is recorded in 1838 as captain of the schooner Velox, carrying a cargo of sundries from Ceylon via Mauritius to Table Bay, the voyage taking from 5 July to 22 August. In 1841 he married Ann Scorey at Table Bay. In 1848 he appears in the news when his barque Johanna was wrecked during a storm at Algoa Bay in South Africa3. For two years he was master of the Alexandrina, built in Aberdeen by the firm of Alexander Duthie, which built several famous Aberdeen clipper barques5. The vessel was registered in London in 1849, with Falconer recorded as both owner and master. The Aberdeen Herald of 16 December 1848 announced its launch: A splendid new clipper barque, the ALEXANDRINA, was launched, the other day, from Messrs. Duthie’s yard. She measures 250 tons new measure, and 290 old; she is intended for the East India trade, and is the property of a gentleman in London. The ALEXANDRINA is now loaded with a cargo of granite stones, and is expected to sail for London today, wind permitting. Algoa Bay as imagined in 1820 by John Baines. Port Elizabeth was where much of South Africa's trade passed, especially when railways were built connecting the interior (8.4)
126 ELIZABETH GIBBON & GEORGE FALCONER : CH 8
A revolt of slaves took place in Demerara in 1823, a period when James Falconer was probably buying sugar. This print is from an 1824 account of the revolt written by Joshua Bryant. It shows a large group of slaves forcing the retreat of European soldiers (8.2)
William Falconer then based himself in London, where he is described as captain in the merchant service, and as a shipping agent and ship insurance broker. Together with Francis Mercer, he operated the Falconer and Mercer Shipping Line, a successful firm of brokers for various clipper ships trading between Britain and South Africa. He gained the Freedom of the City of London in 1856. In 1858 Falconer and Mercer were appointed London Agents for the Union Line, which had inaugurated its first South African mail run in 1857 in a sailing time of 44 days. The previous year the Duthie-built Imogen, owned by Falconer and Mercer, had returned from Algoa Bay to London in 47 days. Thereafter the firm worked closely with the Union Line, which eventually merged with the Castle Line to form the Union Castle Line. William left the business in 1872 and died in 1877 at Gothic House, Stamford Hill, London. He was described by his son in law, Henry Pybus, as ‘a wealthy ship owner and merchant’.
(ABOVE) An advert placed by Falconer and Mercer. St Helena allowed connections to various places further east such as India. (LEFT) William Falconer's Certificate giving him the Freedom of the City of London in 1856.
William and Ann had fourteen children, five of whom died young. Janet married William Robert Seelie, a wine broker. Elizabeth married William Hayden, a doctor. Marie married William Trinder Smith, a South African merchant who lived in London although he died in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Maria died in Beira, Mozambique. There is a gravestone to them both in Port Elizabeth. Amelia married George Kebbell, a London solicitor who features in many newspaper reports of his court cases. John died unmarried and lived with his mother for much of his life. Arthur married Ada Marks and died of syphilis aged 45.
CH 8 : ELIZABETH GIBBON & GEORGE FALCONER 127
In 1887, Florence married Henry Pybus, who was born in the Cape Colony, South Africa, on December 19, 1850. His father Joseph Pybus had retired from the sea in 1843 at the age of thirty, after making a fortune trading opium between India and China5. When Henry was thirteen he won a scholarship to attend South Africa College (now the University of Cape Town). After three years at college he went to sea. His family was distraught because he was only sixteen years old and had not completed his education. Four years later, in 1872, Henry received his certificate as a ship’s officer. Following further service with the Union Steamship Company, he gained certificates as Master, Extra-Master, and for Steam and Compass Deviation. For the next five years he served in the Chinese coastal trade as a river pilot on the Yangtse Kiang, employed by the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company. This firm was owned by Messrs Jardine, Matheson & Co, who had been Hong Kong merchants at the same time as Henry Pybus’ father and uncle in the 1830s. By now Henry had learned that in order to be really successful in a career at sea it was necessary to have Royal Navy training. A new policy, very much frowned on in many quarters, had been instigated by the Admiralty to give the merchant service naval experience. Pybus applied and was the first merchantman to be accepted for training. He was appointed Sub-Lieutenant, Royal Navy Reserve, on 9 March 1885. He supervised the construction of the Cass, one of two vessels being built for the Viceroy of Formosa, and then took command of the ship during delivery to her owner. The Cass and her sister ship the Smith each had fifty Chinese as crew. The Cass was 1,394 tons and 250 feet long. She was later renamed the Hating and eventually became one of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s coastal passenger ships, the Princess May. Pybus next joined the CPR’s new steamship line and was sent to Barrow, England, to supervise the construction of the Empress of China, which was launched on 25 March 1891. He was in command until her sea trials were complete, when the CPR crew took over ownership and he was appointed First Officer. He remained with the Empress of China on the trans-Pacific run until 1898, when he was appointed Commander of the Tartar, constructed under his supervision. He served as First Officer on the ship’s maiden voyage to Vancouver via Hong Kong, carrying passengers and freight bound for the Yukon gold rush. This venture was not an economic success for the CPR and was soon abandoned. In 1901, after several stints as relief skipper, Henry Pybus was appointed to the permanent command of his first ship, the Empress of Japan, a ship that he loved. As her skipper he gained a reputation for being ‘a martinet’, but most of all, as an extraordinarily talented navigator. While he was Captain he broke all speed records, evoking world-wide interest. As newly-weds in 1887, Henry and Florence lived in London, but they soon moved to Vancouver. They did not plan to settle permanently in Canada. Henry always thought of himself as a ‘Cape man’, and intended to retire to South Africa. However, World War I and, later, a succession of Canadian grandchildren changed these plans. When he retired in 1911 he became very active in the Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver, occupying the position of President from 1921 to 1927. He also built the St Clair Hotel in Vancouver. When he died in January 1938, at his request his ashes were committed to the sea from the new Empress of Japan. (LEFT) Empress of Japan as seen in a publicity postcard produced by its owners, Canadian Pacific.
Henry Pybus, who married Florence Falconer in 1887 (8.5)
128 ELIZABETH GIBBON & GEORGE FALCONER : CH 8
(ABOVE) Empress of China, a Canadian Pacific liner captained by Henry Pybus. (LEFT) Empress of China wrecked in Tokyo Bay, 1911.
Two daughters of Florence and Henry both married descendants of John Bell-Irving, a well-known Hong Kong merchant who accumulated a fortune trading opium. The eldest grandson of Henry Pybus, Henry Pybus Bell-Irving, born in 1913, became Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, while his brother Alan had a distinguished career in World War One, being the first Canadian pilot to shoot down five enemy planes. The youngest daughter of William and Ann, Edith Constance Falconer, born in 1864, married Joseph Cocks, who is described as a surgical instrument maker and later as an accountant. Returning to the children of James Falconer and Elizabeth Samuel, George Alexander Falconer was a surgeon who practiced first in Wapping, and later in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire. In 1854 he became the Surgeon for the Queens Own Light Infantry Regiment of Tower Hamlets Militia. George married Isabella Macdonald and they had seven children. He died in 1860 as the result of a train accident. The train in which he was travelling to London, came off the rails at Tottenham and several passengers in the first two carriages were killed or injured. George was seriously injured and died about three weeks later in hospital leaving Isabella, aged 37, with five young children. George and Isabella’s eldest son George, born at Stepney, London in 1842, was at a school for the deaf and dumb in Aberdeen in 1851. He is listed as a wood engraver in 1861 when he was living with his mother in Islington, London. He died in 1865. His sister, Isabella, never married and lived with sister Elizabeth for some time. George and Isabella's next daughter, Matilda, married John Richard Down and they lived in Swansea, John’s birthplace. He was a colliery agent, ship owner, zinc smelter and metal merchant. He founded the firm John R. Down & Co. and was active in a number of areas. For example, in 1918 he was advertising for scrap metal to make munitions and in 1919 he was supplying metal for sidings for the Great Western Railway at Landore, near Swansea. Their son John Leslie Down was a metal merchant’s clerk in 1911, presumably working for his father. When war broke out he became a Lieutenant in the Glamorgan Artillery, then the adjutant of the 1st Rhondda Battalion. In 1914 he was appointed temporary Captain in the 10th Service Battalion Welsh Regiment and by 1916 he was a Captain in the 21st Reserve Battalion of the Welsh Regiment. However, a newspaper report in February 1916 announced that he was dismissed from the service after a general court-martial at Kimmel Camp on a charge of drunkenness. The third sister, Ada, born in 1853, lived with her maternal aunt and uncle named Bloomfield, and later had a job at the Post Office. She never married. The last son, Sidney, who was living at an orphanage in Wanstead in 1871, worked at the Stock Exchange. He married Mary Elizabeth Harris and they had a family. Of the two daughters of James Falconer and Elizabeth Samuel, Elizabeth, the eldest, married Joseph Marie Boyer in 1837 at Stepney. He had been born in Dominica and was presumably a business associate of her father and is described in 1837 as a West India Merchant based at Roseau, Dominica. In 1843 he was the assignee for a firm of bankrupt West India merchants. They had two daughters who both married, one to a Frenchman in Paris in 1889. Sarah Janet Falconer, born in 1824, the youngest daughter of James and Elizabeth, married John Holbeck. He was a clothier before he married, and later described himself as a commercial traveller. Their daughter Alberta married Walter Croager, who was a traveller for trimmings (decoration for clothing), and later a general warehouseman.
CH 8 : ELIZABETH GIBBON & GEORGE FALCONER 129
Boston Harbour 1775 (9.1)
CHAPTER 9
WILLIAM GIBBON AND MARIA CRANMER William Gibbon, known as ‘Junior’ or ‘Youngest’, was born in 1747 in Stonehaven, where he grew up, presumably helping his father as a ship’s carpenter, building small ships near or on the shore and probably also sailing in them. At some point as a young man he sailed to North America. What he worked at there is unclear but he appears in the records as having married Maria (or Marie) Yandell Cranmer (or Maria Cranmer Yandell) on 2 December 1770 at the Trinity Parish Church in New York. Maria was born in 1746 at Bampton, Devon. We do not know how she ended up in New York. William and Maria lived in the New York area for five years before leaving for Boston in September 17751. Maria was then heavily pregnant with her second child, who was born in Boston in December. In February 1776 they sailed for London and thence to Aberdeen. Doubtless they felt, like many others, that they had to leave America because of the outbreak in 1775 of the war of independence against Britain. Possibly William was a ship’s captain trading throughout his time in New York. Was he contracted by the British Government to transport goods and troops locally? Although New York City was under rebel control, New York harbour and the east coast waters were safe enough for British ships, as was Boston harbour in 1775, even though the city was besieged.
New York 1775 as originally published by the Royal Navy (9.2)
Engraving depicting the British evacuation of Boston, 1776 (9.3)
CH 9: WILLIAM GIBBON & MARIA CRANMER 131
CHART 9: GIBBON / CRANMER
SEE CHART 5
William Gibbon 1747 - 1821 [Ship Carpenter & Berthmaster] - M 1770 -
Maria Cranmer 1746 - 1825
Sophia Maria Gibbon 1774 - 1856
Elizabeth Gibbon 1775 - 1852
- M1 1802 -
Jane Gibbon 1778 - 1855
- M 1797 -
Cuthbert Maughan 1772 - 1812
Robert Cockerill 1775 - 1846
[Coal Agent]
[Army Captain]
- M2 1813 -
Robert Beaumont 1781 - 1869 [Mining Engineer]
Francis William Beaumont 1814 - 1895 [Mining Engineer]
William Fuller Mercer Cockerill 1796 - 1835
Maria Catherine Beaumont 1818 - 1877
[Surgeon, India]
[School Head]
- M1 1836 -
-
Ann Jenkins 1818 - 1841
Teresa Alicia Daly 1804 - 1831
Elizabeth Jones c1821 - 1878
- M2 1833 -
Elizabeth Mary Shippard 1803 - 1863
- M3 c1872 -
Marion Elizabeth Curme 1852 - 1884
- M 1891 -
Charles Frederick Godfrey Pearson 1872 - 1947
[Ship’s Purser, East India Co.]
Rachel Ann Middleton 1804 - ?
- M1 1824 -
- M2 1842 -
Alice Marion Beaumont c1873 - 1900
Fortescue Pierrepont Cockerill 1798 - 1864
Francis William Robert Beaumont 1875 - ?
Alfred George A. C. Beaumont 1880 - ?
[Plumber]
-M-
[Crucible Maker]
Alice Cockerill
Charles Cockerill 1819 - 1896 [Hairdresser] - M 1844 -
Jane Simpson Pratt c1822 - 1908
Florence ? 1885 - ?
[Plasterer]
Rachel Cockerill c1851 - 1935
Jane Cockerill c1853 - 1884
[Teacher]
- M 1876 -
John James Innes c1855 - 1881 [Teacher]
Charles Frank Pearson 1892 - ?
Gertrude Elizabeth Pearson 1897 - ?
Florence Edith Pearson 1898 - 1992
- M 1913 -
- M 1921 -
- M 1929 -
Edith Edna Moy Elsey 1887 - 1950
Thomas Charles Arrowsmith c1896 - 1970
Arthur Martin 1904 - 1969
[Salior]
Eliza May Shippard Cockerill
Ellen Lillian Pearson 1895 - ?
132 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARIA CRANMER : CH 9
Mary Louisa Pearson 1900 - 1900
Charles Cockerill 1856 - 1923 [Library Attendant] - M 1911 -
Elizabeth Falconer Maver 1875 - 1944
Alexander Gibbon 1780 - 1870
James Gibbon 1783 - 1846
[Lawyer]
[Colonel, Indian Army]
- M 1809 -
William Gibbon 1783 - 1792
Charles Gibbon 1789 - 1871 [Church of Scotland Minister]
- M 1809 -
-M-
Catherine Mallett c1769 - 1864
Sarah Isobel Gibbon 1786 - 1831
- M 1813 -
Adam Mellis 1783 - 1816
?
Ann Duff 1787 - 1867
[Army Lieutenant]
Catherine Ann Jane Gibbon 1810 - 1829
Emily Elizabeth Gibbon 1815 - 1870
Eliza Gibbon 1806 - ?
James Gibbon 1809 - ?
William Strachan Mellis 1809 - ?
William Gibbon 1811 - ?
Charles Gibbon 1812 - ?
Jane Gibbon 1817 - 1833
SEE CHART 10
David Gibbon 1827 - ?
[Purser, Indian Navy]
[Banker]
Peter Alfred Gibbon c1830 - ?
-M-
?
Judith Agnes Gibbon 1834 - 1880
John Gibbon 1836 - ?
- M 1850 -
Thomas Taylor 1822 - 1878
James Frederick Gibbon 1842 - 1842
Francis James Gibbon 1846 - 1855
Mary Ellen Eliza Gibbon 1848 - ? -M-
Edward Roberts 1845 - ?
[Clerk, India]
- M 1883 -
Thomas James Brown Taylor 1851 - ?
George Robert Gibbon Taylor 1853 - 1895
Alexander Anderson 1856 - 1921
[Inspector, Salt Dept]
[Post Office Superintendent]
- M 1875 -
- M 1875 -
Caroline Christian Durham 1851 - 1876
Jessie Jackson 1856 - 1905
Charlotte Cockerill 1858 - 1937
[Teacher]
John William Wray Taylor 1855 - ?
Eva Judith Taylor 1857 - 1870
Charles Joseph Taylor 1859 - ?
Henry Alexander Stanley Taylor 1864 - ?
[Preventative Officer]
[Merchant & Railwayman] - M1 1883 -
Mary Farnon 1868 - ? - M2 1891 -
Louisa Susan Skinner Woodward 1873 - 1906 - M3 1908 -
Grace Rolfe c1884 - ?
The British departed from Boston in early 1776 and William and Maria were clearly part of this withdrawal. The American War of Independence ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. Anyone who had maintained loyalty to the British had to flee and over 60,000 people ended up trying to make a new start, often in the most desperate straits, in Britain, the West Indies, Canada and Sierra Leone10. William and Maria were lucky that they left when they did. There is a curious item in the Aberdeen Press and Journal 24 Sept. 1781 saying that an American ship, a snow, called the Four Friends and captained by a William Gibbon had been captured by a privateer and taken into Leith. The ship had been bound with a valuable cargo of various merchandise from Amsterdam to Boston. This William is probably a namesake, of whom there was at least one at the time, although it is also possible that our William was still trying to make a living as a ship’s captain through his Boston connections. After their return to Aberdeen, William is described as a ship’s captain. Eventually he became the Berthmaster for the harbour of Fraserburgh, then of Aberdeen. This was an important position, controlling the shipping while it was in the harbour. William features in a court case in 1806 brought against the Berthmaster by the owners of a berthed ship2. Apparently, their ship had entered harbour and been berthed by William, who had later asked them to move to another berth. When his request was refused he had apparently used ‘horrid imprecations and abusive language’, eventually cutting the ship’s cable. The court judiciously decided that although William was within his powers, he had hardly acted appropriately for a man in his position. A major figure in the Aberdeen shipping community, William played a prominent role in the Shipmaster Society, a body set up to help mariners in need, the money coming from a levy applied to every ship entering Aberdeen harbour3. The accounts show that William was President in 1816 and Treasurer in 1818. He died in 1821 of a ‘stomach disorder’. In his will he leaves everything to his wife Maria, apart from various small bequests. He held part ownership in several ships, but the will says that he had recently suffered some business losses, reflecting the precarious nature of shipping at that time. The ending of the French Wars and with it lucrative Government contracts had led to a temporary economic depression for shipowners before they adapted to the new situation. In 1823 Maria had a family gravestone erected at St Fittock’s Church at Nigg, where most of the other early Gibbons were buried.
Aberdeen harbour in 1828 from a map by John Wood showing proposed improvements (9.4)
Proceedings of the Shipmaster Society, or Seamen's Box, which were published in 1911 (see below).
The eldest child of William and Maria was Sophia Maria Gibbon, born in New York in 1774. She married twice. Her first marriage at her parents’ house in Aberdeen in 1802 was to Cuthbert Maugham, Agent at Howden Pan Dock, opposite Jarrow on the River Tyne in Northumberland. He died in 1812 and was buried at Howden Dock. The following year, again in Aberdeen, Sophia married Robert Beaumont, the manager of Halbeath Colliery near Dunfermline, at that time one of the most important collieries in Fife. Contemporary descriptions show that, while serfdom had been abolished in 1799, conditions at Halbeath, as in other collieries, were still brutal, with children under 10, for example, being employed down the mine. An official report of working conditions for children in Britain, published in 1842, makes harrowing reading, as does, for example, the 1853 book White Slaves of England by the American social reformer John Cobden, who looks at British ‘slavery’ in its widest sense.
134 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARIA CRANMER : CH 9
(TOP LEFT) Grave of William Gibbon and Marie Cranmer at Nigg. It reads: In memory of William third and twin son of William Gibbon Junr who departed this life on the 31st May 1792 aged 9 years, also his father William Gibbon Junr who died 13th August 1821 aged 74 and of Marie his wife who died 19th October1825 aged 79. Also of Sarah Isabella, their fourth daughter, widow of Captain Mellis of the 60th Regiment who died 27th Oct 1832 aged 45 years. and of Jane daughter of their second son Colonel Gibbon of H.E.I.C.S. who died 25th March 1833 aged 15 years. Erected by the Widow and Mother 1823; (TOP RIGHT) Entry into Howden Dock painted by D. F. McLea in 1906. He painted many North East of England scenes; (CENTRE RIGHT) Map showing Halbeath Colliery to the east of Dunfermline. Discovery of coal in Fife transformed what was previously a very poor area of Scotland. The map was published by Greenwood and Taylor in 1820. (BOTTOM L-R) In 1842 a Commission appointed to report on the employment of children in industry published their findings. Their thorough investigations revealed a mess of abuse by employers and was the basis for much subsequent legislation; Illustrations from the 1842 Report showing children working in coal mines; The White Slaves of England was published in the United States exposing common abusive practices in Britain and its empire.
At some point Robert and Sophia moved to Glamorgan in Wales, where Robert is described as a Mining Engineer and Surveyor. He emerges briefly in the pages of the Hereford Journal of 2 April 1845 which announced that ‘A dish of very fine radishes was drawn last week, by W. Davies Esq., gardener to Robert Beaumont, Esq., Llandaff.’ Sophia died in Glamorgan in 1856 and Robert in 1869. He was buried at Llandaff Cathedral. Sophia and Robert Beaumont had two children. The elder, Francis William, lived most of his life in London, where despite filing for bankruptcy in 1845 he had a prominent career as a civil and mining engineer. Glimpses of this appear from the records: for example, he published a Plan for the Improvement and Deepening of Dublin Bay and Harbour in 1839 and later a tract on Common Road Locomotives.
CH 9: WILLIAM GIBBON & MARIA CRANMER 135
An obituary of George Stevenson, the inventor of the first successful railway engine, the Rocket, said: A very coarse scene took place when Mr Hudson brought before him a plan of Mr F. W. Beaumont, the engineer, for common road locomotives4. His (Stevenson’s) temper was too apt to give way, unless he had the field wholly to himself. Francis Beaumont also filed at least one patent, for the invention of ‘a hydraulic apparatus applicable to transmitting, regulating, and measuring the supply or flow of liquids’. Francis married three times. His first two wives were Welsh girls from where he grew up. His third wife, Marion Curme, twenty years his junior, was a lime burner’s daughter from Cerne Abbas in Dorset. Their eldest child, Alice, married in 1891, in London, Charles Pearson, a plasterer, with whom she had five children. After Alice died in 1900, Charles remarried and had a further four children. There are many descendants. The eldest child of Charles and Alice was Charles Frank Pearson who was a seaman with the Mercantile Navy Reserve during World War One and in 1918 was Assistant Cook on HMS Orbita, an armed merchant cruiser which roamed the Atlantic and west coast of the Americas in search of German vessels. The eldest daughter Ellen is listed in 1911, age seventeen, as a factory hand. Francis William Beaumont had two other children. The elder, Francis, was a plumber's assistant as a young man. His brother Alfred became a crucible maker in the steel industry, making the clay pots into which the molten steel was poured to create ingots. He married and had three sons and a daughter who worked as a fur finisher, which involved sewing the linings of fur garments.
Marriage register of Alice Beaumont and Charles Pearson in 1891; Staunton church in 1902; A 1902 map showing Staunton, in Gloucestershire.
Maria, the younger child of Sophia and Robert Beaumont, was born in Stevenston, Ayrshire in 1818. Her early movements are unclear, but in 1861 she was living with her father in Llandaff and was the Head of a Ladies School. In early 1871 she was in Clifton, Bristol, unmarried and a ‘Professor of Music’. Later that year she was living at The Cottage, Staunton, formerly a house of her uncle Alexander Gibbon, born in 1780. Alexander did not leave a will and Maria was granted administration of his effects. She was still living nearby when she died in 1877. Her will shows that she was financially comfortable: she left various sums to friends and Beaumont relatives as well as £100 to Anne Grace Tytler, her cousin, the daughter of the Rev. Charles Gibbon.
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The second child of William Gibbon and Maria Cranmer was Elizabeth, born in 1775 at Boston. In 1797 she was married in Aberdeen to Robert Cockerill. Robert was born, also in 1775, at Oswestry, Shropshire, the son of a doctor. He was a lieutenant in the Rutland Light Dragoons, a regiment, formed in 1794, typical of many established during the French wars from local volunteers to counter the threat of invasion. Some became incorporated into the regular army and served abroad, but most served at home, their main role often being to suppress civil unrest, which was to become increasingly frequent. For this reason, they were usually stationed away from their home county or recruitment area. Robert was a Cornet in the Dragoon Guards in 1794, and from 1795 a Lieutenant and later Captain in the 67th Regiment of Foot. He sold his commission in 1829. Elizabeth taught in a school in Aberdeen, together with her sister Jane or Jean, born in 1778. Their father’s will states: To my second daughter Elizabeth Mrs Cockerill, my mourning ring left me at the death of John Adams. To Jean my second and only unmarried daughter, my writing desk and all my household furniture after her mother’s death who is to hold it during her life under the circumstances that while the School continues to be taught by Mrs Cockerill and her, the same to be occupied in common between them, but in the event of Mrs Cockerill leaving Jane, the said furniture shall belong to Jane at her mother’s death. An 1813 advert for the school run by Elizabeth Cockerill and Jean Gibbon in Aberdeen
In 1851 the sisters were both living in Twickenham with Elizabeth’s eldest son and with Jane still unmarried. Robert died in 1846 and Elizabeth in 1852, both at Twickenham, Middlesex. Elizabeth and Robert’s elder son, William Fuller Mercer Cockerill, born in 1796, studied medicine at Aberdeen, completing his training in 1819. The younger son was Fortescue Pierrepoint Cockerill, born at Perth in 1798, a purser in the East India Maritime Service. Between 1824 and 1833 he served on the ships Marquis of Wellington, Thames and Farquharson. He was unmarried and seems to have retired by 1841, when he was living with his parents and aunt Jane at Twickenham, where he died in 1864. An advert shows him as one of the directors of the Britannia Life Assurance Company. In his will, in addition to £900 bequeathed to neighbouring friends, he left £50 to his old servant, £200 to his cousin Charles William Gibbon, and the residue of his estate to another cousin, Emily Elizabeth Gibbon of Staunton. William had an illegitimate son in Aberdeen as recorded in the St Nicholas Church Register of 1813, the fifteen-year-old mother being named as Rachel Ann Middleton. Charles, the son, spent most of his life in Aberdeen, employed as a hairdresser. In 1844 he married Jane Simpson Pratt, an Aberdeen tailor’s daughter. His obituary in the Aberdeen Journal shows him to have been well thought of. Charles and Jane had four children, two daughters and a son being alive when Charles died in 1896. The eldest daughter Rachel became a teacher, as did her sister Charlotte; and Jane, the third sister, married a teacher. The only son was Charles, who became a library attendant in Aberdeen. When he died his widow, Elizabeth married a piano tuner.
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Charles Cockerill's birth registration in 1819, and his obituary in 1896.
Returning to William, born in 1796, he arrived in Bombay in 1820 as an assistant surgeon in the East India Company army and became a full surgeon in 1829. The Aberdeen Journal of August 27th 1828 contained the following: We have great pleasure in stating the following honourable testament to the character and services of our townsman Mr Cockerill: - Previous to the departure of the H.E.I.C 1st Troop of Horse Artillery from Mhow, Bombay, an elegant Gold Snuff Box, bearing the following inscription: ‘W.F.C. from his sincere friends .... in testimony of their grateful sense of his uniform kindness and attention’ - was presented by the Commanding Officer, to Mr W. F. M. Cockerill, their Surgeon. William's first wife, who he married in 1824, was Teresa Daly, the second daughter of Francis Daly of Ballylee Castle, Galway (later owned by the poet Yeats). She had come to India two years previously, presumably to visit her brother serving with the 4th Light Dragoons. Francis Daly had fought in the Peninsular wars and was a Captain, later Lieutenant-Colonel, of the 4th Light Dragoons. Teresa died in 1831 and is buried in the cemetery at St Stephen’s Church, Ootacamund, India. In 1833 William married Elizabeth Mary Shippard, the third daughter of Captain, later Rear Admiral Alexander Shippard12 (who had changed his name from Sheppard). They were married at Park House, Ordiquhill, Banffshire, the home of Colonel Gordon, but why there is not clear. Several other Shippard family members became distinguished and active in the military, the navy, and in colonial administration. William died in I835 and there is a memorial in Rajkot Civil Cemetery, Gujurat: Sacred to the Memory of Will. F.M. Cockerill, Esq., Surgeon 12th Regt. N.I., who departed this life in Rajcote 24 December 1835, aged 36 years. This tomb has been erected by his widow as a feeble but sincere tribute of her affectionate esteem for his Memory. In 1836 widow Elizabeth was awarded a pension from the Lord Clive Military Fund. She later remarried. There is no trace of William and Elizabeth's two daughters, Alice and Eliza, who may have died young. The eldest son of William Gibbon and Marie Cranmer was Alexander, born in 1780. Despite having two Aberdeen ships’ captains, Charles and James Gibbon, as witnesses to his christening, Alexander did not follow the family maritime tradition. He probably went to university before setting up in London as a ‘merchant’. What is certain is the rapidity with which he established himself as a man of affairs. He became an expert in taxation, producing several impressive publications on the subject and writing with
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particular vehemence against income tax, recently introduced to help pay for the French wars. Several of his letters concerning the printing of one of his publications entitled Past and Present Delusions are among the papers of the Blackwood publishing and printing firm in Edinburgh9. His final letter to them in 1851 says, paraphrasing David Hume the Scottish philosopher, that given his publication ‘having fallen all but dead born from the press’ they should send all the remaining copies to Staunton. Despite that, his publications seem to have been highly thought of and he was widely regarded as very able and as a man of influence in political circles. He acted for several trusts and estates including being a trustee for the Bowes-Lyon family5 (which is no doubt why the census of 1851 finds him staying in London with Lady Glamis). In 1809 Alexander married Catherine Mallett, born in New York about 1769. Catherine’s father, Jonathan Mallet, was the British army chief surgeon and hospital purveyor general for New York province throughout the war of independence. Her mother Catherine Kennedy died in 1777. Jonathan settled with his second wife and family in London in 1784, becoming a part of the ‘American diaspora’ there, a glimpse of which is given in the 1808 journal and letters of Aaron Burr, the third vice-president of the United States. Following a series of lapses of judgment that included killing the famous Federalist and former Secretary to the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel, as well as backing some unfortunate policies11, Burr went into self-imposed exile in Europe. While in London, he had met and proposed to Catherine Mallett, whom he described as ‘graceful and comely; a countenance full of intelligence and sensibility’ and with ‘good breeding and social talents in a degree very rare’6. Catherine rejected Aaron Burr in favour of Alexander Gibbon, who was ten years younger than her. Although Alexander had probably never been to America, it is possible that his father maintained contacts from his time there and that is how he knew the Mallets.
Aaron Burr the third vicepresident of the United States (9.6)
Alexander is described in the marriage settlement as a merchant living in Mincing Lane, London, with Catherine living in Bryanston Street. In 1805 Catherine’s brother had been appointed as the rector at Staunton, Gloucestershire. Alexander and Catherine moved to Staunton some time between 1809 and 1815 (possibly to give assistance to her brother, a bachelor, who died in 1822). They lived there for the rest of their lives with Catherine dying in 1864 aged 95 and Alexander in 1870 aged 90. Alexander maintained contact with a wide range of family members, acting for them in various ways including as guardian for his niece Maria Fagan when her mother died in 1848 (see Chapter 10). When his father William died in 1821 Alexander was left his watch, seals and chain in his will. Alexander and Catherine had two daughters. Catherine, the elder, died aged 19 in 1829. The younger, Emily Elizabeth, was unmarried and lived with her father. She died just before him, in 1870, also in Staunton, their entries in the church burial record appearing on the same page. The next children of William Gibbon and Maria were twin brothers James and William, born in 1783. William died in 1792, aged 9. He is mentioned on the family gravestone at Nigg. James spent his working life in the East India Company. His career is summarised in the Aberdeen Journal on 29 April 1846: We regret to announce the death of Colonel James Gibbon of the 6th Bombay Native Infantry, Commandant of the Fort of Asserghur, which lamented event occurred on the 2d of March after a severe and lingering illness, partly brought on, it is said, by distress of mind. He was a most amiable, kind hearted and liberal man, and is not only regretted by his brother officers, to whom he had endeared himself by his manners, but his loss will be long deplored by every native who knew him. Col Gibbon entered the army as a Cadet in 1800, obtained his Ensigncy in 1801, was promoted to Lieutenant in 1802; to Captain 1817; to Major in 1820; Lieutenant-Colonel in 1837; Brevet Colonel in 1841; and Colonel in 1845: and had thus served for the long period of forty-five years. The deceased was in his 63d year. His friends in Aberdeenshire will please accept of this notification of his death.
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It is not known if James Gibbon married officially, though it seems he took an Indian wife or ‘bibi’, a common practice at this time (see Box 9.1). The unusual wording of his obituary referring to his being missed by ‘every native’ also suggests this. James Gibbon is recorded as having seven children (the records being silent about the mother or mothers): Eliza born in 1806, James born in 1809 and William born in 1811, all christened at Surat in 1812; Charles born later in 1812, and Jane born in 1817 were both christened in Bombay in 1819, where father James was stationed as a Captain in the 3rd Regiment of Native Infantry. David was born and christened in 1827 at Bombay, although father James was living at Assurghur. The youngest child was Peter, christened in 1830. It is very possible that most of his family remained at Bombay when he was transferred to Asserghur. His appointment there could not have been regarded as a plum posting, its importance having disappeared in 1819 by its capture at the end of the 3rd Mahratta War against the Pindaris of central India. A visiting missionary wrote in 1844 that ‘the country around Assurghur is bleak and blasted to a degree the only thing worth seeing is the fort.’ But he also said that he was ‘most kindly entertained by the officers of the 3rd Bombay Native Infantry’, which would have included James Gibbon. Jane must have been sent back to Aberdeen to be educated or for medical help as she died there of ‘an inward complaint’ in 1833 aged 14. She is mentioned on the family gravestone in Nigg Churchyard, Aberdeen. Whether any of the other children spent time in Aberdeen is unclear, but it is unlikely. In James’ will of 1846 only two children are mentioned as executors: Eliza, a spinster living with her father, and James, a Purser in the Indian Navy of Bombay. The others presumably died earlier, apart from David who was working at the Bombay Bank, probably as a clerk. James made provision for David as well as two grandchildren: Judith Agnes Gibbon who was at Mrs Wood’s School at Colaba, Bombay and John Gibbon a pupil at Messrs Mainwaring & Jays Seminary, Bombay. We do not know who James the Purser married but his eldest daughter, Judith Agnes, married a widower, Thomas Taylor, at the age of sixteen, at Bombay (Anglo-Indians traditionally married very young at this time13). He was Head Clerk in the Assistant Adjutant General’s Office at Poona. They had six children. Thomas, the eldest, married Caroline Durham in 1875, when he was an Inspector in the Salt Department. The second son George, a Post Office Superintendent, married Jessie Jackson in 1875 and one of their children, Charles, became a ‘Preventative Officer’ or Customs Officer in Bombay whose role was to prevent smuggling. The youngest son, Henry, married three times. His first wife was fifteen years old and Henry, who was aged nineteen, added three years to his age. He is described in 1883 as a merchant and later, in 1908, as an employee of the Carriage Department of the railway. James’ youngest daughter Mary Ellen married Edward Roberts and they have numerous descendants. When their father Thomas died in 1878, his will shows him distributing over 20,000 Rupees round his family. He had some final words for them, though. Ann his only living daughter, from his previous marriage, was to be penalised ‘if she married a person of the name of Robert Baker or any such objectionable person’ (He would no doubt have been pleased when the following year in Bombay she married James Wilkinson, an ‘Inspector in the Municipality’). Thomas hoped that his son John ‘will not keep bad company but endeavour to acquire business habits and live if possible with his brothers’. He concludes: ‘I am pained to declare that my wife (Judith Agnes Gibbon) who is now living with another (who shall be nameless) contrary to the laws of God and man … has thus forfeited her right to receive anything from me’. There is no record of where Judith was living at this time. The next child of William Gibbon and Maria Cranmer was Sarah. In 1809 she married Adam Mellis, a soldier in the 60th Regiment of Foot. He is called Captain on his marriage entry but Lieutenant on the Nigg gravestone. This is presumably the Adam Mellis who was born in Aberdeen in 1783, joined the 59th Regiment in 1804 as an ensign and became a lieutenant the following year. In 1813 he joined the 60th Regiment of Foot. Sarah’s application for a military pension shows that Adam died a Lieutenant in Martinique in 1816. In 1821, when her father died leaving her a mourning ring in his will, Sarah was a widow living in the East Indies. She died of consumption aged 45 in Aberdeen in 1831 and was buried at Nigg (the gravestone says 1832 but this is an error). Sarah and Adam appear to have had one child, William Strachan Mellis, born in 1809 at Nottingham, where presumably Adam’s regiment was stationed. He was a Purser’s Steward according to the records of the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital at Nottingham, where he was treated for a venereal complaint in 1831. In 1850 he was imprisoned for one month for larceny in Nottinghamshire.
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BOX 9.1
ANGLO - INDIANS During the 19th Century in the Indian sub-continent the British men far outnumbered British women, the ratio being 3 to 1 in 1863 and 4 to 1 in 1901. We have examples in this account in Ceylon where the early tea and coffee planters produced many children with local ladies (Chapter 14), Malacca where William Farquhar had an Asian wife (Chapter 7) and India where some of the tea and indigo planters took local wives (Chapters 16 and 24). Many of these men kept these local families secret from their families at home. The children of these unions posed a problem for the British13 as if put in positions of authority they might become an embarrassment by exposing the myth of European superiority. The East India Company passed a series of retrospective orders between 1785 and 1857 which prohibited Eurasians and Anglo-Indians from being employed in many positions which were now reserved for British men such as members of the Armed Forces and Civil Service. The case of William Turing (see Chapter 1) triggered a ban on Anglo-Indians entering the East India Company after he was accepted by mistake but was summoned in front of the Board of Governors of the Company and judged to be too dark skinned. This period was one of calculated and increasing repression, political, economic and social, by the British towards Anglo-Indians. After 1800 more Anglo-Indian children of army officers or senior officials were sent to Britain to be educated but often darker-skinned children were not. Numerous schools were started in India to cater for the growing need to educate Anglo-Indians in India. However many AngloIndians were in very poor economic circumstances and had to see their children merge into the local scene as Indians. Children of British soldiers often found some kind of education within the regimental schools. When from 1850 the British introduced modern means of communication like the railways and the telegraph system, this created numerous positions for both Anglo-Indians and Eurasians, The railways along with the post, telegraphs and customs became an important source of employment for the Anglo-Indians although still not at senior levels of management. Up until about 1920 practically every engine driver, guard, stationmaster and permanent way inspector was an Anglo-Indian. The fairer -skinned might aspire to positions a little higher but Anglo-Indians always received much lower pay than did Europeans for the same job. The Company Marine Services also employed many Anglo-Indians such as James Gibbon (see opposite page), a Purser in the Bombay Navy. He and his brother David were lucky in that their father was a senior officer in the Bombay Army and could afford schooling to launch his children into the careers available. Many such were appointed as clerks (or crannies as they were called) for various Government Departments and several served in the Army but rarely as officers. This racial discrimination continued into the 20th Century although the Eurasians and Anglo-Indians faced increasing competition for jobs from Indians.
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A painting thought to be the young Charles Gibbon presumably made to celebrate his graduation (10.1).
CHAPTER 10
CHARLES GIBBON AND ANN DUFF From now on the account of the Stonehaven Gibbons deals solely with the descendants of Charles Gibbon, the youngest son of William Gibbon, born 1747, and Marie Cranmer. Some are dealt with in greater detail than others, not because they had more interesting lives, or were more important, but simply because more is known about them. A major source of our knowledge is the Rev. Geoffrey Gibbon, born in 1901, who took a deep interest in his family and privately published three accounts of them: Gibbon of Lonmay, Letters from my Father, and John Smith and Company, a Victorian Family. The following includes extracts from Gibbon of Lonmay1 and is somewhat different to the rest of this book in its level of personal detail. It also gives a useful description of a mid-19th century rural Scottish parish. Charles, ninth and youngest child of William and Maria Gibbon, was baptized in St Paul’s Episcopal Chapel in Aberdeen on 2 December 1789. The two witnesses were his uncle James Gibbon and James’ younger brother Charles, a merchant and shipmaster, after whom the child was named. At the age of 12 he was sent to Marischal College, where he graduated MA, at 16, not because he was precocious, but because the Scottish universities at the time were little more than grammar schools. Marischal College was not the magnificent building of today but a very plain one put up in 1696, with classrooms, hall and library on successive floors and two wings added in the 18th century.
The imposing building of Marischal College as it was in the 17th Century (10.2)
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CHART 10: GIBBON / DUFF SEE CHART 9 Charles Gibbon 1789 - 1871 [Church of Scotland Minister] - M 1813 -
Ann Duff 1787 - 1867
Jessie Gibbon 1814 - 1841
Maria Sophie Gibbon 1815 - 1847
- M 1841 -
- M 1833 -
Edward Eyre Williams 1813 - 1880
Christopher Fagan 1776 - 1843
[Judge in Australia]
[General, Indian Army]
SEE CHART 11
144 CHARLES GIBBON & ANN DUFF : CH 10
Maria Fagan 1834 - 1853
Thomas Gordon Gibbon 1818 - 1818
Charles William Gibbon 1820 - 1899 [Stockbroker] - M 1854 -
Mary Ann Wheeler 1836 - 1908
SEE CHART 12
Amelia Ann Turing Gibbon 1822 - 1836
Robina Cumming Gibbon 1824 - 1826
Robert Turing Gibbon 1827 - 1895 [Farmer] - M 1856 -
Jane Burnett 1826 - 1885
SEE CHART 13
Anne Grace Gibbon 1830 - 1904 - M 1848 -
Robert Boyd Tytler 1818 - 1882
William Duff Gibbon 1837 - 1919 [Coffee & Tea Planter] - M 1863 -
[Planter, Ceylon]
Katherine Murray 1842 - 1916
SEE CHART 14
SEE CHART 15
CH 10 : CHARLES GIBBON & ANN DUFF 145
Many of the nearly two hundred students would have been from Aberdeen families: those from outside would have lived in lodgings. With one of these, Thomas Gordon, Charles formed a close friendship. Thomas’ family owned Buthlaw in Longside and Newtyle in Foveran; his father had bought the estate of Cairness in Lonmay in 1796 and had engaged the architect James Playfair to build him a house in the Greek manner, but he died before it was completed and Thomas inherited the property, with the patronage of Lonmay church, at the age of seven. He was sent to Eton but cannot have stayed there long, for at the age of 13 or 14 he was at Marischal College, as we have seen. It is interesting that this young laird of great wealth, coming from the aristocratic world of Eton, should have struck up a friendship with a boy of his own age from the harbour quarter of Aberdeen, whose father was probably hard pressed to find the twenty guineas to put his son through college and into the ministry. Knowing that his friend wished to be ordained, Gordon promised to present him to Lonmay when the living fell vacant. It may have been a bargain between boys of 15 or 16, but it was honoured. Thomas Gordon went on to Christchurch, Oxford, and was then commissioned in the Scots Greys, while Charles Gibbon remained at Marischal College, attending lectures in Divinity for the period prescribed by the Church of Scotland for trainee ministers. The two boys remained friends and correspondents for the rest of their lives, Thomas leaving Charles £1,000 in his will in 1841.
(ABOVE) General Thomas Gordon of Cairness, the life-long friend of Charles Gibbon. This painting is by John Moir in 1836 (10.3) (RIGHT) A copy of this photo of Charles Gibbon was found in the papers of General Gordon, presumably given him by Charles.
Here we come to a difficulty. Charles had been brought up in the Episcopal church and he had accepted his friend’s offer of a living in the Established Church. How did he and his patron square their consciences? The answer is that there was at that time very little difference between St Paul’s Episcopal Chapel and the parish churches of Aberdeen, for St. Paul’s did not share the non-juring, highchurch tradition of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, while the Established Church in Aberdeen was typical of the 18th Century, moderate tempered, tolerant, and unaffected by Covenanting or evangelical enthusiasm. It is possible that Charles Gibbon was accepted without any formal retraction or conversion, perhaps without being required to subscribe to the Calvinistic Westminster Confession, which at that time was not always insisted on in Aberdeenshire.
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The living of Lonmay fell vacant in 1808, when Charles was only 19. Thomas Gordon presented the living pro tem to Hugh Shearer, a man of 67 who for forty years had served as assistant in parishes in the neighbourhood. In the following year, Charles was licensed in the church of Kincardine 0’Neil, on Deeside, as Shearer’s assistant and successor. A few months later Shearer died, and in May 1810 Charles was ordained as Minister of Lonmay. He was to hold the living for more than sixty years. The parish of Lonmay lies in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire, with a long coastline stretching from near Cairnbulg Point almost all the way to Rattray Head. It is eight and a half miles from north to south and four and a half from east to west; mostly flat, with sandhills on the southern part of the coast that have trapped the waters of small streams to form the shallow Loch Strathbeg. In Charles Gibbon’s time there were 1,600 people living in the scattered farmsteads and 500 in the village of St. Combs on the north coast, which had 15 fishing vessels. The medieval church had been in the village, but in 1609 a new one was built two miles inland. Within two hundred years this building had become a ruin. The present church was built close by in 1787.
An 1832 map by John Thomson showing Lonmay, Rathen and Philorth all locations important to the Gibbons (10.4)
Lonmay Church as it is now. The church has been rebuilt since Charles Gibbon’s time.
There is a full account of the parish, written by Charles Gibbon, in the Aberdeenshire volume of the New Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1845. The recent improvements in agriculture are described in detail. The soil was being enriched by bone-dust and by seaweed mixed with compost. Much land had been reclaimed from bog and waste and Charles himself had recovered two acres of glebe from whins and moorland. Land had been further improved by deep trench ploughing with teams of four horses or oxen. In the past forty years, strong draught horses had replaced the old dwarfish animals, so that only two were needed for the new plough designs instead of six. New livestock strains had also been introduced. An unsuccessful attempt had been made in 1790 to drain the Loch at Strathbeg. Charles Gibbon commented that it was unlikely that any proprietor of taste would choose to part with a natural object of considerable interest in the landscape, as well as a source of many days of summer amusement in sailing and fishing. We can guess how much the minister and his children enjoyed the loch, which came to within a mile of the manse. In spite of the improvements in agriculture, life for the workers was getting harder. The New Statistical Account continues saying that ‘the habits of the people are quiet, orderly and industrious. Their meals are frugal in the extreme, with no meat except fish occasionally (usually skate), and a fat ox at the approach of autumn, shared between three or four families. Even this diet is getting harder to procure owing to the depression in agriculture’. Poverty had increased alarmingly, and great exertions were needed to provide voluntary relief for the sick poor, the aged, and the unemployed females. In spite of all this, poor people continued to appear in church in decent clothes and to give their children a Christian education. In 1810 there had been only one school in the parish, with 48 scholars, but in 1840 there were three parish schools and three private schools, with a total of 248 scholars. Gordon had built the school at St. Combs and another had
CH 10 : CHARLES GIBBON & ANN DUFF 147
been built at Kininmonth. At the parish schools the subjects taught were Latin, mathematics, geography, arithmetic, English writing and English reading. The fees paid each quarter ranged from six shillings for mathematics and five for Latin to three for writing and two for reading. Charles Gibbon considered that the people were as well-informed as they could be given their situation, and attentive to their religious and moral duties. The greatest danger to their wellbeing lay in the excise laws, which discouraged the making of home-dried malt liquors, while more intoxicating distilled spirit was sold at a cheap rate. Evening meetings led to gossip, tippling and thriftless and improper habits. (Geoffrey Gibbon thought that those evenings of tipple and gossip were about the only diversions in lives that would be to us extremely hard and monotonous). The older cottages at St. Combs were stone cabins, single storey, closely packed, dismal even on a bright summer day. It was fortunate that fuel was cheap, with peat cut in the parish. Perhaps the two great days in the year were the spring and autumn fairs, when cattle and sheep were sold, farm servants were hired, and there was plenty of fun. Charles Gibbon considered that the booths for the sale of spirits should be removed at sunset, when the fun was beginning. To the Minister and his elders and to the faithful generally, the great day of the year was the Communion Sunday, when 800 people would assemble in Lonmay church. From the outside it seems impossible that the church could hold so many, for it is a small rectangular building, like an old-fashioned schoolroom or village hall. Inside, however, it is impressive. Midway on one long wall is the high pulpit, and below it a dais with the Communion Table. Round the dais on three sides are pews closely packed, and above them three galleries with more pews. It is the standard pattern of a late 18th century kirk, with the people grouped round the minister instead of stretching away from him. In the mid-19th century there was a much bigger attendance at church than now, though the fisherfolk of St. Combs had to walk two miles each way and some farm workers came four or five miles. In 1836 people living in the south end of the parish petitioned the Presbytery for a church of their own, and one was built at Kininmonth and a resident preacher provided. Seats in the parish church were allocated and pew rents were given to the Poor Fund. Some landlords most improperly charged their tenants a small additional rent for seats in church. Lonmay is tucked away in a remote corner, but even in 1840 it was not cut off from the outside world. Two turnpike roads cut through the parish within a mile or so of the manse, one from Aberdeen and Mintlaw to Fraserburgh and the other from Peterhead to Fraserburgh and Banff. There was a daily mail- coach service between Fraserburgh and Aberdeen and the South, and three coaches a week ran between Peterhead and Banff by way of Mintlaw. Letters and newspapers for Lonmay were dropped at Cortiebrae, a mile and a half from the manse. Charles Gibbon came to Lonmay as a 21-year-old bachelor. Three years later, in 1813, he married Ann Duff in her father’s church of King Edward parish, midway between Banff and Turriff. Robert, Ann’s father, had been minister of King Edward for nearly fifty years (see Chapter 2). His father William Duff, who had held the living before him, was the natural son of William, Lord Braco. Charles and Ann began their married life in the old manse of Lonmay, living there until 1824 when the present house was built. In 1840 Charles wrote slightingly that this new house had already undergone some overhauling and would probably require more, as is common with cheap manses. Today it looks well and solidly built: a typical Scots house of the 19th century, with a bay window each side of the front door, three plain windows on the first floor, and two bow-fronted dormers to light the attics. Inside, the rooms are of good size, with low ceilings that make for warmth and comfort. At the back of the house is an extension of later date. The house and garden are surrounded by a belt of trees that give protection from the bitter winds. On the other side of the road is the long stone wall of the Cairness estate, with a gate near the Manse which the laird used when he came to church and the minister when he visited the Big House. Cairness is indeed a big house, built of white granite. The long front is severely plain but for a small pillared portico set on a wide flight of steps. At the back a high semi-circular wall projects from the house, enclosing the service courtyard. Inside, the great hall and two main reception rooms are decorated in the Greek manner, and there is a smaller Egyptian room, but the most attractive room is the library with its glass-fronted shelves, where we can imagine the laird and the minister discussing Greek antiquities in their armchairs before a blazing fire.
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Ann Duff who married Charles Gibbon. The whereabouts of the original portrait is unknown. The Rev Charles Gibbon.
During his early years at Lonmay, Charles could have seen little of Thomas Gordon. Between 1810 and 1812 Thomas was travelling in European and Asiatic Turkey; in 1813 he was serving as a staff officer in the Russian army; in 1816 he was living in Constantinople, where he married a Greek-Armenian lady, Barbara Kana. There is a letter in the Aberdeen University archives from Charles to Thomas addressed c/o the H. M. Consul of Wallachia and Moldavia at Bucharest3. The writing is in two directions, at right angles, on the same page in order to save paper, a common practice in those times. There are several other letters between the two in the archives. In 1821-22 Thomas Gordon was serving in the Greek war of independence, and he returned to Greece in 1827 with the rank of general to command an expedition to the Piraeus. After three years he returned to Lonmay and wrote a two-volume History of the Greek Revolution, a copy of which he gave to Charles; then from 1833 to 1836 he was again in Greece on military duty. As a soldier he was a Knight of St. John and a Grand Commander of the Greek Order of the Saviour, and as an archaeologist he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. At Cairness he had a valuable library and an important collection of antiquities. Charles had a collection of ancient coins that the General had given him and a finely engraved book by which to identify them. He made a box for the coins containing three trays, with a little compartment for each specimen, each coin wrapped in a paper giving its description. General Gordon brought back from the East a Turkish servant, ‘John Turk’, who was well known in the Lonmay countryside. A full-length portrait of him hung in Cairness House, and Charles had a smaller portrait of him which Geoffrey Gibbon remembered seeing in a battered state in his home at Barnet, London. General Gordon died in Lonmay in 1841 at the age of 53. He had no legitimate children, and Cairness passed to his natural son, Wilkinson Gordon, who sold his father’s antiquities and library. In the Gordon of Cairness papers in the Aberdeen University Archives there is a copy of a photograph of Charles as an elderly man in a top hat.
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Of Charles’ other friends we know less. The second great landowner in the parish, Sir Charles Bannerman of Crimonmogate, was, Geoffrey Gibbon believed, an Episcopalian. Relations with him must have been cordial, for Charles had a portrait of him at the Manse. With Mr Busfield, the Episcopalian minister of Lonmay, Charles was on very good terms, and his two daughters were great favourites, two landscapes painted by them hung in the manse. Poor Mr Busfield must have had a hard life, for his income came largely or entirely from pew rents, and there were only 33 Episcopalian families in the parish as against the 336 of the Established Church. The Episcopal church, now closed, is in the Early English style with a high-pitched roof, and stands among trees opposite the entrance to Cairness. Apart from the Episcopalians there was one solitary Papist, and three Seceding families who attended services outside Lonmay. There were few Dissenters in the parish when the Church split in 1843 over the issue of patronage and freedom from the state although nearly one third of Ministers and congregations left the Church. While the Disruption did not affect the Lonmay congregation, a Free Church was built at Rathen East, just over the border. Charles was certainly no opponent of patronage, having benefited so well from the system. He co-authored a pamphlet for the Assembly in 1840 basically supporting the existing system8 thus hastening the church Disruption to come three years later. Among neighbouring ministers, Charles had two special friends: his wife’s cousin Robert Douglas of Ellon, whose mother was a Duff; and John Imray of Longside, who had been his contemporary at Marischal College. In days when many sermons were printed, Charles published only one, an appeal on behalf of distressed fishermen, but he spoke to great effect in the General Assembly of 1836, when he carried a motion establishing a Supplementary Orphan Fund and was appointed its first Convener. He spoke of the plight of his sister-in-law Grace Duff, after the death of her father in 1825. By 1869 Charles was Father of the Aberdeen Synod, as his father-in-law had been of the Moray synod, and like the latter he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Divinity. He was now 80, and had an assistant, Alexander Grant, to help him. He could well afford this, for his elder brother Alexander had left him something over £10,000 (see Chapter 9) making him an extremely rich man by today’s standards. Perhaps it was this legacy which moved him to the unusual extravagance of buying Macaulay’s history in the 8-volume cabinet edition of 1862, finely bound in fur of calf. A friend asked him why he bought such expensive books, and he replied: ‘They’ll look well in the sale,’ But he did not buy for show: he read the Macaulay and, as was his custom, wrote observations in the margins, some of them pungent. He read widely, and built up a large and varied library. It included the volumes of the antiquarian Spalding Club, of which he and Sir Robert Turing were members; eight volumes folio of St Augustine’s works; a Dutch edition of Boethius dated 1671, with fine engravings and its original vellum binding, which Geoffrey Gibbon bought for two shillings in an Aberdeen bookshop in the 1920s; a collection of venomous tracts against the corruption of the Church of England, bound together to form The Parson’s Hornbook, which Charles bought as late as 1860; and the Autobiography of Dr Alexander Carlyle, the 18th century Moderate who may well have been a man after Charles’ own heart. Geoffrey Gibbon had a Metrical Psalter, published in London in 1834, which Charles gave to his sister-in-law Grace Duff. When Charles died he left £2,500 to each of his sons, £1,000 each to his two surviving daughters, and £100 to be invested to relieve two poor persons in Lonmay not receiving aid from poor funds. Portraits of himself with his wife and/or his children were to be divided among the family. Each child might choose books from the library and the rest were sold - but not Macaulay, which passed to my grandfather and to my father and to me. Other relics of the Manse were brought south: the grandfather clock by James Howden of Edinburgh; an unusually long writing bureau with a finely grained opening flap; an interesting cupboard that used to stand on the bureau, topped with a kind of pediment formed by two great wooden scrolls; a violin, which was repaired and restrung for my brother Hubert in 1912; a set of ivory chessmen in a mahogany teacaddy - tradition said that Charles used the caddy as a tobacco box; and a fine silver teapot, inscribed with Persian characters, with its cream jug and sugar basin (see Box 1.3). Charles Gibbon's grandfather clock which descended down through the family and is currently owned by Robin Gibbon in Essex. It was made by James Howden of Edinburgh.
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The census of 2 April 1871 finds Mary Ann Gibbon, Charles’ daughter in law and her six children occupying the manse at Lonmay – the Rev. Charles had died in February and they were probably clearing the house. The same census finds husband Charles William a visitor at the house of a Senior Clerk at the Board of Trade. In memory of Charles, his eldest son gave three silver Communion salvers to Lonmay church in 1871 to replace the old plate of pewter. In the centre of the old churchyard at Lonmay by the side of the manse a stone arch was built, shaped like the gable end of a porch, in which were set two tablets of white marble inscribed with the names of Charles and Ann and their nine children. As happened frequently, there are some discrepancies between the dates given there and those which appeared in the Family Bible. Charles’ two immediate successors at Lonmay remained only a short time, but James Forrest, appointed in 1878 at the age of 35, was minister till 1914. He was a good Hebrew scholar, and a keen antiquarian and ethnologist. He published books on the Buchan dialect and was President of the Buchan Field Club. Through his friendship our family retained their link with Lonmay well into the 20th century, and my father and mother visited him in 1910. Between 1814 and 1837 nine children were born to Charles and Ann. Two of them, Thomas Gordon and Robina Cummine, died in infancy, and another, Amelia, at the age of 14. Three were baptized by their grandfather, Dr Duff, who was over 80 when he made his last journey from King Edward, twenty odd miles away. Two were baptized by Robert Douglas of Ellon and others by the ministers of Longside (Mr Grieg), Old Deer, Rathen and St. Fergus. Robina was born at Kininmonth House, in the south of the parish, in 1824, when the manse was being rebuilt. It is interesting that Charles did not baptize his own children. It would have been in accordance with custom to have the service of baptism in the manse rather than in the church. There was a tradition, which may or may not be true, that a punchbowl displayed in a china cabinet at Barnet had been used as a font. Charles’ wife Ann Duff died in 1867 at the age of 80, after 54 years of married life. It must have been in the following year that his eldest son, my grandfather, failed in business and sent his wife and children to Lonmay for a year while he tried to straighten out his affairs. The journey was not too difficult, for the Buchan and Formartine Railway Company, a part of the later Great North of Scotland system, had built a branch line from Maud to Fraserburgh which passed through Lonmay and gave a connection with Aberdeen and the south. The children enjoyed the change from Islington: Milly (Amelia Grace Gibbon, born in 1860) used to say that it was the happiest year of her life, and my father remembered how he used to go on Sunday afternoons to the Episcopalian church and sit in the choir with a tune book lent by a chorister. He could not read it, but he felt great. The choir and organ and the varied music of the Episcopal service made it much more attractive to a small boy than his grandfather’s church, where the congregation had to sit almost silent through a service of one and a half hours or more. In those days the Protestant Sunday service began with a metrical psalm, a long extempore prayer, a Bible reading and a second psalm. Then came a sermon of maybe 45 minutes, another long prayer, a concluding psalm and the benediction. The psalms were sung without accompaniment, led by the clerk. By 1860 a revival movement had reached Aberdeen and the fishing villages, causing a demand for hymns in which the people could express their faith, but I doubt if this influenced the Lonmay services in Charles’ time. Today things are very different: there is a choir and an organ, and four hymns and one psalm are sung in the service, which might last only 50 minutes.’ An interesting snippet appeared in the Annals of Banff2 from a letter written in February 1821 by an anonymous lady: I am told there was rather a strange sermon preached at Banff last Sunday by Gibbon, Lonmay. He prayed for the Queen, and said a long story about the ladies being so fond of dress, and the men were bad, but women were worse. Lord Fife, it is said, was very angry, and said he would not subscribe again to Allardyce for permitting Gibbon to preach. The Queen was the mad, scandalous Queen Caroline, estranged wife of the equally scandalous Prince of Wales who was crowned George IV in April 1821. Unfortunately for Charles Gibbon, Lord Fife was a personal friend and roistering companion of the Prince of Wales. When George IV died The Times wrote: There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creature than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved?
CH 10 : CHARLES GIBBON & ANN DUFF 151
Four years before his ninth child was born, Charles’ second daughter Maria was married at the age of 17 to Major-General Christopher Fagan (see Box 10.1), formerly Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army, who was aged 57. Family legend has it that Charles Gibbon had Maria confined to her room and fed only bread and water when she showed some reluctance to the marriage. Such an age difference was not uncommon, especially for Indian soldiers marrying again, but it would be interesting to know the full circumstances here. Eighteen months later she had a daughter, also Maria, born in Paris, but in 1847 the mother died and daughter Maria was placed under the guardianship of her uncle Alexander Gibbon (born 1780) of Staunton in Gloucestershire (see Chapter 9). Geoffrey Gibbon thought that ‘to judge from her portrait (see opposite page), Maria, the mother, was a beautiful woman, with dark hair, fine eyes, gently smiling lips and a not too stern Roman nose’. Another, fictional, Rev. Gibbon featured in Sunset Song, the first part of the fictional trilogy A Scots Quair, by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, published in 19327. Lewis Grassic Gibbon was a pseudonym although the writer’s mother was called Grassic Gibbon, one of the many Gibbons from Echt Parish to the east of Aberdeen. Both the Aberdeen and the Stonehaven Gibbons may well have come from Echt originally, around the beginning of the 17th Century so there may well be a stray gene in common. The Gibbon Memorial in Lonmay Churchyard; One of the authors examining the memorial to her great grandfather’s family at Lonmay.
LONMAY PARISH MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS In memory of rev. Charles Gibbon DD minister of Lonmay for nearly 61 years, born 20 November 1789, died 5 February 1871 and buried here beside his wife Ann Duff born 17 November 1787, died 11 December 1867. She was eldest daughter of Rev. Robert Duff DD Minister of King Edward and of Janet Turing his wife. Robert Turing Gibbon, 3rd son, born 1827 died Aberdeen 10 August 1895. Charles William Gibbon eldest son born 13 September 1820, died 30 August 1899, Sir William Duff Gibbon Kt, youngest son, born 22 July 1837, died 19 March 1919 (R.S.). Their children Thomas born 25 March 1818, died August 1818, Robina born 16 March 1824, died 28 November 1825. Amelia Ann Turing, born 8 September 1822, died about 15 June 1836 were buried here. Maria Gibbon, wife of Major General Christopher Fagan H.E.I.C.S., born 2 December 1814, died 5 November 1847 buried beside her husband at Pau in France. Jessie, wife of Sir Edward Eyre Williams, born 29 August 1815, died 13 November 1913, Annie Grace, wife of Robert Boyd Tytler, born 18 January 1829, died 23 October 1904. (Some inaccuracies with dates of children between gravestone and Family Bible)
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BOX 10.1
CHRISTOPHER FAGAN Christopher Fagan was born in 1776 in the Canary Isles, where his father, Captain Robert Fagan, was a merchant after retiring from the British Army in North America. Christopher was related to a prolific family of landed Fagans, from Feltrim in Ireland, who produced many British Army officers. Christopher joined the Army and became a Lieutenant in the 1st Bengal European Regiment and then Adjutant of the 1st Native Infantry4. In 1801 he took part in an expedition to Egypt to assist in the expulsion of the French. The force included a high proportion of native Indian troops. The expedition was successful and the French were expelled from Egypt after a heavy defeat at Alexandria. Christopher was then appointed Agent for transports on the Nile, and later Deputy Judge Adjutant General in Alexandria. He next served two generals in India as Aide de Camp or Secretary before becoming Captain in the 19th Native Infantry. In 1810 he volunteered to take part in the expedition to Mauritius, which was captured from the French after having been a thorn in the flesh of the East India Company for many years. Christopher subsequently became Captain in the 2nd Bengal Volunteer Battalion, and later Judge Adjutant General, before being appointed Lieutenant Colonel. In 1816 he took extended leave in Britain because of ill health, but he returned to the 2/19th Native Infantry in command of Malwa. Finally he became a Brigadier commanding various Native Infantry units, before retiring in 1832 after nearly three years’ leave. Christopher Fagan married three times: first in 1803, in London, to Mary Elizabeth Fagan, a full cousin from Kitallah, Ireland, who died in 1805; second, in 1807, in Calcutta, to Eliza Lawtie, the daughter of a Bengal Army officer from Banffshire who became a merchant in Calcutta. Eliza died in 1824, having produced seven children, the majority of whom lived to adulthood. Christopher’s third wife was Maria Sophia Gibbon, whom he married in 1833 at Lonmay. By then he had retired from the army, and they seem to have gone to live in France: their daughter Maria was born in Paris in 1834. In a letter8 of June 1839 to his friend Dr Lee, Principal of Edinburgh University, Charles Gibbon wrote that he had just said goodbye to the Fagans and they intended to head for ‘Frankfurt and Reisengen where they will pass the summer months and towards the fall of the leaf will cross the Alps and winter in Naples. I am indeed very anxious as to the result but I commit her to His care’. Christopher and Maria later lived in Pau in the Pyrenees where they both died, Christopher in 1845 and Maria, in 1847. Pau became increasingly popular after the Duke of Wellington established a garrison there in 18145,6. It became one of several spa towns popular with the British, especially during the winters, which are surprisingly mild. A large number went there for their health, many having some form of tuberculosis, which in 1838 was responsible for a sixth of all deaths in England and Wales. We do not know what the Fagans died from. They were in Pau at the same time as Elizabeth Smith née Grant from Rothiemurchus, but she makes no mention of them in her diaries as she endeavoured to keep her distance from the British community of about 400 people. She had gone with her sick sister, who died in France, partly to save money as it was possible ‘ to adopt a simpler life without losing caste’. One observer of the time said ‘the little English Colony pass their time in hunting and going three times a week to the bank varied by the occasional dance at the Casino and a mild afternoon tea party’. There is no mention of how or where Christopher Fagan’s earlier children were brought up, although one son was killed in action during the Mutiny. Maria does not seem to have assumed the role of stepmother. (L-R) Christopher Fagan; Maria Gibbon; A sketch of Pau in France made around 1845 when the Fagans were living there. Christopher died there in 1845 and Maria in 1847.
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Melbourne 1839 (11.1)
CHAPTER 11
JESSIE GIBBON AND EDWARD EYRE WILLIAMS Jessie, born in 1814, was the eldest child of the Rev. Charles Gibbon and Ann Duff. The first reference we have for her is in Paris in 1833, when she had her portrait painted by the fashionable artist ClaudeMarie Dubufe. Her sister Maria married Christopher Fagan at Lonmay earlier the same year. If they went directly to Paris, Jessie may have accompanied them. Later she was at Lake Como in Italy, where she is said to have been proposed to by an English barrister, Edward Eyre Williams, whom she married in London in 1841. He was born in England in 1813, the sixth son of Burton Williams, a planter of Trinidad, West Indies, and his wife Jane Hartley18. Between 1821 and 1823 slavery was abolished in the Bahamas, earlier than in Trinidad. Burton Williams moved 336 of his 450 enslaved people from the Bahamas to Trinidad, where he had bought land to set up sugar plantations for himself and his sons. This allowed him to exploit slavery for many more years.
Portrait of Jessie Gibbon painted in Paris by Claude-Marie Dubufe, entitled Is he Thinking of Me? An interesting question is who paid for the portrait? A Dubufe portrait would not have come cheap given that many of his subjects were royalty and aristocrats (11.2)
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CHART 11: GIBBON / WILLIAMS
SEE CHART 10 Jessie Gibbon 1814 - 1903 - M 1841 -
Edward Eyre Williams 1813 -1880 [Judge in Australia]
Edward Williams 1842 - 1916
Hartley Williams 1843 - 1929
[Colonel, British Army]
[Judge]
- M 1886 -
- M1 -
Edith Ellen Horne 1851 - 1885
Harriet Ingram 1846 - 1939
- M2 1887 -
Jessie Bruce Lawford 1849 - 1933
Hartley Eyre Williams 1871 - 1933
Edith Ethel Williams 1873 - 1945
[Lawyer & Proof Reader]
- M 1896 -
William Pomeroy Greene 1866 - 1934 [Grazier]
George Herbert Williams 1875 - 1957
Edward Ernest Williams 1875 - 1915
Muriel Maud Williams 1880 - 1936 - M1 1902 -
[Lawyer]
[Major, British Army]
- M 1922 -
- M 1908 -
Ellen Maud O’Loghlen 1874 - 1960
Josephine Mary Stockinger 1882 - 1971
Edgar Eyre Williams 1881 - 1882
Walter Oswald Watt 1878 - 1921 [Grazier] - M2 1914 -
Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford 1865 - 1953 [General, British Army]
Roy Bruce Williams 1888 - 1972 [Tea Commissioner] - M 1923 -
Annette Flora Barton 1896 - 1986
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Jessie Lillian Williams 1890 - 1972 - M 1913 -
William Henry Miles 1898 - 1975 [Businessman, London]
Annie Grace Williams 1845 - 1936
Jessie Williams 1848 - 1872
- M 1866 -
Frederick Langloh Parker 1838 - 1892 [Grazier]
Frederick William Parker 1867 - 1954
Hubert Charles Parker 1870 - 1939
[Grazier]
[Grazier]
- M 1893 -
- M 1903 -
Grace Gertrude Crouch 1863 - 1956
Edith Morrison Brown 1872 - 1966
Edward Eyre Parker 1874 - 1885
Jessie Eleanor Parker 1877 - 1952
Katherine Langloh Parker 1885 - 1977
- M 1902 -
- M 1910 -
Robert Gilbert King 1868 - 1935
Keith George Edward Brougham 1883 - 1967
[Orchardist]
[Grazier]
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When slavery was eventually abolished in Trinidad in 1836, Edward Eyre Williams was awarded compensation from the British Government. This was for 26 enslaved people and for the plantation of Savanna Grande in Trinidad. He was co-trustee with his uncle Robert Gwilt, on behalf of Richard Burton Williams, his lunatic brother1,2. He also apparently received compensation on his own account for 38 slaves, receiving £1,828 17s 8d the equivalent of about £180,000 at present values based on inflation, or many times higher if based on other indices. Table 11.4 shows the list of slaves submitted by Edward Eyre Williams to the British Government. The top line starts: Sam Samuel, Negro, Labourer, Age 29, Height 5ft 7 ½, Creole of the Bahamas, No marks, Acquired. Edward was called to the Bar of the Inner Temple in 1833 and practised law in London3,4,5. After their wedding, Jessie and Edward sailed for Australia, arriving on 13 February 1842 at Melbourne, having disembarked at Port Phillip nearby. Edward toyed with the idea of squatting, i.e. occupying an area of outback, thus creating ownership, but he was persuaded instead to practise his profession. The artist Georgina McRae22, the illegitimate, but fully acknowledged, daughter of the 5th Duke of Gordon and niece of Dr Alexander Morison (Chapter 19), wrote: May 15th 1842. Mr and Mrs Eyre Williams and Mr Baker (a barrister) came to see us. Mr Baker about to sell off, even his law books, and return at once to England. At this time Mr Eyre Williams was intending to become a ‘squatter’, but Mr McCrae advised him to buy all Mr Baker’s books, and to practise his profession. Mr Eyre Williams at once decided to do so. Edward may still have been undecided, at this point, but he had already made moves towards the legal profession. On 30 March he had been admitted to the Colonial Bar. At his initial court appearance on 7 April, Edward had ‘acquitted himself in a manner to establish his credit as a quick examiner and a self-possessed speaker’. Early in his career he appeared for the defendant in several libel cases. He became known for ‘a spasmodic style of address - something of a melodious bark’. He first lived at Brunswick Street, Fitzroy; then in 1846 he paid £1,450 for a large plot of land in what is now South Yarra, built a mansion of local mudstone, and named it Como House after Lake Como in Italy, the scene of his proposal. The elegant house held ‘entertainments’ in keeping with the profile of its occupants, whose list of acquaintances included the names of those who defined Melbourne during the mid-19th Century – names like Charles La Trobe, William Lonsdale and Redmond Barry21. In 1852 Edward and Jessie sold Como House for £4,500. A year later it was sold for £12,000, showing how Melbourne was booming. The Williams moved to another house in South Yarra and then to the St Kilda district.
Como House, Melbourne in the 1850s, and at present (11.3)
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In order to claim compensation for owning slaves, owners were obliged to submit lists of their slaves. This is one of the lists submitted in 1828 on behalf of Edward Eyre Williams: harrowing reading for present-day eyes (11.4)
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Edward became a prominent figure among the influential circles of early Melbourne and Port Phillip society6,7. In the 1840s he was active in community affairs and ‘his portly figure was frequently to be seen whenever any question affecting public welfare required a strong helping push’. In 1844 he was appointed a member of the Bourke District Council and was made a trustee of the Port Phillip Savings Bank. He was on the committee of the Mechanics’ Institute and in 1845-46 was active in setting up the Melbourne Hospital, becoming a member of its first committee of management in 1847. In 1846 Edward became a founding member of the St George’s Club. He spoke against transportation of prisoners at a public meeting in 1847. A keen Anglican, he was a founding member of the Diocesan Society from 1848, and later supported the establishment of a sabbath observance association. Edward Eyre Williams (11.5)
Views of early Melbourne 1839-41 by William Liardet, a Swiss who settled there and produced a book of paintings20 (11.6)
In 1851 Edward was appointed chief commissioner of insolvent estates, commissioner of the Court of Requests for the City of Melbourne and County of Bourke, and chairman of Quarter Sessions. The following year he was appointed solicitor-general, entitled to a non-elective seat in the Legislative Council. Later that year he became second puisne (junior) judge of the Supreme Court, a role in which he proved both capable and reliable. Much of his time was spent on circuit and he gained a reputation for disposing of his work speedily to maintain a tight schedule of travel, sometimes keeping the court sitting until 2am. For example, Edward presided over the trial of three criminals who had stolen gold being transported from the gold fields to Melbourne (see Chapter 24) and the newspaper reports show that he kept the court sitting late. Despite this, he was accused by some of lacking the industry of his colleagues, Edward was for many years in delicate health. In 1859 he took two years’ leave of absence, travelling to England via Sydney. Edward was knighted in 1878. He and Jessie retired to England, where he died at Bath, aged 66, in 1880, leaving probate of £6,650.
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Hobson's Bay at Melbourne in 1853. Gold had been discovered in Victoria and ships arriving at Port Phillip were abandoned as whole crews deserted, or left their ships, to head for the gold fields. The scene here shows some of the possibly hundreds of ships lying empty (11.7)
There are many brief mentions of Jessie during her life in early Melbourne. For example, she is described in a recent account by Gilmour21, who quotes from Georgina McCrae’s diary already mentioned above: ‘Mrs Eyre Williams came in Kirk’s phaeton, and I took her to call on Mrs La Trobe, Mrs Lonsdale and Mrs Myer, and left cards for Mrs Kemmis’. As Gilmour also says, ‘with its frequent references to musical suppers, tea parties and dining, Georgiana’s diary created a portrait of a coterie of cultivated women maintaining a semblance of elegance in muddy, pre-marvellous Melbourne’. Jessie died at Bath in 1903, aged 88. Edward and Jessie had four children. The eldest, Edward Eyre Williams, born at Melbourne in 1842, joined the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Kings Liverpool Regiment in England as an ensign. He remained with this regiment for much of his military life, eventually commanding the 1st Battalion. In 1886 he was promoted from Lieut. Colonel to Colonel, but then spent some years on half pay. In 1892 he was given command of the 8th and 40th Regimental Districts, including various Volunteer and Militia Battalions from Liverpool and South Lancashire. The Cheshire Observer approved of his appointment, calling him ‘a very smart officer’. He seems to have taken a keen interest in the training of volunteers, saying in a speech that year how important volunteers were, given how easily a continental war could break out, as it did a little over two decades later. Edward retired in 1899 and died in 1916, leaving no children. In 1886 Edward had married Harriet Ingram, one of five daughters of Ann Little and Herbert Ingram, the Member of Parliament for Boston, Lincolnshire. Herbert started from a lowly beginning, becoming a printer. It was only when in 1842 he purchased the rights to a laxative, Parr’s Life Pills, that he accumulated enough money to start his newspaper with illustrations, the Illustrated London News. This was an immediate financial success5. One of Ann’s grandsons was the famous ‘Cherry Ingram’ who saved Japan’s cherry tree varieties from extinction.
Georgina McCrae, friend of Jessie Williams (11.8); Herbert Ingram MP founder of the Illustrated London News in 1842 (11.9)
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After Herbert Ingram's death in 1860, Ann married industrialist Sir Edward William Watkin (briefly described below). She died in 1897. An item in the Morning Post of 12 March 1897 says: Dame Ann Watkin leaves money to her five daughters including Harriet Eyre Williams. She was the wife of Sir Edward William Watkin and widow of Mr Herbert Ingram founder of the Illustrated London News in which Lady Watkin had a very large interest being the registered holder of shares for £75,000 in addition to shares for £37,000 standing in the names of her five daughters. Unfortunately, the rich widow Harriet was targeted by fraudsters who relieved her of a large sum of money. This resulted in a celebrated court case in 1935, at the end of which the three fraudsters were condemned to various terms of imprisonment and penal servitude. Harriet died in 1939. Three months later The Times of 27 January 1940 carried the following snippet: First Edition of ‘Jane Eyre’ A copy of the first edition of ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte (3 vols 1847) was sold for 100 guineas yesterday at Knight, Frank and Rutley’s to Mr E. Joseph. The volume was discovered among the property of the late Mrs Harriet Eyre Williams of Thurloe Place, S.W. This was the first time for a number of years that a first edition of ‘Jane Eyre’ had been in the London market. Edward William Watkin, mentioned above, who had married Harriet Eyre Williams’ mother, aged 80 (for her money, said her family who refused to attend the wedding), was an extraordinary character. He was an MP and railway magnate with many great engineering achievements to his name. Among his less successful projects were attempts to build a channel tunnel, which was progressing well but was blocked on the grounds of national security, and to build a rival to the Arc de Triomphe at Wembley in London in order to encourage passengers on to his railway line. He made a trip to India and was asked to make suggestions for better governance, which he included in a book called India: A Few Pages About It in which he, an industrial magnate, repeatedly points out how inefficient private companies are when they are relied on to provide public infrastructure - a lesson unfortunately lost to present-day Britain. As a politician Edward Watkin was a Liberal and ahead of his time, consistently in favour of electoral reform and the extension of the franchise to working people and to women. He had progressive views about Ireland and was an important figure in achieving a cross-continental railway in Canada, paving the way for the unity of the provinces.
Cartoon of Sir Edward William Watkin printed in Vanity Fair (11.10) The rival Arc de Triomphe at Wembley, London. This was all that was completed before the project ran into financial difficulties.
The second son of Edward and Jessie was Hartley Williams, born at Fitzroy, Port Phillip in 1843. Like his father he became a Judge. His career is shown in Box 11.1. He married Edith Horne, the daughter of George Horne, who is described as Commissary General and was initially based in Tasmania. This was not a military post: he was employed by the Treasury to supply provisions and other requirements for the troops and convicts of Australia. Edith died in 1885. In 1887 Hartley married his London cousin Jessie Bruce Lawford, eldest daughter of the late Thomas Acland Lawford and Janet Turing Bruce. Jessie was related to the same Turings as the Gibbons and Duffs, her great grandfather being Alexander Turing, born in 1702 (Chapter 1). There was a son and a daughter by the second marriage.
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Hartley’s eldest child by his first wife was Hartley Williams, born in 1871. Like his father and grandfather, he also became a lawyer, setting up a legal business in several towns in Victoria before moving to Perth, Western Australia. He died unmarried in 1933 and The Daily News (Perth) of 25 Sept 1933 said: The death of Hartley Eyre Williams removes one who, in the days of the gold boom, was a prominent mining lawyer on the fields and who later filled in a good many years as proof-reader on The Daily News. A capable craftsman and a kindly soul, he was known to his familiars as ‘Anyhow’ because of his philosophic use of the word in summing up disconcerting problems.
Sir Bryan O'Loghlen
Hartley and Edith’s second child, Edith Ethel Williams, born in 1873, married in 1896 William Pomeroy Greene, a local pastoralist (or farmer) and stockbroker. William was the son of the famous pastoralist Molesworth Richard Greene who in 1842 had arrived at Melbourne, aged 15, on a ship which his father had chartered for his household, hunters, two race-horses, two bulls and a cow, a library and a prefabricated house. Molesworth8 built up a huge agricultural empire over his lifetime, as did his son William. The wedding of Edith and William, as reported in the local newspapers, was a grand affair as befitted such a society wedding, with the usual long list of expensive wedding presents being William Pomeroy published as well as gushing descriptions of the wedding ceremony. Edith and William Greene had no children. William died in 1934, (Edith in 1945) leaving an estate of £200,900. The third child of Hartley and Edith was George Herbert Williams, born in January 1875, and known as ‘Tupp’. In his early career he worked with his father and in 1918 he was appointed as assistant to the new Chief Justice at a salary of £250 per year (the Chief Justice received £3,000). He was still in this job in 1922 when he married Ella Maud O’Loghlen after an almost four-yearlong engagement. She was one of a family of ten, the daughter of Sir Bryan O’Loghlen17 originally from Drumcora, County Clare in Ireland, a prominent lawyer and politician in Melbourne. George died in 1957 and Ella in 1960.
The fourth child was Edward Ernest Williams, born in 1875. He joined the Army in 1896 as a volunteer, or a ‘Gentleman Cadet’, before becoming a Second Lieutenant in the Northumberland Fusiliers and Captain in 1900. From 1889 he was a member of the West African Frontier Force9 (Box 11.2), serving in Northern Nigeria in the Kaduna Expedition, the Kano-Soto Campaign and the Okpotos Campaign, and commanding the Sura Expedition. He was mentioned in Despatches and awarded the DSO for his actions during the Bassa Campaign against the Okpotos. The citation says that it was awarded ‘for work done by punitive expeditions’. After a further period in Nigeria, Edward returned to Britain to undertake the training of the 8th Service Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers, recruited at the outbreak of World War One. In July 1915 Edward, now a Major and in Edward Ernest Williams charge of a company, was sent with the battalion to Gallipoli, landing on 7 August at Suvla Bay, where he was killed on 16 August. The landing at Suvla was mismanaged from the outset and quickly reached stalemate due to the indecision and inactivity of the Staff. It has been described as ‘one of the most incompetent feats of generalship of the First World War’. The shambles at Gallipoli was brought to the attention of the public and the British Government by several people, most forcibly and effectively by Keith Arthur Murdoch (see Chapter 20), who was close to several important politicians. In 1908 Edward married Josephine Stockinger in London. Her father was the Consul General in London for AustriaHungary and, judging by newspaper reports, the centre of a very influential and lively circle of people. Josephine lived in the south of England and died in 1971 on the Isle of Wight. Map of Suvla Bay. The Northumberland Fusiliers were stationed at the top of the map.
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Edward and Josephine had a son, Edward Eyre Max Williams, born in 1917. He went to the Royal Military College and in 1932 was appointed as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, his father’s old regiment. He was promoted Temporary Major and mentioned in despatches in 1941, and was in Haifa in 1942 for a War Course. He became a Major in 1946 and retired from the Army in 1947. In 1945 he married Margaret Campbell-Orde, née Atkinson. She was the widow of Captain Peter Stewart Campbell-Orde of the 6th Norfolk Regiment, who had the misfortune to land in Singapore in 1942 just before the Japanese invaded. He was wounded, but ironically was killed by a Japanese bomb which hit his hospital just after capitulation by the British. Edward died in 1979 on the Isle of Wight and Margaret in 1998 in Dorset. The next child of Hartley and Edith Williams was Muriel Maud, born in 1880. In 1902, at a splendid society wedding, she married Second Lieutenant Walter Oswald Watt.
Muriel Maud Williams (11.12); Walter Oswald Watt in his French uniform in 1915 (11.13)
Walter, known as Toby, was educated in England before returning to Australia and building up a substantial portfolio of pastoral properties10,11. He first interested himself in aviation in 1911, whilst on a visit to Europe. When war broke out in 1914 Toby happened to be in France, working as a mechanic in Bleriot’s factory to learn the intricacies of aeronautics. Fearing that Britain might not come into the war, he became a pilot in the French Army. He was nominated a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and decorated with the Croix de Guerre with three palms and stars. In 1916 he joined the newly formed Australian Flying Corps and took the 2nd Australian Squadron to France as their squadron commander. During the last phase of the war, he trained pilots for the Australian squadrons. On his return to Australia he returned to life as a wealthy pastoralist, with involvement in various other commercial enterprises. At the age of 43 he was accidentally drowned in the sea near Newport during his regular morning swim. The marriage of Muriel and Toby came to an abrupt end in September 1913 when Muriel was granted a divorce after a celebrated court case.
Watt Williams Divorce: caption from an irreverent article in the New Zealand Truth 28 June 1913.
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The judge was not convinced by Toby’s confession of adultery but eventually granted the divorce, restoring the reputation of the main accused, actress Ivy Schilling. Muriel remarried with remarkable speed, in May the following year, to her sister-in-law’s brother, Sydney Turing Lawford. Born in 1865, an English military officer, he served in the Mounted Infantry in the Boer War and afterwards at the School of Mounted Infantry. During World War One he was Commander of the 22nd Infantry Brigade and then of the newly formed 41st Division from January 1916 until it was demobilised in 1919. In 1916 the Division was sent to the Somme and took part in the battle of Flers-Courcelette, part of the bigger Battle of the Somme, followed by the Battle of Messines and the Battle of Passchendale. The Division was then sent to the Italian front at the end of 1917 before returning to the Western Front early the next year, where it was involved in stemming the German offensive, followed by the Allied offensive which ended the war. After the Armistice the Division joined the Army of Occupation in Germany. Sydney rose to the rank of Major General and was knighted in the field. His nickname of ‘Swanky Sid’ apparently derived from his habit of donning full-dress regalia, including all medals, for every occasion.
(L-R) Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford (11.14); Sydney's medals.
After the Great War, while serving in India as Commandant of Lahore District, Sir Sydney committed the socially unspeakable solecism of falling in love with a fellow officer’s wife, May Somerville Aylen, née Bunny. She gave birth to Sir Sydney’s child, Peter Lawford, the actor. Peter originally bore the name of his mother’s husband and he did not find out his true birth status until he was an adult. Sir Sydney and his amour were driven by the resulting scandal to flee to England, then France and finally America, where they settled in Palm Beach, Florida and then in California. By then they had both divorced their spouses. They became involved in the film industry and both appeared in several movies. Sir Sydney Lawford died in Los Angeles, California in 1953. The first marriage of their son, Peter Lawford, was to socialite Patricia Helen Kennedy, sister of the future President John F. Kennedy.
Peter Lawford the actor, son of Sydney Lawford, with his wife Particia and his brother-in-law President John F. Kennedy (11.15)
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Muriel and Walter (Toby) had a son, James Oswald Watt, born in Australia in 1905. He was educated in England but returned to live in Frankston, Victoria, where he built a house and was, for most of his life, employed as an engineer. In 1933 he married Beverley Rand Jackson, the daughter of a wealthy grazier, and described at the time as a ‘clever amateur actress’. She died in 1961 and James in 1967. Muriel, James’ mother, lived in England but returned frequently to Victoria. She died in 1936 just after making her thirty-first voyage between England and Australia. Watt – Jackson wedding in 1933: On Their Way to the Wedding Breakfast, a somewhat fuzzy photograph from The Argus newspaper.
James Oswald Watt
When his first wife, Edith Horne, died, Hartley Williams married again, in 1887, to Jessie Bruce Lawford, ‘Swanky Sid’s’ sister, and they had two children. The elder, Roy Bruce Williams, born in 1888, spent his early career in Ceylon, where he married Annete Flora Barton, the daughter of a Sydney barrister. They later moved to Sydney, where he was the Australian and New Zealand tea commissioner. When he retired they moved to England where they both died, Roy in 1972 and Annette in 1986. Roy’s sister, Jessie Lillian Williams, was born in London in 1890. She married, in 1913, William Henry Miles, the son of Sir Henry Miles. William became a Captain in the Somerset Light Infantry and fought in the First World War, including in Palestine. He was wounded and was mentioned in despatches. After the war he was involved in banking in the City of London. Like his brother-in-law Roy, he was interested in tea and Ceylon and at one point was the Chairman of the Talawakelle Estates tea company. William died in 1975 and Jessie in 1972, both at Eastbourne, Sussex. They had three children, one of whom, Charles, died when he crashed his Beaufighter during fog in Kent in 1941. Another, Pamela, married William Maxwell Evelyn Denison, who inherited Ossington Hall in Nottinghamshire. His grandfather had been a Governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). He served with the Notts Yeomanry during World War 2 and attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. After his death in 1972 Pamela married Daniel Goedhuis, a distinguished expert in Space Law19. Along with various other Denisons he has a memorial in Ossington Church. Pamela’s sister Lilian married Alan Maby, who was a Captain in the Irish Guards before making a career in the City of London. Going back to Edward Eyre Williams and Jessie Gibbon, their eldest daughter was Annie Grace Williams, born in 1845. In 1866 she married Frederick Langloh Parker, who was born in 1838 in Tasmania into a cattle raising family. His uncle, who had moved to the mainland and made money selling meat during the gold rush, helped establish Frederick and his brothers as pastoralists in their own right. Frederick took over Quiamong Station, near Deniliquin in New South Wales, which he ran until his death in 1892. It became one of the best-known sheep stations in the area 13,14. One historical byway is that Frederick helped to trial the first automatic sheep shearing machines, invented by one of his neighbours, Frederick Wolseley16, whose firm later dominated the market for shearing machines. Frederick Parker was also involved in various other properties in New South Wales over the course of his lifetime. He was once described as ‘ an uncommonly good whip, and good-looking also’.
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During this epic period of Australia’s history, sheep and cattle properties were created by adventurers pushing ever deeper into the interior. Much of the land was squatted on until ownership could be legally established. Properties were bought and sold at a bewildering rate. Droughts and floods made cattle and sheep ranching an uncertain business with frequent bankruptcies and restarts. When times were good, huge wealth was created, leading to a very powerful and wealthy pastoralist lobby with enormous influence6. This is exemplified in the Melbourne Club, started by a group of pastoralists needing somewhere to stay while in town, membership of which quickly became a sign that you had arrived socially. Needless to say, various of the Williams family were members as well as Frederick Parker. For the wealthy pastoralists, when away from their properties, there was a familiar routine of social events, culminating in the Melbourne Cup12.
(ABOVE) An early Wolseley shearing machine head.
(TOP) Shearing the Rams painted by Tom Roberts in 1890. It shows the shearing of sheep using only shears (11.16); (ABOVE) Shearing using Wolseley mechanical shears (11.17)
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Frederick’s brother Langloh Parker was an extraordinary figure from an extraordinary time15. He started life, like Frederick, managing properties for his uncle before branching out on his own. He began to acquire and speculate on various properties in New South Wales and Queensland, juggling mortgages and financial partners, and was a major figure, along with his brother, in the Australian Squattocracy, as it was known. In the 1870’s many Victorian and Riverina squatters and pastoralists began to acquire land in the north west of NSW and Queensland, no doubt being attracted by the huge acreages available to run their increasing numbers of livestock, especially sheep, with flocks at that time reaching hundreds of thousands. This expansion was encouraged by the weather at that time, which unfortunately turned out to be a wet cycle, soon to be followed by dreadful droughts. Like so many pastoralists of that era, Langloh lived on credit. Some, with careful management, properties in different climatic regions, and the luck of good seasons, were able to reduce their debts and eventually acquire full ownership of their stations. A few even became wealthy. Langloh was one of them. He took on the station of Bangate close to the Queensland border, which at that time (1888) comprised 215,408 acres, with nearly 138,000 sheep, plus a number of beef cattle on areas unsuitable for sheep. This enterprise employed only seventeen hands, including house servants. Many stations operated with Aboriginal stockmen only. The animals would be moved to the far distant markets via very long sheep and cattle drives along what were to become designated stock routes, referred to as the ‘long paddock’. Some took seven months or more to arrive. Unlike many of his contemporaries, whose wives lived in town, Langloh took with him to Bangate his new wife Catherine (Katie) Parker née Field, who had grown up in a remote area and insisted on accompanying him in this primitive environment. Katie Parker was a pioneer in taking an interest in Aboriginal culture and became famous for collections of tales and artefacts and for her understanding of the Aboriginals on the Station16. However, for every such wealthy high-profile pastoralist there would be many more individuals out in the interior struggling to make a living as station hands, small property owners or managers. For many it was a hard and uncertain life. Unresolved issues during this period included the role of women, Aboriginal-White relations, and environmental degradation through overgrazing. Frederick and Annie Parker had five children. The eldest, Frederick William Parker, born in 1867, spent his life as a pastoralist, partly at Buckalow Station, near Broken Hill, New South Wales. In 1893 he married Grace Crouch, the daughter of another pastoralist, and they had two daughters. Frederick died in 1954 and Grace in 1956. The next child of Frederick and Annie was Hubert Charles Parker, born in 1870, also a pastoralist or ‘grazier’. In 1903 he married Edith Brown, the daughter of yet another grazier. They lived at Notoura Run, Denilquin, New South Wales. Hubert died in 1939 and Edith in 1966. The third child, Edward Eyre Parker, born in 1874, died young. The fourth child and elder daughter, Jessie Eleanor Parker, born in 1877, married, in 1902, Robert Gilbert King, an ‘orchardist’, or fruit grower, at Beaconsfield, Victoria. He died in 1935 and Jessie in 1952. Jessie’s sister Katherine Langloh Parker, born in 1885, married in 1910 Keith Brougham, a grazier, described in 1944 as a station manager near Broken Hill, New South Wales. All four of the surviving offspring of Frederick Parker and Annie Williams had children. The second daughter, and youngest child, of Edward Eyre Williams and Jessie Gibbon was Jessie Williams, born in 1848. We know very little about her except that she died in 1872, after falling off a cliff in a mountaineering accident at Vallorbe in Switzerland. Vallorbe lies in the heart of the Swiss Jura, near the cliffs of the Mont d’Or and Dent de Vaulion mountains. Since the 1840s climbing had become increasingly popular there with visitors, despite increasing numbers of fatalities. As we have seen, both of Jessie’s parents were no strangers to the area, having probably become engaged at Lake Como.
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BOX 11.2
THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND NORTHERN NIGERIA The history of Northern Nigeria since the mid-18th Century almost serves as a model for how the British Empire was formed. First came traders (originally in this case in slaves), followed by international recognition as an area of British interest. Northern Nigeria was recognised in this way by the Berlin Conference in 1885. This coincided with a period when Britain’s territorial ambitions became more aggressive, as seen by the appointment of Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary in 1895. He argued that the welfare of Britain depended upon the preservation and extension of the empire, for colonies fostered trade and served as a source of raw materials. In addition, Chamberlain asserted that the British Empire had a sacred duty to carry civilization, Christianity, and British law to the ‘backward’ peoples of Africa and Asia British interests in Norther Nigeria were protected by British military might in the shape of the West African Frontier Force9, whose job it was to ensure that pacification of the area went ahead. The officers, such as Edward Williams, born in 1875, were British and the men African, usually Hausa or Yoruba. There were numerous battles when the various emirs and chiefs refused to succumb easily to the imposition of missionaries, foreign traders, a poll tax, British coinage or taxation on trade. Eventually lack of funding forced the British to incorporate the traditional authorities into an even looser structure of control than usual in the Empire. Military operations, often framed as retaliatory, began in 1902 and continued for about five years of sporadic fighting. It did not help that a large part of the population was Muslim. Eventually the Frontier Force prevailed, helped by the fact that, unlike the locals, they had machine guns. This remains a very brutal and nasty piece of British history. After 1907 there were fewer revolts and less use of military force by the British and the focus turned towards taxation and administration, allowing the local Muslim chiefs much autonomy. As a result, the basic problems of this region remain to this day in the form of radical Islamic groups operating freely.
A Yoruba sculpture showing an African interpretation of British officialdom (FAR R) The Maxim Gun in West Africa 1901
(L) West African Frontier Force in 1911; (R) A somewhat staged photograph of a British missionary preaching Christianity in Africa. Much political unrest in the British empire was due to the evangelical movement. In Northern Nigeria missionaries created severe problems because of the predominately Muslim population containing many zealots of their own.
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BOX 11.1
HARTLEY WILLIAMS Hartley Williams the second son of Edward Eyre Williams and Jessie Gibbon3 was born in 1843 at Fitzroy, Port Philip, near Melbourne, At the age of nine he was shipped off to school in England, a common fate of colonial children from better off families. He was enrolled at Repton School, near Burton-on-Trent, and graduated with an MA from Trinity College, Oxford in 1866. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1867. Respecting his father’s belief that anyone wishing to be thoroughly educated in the legal profession should spend some time in a solicitor’s office, Hartley worked for a while in the offices of two London solicitors. He returned to Melbourne in 1867 and was admitted to practise as a Barrister of the Supreme Court, commencing in 1868. He established an extensive and successful common law practice, devoting himself from the outset to the Common Law side of his profession, in which his English training stood him in good stead. He was also a law reporter for some years. In 1870 Hartley married Edith Ellen Horne, in Tasmania. She was the daughter of Commissary General George Horne, late of 15th Hussars, formerly 12th Lancers. In 1873 Hartley was appointed examiner in law at the University of Melbourne, but he resigned in 1879 after a disagreement with the council over an examination result. He also began to participate in public life, campaigning to establish free and compulsory secular education at collegiate schools, which would give the children of poor people the highest education the Colony could afford. Like his father, Hartley dabbled in politics. In 1874 he stood for the seat of St. Kilda in the Legislative Assembly, in opposition to the Attorney-General, Mr Wilberforce Stephen. The boisterous campaign exposed Hartley’s lack of experience and he was beaten by a large majority. However, later that year, when the Attorney-General was elevated to the Bench to fill the vacancy left by Hartley’s father, Mr Justice Williams, Hartley stood again. Again he lost, in another rumbustious campaign, with slogans such as: ‘Vote for Williams and Constitutional Reform of Upper House’; ‘Vote for Williams the manly and outspoken candidate’; ‘Vote for Williams and no Trimming’; ‘Vote for Williams who does not circulate false and abusive squibs’. Meanwhile, Hartley was still practising at the Bar, working extremely hard and financially very successful. In 1881 because of his expertise in Common Law, he became the youngest judge ever appointed to the Victoria Supreme Court. As a Judge he showed himself to be fearless and outspoken, unafraid to say what he thought. While he created frequent controversy, he was regarded as a competent judge, usually proved right in his judgments. Hartley was much in demand as a lecturer on religious, moral and philosophical subjects. He also published several pamphlets on religious topics, which stirred up considerable controversy in the religious life of the colony. His view was that fundamental and cardinal doctrines of popular Christianity were mere crude superstitions and that their effect was ‘to disfigure and obscure pure and true religion.’ He said: ‘When these misconcepts have been cleared away the residue is pure Theism, which is the purest as well as the only rational and scientific form of belief. I have not written with the object of throwing discredit upon Religion.’ He held many other progressive views, including the need for colonies to govern themselves, the need for a Federal Court, and a dislike of the monarchy. When he failed to be appointed Chief Justice, Hartley once again illustrated his volatility and inability to hold his views in check, writing a furious letter to The Argus stating that the man chosen was not the best appointment to the position and threatening in future to do no than his ‘bare duty.’ As might be expected, this unfortunate letter caused considerable concern in legal and Parliamentary circles, and there was much comment in the Press. Perhaps to show that he was forgiven he was knighted in 1894. Known as the ‘athlete judge’ Williams was a great one for cycling. In the 1880s he rode on a ‘safetychain-driven’ bicycle to circuit work presiding over cases in the different towns. The Herald was ‘shocked’: The whole legal profession is scandalised at the burlesquing of the judicial bench by Mr Justice Williams by going on circuit on a bicycle ... Fancy a judge of the Supreme Court entering a large city like Ballarat on a velocipede and being met, not by the sheriff and other functionaries, but by half a dozen other boobies on bicycles.
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Hartley took a keen interest in various sports but in 1897, aged 55, his active participation in sport was somewhat curtailed. When visiting the Buffalo Ranges in the autumn of that year, he slipped on some rocks and seriously injured his knee. He had to be carried by bearers for some 11 miles and it took him several months to recover. His home, Flete, was built in 1882-83 on more than 6 acres (2.5 hectares) of land fronting Kooyong Road. The 13-roomed Italianate villa was designed by architect Thomas Watts. Williams sold Flete to auctioneer Stratford Strettle in 1889 but re-purchased the property in 1894. He was knighted the same year. When Captain Charles Lawrence purchased Flete in 1902, the property included a conservatory, pavilion, tennis court and stables. In 1903 Hartley announced his retirement. He left Melbourne, with a pension of £1,500, on the 9 June, his wife and his youngest daughter having left for England some weeks previously. Sir Hartley had a small property at Staunton, Gloucestershire, inherited through his great uncle Alexander Gibbon (see Chapter 9). He retired to London where he died aged 85 in 1929, leaving three sons and two daughters. In 1911, the Williams were both passengers on a ship returning to the UK from Colombo, Ceylon. Fellow passengers were William Duff Gibbon, born 1837, and his wife, on their way to retirement. William was knighted the following year. Whether the Williams had simply visited Ceylon or were returning from a visit to Australia is not clear but it does illustrate how even extended families kept in touch.
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Charles William Gibbon
CHAPTER 12
CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON AND MARY ANN WHEELER Charles William Gibbon, born in 1820, was the eldest surviving son of the Rev. Charles Gibbon and Ann Duff. Geoffrey Gibbon1 wrote: At one time he probably hoped to follow his father into the ministry but instead, went to London and became a clerk with the United Discount Company. As a business man, Charles was a failure: when he launched out on his own the result was disastrous. He was deeply religious and would attend a synagogue as readily as a parish church to hear a good preacher - a gentle idealist, and a religious philosopher of unusual tolerance and breadth of mind, who at the age of 74 was still working as a stockbroker’s clerk. At the age of 34, he married the 17-year-old Mary Ann Wheeler whose father was an inspector in a Fire Office. Most of her immediate family went to Australia but her mother’s relatives, the Robsons, became close friends of the Gibbons. Fortunately Mary Ann was a very practical person who brought up her large and lively family with strict economy and inculcated in them her own self-discipline and courage. Charles died in 1899 and his widow lived with the Gibbons at Barnet till her death in 1908.
(L) Mary Ann Wheeler (ABOVE) Charles and Mary Ann
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CHART 12: GIBBON / WHEELER
SEE CHART 10 Charles William Gibbon 1820 - 1899 [Stockbroker] - M 1854 -
Mary Ann Wheeler 1836 - 1908
Charles Gibbon 1856 - 1930 [Tea Planter]
Mary Ann Gibbon 1857 - 1926
Henry Gibbon 1859 - 1947 [Episcopal Minister]
- M 1903 -
- M 1884 -
Elizabeth Helen Benn 1857 - 1957
Amelia Grace Gibbon 1860 - 1918 - M 1883 -
- M 1907 -
Edward Palmer Smith 1860 - 1938
Harold Imray 1856 - 1902
Anna Campbell Margaret Emily Maitland Makgill Crichton 1876 - 1954
[Engineer]
[Civil Servant]
SEE CHART 16
Alexander Robert Turing Gibbon 1885 - 1975 [Tea Planter] - M 1919 -
Kathleen Minnie Truby 1895 - 1979
Valerie Gibbon 1924 - M 1948 -
Robert John Barlow 1924 [Tea Planter]
Bruce Scott Gibbon 1888 - 1964
Charles William Gibbon 1891 - 1957
[Tea Planter]
[Tea Planter]
- M1 1916 -
Gladys Scholes 1893 - ? - M2 1949 -
-M-
Gladys Elizabeth Begg c1892 - ?
Helen Beatrice Hogarth 1904 - 1976 Henry Denys Gibbon 1909 - 1990
Cyril Robert Maitland Gibbon 1911 - 1977
Patrick Crichton Gibbon 1913 - 1977
[Engineer]
[Banker]
[Civil Servant]
- M 1943 -
- M 1940 -
- M 1945 -
Joan G Ingledew 1920 -
Blodwen Myfanwy Reynolds 1907 - 1988
Nirvana Ayscough De Fontenelle Fawkes 1914 - 1984
Robet Maurice Gibbon 1926 - 2004
Charles David Gibbon 1928 - 2013
[Tea Planter]
[Tea Planter]
- M 1952 -
-M-
Sheila Mackail Waldock 1928 -
Rese Jacqlyn Davies 1927 -
Barbara Elizabeth Margaret Gibbon 1918 -
Marjorie Doreen Gibbon 1923 - 1979
- M 1945 -
- M 1953 -
Ronald Montague-Jones 1909 - 1996
Arthur G Bate
[General, British Army]
Thomas Turing Gibbon 1915 - 1930
Robert William Gibbon 1863 - 1932
Catherine Jessie Gibbon 1865 - 1866
William Duff Gibbon 1867 - 1949
John Turing Gibbon 1873 - 1954
[Marine Insurance]
[Explosives Business]
[Insurance Broker]
- M 1894 -
- M 1901 -
- M 1900 -
Frances Edith Smith 1871 - 1913
Clara Elizabeth Robson 1871 - 1961
Catherine Mary Elliott 1876 - 1959
SEE CHART 17
Benjamin Duff Gibbon 1902 - 1918
Private
Donald William Gibbon 1910 - 1941
Dorothy Clarissa Mary Gibbon 1904 - 1991
[Explosives Expert]
[Royal Navy]
[Farmer]
- M 1931 -
- M 1934 -
Sylvia Mary Knott 1907 - 2001
Irene Ranyell
Kenneth Turing Gibbon 1903 - 1999
David William Gibbon 1943 [Royal Navy] - M 1972 -
Carol Hayter 1950 -
Margaret Mary Gibbon 1904 - 1983
Dorothy Grace Gibbon 1906 - 1906
Susan Elizabeth Gibbon 1946 - 1993
Elizabeth Jean Gibbon 1907 - 2003
William John Gibbon 1937 -
Jacqueline Anne Gibbon 1940 - 2019 -M-
David Jeremy Pilgrim 1940 - 2015
[Royal Navy]
CH 12 : CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER 175
The Standard newspaper carried a report on 1 November 1851 of a court case in which Charles William Gibbon accused the defendant of trying to steal his gold watch while Charles was in the crowd waiting in the City of London for the arrival of a Hungarian politician and journalist whose championing of freedom within the Austrian empire made him an icon for the British public. At this trial Charles described himself as a clerk for the Hand-in-Hand Fire Insurance Office in New Bridge Street, London. Started in 1696 and employing Thames watermen. Hand in Hand was the first fire insurance company. Possibly Charles’ father-in-law helped him to the position. Charles later became a clerk for the United Discount Company, which acted as a discount broker carrying out buy and sell orders for securities. Before the advent of discount brokers, only the wealthy could afford a broker and access to the stock market. Charles’ attempt to set up independently as a bill broker for the buying and selling of bills of exchange failed in early 1865, perhaps as a result of the financial panic of the time, which bankrupted numerous firms. The newspaper announcements of the dissolution of his partnership in 1865 show that Charles was in partnership as a bill broker with James William Gibbon (or William James Gibbon depending on the report), and that their office was in Threadneedle Street in the City of London. It is not clear who Charles’ partner(s) were. In 1872 Charles became a Freeman of the City of London by being admitted to the Livery Guild of Loriners, one of many which admitted City clerks.
(L) Mary Ann Wheeler with Doris Imray behind; (ABOVE) An early Firemark for the Hand-in-Hand Fire Insurance Company which employed Charles Gibbon. Each insurance company's Firemark was displayed on the house front and only the firemen from that company would attend a fire there. (L) Charles Gibbon and Elizabeth Benn and family taken at either Goonambil or Carolina tea estate, Ceylon, to the north of Kandy, their family base. Tea can be seen growing on the hills behind the house.
Charles and Mary Ann had eight children. The eldest, Charles, born in 1856, was educated at Framlington School in Suffolk and went out as a tea planter to Ceylon, possibly with the help of his uncle William Duff Gibbon, who had preceded him there (see Chapter 15). He worked at various tea plantations including Eriagastenne, Goonambil, Gilbury, Udapolla and Malvern. In 1884 he married Elizabeth Benn in Colombo. When Charles died in Ceylon in 1930, he was buried in Mahayaya Protestant cemetery. Elizabeth returned to England, and lived in Hampshire where she died, aged 100, in 1957.
176 CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER : CH 12
Charles and Elizabeth’s eldest son, Alexander Robert Turing (‘Art’) Gibbon, who acted as Elizabeth’s executor, was born in 1885 in Ceylon and baptised at St Paul’s Church, Kandy. He too was sent to school in Framlington and returned to Ceylon to become a tea planter at estates including Carolina and Wigton, Rozelle. During the First World War, in August 1917, he was accepted for the Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps.2 He later served in one of the Reserve Cavalry Regiments as a 2nd Lieutenant. In 1919 he married in London his cousin Kathleen Minnie Truby, whose mother was a Robson. Kathleen adapted well to life as the wife of a tea planter. They had three children: Valerie Gibbon, who married Robert John Barlow, another tea planter; and two sons, both tea planters: Robert Maurice Gibbon, who, in 1952, married Sheila Mackail Waldock; and Charles David Gibbon, who married Rese Jacqlyn Davies, a teacher, born in Kenya. All three couples had families. From 1955 to 1959 Robert was manager at the Hethersett Tea Factory. Sheila was the daughter of Leslie Waldock, who died in 1943 while a Major in the Ceylon Garrison Artillery. He came from a well-established family of tea planters. When Ceylon became Sri Lanka after independence, Robert returned to England, while David continued as a tea planter in Kenya. Robert died in 2004 and David in 2013. Valerie went to Natal before returning to England. Alexander died in 1975 and Kathleen in 1979, both in Wiltshire. Alexander wrote in 1964: I spent some years in Barnet before returning in 1904 to Ceylon where my parents were planting and Segary Villa and Woodside Villa were wonderful homes to visit. All the Imray and Gibbon cousins were great fun for a lonely person like me with my parents abroad. (see Chapters 16 and 17). I was some 50 years in Ceylon and our three children returned to us after school and some war service and continue to carry on the traditions of our branch of the family - in Ceylon for well over 100 years and now in Kenya. Our grandchildren in Kenya are the 5th generation. Mark Lowe has a memory of visiting Alexander as a boy and being told to “go abroad, make a career in the colonies or somewhere. Don’t just rot in Britain’. A close-up of the Ceylon group. Back Row: Kathleen Minnie Gibbon née Truby, born in 1895, with her husband Alexander Robert Turing Gibbon, born in 1885; Bruce Scott Gibbon, born in 1888; Elizabeth Helen Gibbon née Benn, born in 1857; Charles William Gibbon, born around 1892; Front Row: Charles Gibbon, born in 1856, an early tea planter in Ceylon, who married Elizabeth Benn; he is holding his granddaughter Barbara Elizabeth Margaret Gibbon, born in 1918, the daughter of Gladys Gibbon née Scholes, born in 1893, who is sitting to his left.
From left to right: Charles Gibbon born 1856, his son Charles William born about 1892, Elizabeth Helen Gibbon née Benn born 1856, the wife of Charles senior, Mary Ann Gibbon aka ‘Wifie’ born 1857. This photo must have been taken in England when the Ceylon Gibbons were home on leave.
CH 12 : CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER 177
Bruce Scott Gibbon, Charles and Elizabeth’s second son, was born in 1888 in Ceylon. He said that the family were brought up at Carolina Estate to the north of Kandy. Goonambil estate was near to Carolina and father Charles and Bruce Scott managed there at different periods from 1883 to 1930. Where exactly they were staying is not clear as many tea estates were managed by managers who did not live on the estate. Like his brothers Bruce was sent to Framlingham School at a young age. He returned to Ceylon, but came back to England in 1915. A month later he joined the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps2, as later did his brother Alexander. Bruce served in France in the newly formed Machine Gun Corps, becoming a Captain in July 1918. He married Gladys Scholes, an auctioneer’s daughter, in Harrogate, Yorkshire in 1916, while he was a Second Lieutenant stationed at the training depot in Grantham for the Machine Gun Corps. On returning to Ceylon he resumed life as a tea planter, spending some time as manager of Goonambil. In 1948 he retired to England, marrying his second wife, Helen Beatrice Hogarth, a year later. She was born in Australia, the daughter of an Admiralty clerk and the widow of Colin Savory, a planter in Ceylon, who had died the previous year. Bruce died in 1964 leaving two daughters from his first marriage. The elder daughter Barbara married, in 1946, Brigadier-General Ronald Montague-Jones, who had a distinguished career in the Royal Engineers, becoming Director of Movements for the South East Asia Command in 1944. Barbara was the second of his three wives. They divorced and Barbara later married a Mr Bain. The younger daughter, Marjorie Doreen Gibbon, married Arthur G Bate in 1953. She died in 1979. The youngest son of Charles and Elizabeth Gibbon was Charles William Gibbon. Born around 1892 in Ceylon, he worked initially at the Chartered Bank of India in Ceylon, but resigned to join the British Army in 1914. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders. Later, like his brother Bruce, he joined the Machine Gun Corps, still within the 4th Battalion, and by 1918 had become a Major. The 4th Battalion took part in many of the nastiest battles of the war. After the war he returned to Ceylon and took up life as a tea planter, managing for the Fordyce Group among other estates. Charles married Gladys Elizabeth Begg and they both retired to Dorset in England, where Charles died in 1957.
(ABOVE LEFT) Bruce Scott Gibbon from Ceylon with his Imray and Gibbon cousins. From left to right: Harry Imray; Irene Imray; Jessie Imray; Bruce Scott Gibbon born 1888; Doris Imray; Gerald Gibbon; Charles William Gibbon. The photo is taken around 1905 at Hadley Woods close to the Gibbon/Imray dwelling at High Barnet (12.8); (ABOVE RIGHT) Kandy taken around 1919. This was the nearest town to Goonabil (12.1) (INSET ABOVE RIGHT) Gladys Scholes as she appeared in Tatler after her marriage to Bruce Gibbon.
Mary Ann Gibbon, born in 1857, was the eldest daughter of Charles William and Mary Ann Wheeler. Geoffrey Gibbon wrote: Mary Ann, the second child, called ‘Polly’ by her father and ‘Wifie’ by everyone else, was a tiny, fluttering, anxious person, full of kindness, with a magnificent Roman profile [Geoffrey described several family members as having Roman profiles]. Late in life she married Edward Palmer Smith, a retired engineer, a big, shy, gentle person, rather lame, whose hobby was photography. Their home, first near Bournemouth and later near Glastonbury, was a holiday resort for many nephews and nieces. Wifie died in Wells in l926 in her 70th year. Edward died in 1938, also in Somerset.
178 CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER : CH 12
(LEFT) Mary Ann Gibbon or ‘Wifie’; (RIGHT) Barbara Elizabeth Margaret Gibbon, born 1918. Studio portraits like this one, taken in December 1920, were commonly made to distribute to close relatives. This one was sent to Britain from Ceylon. (INSET) Brigadier Ronald Montague-Jones who married Barbara.
Henry Gibbon, born in 1859, the second son (and third child) of Charles and Mary Ann, graduated from Hatfield College, Durham. He was ordained [in the Anglican or Episcopal Church] at Exeter in the early eighties and moved about, holding livings in Devon, Somerset, Fife and finally Sussex. In 1907 he married Anna Campbell Margaret Emily Maitland-Makgill-Crichton, a member of a family of Scottish landed gentry from Edinburgh, but originally from Fife, where they presumably met during Henry’s tenure there.
Cyril Gibbon
Henry and Anna had four sons, all born in Somerset. The eldest, Henry Denys Gibbon, born in 1909, made a career as an engineer with English Electric, a large British electrical manufacturing company. He married Joan Ingledew from Middlesborough, Yorkshire, in 1943. He died in Kent in 1990. The second son, Cyril Gibbon, born in 1911, became a banker, his career being interrupted by World War Two. It is always interesting to see what traces people leave of their lives. For Cyril, his only appearance in the press was in 1939 when he was fined £1 5s for allowing a lady to drive his car without a driving licence or insurance3. Cyril’s lawyer said: ‘The lady (Vera Payne) made a request to drive the car and the gentleman was too chivalrous to decline.’ He married Blodwen Myfanwy Reynolds the following year and they had four children. The third son, Patrick Gibbon, born in 1913, went to Japan to teach. During World War Two he served in India as a Captain in the 6th Rajpur Rifles, later also working as an interpreter. After the war he worked in the Foreign Office in Cheltenham. In 1945 he married Nirvana Ayscough de Fontenelle Fawkes. When Patrick died in Cheltenham in 1977 his widow Nirvana remarried to the Rev. Geoffrey Gibbon, Patrick’s cousin. The fourth son of Henry and Anna, Thomas Turing Gibbon, born in 1915, died in 1930 after being bitten by an unknown insect while on an outing from Eastbourne College to nearby Abbot’s Wood. The next children of Charles William Gibbon and Mary Ann Wheeler, Amelia Grace and Robert William, are dealt with separately in Chapters 16 and 17 respectively. Their brother William Duff Gibbon was born in 1867 and attended the City of London School. On leaving he joined the firm of John Lee, iron broker. When John Lee died, William ran the company until he was invited to join the firm of Gibbs in Birmingham.
CH 12 : CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER 179
He became interested in the development of new high explosives and realized at an early stage how they would replace gunpowder and dynamite in the mines. The firm of Gibbs and Gibbon worked with Curtis and Harvey, a large manufacturing company in Birmingham, until they were both absorbed eventually into Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). William retired to Monmouthshire, where he died in 1950 at the age of 83. According to Geoffrey Gibbon, he was the only one of the five brothers to retain a trace of Scottish intonation. Like Geoffrey’s father, he joined the Swedenborgian Church in north London [See Box 17.2] as a young man and supported the small and struggling group in Birmingham. However, William ensured that his children were confirmed in the Church of England. He married his cousin Clara Elizabeth Robson in 1901. She died in 1961, also in Monmouthshire.
(ABOVE & BELOW LEFT) William Duff Gibbon, born 1867 and Clara Elizabeth Robson, born 1871. (BELOW) Benjamin Duff Gibbon born 1902.
William Duff and Clara had six children, all born at Kings Norton, near Birmingham. Benjamin Gibbon, the eldest, died aged 15 from tuberculosis. The second son, Kenneth Turing Gibbon, born in 1903, joined his father in the explosives business. When ICI took over, despite being offered employment with them in Scotland, he resigned, preferring to keep his independence. He took a job managing a brick-works in the Forest of Dean but had a breakdown from which he never fully recovered. He suffered from tuberculosis, having by the end only a third of one lung. However, his death in 1999 was caused, not by TB, but by an infection contracted while in hospital. He married a Birmingham friend, Sylvia Knott, and they adopted three children. The second of these, David William, lived for two years in Usk in Wales with his grandmother Clara when illness hit the family.
180 CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER : CH 12
(TOP) Children of William Duff and Clara Gibbon. From left: Benjamin Duff, Kenneth Turing, Margaret Mary (or Marjorie) and Elizabeth Jean; (L-R) Clara Gibbon née Robson with her son Kenneth, born 1903; 12.28 Sylvia Knott, who married Kenneth; David William Gibbon; Carol Hayter, who married David.
David joined the Royal Navy in 1959 and was a radar expert for six years before becoming a PE instructor. In 1983 he transferred to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Careers Service. He left the Royal Navy in 1998. In 1972 he married Carol Hayter, who had a career in the WRNS and has been very active with the Association of WRENS, recently serving as the National Chairman. David and Carol have two sons. The eldest, Robert William, born in 1977, married Britta Holmer, and is a marketing executive in Atlanta, Georgia. The second son, Huw David Gibbon, born in 1980, is a planning officer, married to Carrie Ann Wing and living in Falmouth, Cornwall. The third child, Susan Elizabeth, married Roger Bennet, a founder of Radio Bristol. They were divorced. Susan died in 1993.
CH 12 : CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER 181
The eldest daughter of William Duff Gibbon and Clara Robson was Margaret Mary Gibbon, born in 1904. She suffered from tuberculosis and, as a child, spent almost two years in bed. She died in 1983 in Gwent, Wales. Neither she nor her next sister, Elizabeth born in 1907, were married. Elizabeth Gibbon was born in 1907. In early life she suffered from chronic psoriasis, which suddenly cleared up when she left home and went to work on a farm in County Durham owned by one of her Knott relatives. She then went to work for a doctor at Chester Le Street. When her mother died she returned to Birmingham and worked at Cadbury’s chocolate factory before becoming housekeeper to the family of Bernard Metcalf, who had been her father’s business partner at the firm of Bradshaw Brodie. She died in 2003. The youngest child, Donald William Gibbon, born in 1910, trained at HMS Conway from 1927 to 1928 and was commissioned as a midshipman in the Royal Navy Reserve. However, he resigned after the Invergordon riots of 1931, when the Atlantic Fleet mutinied against brutal pay cuts imposed on the sailors. He then joined the merchant service, working for the Clan Line. In 1939 he was a partner in an insurance firm in London and an ARP warden. When World War Two started he became a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve and was lost at sea when his ship, the liner SS Britannia, was sunk in March 1941 in the South Atlantic. He had been bound from the UK to India, where he was to join a submarine, but SS Britannia met the German surface raider Thor, which sank her by gunfire and made no attempt to help the survivors. 251 passengers and crew lost their lives. One lifeboat reached Brazil after a voyage of 23 days, with 32 survivors out of a total of 82 who started. Donald is named on the Portsmouth Naval War Memorial. After his death his widow, Irene Ranyell, whom he had married in 1934, moved to Australia with her son John. His daughter Jacqueline married David (‘Jerry’) Pilgrim, who died in 2015.
(TOP L-R) Margaret Mary Gibbon born 1904; Elizabeth and her brother Donald William Gibbon, born 1910, in his midshipman’s uniform. (L-R) Jackie Gibbon; David Jeremy (Jerry) Pilgrim, who married Jackie.
182 CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER : CH 12
(ABOVE) Elizabeth Jean Gibbon and her brother Donald William Gibbon; (RIGHT) Donald posing.
John Turing Gibbon, the youngest child of Charles Gibbon and Mary Wheeler, was born in 1873, six years after his nearest brother, William Duff. He began his working life in a marine insurance office alongside his brother Robert William Gibbon, born in 1863. After a few years he moved to the large marine insurance firm of Willis Faber. This was the firm that brokered the Titanic, which sank in 1912. Family legend has it that Robert William Gibbon’s firm took up a small part of the risk, but while this is quite likely, there is no evidence and his signature is not on the original list at Lloyds for those signing up for an initial share of the Titanic. In 1900 John married Catherine Elliott, the daughter of a Morocco leather factory manager. They had a daughter, Dorothy Gibbon, who died in 1991. John died in 1954 and Catherine in 1959. Geoffrey Gibbon wrote of John: Catherine Mary Elliot, born 1876, who married John Turing Gibbon.
He lived mostly on the London and Southend line till he retired, when he and Katie moved to Oakham in Rutland to be near Dorothy, who was working nearby and had become an expert on goats. John was the liveliest of my uncles, who kept young in spirit in spite of his bald head. He was a member of the Church of England Men’s Society and a Lay Reader, but sufficiently unorthodox and tolerant to conduct Methodist services on request.
CH 12 : CHARLES WILLIAM GIBBON & MARY ANN WHEELER 183
Robert Turing Gibbon and Jane Burnett (13.1)
CHAPTER 13
ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT Robert Turing Gibbon, named after his mother’s uncle who was drowned at sea in 1820, was born at the Manse in Lonmay. He became a farmer and by 1851 he employed two farm servants and farmed 90 acres, probably his father’s land at Lonmay. By 1861 he had moved to the nearby farm of Milltown of Philorth, near Fraserburgh, with only 63 acres but probably better land, as he had six employees. By 1871 he had moved to Brackens Farm, to the north of Turriff in Banffshire, with 241 acres, seven farm servants and a nine-room farmhouse. Ten years later we see him at the much smaller farm of Butterywells, in Banchory Devenick parish, just south of Aberdeen, employing one man, one boy and a woman. There he effectively retired, moving shortly to Aberdeen, where he died in 1895. In 1856 Robert married Jane Burnett. Her father was a nearby farmer who had started life in Fraserburgh as a sawyer and then worked as a butcher. Jane died in 1885. Robert and Jane had seven children. (L) Map showing Brackens Farm to the north of Turriff (13.2) (R) Milltown of Philorth Farm (13.3)
CH 13 : ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT 185
CHART 13: GIBBON / BURNETT
SEE CHART 10
Robert Turing Gibbon 1827 - 1895 [Farmer] - M 1856 -
Jane Burnett 1826 - 1885
Annie Grace Turing Gibbon 1857 - 1940 - M 1884 -
Charles James Gibbon 1859 - 1915
Robert William Gibbon 1861 - 1931
[Grazier in Australia]
[Furniture Maker]
James Barnet 1851 - 1928 [Marine Engineer]
Annie Grace Park Turing Barnet 1886 - 1969
Jane Norah Stewart Barnet 1889 - 1901
- M 1919 -
John Philip 1873 - 1951 [Colonel, Egyptian Police]
186 ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT : CH 13
James Knox Barnet 1892 - 1918
Isabella Mary Barnet 1894 - 1983
[Army Lieutenant]
[Art Teacher]
Alexander Gibbon 1863 - 1945
Edward Tytler Gibbon 1866 - 1933
James Burnett Gibbon 1867 - 1951
William Duff Gibbon 1872 - 1964
[Banker]
[Banker]
[Auctioneer]
[Photographer in Australia]
- M 1909 -
- M 1894 -
- M 1910 -
Martha Reid Mitchell 1876 - 1943
Florence MacCarthy 1870 - 1958
Jessie Morrison 1878 - 1969
Florence May T Gibbon 1896 - 1982 - M 1930 -
William Lawson Rennie 1900 - 1978 [Tea Planter]
CH 13 : ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT 187
The eldest child, Annie Grace Turing Gibbon, was born in 1857. She married in 1884 James Barnet, born in 1851, the son of a farmer at Mains of Philorth, Fraserburgh. He studied in Aberdeen before becoming an apprentice marine engineer. In 1881, and again in 1884, he is recorded as living in Glasgow and working as an engineer on a steamship. Soon after the wedding they seem to have gone to Essex, where he worked as an engineer and where two of their children were born. In 1891 he was living in Leith, Edinburgh as an engineer surveyor for the Board of Trade. Between 1892 and 1894 they were living in Aberdeen, where the two youngest children were born, and where James was the Lloyds Agent. With the outbreak of World War One in 1914 he became a surveyor of ships and an examiner of engineers for the Board of Trade based at Leith, Edinburgh. He retired in 1916 and moved to Ugie Brae, Old Deer, Aberdeenshire. He was then employed until 1919 superintending steamers for the North of Scotland and Orkney and Shetland Company. James died in 1928 and Annie in 1940. James and Annie had four children. Annie Barnet, the eldest, became the second wife of John Philip, born about 1873, the son of a warrant officer in the Grenadier Guards. John made a career in Egypt with the Civil Police, rising to Lieutenant-Colonel and known as Kaimakam John Philip Bey MBE, DCM. He retired to Edinburgh, where he died in 1951. John and Annie had three daughters. Jane Barnet, the second daughter of Annie and James, died of heart problems aged 11. Her brother James Knox Barnet, born in1892 in Aberdeen, attended Robert Gordon’s College before joining the Royal Scots. He was involved in the fighting at Gallipoli until the evacuation, when he was sent to Egypt. He transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps (Mechanical Transport), becoming a Lieutenant. He died in Egypt in early November 1918, just as World War 1 was ending. In 1917 and 1918 there were two outbreaks world-wide of a particularly virulent flu virus in which up to 100 million people died3. Unlike most flu viruses it killed healthy young adults, and many soldiers survived World War One only, to be killed like James Knox Barnet by Spanish Flu. (The molecular sequence has been recently determined and suggests that it originated in birds and that, if released nowadays, it would cause around thirty million deaths within six months). There is a memorial to James in Cairo Memorial Cemetery and he is featured in the Robert Gordon’s College Roll of Honour.
A humorous postcard of around 1900 showing the typical hazards of holidaying in Egypt. James Knox Burnet is named on the Old Deer Parish War Memorial (13.5)
Cairo street scene in the 1920s (13.4)
188 ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT : CH 13
Isabella Mary Barnet, born in 1894, the fourth child of Annie and James, studied art and design at Gordon’s Technical College in Aberdeen, winning a Byrne Scholarship on graduation in 1914. She remained at the college as an assistant for design and embroidery. She spent a year at Peterhead Academy in 1924-25 before moving to Dundee Technical College and School of Art. Her mother lived with her in Dundee after her father’s death. In 1925 she spent her summer visiting her sister Annie in Egypt. She died in 1983, unmarried. The second child of Robert Turing Gibbon and Jane Burnett was Charles James Gibbon, born in 1859. With two younger brothers, James Burnett and William Duff Gibbon, he went to Australia in 1881. He became a grazier at North Murchison, Victoria, where he farmed for most of his life, apart from a trip to Scotland in 1909. North Murchison is about 170km north of Melbourne. When gold was discovered in Western Australia Robert visited several goldfields where, as his obituary states2: ‘his success was not as great in this direction as in other walks of life’. He never married, and died in 1915. His headstone is in Murchison Cemetery, where he was buried with a funeral cortege of sixty vehicles.
(ABOVE) A glimpse of Murchison Township in 1860 during the pioneering period when people pushed into the outback (13.6) (L) Charles James Gibbon, born 1859. This photograph, which formerly belonged to the Mechanics' Institution and is now the property of the Murchison and District Historical Society is captioned 'Charles James Gibbon J.P. Died 3rd January 1915. Born Fraserburgh, Scotland. Ex President, Trustee and Member of Committee of this Institution. Deputy Coroner and supporter of all local institutions' (13.7)
Robert William Gibbon, the next brother, born in 1861, trained as an architect. Whether he ever practised as such is not clear, but he joined the well-known Aberdeen furniture firm of Messrs J. and A. Ogilvie, in Union Street. An expert craftsman, he was for many years in charge of the design department, making the firm’s products renowned throughout the north-east. He designed two pieces of furniture for his uncle and namesake which became family heirlooms and he may well have done similar work for other members of the family. He died unmarried in 1931.
A typical advertisement in the local Aberdeen paper for J. and A. Ogilvie.
An Art Nouveau hall stand made by J. and A. Ogilvie in Aberdeen, probably designed by Robert William Gibbon.
CH 13 : ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT 189
Alexander Gibbon, born in 1863, became a bank clerk, eventually being appointed manager of the Cults, Aberdeen branch of the successful North of Scotland Bank, which merged with the Clydesdale Bank in 1950. He married Martha Reid Mitchell, a farmer’s daughter from Fyvie, in 1909 and they lived latterly at Tulloch Lodge, West Cults. Martha died in 1943 and Alexander in 1945. They had no children. He was a keen genealogist and corresponded widely with others in the family, including descendants of the Gibbons who emigrated to Wisconsin in 1838 (see Chapter 25) and who still have his letters. Edward Tytler Gibbon (‘Ned’), the next son, born in 1866, also became a banker, serving his apprenticeship with the Commercial Bank in Aberdeen. After a year in the London office of the Oriental Bank Corporation he worked for them for four years in Ceylon. In 1884 the bank failed, largely due to a drop in the value of silver and the collapse of Ceylon coffee plantations when coffee disease struck, leading to a massive loss in investments and widespread foreclosures. The bank was reconstituted as the New Oriental Banking Corporation, but this too failed in 1892, and Edward had to look for another job. In March 1893 he went out to Buenos Aires, Argentina, working for the British Bank of South America as a local manager, the bank’s head office being in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Altogether Edward spent about seven years in South America. It was an interesting time to be there: in 1890 the failure of the Argentine wheat crop coincided with a political coup. Financial uncertainty spread, culminating in a run on gold in the USA and a major financial crash starting in 1893 and spreading throughout North and South America.
(ABOVE LEFT) Bank note for the North of Scotland Bank and bank note for the Oriental Bank of Ceylon. (ABOVE RIGHT) London advert of the British Bank of South America. (LEFT) St John's Church in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Edward Tytler Gibbon and Florence McCarthy were married.
(ABOVE) Edward Tytler Gibbon and Florence McCarthy.
(R) Florence McCarthy, who married Edward Gibbon (13.18) (FAR RIGHT) Rev. John Agar McCarthy, Florence's father.
190 ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT : CH 13
In 1894 Edward married Florence Mary MacCarthy at St John’s Anglican Church in Buenos Aires. They had met in Ceylon, where Florence had gone in 1890 to visit family members. She was the daughter of the Rev John Agar MacCarthy, who had been a missionary in India before returning to England and life as a rector. He had been stationed at Peshawar where the majority of the missionaries or their wives had died of sickness. When Edward and Florence returned to England, they set up home in Waterloo, Liverpool, where Edward was appointed bank manager of Parrs Bank. When this was taken over by the Westminster Bank, he became manager of the Westminster Bank in Macclesfield, after which he and Florence retired to Worthing, Sussex. Like his brother Alexander, Edward was a keen genealogist and corresponded widely within the family. He and Florence died in Worthing, in 1933 and 1958 respectively. Their daughter, Florence May Turing MacCarthy, born in Argentina in 1896, married, in 1930, William Lawson Rennie, born in 1900. He was the son of a master mariner from Lossiemouth who became a tea planter in Ceylon. He started as an assistant manager at estates which included the Ury Group at Badulla and the Gonakelle group at Passara. One of Florence’s uncles was a tea planter in Ceylon and another was a tea, rubber and coffee agent there, so there was plenty of background for her marrying a Ceylon tea planter. They retired to England. William died in 1978 in London and May died in 1982 in Sussex. James Burnett Gibbon, the sixth child of Robert Gibbon and Jane Burnett, born in 1867, went to Australia with his two brothers, Charles and William Duff1. In 1903 all three were living together at North Murchison, Victoria, with James describing himself as a farmer1. In 1906 he sailed from Sydney to Scotland via British Columbia. He returned to Canada where he worked in Stettler County, Alberta as an auctioneer. By 1908 he was established in the partnership of Waddington and Gibbon, Auctioneers and Dealers in Lethbridge, Alberta, but the partnership was dissolved later that year. In 1910, when he married Jessie Morrison in Aberdeen, he described himself as a carting contractor living in Lethbridge. Jessie, a farmer’s daughter from Upper Cotburn, Turriff, born in 1878, returned with him to Lethbridge. He may have served with the armed forces in Europe during World War One, although he was still listed as living in Lethbridge in 1915. Later, he settled back in Scotland, first in Stirling, and then in Aberdeen, working as an auctioneer. James and Jessie had no children. James died in 1951 and Jessie in 1969, both in Aberdeen. William Duff Gibbon, born in 1872, the youngest child of Robert and Jane, went with his two brothers Charles and James to Australia and shared a house with them at North Murchison, Victoria. After James left for Canada, William continued to live with Charles for at least ten years. He spent his whole life in Murchison, working as a photographer1. He never married, and died in Melbourne, aged 92. A scroll, given to William Duff Gibbon and preserved by the Murchison and District Historical Society, reads: Dear Sir We the executive officers of the Murchison Soldiers Farewell and Reception Committee, representing the citizens of Murchison and District, The Sailors' and Soldiers' Fathers' Association, (SubBranch) representing also the parents and relatives of those soldiers from this District who made the supreme sacrifice, and The Returned Soldiers' League, (Sub-Branch) desire to extend you a very hearty welcome on your return to Australia from Scotland, and to express our appreciation for the kindness and hospitality extended by you and your sister Mrs Barnet of Ugiebrae, Old Deer, Scotland, to our Murchison boys whom you had the opportunity of meeting during the War. Your previous sojourn in Murchison had made you known to many of them, and, keeping in personal touch you acted as their "guide, philosopher and friend". The scroll given to William Duff Gibbon and preserved by the Murchison and District Historical Society (13.8)
To Mrs Barnett we offer our sincere sympathy on the death of her soldier son, and, now that the clouds of war have passed, we trust that the future of you both will be long and happy.
CH 13 : ROBERT TURING GIBBON AND JANE BURNETT 191
A publication produced for political purposes to justify the Company’s existence to the Chilean Government. Kenneth Carnegie Ross was General Manager (14.1)
CHAPTER 14
ANNIE GRACE GIBBON AND ROBERT BOYD TYTLER In Chapter 12 we see how a branch of the Gibbons ended up as planters in Ceylon. This chapter is almost entirely devoted to others who went to Ceylon. It shows how a colonial plantation industry developed, adapted and then coped with post colonialism. A major source is the 1996 memoir of Beryl Mitchell, granddaughter of Annie and Robert, about her tea-planting ancestors and family1. Box 14.3 briefly explores the wider effects of the British Empire on the Gibbons. Charles Gibbon of Lonmay’s daughter Annie Grace Gibbon (see Chapter 10) married Robert Boyd Tytler2 in 1848 at Lonmay, the Rev. William Boyd of Crimond, Aberdeenshire, officiating. Robert, born at Inverurie in 1819, was the son of William Tytler and Catherine Boyd; William Tytler was a cabinet maker who later became a farmer. According to Beryl Mitchell, Robert was the sixth child in a family of ten. He was adopted by his uncle the Rev. William Boyd, Minister of Crimond, whose own family had grown up. Several of the Boyd family were involved in agriculture in Java and India and one son, George Hay Boyd, established the firm of Ackland, Boyd & Co. in 1829 in Calcutta and Colombo. This firm came to grief in 1848. Robert Tytler also had an Indian connection: two of his brothers worked for the East India Company. Robert left school at the age of 12 and worked for three years in the local gardens of Philorth Estate near Fraserburgh. He spent the next three years in Jamaica on the sugar plantation of a family friend, Charles Anderson. This was presumably arranged by the Rev. Boyd. Robert studied tropical agriculture in Jamaica, specifically coffee growing and the sugar industry. In 1837, at the age of 18, Robert went to Ceylon to establish out of the jungle vast new areas for coffee, coping with great hardship and difficulties in areas such as Dumbara, Kellebokke and Matale. Other planters moved from the West Indies to Ceylon around this time as the emancipation of slaves had made many estates uneconomic.
(L-R) Memorial to Robert and Annie Grace Tytler at Nellfield Cemetery, Aberdeen; Robert Boyd Tytler, born 1819; An early photograph of bullock carts in Ceylon laden with coffee heading for shipment abroad; The invaluable memoir written by Beryl Mitchell about her family both in Ceylon and in Australia.
CH 14 : ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER 193
CHART 14: GIBBON / TYTLER
SEE CHART 10
Annie Grace Gibbon 1830 - 1904 - M 1848 -
Robert Boyd Tytler 1819 - 1882 [Planter, Ceylon]
Robert Stephen Duff-Tytler 1849 - 1905
Annie Grace Tytler 1851 - 1926 - M 1876 -
[Planter, Ceylon]
Yesudial Arsrivartham Rayappen 1872 - 1930
[Secretary]
Annie Grace Gibbon Reith 1878 - 1926
- M 1901 -
[Nurse]
Alice Harriet Gard 1879 - 1940
Grace Duff-Tytler -M-
Patrick Caulfred Matthews 1870 - ? [Planter, Ceylon]
Edward Duff-Tytler ? – 1917 [Soldier]
William Alexander Tytler 1854 - 1924
[Planter, Ceylon]
[Planter, Ceylon]
Archibald Reith 1837 - 1894
- M 1904 -
Archibald Reith 1877 - 1933
Charles William Tytler 1853 - 1898
-M-
Menekie ?
[Doctor]
Charles Edward Williams Reith 1886 – 1957
Jessie Eyre Williams Reith 1881 - 1881
Edward Tytler 1894 - ?
Alice Terese Tytler c1895 - 1961
[Author]
[Planter, Ceylon]
-M-
- M 1924 -
-M-
Marguerite Hannah Ellen Gordon 1896 - 1980
Elsie ?
Cranston Graham Reith 1892 - 1958 [Planter, Ceylon]
Ida Duff-Tytler 1896 - ?
Dorothy Duff-Tytler
- M 1927 -
R McKeller
Jerome Fernandez c1907 - ?
194 ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER : CH 14
-M-
Mabel Duff-Tytler 1898 - 1996
Josephine Duff-Tytler 1899 - 1984
Henry Tytler 1855 - 1856
Catherine Amelia Tytler 1861 - 1894
Jessie Duff Tytler 1863 - 1945
- M 1888 -
Henry James Vollar c1850 – 1918
Mary Penelope Tytler 1864 - 1933
- M 1882 -
Alexander Carnegie Ross 1859 - 1910
Patrick Boyd Tytler 1867 – 1941 [Banker]
- M1 1884 -
James Miller Gordon Pirrie c1852 - 1891 [Doctor]
- M 1905 -
Edith Burnham 1873 - 1938
- M2 1911 -
[Planter, Ceylon]
Clarence H Hays
[British Consul]
- M3 1915 -
Henry William Barber c1860 - 1928 [Fishmonger]
Mary Tytler
Lucy Tytler 1910 - 1997
Josie Tytler
-M-
-M-
-M-
John Bolling
Rienzie Joseph Arnolda 1902 - ?
R G Rollo
[Planter, Ceylon]
Hazel Tytler
[Manager, Patagonia] - M 1916 -
[Planter, Ceylon]
Lucy Douglas Mackay c1886 - ?
[Engineer]
Charles Duff-Tytler 1900 - 1979
Marie Duff-Tytler 1904 - 1942
Amelia Duff-Tytler
-M-
- M 1942 -
Arthur B Rodrigo
Stephanie Marie Frances Wallace 1909 - 1982
Carl Osborne Warren 1907 - 1959 [Merchant / Sailor]
Kenneth Carnegie Ross c1888 - 1963
-M[Planter, Ceylon]
John Duff-Tytler 1904 – 1970 [Planter, Ceylon] - M 1930 -
Nancy Mary Tribe 1908 - 1981
Natalie Carnegie Ross 1890 - 1967
Jessie Vollar
Katie Vollar
- M 1917 -
Charles Clement Guthrie 1890 – 1966 [Businessman]
Robert Stephen Duff-Tytler 1905 - 1976
Helen Grace Annie Tytler 1907 - 1981
-M-
- M 1932 -
A Cameron
James Gerald Atkinson 1906 - 1998 [Safety Engineer]
CH 14 : ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER 195
Later Robert lived in Kandy, acting as agent for a number of absent proprietors and dealing with sugar cane and with numerous coffee estates. Initially he worked for Ackland, Boyd & Co., who had bought up huge tracts of mountainous jungle for very little from the Government when the Colonial Administration decided to encourage plantation agriculture. One observer, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, described the process in the Ceylon Literary Register: Having thus secured the services of a competent and practical planter (such as Robert B. Tytler), Ackland, Boyd and Co. sent out relays of young men, principally from the neighbourhood of Crimond, who served a sort of apprenticeship under him. When new estates were opened these men were put in charge. Young men newly imported were placed under them, to whom they were expected to impart the knowledge and experience which they had acquired from Mr Tytler. Thus, in course of time the whole planting community adopted the ideas of Mr Tytler, and to these ideas, carried out to their practical issues, the present prosperity of Ceylon is in a great measure to be ascribed3. Robert, it was said, introduced the West Indian method of coffee growing and was sometimes called the Father of Ceylon Planters. It was claimed that when plantation work first began on the island 95 per cent of the overseers on Ceylon’s coffee plantations were Scots; 50 per cent of them Aberdonians.4
Kandy in 1864. Lithograph by Jonathan Needham.
Tea tasting and auctioning of Ceylon tea c.1900.
Robert returned to Aberdeen in 1848 to marry Annie Grace Gibbon, whom he had met when she was visiting Ceylon. At first Robert bought only small parcels of land for himself, but eventually he became one of the largest estate owners in Ceylon. He managed, then bought the estate of Pallakelle, which he built up to be a much-admired coffee estate. He was one of the earliest of the new breed of tropical agriculturalists interested in the application of scientific methods. He corresponded widely with scientists, experimented with new fertilisers for his coffee, recorded rainfall, and made attempts at large-scale irrigation. However, around 1869 a fungus started to reduce the coffee yields so dramatically that within a decade the coffee industry had collapsed (see Box 14.1). This coincided with a British financial crisis and most estates fell into debt5. Robert, however, was able to recoup his losses by experimenting with cocoa as a substitute. He even made a return visit to the West Indies to study their methods. He helped found the influential Planters’ Association, of which he became President. For a period he was also a member of the Ceylon Legislative Council. He retired to Aberdeen, where he died in 1882 of those two colonial hazards, disease of the liver and chronic dysentery. Annie Grace died in Stonehaven in 1904 and was buried at Nellfield Cemetery, Aberdeen. As one of his obituaries emphasised, Robert Tytler was a charitable man of strong religious beliefs, an enthusiastic evangelist and lay preacher who would preach in the streets of Aberdeen. He was a strong supporter of the spread of Christianity throughout the British Empire. Beryl Mitchell wrote: During his visits back home to Aberdeen (which were fairly frequent as his children were educated there) the burly, broad-chested 18-stone figure of Robert Boyd Tytler was well known at Castle Gate and on the streets where his cheery salutation was enjoyed by all. He was welcomed at public meetings, being intensely sympathetic and at times so childlike in voice and laughter that he invariably won the hearts of all with whom he came into contact. He was passionately fond of giving, which of itself ensured his popularity in Aberdeen. The boys would double round corners, change hats for another sixpence or even a ‘fite penny’ as Robert would call the florin with which he liked to astonish the recipient. The most unselfish of men, he cared nothing for money saying: ‘You see what the Lord thinks of money, by the sort of people he gives it to keep’.
196 ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER : CH 14
Needless to say, when he did die, his coffee-estate property in Ceylon was worth a great deal of money.
Robert Duff-Tytler
Of the twelve children of Robert and Annie Grace, eight survived into adulthood. The first four were born in Ceylon and the rest in Aberdeen. They were all educated in Aberdeen and the parents made frequent visits back to see them. The eldest, Robert Stephen Duff-Tytler, was born in 1849 at Kandy. He was given the hyphen to combine both grandparents’ surnames - apparently, not an uncommon practice with the eldest child in aspiring Scottish families. In this case it shows again the social importance of the Duff connection for the Gibbons. Robert went to the Grammar School in Aberdeen from 1861 to 1866 before returning to work for his father at Pallakelle until 1876, thereafter spending several years on various other estates. He paid a short visit to Australia in 1878. He was the Secretary of the Haputale, and Chairman and Secretary of the Saffragon and Pusselawn Planters’ Associations. Robert knew the tea planter Gibbons well, and stood godfather to his cousin Charles’ eldest son, Alexander Robert Turing Gibbon. He worked on various tea estates and became the visiting inspector of plantations for the Lipton Company, the largest tea company in Ceylon. The records show him joining the masonic Sphinx Lodge 107 at Colombo in 1895 (where the membership list shows only a few planters (but several divers, presumably for pearls). Most planters joined the St John’s Lodge. Robert later became Superintendent of Immigration, overseeing the influx from India of Tamil labour which was increasingly required by the estates6. This involved Robert staying around 1903 to 1904 in Pambam, South East India, the crossing point from India to Ceylon for the Tamil workers. He resigned when he became disillusioned by the colonial government’s unsympathetic approach to the recruitment and safe passage of immigrant labour. He died at Colombo in 1905, leaving £285 14s 6d. His obituary in the Aberdeen Journal says that his post as Immigration Officer was: an office instituted at the request of the planters in order that the influx of Tamil coolies might be regulated. The post was one which required not only a good deal of tact but a knowledge of the coolie and his language. As a young planter, Robert formed an alliance with a local Singhalese lady, Yesudial Arsrivartham Rayappen, born in 1872, whom he had met at the Christian Mission Society. They married at St Mark’s Catholic Church at Pamban, India in 1904 although most of their eleven children, all born in Ceylon, had appeared by then. Yesudial was still only aged 32. She was presumably a Catholic, as were her children.
Ceylon tea became famous around the world with a wide range of advertising.
The artist Rupert Garcia adapted a famous Lipton Company image to remind people that there was a downside to the colonial tea industry (14.2)
CH 14 : ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER 197
Grace Duff-Tytler, the eldest daughter of Robert and Annie, married Patrick Caulfred Matthews, born in 1870. She was his second wife and there were eight children from the first marriage. Grace and Patrick had four further children: Douglas, born in 1916, Rex, born in 1918, George born in 1920, and Norman. Edward Duff-Tytler, the eldest son, was born at Pussewalla. We do not know his date of birth but it must have been before 1898 in order for him to be old enough to be conscripted into WW1. He joined the 25th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers as a Private in 1915. Known as the ‘Frontiersmen’, the Battalion was raised in London in 1915 by the sinister-sounding Legion of Frontiersmen, a paramilitary group formed in 1905 to counter fears of impending invasion of Britain and the Empire. Branches were formed throughout the Empire, with the aim of preparing patriots for war or helping maintain vigilance in peacetime. When World War One started they fought in various theatres. Edward and the 25th Battalion arrived in Mombasa, Kenya in May 1915 and fought in the East Africa Campaign, in which the British attempted to dislodge the Germans from German East Africa (later Tanzania). For more than four years a 250,000-men British army was held back almost solely by the strength of will of the German General von Lettow-Vorbeck. He achieved his victories not only through the incompetence of the British, but also by training a small, but highly disciplined and loyal army of local men to act as soldiers. This became known as the Battle of the Bundu13 (the Swahili name for bushland) and some see it as a romantic struggle but there was much coercion and brutality involved – on both sides. Edward Duff-Tytler died of wounds on 20th October 1917 at Dar es Salaam. He is buried in the War Cemetery there.
(L-R) A recruiting poster and cap badge for the Empire-loving League of Frontiersmen; German Colonial Volunteers in Tangynika in 1914 preparing to fight the British and their allies (14.3); Battle for the Bundu. Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck can be seen on the front cover of this account of the campaign. Behind him are his African askaris, near the end of the war.
Ida (or Ity) Duff-Tytler, Robert and Yesudial's second daughter, was born in 1896. She married Jerome Fernandez at Bangalore, India in 1927. Her sister Dorothy Duff-Tytler married R. McKeller, but we know nothing further. Both daughters had children. Mabel Duff-Tytler, another daughter, may have been a nurse/governess. We find her accompanying a tea planter’s family in 1926 from Ceylon to Britain, and again, on her own, travelling first-class from Ceylon to Britain as a retired lady. Mabel died in 1996, aged nearly 100, and her younger sister Josephine Duff Tytler lived to 75. Charles Duff-Tytler, born in Ceylon at Pussellawa in 1900, became a tea planter in Ceylon. He married Stephanie Marie Frances Wallace, born in 1909 in Ceylon. She was the daughter of another tea planter, Henry Charles Wallace, who had married a Singhalese lady. Charles and Stephanie retired to Harrow, Middlesex, where Charles died in 1979. Stephanie died in Ontario in 1982. Marie, the next daughter, born in 1904, married Carl Osborne Warren, born in 1905 in Oklahoma, USA. He was a merchant sailor, mostly serving as a Second Mate. They were married in 1842 at St Mary’s Church, Colombo. Carl died in 1959 and Marie in 1942. Marie’s sister Amelia Duff-Tytler married planter Arthur B. Rodrigo and they had children. Marie’s brother John Duff-Tytler was born in 1904, at Pamban, India, when his father was the Tamil Immigration Officer there. He was raised in Kandy, Ceylon, with his mother and younger brother Stephen, and was schooled at Trinity College, Kandy, where he taught for a while. He then worked at the Coconut Research Institute at Lunuwila before training as a rubber and tea planter and working for the Pitakande Group, first at Matale, later at Madukelle, and finally at Tembiligala. In 1930 John married Nancy Tribe, a nurse, born in 1908 at Matale, Ceylon, where her father was a tea planter. Her grandfather had been the Chaplain of the British forces stationed at Agra in India; later he became the Archdeacon of Lahore.
198 ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER : CH 14
John and Nancy retired to Australia, where John died in Victoria and Nancy at Sydney. They had five children. The second child, Beryl, born in 1934, married another tea planter, Douglas Mitchell. Two of Beryl’s brothers, John and Ken, also became tea planters. Beryl published a fascinating memoir1 of her upbringing and family, including her experiences as an immigrant to Australia, where many of her family ended up in the mass emigration from Sri Lanka to other parts of the world that followed the rise of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. Her book also gives a vivid picture of life in the tea planting community as well as a useful insight into Sri Lankan politics. Stephen, the youngest son, was also born in Pamban, India, in 1905, six weeks after his father’s death. It is not clear what became of him. Returning to the children of Annie Grace Gibbon and Robert Boyd Tytler, the eldest daughter, Annie Grace Tytler, was born in 1851 in Ceylon. At an early age she was sent to school in Aberdeen. Her parents often visited and the Census of 1861 shows the whole family living in Aberdeen. In 1876 Annie Grace married, as his second wife, an Aberdeen surgeon, Archibald Reith, who was fourteen years her senior. He had five children with his first wife, the sister of Katherine Murray, who married William Duff Gibbon born in 1837 (see Chapter 15), and three more with Annie Grace. Reith was born in Stonehaven in 1837, the son of George Reith, who worked his way up from being a cartwright in Stonehaven to becoming Manager of the Scottish North Eastern Railway Company and then of the Grand Trunk Railway, Canada. He later became Secretary of the Clyde Navigation Trust. (FAR L) Annie Grace Tytler (L) The Aberdeen surgeon Dr Archibald Reith, who married Annie Grace (14.4)
A nephew of Archibald was John Reith, born 1889, the founder of the BBC, and its first Director General when it became a public corporation in 1927. He created the basis for a broadcasting service free of political interference and with a remit to ‘educate, inform and entertain’.
Archibald Reith is remembered in Aberdeen by a plaque at the former site of Porthill School, which he founded to help educate working girls in the evening. In 1894 he died of stomach cancer in the English Channel, when returning after a brief trip to South Africa. There is a gravestone in Nellfield Cemetery in Aberdeen to various members of his family. Geoffrey Gibbon wrote: Annie Grace was left a widow with no money, when her younger son was still at school. Some of her husband’s doctor friends suggested that she should open a home for mental cases, guaranteeing to keep her supplied with patients. She trained for a few months in an asylum, built up a good connection, and was able to buy quite a big house in Stonehaven, where her patients did well. Her stepson, a bank manager in China, who was unmarried, allowed her £300 a year and her stepdaughters visited her regularly. She seemed to have been somewhat of a ‘wag at the wa’ as they say in Scotland because when she died in 1926, one of her nephews wrote of her: 'Poor thing, she led a very strenuous life and fought her battle bravely. If she could have controlled her little member more she would have saved herself much, but everyone has some failing and after all it was an amusing foible'.
CH 14 : ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER 199
The eldest son of Annie Grace and Archibald Reith’s surviving children, also Archibald, started as a stockbroker’s clerk. In 1901 he married Alice Harriet Gard, a London solicitor’s daughter. In January 1911 he is recorded as a Secretary, sailing to New York. In April 1911 he was back in Hampstead as a Congregational Minister. He died in 1933 and Alice in 1940. He had two children, one of whom seems to have travelled round the world before becoming a plant nurseryman in Yorkshire. Police Principles and the Problem of War by Charles Edward Williams Reith, born 1886.
(ABOVE) Plaque in central Aberdeen to honour the founding of the Porthill Sunday Schools by Archibald Reith. (L) The Reith-Tytler family memorial in Nellfield Cemetery, Aberdeen.
The second child of Annie Grace Tytler and Archibald Reith, Annie Grace Gibbon Reith, born in 1878, trained as a psychiatric nurse and worked in her mother’s hospital in Stonehaven. She was unmarried. The second son, Charles Edward Williams Reith, born in 1886, became initially a tea and rubber planter in Ceylon. With the outbreak of World War One he enlisted in the Indian Cavalry Branch of the Indian Army as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Brahmins. Later he became a Captain, then a General’s ADC in Mesopotamia and Palestine. After the war he worked in the tea and rubber trades in London and started writing, publishing a novel in 1925 called An Ensign of the 19th Foot. Three years later he went to Italy but he returned to London in 1933 and for a time edited his own monthly magazine as well as writing for Time and Tide magazine. About this time he became very interested in police matters and he became a well-known author in Britain, writing several influential books about policing and the police18. During World War Two he lectured to Polish officers on the British constitution and way of life. He married Marguerite Hannah Ellen Gordon in 1924 and they had one son, Charles Martin Reith, who became an Episcopal Minister. Charles died in Edinburgh in 1957 and his son in 1992. They share a headstone in Nellfield Cemetery at Aberdeen. The third child of Robert Tytler and Annie Grace Gibbon Charles William Tytler, born in 1853, became a planter in Ceylon. He was unmarried and died at the age of 45 at Cranleigh Estate, near Lindula. He was buried in St John’s Churchyard at Lindula, where a memorial once existed but has now disappeared. William Alexander Tytler, the next brother, was born in 1854 in Ceylon and sent to school in Aberdeen. According to Beryl Mitchell he spent six years planting in Mysore, India, two years as a book-keeper and store keeper on a sheep run in New South Wales, one year in the Army during the Boer War, and forty years as a planter in Ceylon. He worked on various estates before settling in Matale, where he grew coffee, quinine, cardamom, tea and latterly rubber. The Masonic records show that in 1894 he was initiated into the St John Lodge of Colombo, one of several in the town. His address in 1894 was Nawalapitiga and in 1904 Kituajidira, both tea estates. Robert Duff Tytler, born in 1849 at Pussellawa tea estate, was also a mason; tea planters at that time constituted a large proportion of this Lodge's membership. William died at Matale and was buried in the Mahayaya Protestant Cemetery in Kandy, where the records show that Charles Gibbon paid for a burial plot for him on 15 July 1925.
200 ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER : CH 14
William married Menekie, a Sinhalese lady, and they had five children, all but one of whom became or married tea planters. Only the third daughter, Lucy, took a different path, marrying Rienzie Arnolda, a mechanical engineer in Ceylon. The eldest, Alice Terese Tytler, born about 1895, married Cranston Graham Reith, born in 1892. The second daughter Mary married John Bolling and the fourth daughter Josie married R. G. Rollo. We have no information about the youngest daughter, Hazel. Edward, the son, continued the family trade. He married and had children. At the Koladatchy estate at Matale, Edward Tytler, Cranston Graham Reith and R. G. Rollo were all managers or assistant managers within a space of five years, showing how close were the networks between planting families. As Beryl Mitchell pointed out, their descendants are now spread out over England, Canada, Australia and Sri Lanka, the turmoil after independence having caused many to emigrate. Catherine Amelia Tytler, the next surviving child of Annie Grace Gibbon and Robert Boyd Tytler, was born in 1861 in Aberdeen. She married Alexander Carnegie-Ross, who was born in 1859 at Sealkote (now Sialkote), Pakistan. His father was John Ross of Tillycorthie, Aberdeenshire, a Major in the Indian Army there and his mother was Flora Mackinnon. Alexander became an advocate in Aberdeen and then held a number of posts abroad: Vice-Consul in Quilimane, Mozambique; Consul in Lorenzo Marques, Mozambique; Consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Consul in San Francisco, USA. He was made a Companion of the Bath in 1900. Catherine died at Beira in 1894 aged 32 and Alexander remarried. Kenneth Carnegie Ross, born around 1888 in Durban, South Africa, was the elder of Catherine and Alexander’s children. He went out to Patagonia, in Chile, as a sheep farmer for the Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego. This was a giant sheep farming empire (see Box 14.2), of which Kenneth became the fourth General Manager. He was President of the Anglican Society of Punta Arenas and acted for the Magellan Dramatic Society. After retirement he moved to Argentina. In 1916 he married Lucy Douglas Mackay, born around 1886, at St James’ Anglican Church in Punta Arenas, Patagonia. The Magellan Times printed, as was the custom, an impressive list of their wedding presents. Kenneth’s sister, Natalie Carnegie Ross, born at Aberdeen in 1890, married in 1917 a businessman Charles Clement Guthrie, born in 1890. In World War One he served in the Royal Garrison Artillery who were armed with heavy large-calibre howitzer guns that were positioned some distance behind the front line and had immense destructive power. In 1922 Natalie and Charles were both living at San Rafael, California but they were later divorced and Charles remarried. Natalie lived in California for many years but she and Charles both died at Victoria, British Columbia in 1967 and 1966 respectively.
(TOP L-R) A group of Patagonian golfers in 1931. Kenneth Carnegie Ross is on the left; St James’ Anglican Church in Punta Arenas in about 1907 before it was enlarged in 1929. Kenneth Carnegie Ross and Lucy Mackay were married here in 1916; A medal produced in 1943 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Sociedad.
Sheep everywhere, 1942 (14.6)
A typical shearing shed - exactly the same as those in Australia and new Zealand, the plans having come from there via the Falkland Islands.
CH 14 : ANNIE GRACE GIBBON & ROBERT BOYD TYTLER 201
(ABOVE) A booklet produced in 1943 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company. (LEFT) Map of Chilean Patagonia showing the positions of the various sheep estancias owned by the Sociedad Explotadora (14.7)
Jessie Duff Tytler, the next child of Annie Grace Gibbon and Robert Boyd Tytler, was born in 1863 at Aberdeen. She married Henry James (Harry) Vollar, a tea and cocoa planter in Ceylon, also born in Aberdeen, the son of an Aberdeen shipmaster. Both appear in a nice vignette of life in up-country Ceylon in 190514 where the author, an artist, describes visiting and being shown round the estate of Pallekelle, managed by Harry. On this estate coffee is almost a thing of the past, and there is little tea grown; it is almost entirely given over to the cultivation of cocoa, which seems to thrive well here. The chief crop is gathered in the autumn but a small crop is also picked in the early summer, and we saw this ripening whilst the tiny little flower for the autumn fruit (it grows straight from the stem of the plant) was coming out. He showed us how the young cocoa plants are protected from the sun by the branches from other trees, and what the seeds of cocoa-nibs are like inside the great pod; also how india-rubber is gathered, and how the fungus in the coffee leaf shows itself. The heat drove us in about eleven o’clock, and then we were introduced to Mrs Vollar, and found that we had many friends and interests in common. Jessie and Henry retired to England. In 1911 they were living at Cold Ash, Newbury; later they moved to Bournemouth, where Henry died in 1918. Jessie died in 1945 in Yateley, Hampshire, where her cousin Jessie Cayley was also living. They had two children, Jessie and Katie, who appear to have died young.
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Katie and Jessie, the children of Henry and Jessie Vollar.
Mary Penelope Tytler, or ‘Molly’, the next child of Annie and Robert, was born in 1864 in Aberdeen. In 1884 she married James Miller Gordon Pirrie, whose father was the Professor of Surgery at Aberdeen University. James’ sister, Helen Lumsden Pirrie, born in 1838, married Alexander Gibbon, born in 1810 (see Chapter 22). James became a surgeon like his father, practising in Aberdeen, but moved to Montreal, Canada and then to London, where he reputedly died of drink in 1891 in Kensington, at the age of 39. His obituary in the Aberdeen Weekly Journal, however, says that ‘he moved south because of his health and died after catching a cold which settled in his lungs. He had never had robust health’. A son born in 1887 in Montreal moved south to live in Detroit, Michigan, where he was recorded variously as an inspector, a machinist and as working for Burroughs Adding Machines. He married in 1915 but was divorced by his wife, his ‘extreme cruelty’ being given as the official reason. They had a son in 1917 but he died aged 8. After James died, Mary met an American, Clarence Hays, and in 1911 went through a marriage ceremony with him at St Giles, London. He claimed he was rich but turned out to be penniless and already married. Her fortunes changed in 1915 when she married a wholesale fishmonger, Henry William Barber. He was a member of the long-established Barber family who had been trading at Billingsgate since at least the 1850s. Billingsgate Market Tallies are the tokens used to pay the porters who unloaded and loaded the fish. At the end of the day the number of tokens earned would be used to work out each man’s wages. Modern collections of these tallies feature many Barber examples. Henry and Mary lived in Kensington before moving out to Chorley Wood in Hertfordshire. Henry died there in 1928 leaving almost £176,000, a very large sum for the time. Mary died in 1933 in Kensington and left £601. (L-R) An 1875 image from The Graphic newspaper showing the old and the new Billingsgate Markets; A Barber Company tally used at Billingsgate Fish Market in London.
The street outside Billingsgate Fish Market in the early 20th Century.
The youngest child of Annie Grace Gibbon and Robert Boyd Tytler was Patrick Boyd Tytler, born in 1867 in Aberdeen. He emigrated to Canada at the age of 16 before working in Detroit, Michigan for a few years as a clerk with the Michigan Central Railway Company. In 1882 he was in Australia, but he had returned to Canada by 1901 and lived most of his life in Montreal, Quebec, working as a banker. In 1905 he married Edith Burnham at Ashburnham, Peterborough, Ontario, where she was born in 1873. Edith died in 1938 and Patrick in 1941. They had one daughter, Helen Grace Annie Tytler, born 1907, who married James Gerald Atkinson, a safety engineer. They lived and died in Montreal, Helen in 1981 and James in 1998.
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BOX 14.1
CEYLON AND THE RISE OF PLANTATION AGRICULTURE Ceylon came under British rule in its entirety only in 1815. For about a century and a half before then a small area had been controlled by the Portuguese, the Dutch East India Company and then, in 1802, the British. For some years after 1802 there were local insurrections against the British. These make depressing but familiar reading, with arrogant and ignorant Governors and a failure to impose taxation or labour policies sensitively or intelligently. Eventually the whole country was subdued. The last disturbances, sparked off partly by excessive taxation, were suppressed in 1848 with martial law and unnecessary brutality. Several coffee planters in official positions encouraged the overreaction by the military. The high death toll, all sustained by the local population, was exposed in an 1851 British parliamentary select committee report into the disturbances7. Early economic activity was slow. The main export was cinnamon; coffee was grown by the local Sinhalese on a small scale. In 1820 the Governor started a road-building programme and in 1823 a government initiative created several small plantations, using the traditional local method of forced labour8. Large-scale planting only began in 1835, when tariffs protecting West Indies coffee were removed. The next decade saw a frenzy of activity in coffee growing and land speculation, reaching a climax in 1845. The area under cultivation for coffee increased nearly tenfold to about 40,000 acres, and exports of coffee grew nearly sevenfold to around 10,000 tons. The key was the sale of Crown lands, formerly controlled by the Sinhalese rulers. They were initially given free or at very low prices to local officials or residents, then to immigrants attracted by the prospect of huge profits. Sir James Tennent, the Ceylon colonial secretary, wrote in 1859: The East India Company’s officers crowded to Ceylon to invest their savings and capitalists from England arrived by every packet. As a class the body of emigrants was more than ordinarily aristocratic, and if not already opulent, were in haste to be rich. So dazzling was the prospect that expenditure was unlimited, and its profusion was only equalled by the ignorance and inexperience of those to whom it was entrusted. The aristocratic Governor Viscount Torrington had the same view of the new planters, saying: Our coffee estates are a source of deadly hatred to the Kandians. The mass of the coffee planters, many of the worst class of Englishman, has very much tended to lower and degrade our cast (sic) and character in the eyes of the natives. During the planting frenzy money was borrowed at high rates of interest, so when world coffee prices dropped and a financial crisis hit Britain, there were many bankruptcies and large areas, already cleared, were abandoned. Over a third of estates were sold for nominal sums. After several bad years, coffee growing became a steadier affair, with better cultivation practices and experienced managers. With the help of improved roads and a railway, in addition to the importation of cheap labour from India, coffee output and profits rose to new heights. The rise of estate agriculture was not entirely without benefit to the local people: many Sinhalese now expanded their small coffee gardens until by 1870 they were producing about half the total Ceylon tonnage. The creation of new coffee estates by jungle clearing, new roads, villages and towns, generated new types of employment, which benefited the local population, despite the downsides of being excluded from power and from much economic activity. However, in the 1870s the spread of a coffee fungus blight caused coffee growing to became uneconomic. Planters, with Robert Boyd Tytler in the van, turned to the production of cocoa, rubber, sugar, tea, and, for a period, quinine. The most successful substitute crop proved to be tea. Although small acreages had been grown previously, it now expanded, helped by knowledge and experience from other parts of the Empire. One of the strengths of British colonial agriculture was the development of scientific networks, research stations and expert scientists who shared their knowledge with each other. The Ceylonese author Ondaatje 9 writes: Tea planting rose up the social scale and soon attracted men from ‘good families’ who insisted on behaving like gentlemen. Evening dress would be worn for dinner on the remotest tea estates and planters built clubs which became an integral part of imperial life.
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By 1890 220,000 acres of old coffee land had been converted to tea. Tea estates required large amounts of capital for new buildings to house new processing machinery. As local entrepreneurs found it difficult to raise this capital, the tea business encountered a shift from estate ownership by individuals to large companies where the estate managers were paid employees. For example, by 1900 15% of tea production in Ceylon was controlled by Sir Thomas Lipton. This pattern of consolidation continued up to independence and beyond. It has been estimated that by 1960 there were 15 to 20 such companies controlling hundreds of tea, coconut and rubber estates all over Ceylon. In 1965 Ceylon was the world’s largest tea exporter. In 1971-72 502 estates, growing tea, rubber and coconuts, were nationalised, most European managers left Sri Lanka, and production plummeted. In 1992-93 many estates were denationalised and most of the estate economy is now in private hands, although many estates remain closed. Tea exports have never recovered and now much of what there is goes to Russia and other countries to the east. One of the most dramatic changes in Ceylon during the development of estate agriculture was the importation of labour from India6. With many local Sinhalese unwilling to work as field labourers, a highly organised system developed of importing Tamils from South India. Initially these workers would be seasonal and were treated appallingly. By 1900, however, there were well over half a million ‘Plantation Tamils’, including young children, working year-round on European tea and rubber estates. Most of the labour force was organised not by the estate manager but by a ‘kangani’ or gang boss, who might recruit labour in India as well as organising it on an estate. Many workers became trapped through indebtedness to the kanganis or to an estate where wages might remain static while the price of foodstuffs rose. Accommodation for the estate Tamils was absolutely basic with sanitary facilities non-existent. Increasingly, however, the colonial authorities were forced to take an interest in the estate workers’ welfare and conditions. Despite the poor conditions, employment on the estates was welcomed by the Tamil immigrants, who achieved a far better standard of living than they could at home. After Independence the Plantation Tamils were denied citizenship and many were forced to move to an India which they knew little about. As elsewhere, British colonial rule undoubtedly brought huge benefits to the population as a whole, despite the violence and humiliations. Ultimately, however, the main downside here was the exclusion of most of the local population from equal rights and opportunities, and the exportation of most of the wealth created. Almost all British planters retired abroad and the planting companies distributed their profits to their overseas shareholders. Thus, the country was denied funding to establish, for example, improved facilities for health and education.
(ABOVE L-R) Danawala Club in the 1880s. Each planting district eventually started a club for European planters where they could gather, principally at weekends; To some, the tea planter’s life seemed romantic but it could be anything but for many wives who had to overcome extreme loneliness; (R) Tea planting areas, being situated in the mountains, had spectacular views. This shows how planting has been sustained on what looks like marginal land between rock ravines to carry off flood water, a big problem in the mountains.
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BOX 14.2
SHEEP FARMING IN CHILEAN PATAGONIA Until the 1880s the area at the extreme south of Chile was largely ignored by outsiders, apart from a brief gold rush and the establishment of a penal colony. However, when some sheep were introduced from the Falkland Islands, it became obvious that there was money to be made selling the wool. The Chilean Government offered concessions on very large areas of land, which were steadily taken up and estancias or ranches established. Among the most enterprising ventures was the establishment, in 1893, of the ‘Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego’ by local entrepreneurs, with the help of investment capital from elsewhere10,11. The Company leased around 4,500 square miles of land in Tierra del Fuego and by 1897 they owned 72,000 sheep. The stocking rate was between 1 and 2 hectares per sheep. During these years, the local Oha and Tehuelche Indian populations were virtually wiped out, with thousands being killed, not only by ranchers and shepherds but also by Government soldiers. The Explotadora Company was heavily involved in this12. During this period of economic boom numerous other private or company ranches were established all over southern Chile. Sheep initially came from the Falkland Islands, as did the models for shearing sheds and other buildings, which in turn had come from Australia. At first the meat could not be conserved so fat-rendering plants were built, where whole sheep could be melted down to tallow and exported in barrels. Soon, however, refrigeration became available, meat packing plants, or ‘frigorificos’, were introduced and meat was exported in special ships. Virtually everything needed had to be imported. For example, a large freezer plant built in 1913 at Puerto Bories near Punta Arenas for the Explotadora Company was constructed with bricks imported from Scotland. Settlers, particularly from Britain, arrived in increasing numbers to serve, for example, as managers, engineers, storekeepers and shepherds. Many of the earliest shepherds came from Scotland, and especially from the Hebrides: on some estancias daily orders were written up in Gaelic as well as Spanish and English. The influence of these British settlers lived on, and in 1936 there were still estimated to be around 1,000 British residents in southern Chile, owning about one fifth of the land, acting as managers in one fifth of commercial ventures and making up a quarter of farm managers. Most estancias were very isolated, so anyone working on one needed to be able to face long periods of isolation. By 1901 the Explotadora Company owned 216,000 sheep, 4,500 cattle and 1,300 horses. The introduction of Corriedale and Merino sheep increased productivity. According to Elizabeth Dooley: The Explotadora’s methods of sheep farming hadn’t changed since the company started at the turn of the century. They had thousands upon thousands of sheep covering vast tracts of land but employed no veterinary surgeons or agricultural experts and had no pasture improvement schemes. Steadily over the years the Company leased, or increasingly bought, more land in Chile outside Tierra del Fuego, as well as land in Argentina. Over the first half of the twentieth century the Company survived an uneasy relationship with successive Chilean Governments who recognised that, while land reform was essential in the north, small farms in Patagonia could not survive on such poor land and larger operations were probably necessary. Kenneth Carnegie Ross was the fourth General Manager during this uneasy period from about 1944 to 1950, when he retired to Buenos Aires. From 1964 onwards the Company was put under pressure by changes introduced by the Government, and it was finally wound up in 1973.
An early photo of wool awaiting shipment having come to the port by wagons from various estancias.
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The Company resisted change but could not resist the communist policies of Salvador Allende’s government when it came to power in 1970. Many estancias and processing plants, both private and company owned, were overnight given to their workers, who had no training and little education. As a result, chaos reigned until the repressive government of General Pinochet reversed some of the changes. Most of the estancias are still there, but under more varied ownership, and Patagonian Chile is now a more democratic place. Present-day Patagonian sheep herding (photo by the authors, 2004) In 1914 the Sociedad Explotadora built a huge slaughter and refrigeration plant near Puerto Natales to allow the export of sheep carcasses, tallow and hides. An Italian photographer, Carlos Foresti, recorded the whole process in Vistas del Frigorifico de Puerto Bories.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Vistas del Frigorifico de Puerto Bories; The entrance to the ‘frigorifico’ or slaughter plant now demolished; Inside the frigorifico showing sheep carcasses awaiting shipment; Sheep awaiting slaughter at the frigorifico - showing the scale of the enterprise.
Estancia Cameron lies to the south of Puerto Natales (No 44 on the map earlier) and was visited by the authors in 2004. In over 100 years little had changed. The living quarters, office and canteen looked exactly as they did in old photographs. One difference was that the gauchos eating their mid-day meal in the canteen were all Chilean. A hundred years ago the shepherds in the same room would probably all have been gaelic-speaking Scots.
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BOX 14.3
THE GIBBONS AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE Throughout this account we come across many Gibbons actively involved in pursuing British interests abroad, whether commercially or otherwise. The career benefit of this is obvious. Less so are the benefits which came to most of those who remained behind in Britain. However, these soon became apparent towards the end of the 18th Century as Britain became wealthy as an industrial exporter and individuals returned with money to invest. In almost all areas of employment, from modest to distinguished, the home Gibbons benefited as Britain grew wealthier. Economic cycles with their highs and lows were still present and industries came and went, but for most, opportunities for career advancement steadily increased. For example, even the poorer Gibbons involved in weaving in Chapter 4 benefited from the British Empire policy of suppressing overseas industry so that finished goods could be exported from Britain. Like the majority of families, some branches of the Gibbons had little direct contact abroad but others took advantage of the opportunities. The earliest of these were in the armed forces. Before the Union with England many Scots served as mercenaries or as merchants all over Europe although we have little evidence of this for the Gibbons, Throughout the early 18th Century we see a trickle heading abroad, mostly to India: this would become a flood in the second half of the 18th Century as the East India Company expanded and the Scots started to dominate. Many Gibbons in the East India Company were doctors, as Scotland was for long pre-eminent in medical training. It also produced large numbers of young men from the five ‘universities’ or colleges of the time with a basic sound education and later more specialised training, such as in engineering. With limited opportunities at home, Scots had to find employment outside the country. Opportunities abroad depended on patronage and the Scots were masters at this. Each successful ‘Gibbon’ in this account required to be part of a network of influence. We have encountered the East India Company in numerous chapters, and have briefly outlined the exploits of various Gibbon individuals in establishing different parts of the British Empire. The story of the creation of the Empire is very complicated, each ‘possession’ evolving in a different way and we can’t even begin to explore it here. To a great extent there was no conscious plan to create this Empire until towards the end of the 19th Century16. Any expansion before this was largely unplanned activity depending very much on individuals in place at different times. Much territorial expansion occurred with individual Army personnel looking for glory and loot rather than from a desire to set up new colonies. Once communications with London improved, it was less easy for individuals to behave with such independence. However, towards the end of the 19th Century expansionist government ministers and colonial governors appeared and the British-controlled areas began to be seen as colonies which were part of a British ‘Empire’ whose purpose was directly to benefit Britain. Steadily each colony’s economy was converted to producing export crops and raw materials to be processed in Britain, with manufactured goods sent back in return. The British controlled taxation, investment and trade, regulated the currency and manipulated labour and production. As we have seen in India, the distortions brought about by British domination led to huge unrest at some point or other in virtually all the territories of the Empire. Between 1837 and 1900 there were more than 230 ‘little wars’ fought by Britain17. Most of these involved the suppression of indigenous populations who became restless under British rule but they also included invasions of neighbouring territories under various justifications. These little wars supplied plenty to keep the military Gibbons occupied, no matter when they joined the armed forces. And of course, this account is coloured by the Gibbons caught up in the two World Wars, both of which were fought for reasons of ‘Empire’. There had always been criticisms within Britain of the British abroad, especially when news of some particularly brutal behaviour against the locals became public knowledge. It is often forgotten that few excesses or atrocities in the colonies were hidden completely from the British public, given the freedom of the newspapers and the continual flow of letters from abroad to family at home. But there were always two strands to British rule: one commercial and exploitative; the other smaller, liberal and high-minded.
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When the British were behaving despicably there was almost always a liberal critique of the behaviour from within British society. However, as today, this might not be enough to change the situation and British governments, then elected by the tiny majority who were allowed to vote, proved to have a remarkable capacity to shrug off any criticism. Today, the accepted racism of the past makes people uncomfortable, but well into the 20th Century many British were not only comfortable with racism but had codified racism into a pseudoscience, justified by the theory of the survival of the fittest15. As time went on, a view developed that the Empire was an imaginative civilising enterprise, reluctantly undertaken, that brought the benefits of modern society to backward peoples. This view, which still exists, is coupled with a belief that the British Empire was obtained and maintained with a minimal degree of force and with maximum cooperation from a grateful indigenous population, and that independence was granted willingly. Although this is clearly nonsense from a present-day perspective, most of our earlier ‘Gibbons’ would have thought this. But times change and British Imperial history is being increasingly reinterpreted and more openly debated. Even the authors, who worked in post-independence Tanzania, could see at first hand the gulf in understanding between their generation and the pre-independence expatriates.
Map showing the extent of the British Empire made for the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in 1886
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From W. D. Gibbon’s book on rugby
CHAPTER 15
WILLIAM DUFF GIBBON AND KATHERINE MURRAY William Duff Gibbon, sometimes known as Freddie, was born in 1837, the ninth and youngest child of the Rev. Charles Gibbon and Ann Duff (see Chapter 10). He went out to Ceylon in 1852, following in the footsteps of his sister Anne Grace Gibbon, and made the most of his family connections in creating his successful career as first a coffee, then tea, planter. He married Katherine Murray (christened Catherine) in 1863, at Aberdeen and they had nine children.
William Duff Gibbon and Katherine Gibbon née Murray posing for a special occasion possibly their 50th wedding anniversary in 1913.
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CHART 15: GIBBON / MURRAY
SEE CHART 10
William Duff Gibbon 1837 - 1919 [Planter in Ceylon] - M 1863 -
Katherine Murray 1842 - 1916
Mary Duff Gibbon 1864 - 1865
Annie Grace Gibbon 1866 - 1951
Charles William Duff Gibbon 1868 - 1870
Katherine Ellen Macdonald Gibbon 1870 - 1930
[Housekeeper]
- M 1894 -
Alexander Deane 1867 - 1929 [Army Major]
Denis Deane c1896 - 1914 [Army Lieutenant]
Elizabeth Deane 1912 - 1993 - M 1932 -
Travers Robert Blackley 1899 - 1982 [Army Brigadier]
Andrew Murray Gibbon 1872 - 1950 [Banker] - M 1909 -
Nicola Anne Louise Hutchison 1872 - 1932
Nicola Katherine Margaret Murray Gibbon 1910 - 1983 - M 1934 -
Edward Copson Peake 1908 - 1982 [Lt Commander, Royal Navy]
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John Murray Gibbon 1875 - 1952 [Writer & Publicist] - M 1901 -
Anne Fox 1879 - 1956
Murray Fox Gibbon 1904 - 1977
Jessie Eyre Duff Gibbon 1877 - 1955
Charles William Gibbon 1877 - 1879
William Duff Gibbon 1880 - 1955 [Schoolmaster]
- M 1906 -
Douglas Edward Cayley 1870 - 1951 [Army General]
Ann Faith Gibbon 1907 - 1997
John Gibbon 1913 - ?
Philip Gibbon 1919 - 1998
- M 1931 -
- M 1942 -
Graham Howard Shepard 1907 - 1943
Winona Eleanor Dyer 1920 - 2011
[Illustrator & Royal Navy Officer]
Richard Douglas Cayley 1907 - 1943 [Royal Navy Officer] - M 1933 -
Nancy Violet Coutts 1911 - 2006
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William Duff Gibbon went to school at Banff Academy and Aberdeen Grammar School before going to Marischal College, Aberdeen3. At the age of eighteen he left college to sail for Ceylon with his brotherin-law, Robert Boyd Tytler (Chapter 14). When he landed at Point-de-Galle on September 24, 1855, there was neither telegraph nor railway, and letters and passengers alike were dependent on horse-drawn coaches for conveyance between Colombo, Kandy and Galle. Coffee was then the major product, though the planting area was small in comparison with what it became4. Box 14.1 describes the shift from coffee to tea as the main plantation crop. William’s coffee planting career started on the Madulkelle estate, in the Kelebokka district, under the excellent tutelage of Donald Stewart, who became a legend in the industry. William subsequently took over the management of Oonoongalla Estate, and at a later date added to his responsibilities the management of Madulkelle. In 1858-59 he took charge of the 800-acre Hoolankanda for Robert Boyd Tytler remaining there until 1864, when he moved to Oodewelle in the Hantane district. A planter was expected to be capable of supervising more than one estate and the best superintendents were often made visiting agents. After about six years in the Hantane district William was appointed visiting agent for the estates of Messrs. J. M. Robertson & Co. and also attorney for Robert Boyd Tytler, and agent for his properties. This was a period of heavy and continuous work. He moved to Kandy, where he became agent for the British North Borneo Company and for Messrs Dent Bros & Co. of London. By grouping together into companies, estates could obtain limited liability status for themselves15. William remained very active right to the end of his career, visiting estates in the remotest quarters of the island. He also became one of the first members of the Planters’ Association. He was elected Chairman in 1878 and Acting Secretary in 1899. He was a member of the Provincial and Road Committees and of the Kandy Municipal Council. He was made a Justice of the Peace, and was also nominated to act as Planting Member of the Legislative Council.
Coffee was the plantation crop of interest when William Duff Gibbon arrived in Ceylon. This photo of anonymous planters shows the primitive conditions in the early days while clearing the jungle (15.10)
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(ABOVE L-R) Planting coffee in Ceylon after clearing the jungle. An early photograph by W. L. H. Skeen (15.11); An anonymous early coffee planter with his labourers. (L) In the early days coffee was pounded by hand before being sold. This photograph was taken by Charles Scowen c1880. (BELOW L-R) Coffee berries; Coffee rust, the fungal disease which caused the collapse of the coffee industry in Ceylon and led to the rise of the tea industry.
William and Katherine retired to Bournemouth, England in 1911, where they died in 1919 and 1916 respectively. On the ship home to Southampton from Colombo the Gibbons were joined by William’s nephew Sir Hartley Williams (see Chapter 11), his wife Jessie Bruce Lawford, and Lillian, one of their daughters, who had presumably been on a visit to Australia. William Duff was awarded a knighthood in 1912 (at the same time as Henry Ryder Haggard, the famous adventure story writer). Geoffrey Gibbon wrote about William Duff: I remember having lunch and tea with him in his house in Bournemouth in 1917, when he was 50 and I was 14. He was unassuming, friendly and alert, interested in all that was going on. He was short and thickset, with a Roman nose.
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Katherine was the daughter of a prominent Aberdeen advocate. One of her brothers was a planter in Ceylon, who later became a music teacher in the USA. Her well-documented extended family of Andersons and Murrays is a model of how so many business and professional families from the North East were so successful, using their networks and access to education to pursue careers, not only within the UK but also all over the British Empire. Her relatives included ministers of religion (including one in Singapore), authors, advocates, planters, professors, a university Principal, ship owners and distinguished doctors including Mona Chalmers-Watson who instigated and became Chief Controller of the Women’s Auxiliary Corps. Another was Eric Campbell Geddes a distinguished politician and industrialist. One cousin went to study medicine in Paris because she could not do so in Britain. Katherine's uncle, Dr John Murray, born in 1809 and a surgeon with the Bengal Medical Service, eventually became the Inspector General of Hospitals. He took up photography in 1849 and photographed Mughal architecture in India, as well as scenes from the Indian Mutiny, making over 600 images, many of which are now in the British Library11, 12. A niece of Katherine, Mary Olive Edis, née Murray, also became a famous photographer1. While her studio clients included many of the most prominent figures of the age, she also photographed the work of British women in France and Flanders after World War One. Later she made a famous series of images of fishermen at Sheringham, Norfolk, where she was joined on his retirement from India by John Murray. As with all her family, she made the most of her connections, such as her cousin John Murray Gibbon (see Box 15.1), producing work for his magazines Black and White and the Illustrated London News and also for the Canadian and Pacific Railways. In 1928, at the age of 52, Mary Olive married Edwin Henry Galsworthy. Edwin was a cousin of John Galsworthy, the novelist, who is said to have used maternal forebears of Mary Olive, the Anderson family from Peterhead, as a blueprint for his Forsyte Saga.
Mary Olive Edis self-portrait (15.3)
This plate of the Taj Mahal is unusual in that it is one of the few photos of John Murray in which he appears (John Murray, born 1809, was Katherine's famous photographer uncle) (15.2)
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All nine of William Duff and Katherine's children were born in Ceylon. Two died young and are buried in the British Garrison Cemetery at Kandy. The eldest surviving child was Annie Grace Gibbon, born in 1866. She was unmarried and kept house for her parents and then for her brother William Duff for over 30 years. She died in 1951 in Fleet, Hampshire, her brother William acting as the executor of her estate.
(ABOVE L-R) Gibbon family grave in the Garrison Cemetery at Kandy, Ceylon. The inscription says: In memory of Mary daughter of William and Katherine Duff Gibbon who died 25 May 1865 aged 9 months and their son Charles William who died 11 May 1870 aged 1 yr 7 months. Also of the above Sir William Duff Gibbon who after 56 years in Ceylon died at Bournemouth in 1919 aged 81. Lady Gibbon who died there in 1916 aged 74 (15.4); Annie Grace Gibbon, born 1866; William Duff Gibbon photographed by Mary Olive Edis, his niece (15.6)
The next surviving child was Katherine Ellen MacDonald Gibbon, born in 1870. She married Alexander Deane, who was born in 1867 in Cork, Ireland, the son of a Lieutenant-Colonel. He joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers, then became a second lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was promoted Captain in 1898 and then served on the Staff Corps and in the Depot Department of the regiment. He retired in 1912 to Fleet, Hampshire. Alexander died in 1929 and Katherine in 1930, both at Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. They had two children, Denis born in 1896 and Elizabeth born in 1912. Denis joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, his father’s old regiment, at the outbreak of World War One, and was killed almost immediately during the First Battle of Ypres on 24th October 1914. The war diary for the Regiment records heavy casualties suffered that day during the battalion’s first experience of heavy artillery fire from the Germans, many officers being among the dead. His name is on the Menin Gate Memorial. Photo of the formerly magnificent Cloth Hall in Ypres taken by Mary Olive Edis in 1919 showing the complete destruction of everything in the war zone (15.5)
(TOP L) Notice of the death of Denis Deane in the Aberdeen Daily Journal 6 Nov 1914. This contrasts with notices later in the war, which often consisted only of columns of names; (BOTTOM L) 54,395 names are recorded at the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres in Belgium, including that of Denis Deane. Others are recorded elsewhere. They are of soldiers who died in the salient but whose bodies have never been identified or found.
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Denis' sister Elizabeth married Travers Robert Blackley in 1932 in London. The year previously he had announced his engagement to the daughter of the Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Travers had a very varied career. He went to Charterhouse School and then joined the Royal Field Artillery in France as a Second Lieutenant in June 1918. After the war he graduated from Worcester College, Oxford, but he continued to be attached to the Royal Artillery between 1922 and 1948. He joined the Sudan Political Service as an Assistant District Commissioner in 1922, and was promoted to District Commissioner in 1932, and Deputy Governor in 1940. He saw active service as a Lieutenant Colonel with the Sudan Defence Force in 1940 and took part in the invasion of Eritrea in January 1941, acting as an Area Intelligence Officer with the 5th Indian Division. He was appointed Secretary to the Occupied Territory Administration in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1941 and promoted to Deputy Chief Political Officer, Ethiopia, in 1942. He became a Brigadier in 1943, when he accompanied the 51st Division of the 8th Army during the invasion of Tripolitania (or Libya), and he then became the Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Central Province, Tripolitania. From 1943 to 1951 he was the Chief Administrator in Tripolitania and he became the British Resident in 1951. Over his career he was awarded the Order of the Nile and was invested as OBE, CBE, and CMG. He and Elizabeth retired to Gurrane, Fermoy, Ireland, where Travers died in 1982 and Elizabeth in 1993. They had six children and there are many descendants.
BRIGADIER T. R. BLACKLEY Travers Blackley, who has died at the age of 82, as already announced in your columns, was an administrator to whom this country owed much during and after the Second World War. Seventeen years in the Sudan Political Service made him an obvious choice to be my Chief Secretary in the difficult task of administering that part of Ethiopia temporarily occupied by British troops after the expulsion of the Italians in 1941 and the return of the late Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne. Blackley’s wisdom and patience were invaluable.
He entered Tripolitania in 1943 with the 8th Army and again became my Chief Secretary, in the British Military Administration in that country. He spent six months as Instructor at the US Army School of Military Government at Charlottsville University where he earned a high reputation among American officers. He returned as Chief Administrator of Tripolitania and held that post during the difficult seven years of uncertainty as to the future of that country. He handed over a peaceful and contented country to the first Libyan Government on Independence Day 1951.
From The Times 1st March 1982. Contributed by Brigadier Maurice Lush, British Military Governor, Tripolitania 1942-43.
Andrew Murray Gibbon, born in 1872, the next child of William Duff Gibbon and Katherine Murray, became a banker and spent much of his career abroad. In 1904 he was working for the Chartered Bank in Singapore, one of the earliest foreign banks to be established there, in the mid-19th Century. In 1909 he married Nicola Anne Louise Hutchison, born in 1872 at Aberdeen, the daughter of a civil servant. Andrew was by then a manager of the Chartered Bank in Hamburg. He was still there in 1914, at the start of the First World War, and was interned in Germany for the duration. Whether his wife and daughter were also interned is not clear. They might have been interned in the famous camp Ruhleben near Berlin. Although the incomplete list of inmates does not show the family, Ruhleben held about 4,000 British civilians and was entirely self-governing, forming a complete British society including servants, racism and anti-semitism. Inmates suffered badly, mainly from shortage of food. In 1929 Andrew and Nicola retired to Tunbridge Wells and then to Fleet, Hampshire. Nicola died in 1932 in London and Andrew in 1950 at Milford on Sea. Andrew and Nicola’s daughter Nicola Katherine Margaret Murray Gibbon (or Peggy) married in 1934 at Fleet, Hampshire, Edward Copson Peake, the son of an English rector. Edward had enrolled in the navy in 1922, and by 1934 was a naval Lieutenant serving on the battlecruiser HMS. Hood. (The Hood was sunk in 1941 with only three of the 1,418 crew saved). During World War Two Edward served as Lieutenant Commander on several destroyers including Ambuscade, Escapade and Zebra, much of the time on convoy escort duty. He retired in 1952 and died in 1982. Nicola died in 1983. Commander Edward Copson Peake, Royal Navy
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John Murray Gibbbon, born in 1875 in Ceylon, was Andrew’s younger brother. He became a distinguished figure in Canada and his life is described in Box 15.1. He married Anne Fox in 1901 in Whitehaven, Cumberland. A farmer’s daughter, she was a contemporary at Oxford University, but they had met earlier at Gottingen University during a summer session there. They had four children. Murray Fox Gibbon went to Canada with his parents in 1913 and studied at McGill University in Montreal. In 1925 he was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship for the Province of Quebec, which allowed him to study at Oxford. He died in 1977 in Montreal. John Murray Gibbon, portrait by his cousin Mary Olive Edis.
Murray Fox Gibbon’s sister Ann Faith Gibbon lived in England and married Graham Howard Shepard in 1931. At Marlborough College he was a contemporary of the poets John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice, and with Anthony Blunt (the Russian spy). MacNeice’s poem He Had A Date is loosely based on the life and death of Shephard. Graham joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Lieutenant during World War Two and died while on convoy duty in 1943. His ship HMS Polyanthus was sunk in the mid-Atlantic on 21 September 1943 by the German submarine U-952, one of a wolf pack of seventeen. Graham was an illustrator and cartoonist for the Illustrated London News. His father was Ernest Howard Shepard, a cartoonist for Punch magazine for nearly fifty years, who became better known as a book illustrator, illustrating Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows. Pooh was based on Growler, Graham’s teddy bear. Graham and Ann Faith had a daughter, Harriet Jessie Minette, who married Roger Hunt, an underwriter, in 1957. The third child of John Murray Gibbon and Anne Fox, John Gibbon, went with the family to Canada at a few months of age but we have no further information on him. The fourth child was Philip Gibbon, born in 1919 at Montreal. He married Winona Eleanor Dyer, born 1920, in Sutton, Quebec in 1942. They have descendants in Texas, Ontario and Quebec.
(L-R) Grave of Graham Shephard and Ann Faith Gibbon at Shamley Green, Surrey (15.7); an illustration by E. H. Shepard; Philip Gibbon and Winona Dyer’s wedding in 1942; Philip and Winona’s grave in Montreal.
Returning to the previous generation, the youngest daughter of William and Katherine was Jessie Eyre Duff Gibbon, born at Kandy, Ceylon. Like her siblings she went to school in Aberdeen. She married at Kandy, Major Douglas Edward Cayley, whom she met when his Worcestershire Regiment was posted to Ceylon in 1905. Douglas was born in 1870 in Simla, India, the son of Henry Caley and Letitia Walters, a clergyman’s daughter. Douglas came from yet another of those families with large numbers of highly successful doctors, clergymen and military members, many playing a prominent role in the British Empire. Douglas’ uncle, for example, Sir Richard Cayley, became the Chief Justice of Ceylon. Henry Caley trained as a doctor and surgeon and joined the British army in India. He was awarded a medal for his part in the Indian Mutiny, and participated in a number of expeditions. After reaching the rank of Deputy Surgeon-General, he returned to England in 1887 and was appointed Professor of Military Medicine at the Army Medical School at Netley, Hampshire. He retired from the army in 1900, but the following year went to South Africa to supervise a hospital during the Boer War. After that he became Honorary Surgeon to King Edward VII. While in India, he is said to have made clearer the link between mosquitoes and malaria.
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Douglas was sent to school at Clifton College in Bristol, along with his brothers9. After attending the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment in 1890. He was posted to the 1st Battalion in India and served with them at Poona, Kamptee, Rangoon and Aden until 1896, when he came home with the Battalion to Devonport. He was promoted Captain in 1899, and served with the 1st Battalion throughout the South African War, being awarded the Queen’s medal with three clasps and the King’s medal with two clasps. He was promoted Major in 1904 and posted to the 2nd Battalion in Ceylon in 1905, serving with them there and at Ahmednagar and Jhansi, India. While in Ceylon he met Jessie Gibbon, whom he married at Kandy in 1906. As Second-in-Command, he came home with the Battalion to Aldershot in 1913. In 1914 he was promoted Lt Colonel and proceeded to Burma to take command of the 4th Battalion, which formed part of the 88th Infantry Brigade, 29th Division. He commanded the Battalion at the historic landing in 1915 at Helles in Gallipoli, and in various actions on the Peninsula; he was one of few officers present throughout the campaign in Gallipoli from the first landing to the evacuation of Suvla and Helles, which enabled the Allies to leave without the Turks being aware. The Allies left various booby traps for the Turks, including laying a fire in the fireplace in Cayley’s dugout, with 30 lbs of explosive, The daily Regimental Diary of this time shows how successful Cayley was as a commander and how highly he was respected. During Gallipoli his brother-in-law William Duff Gibbon was under his command. After a refit in Egypt, the 29th Division was moved to the Western Front. Now a General, Cayley commanded the 88th Infantry Brigade at the opening Battle of the Somme in July 1916, and during subsequent operations until the Battle of Monchy-le-Preux in April 1917, where his Brigade was heavily engaged and he himself was gassed. On recovery he resumed command of the Brigade until the Battle of Ypres in 1917 (Passchendaele), when he was severely gassed again along with the whole of the Brigade staff. In March 1918 Cayley was promoted Major-General in Command of the 29th Division. He continued in this post through many engagements including the advance to the Rhine and finally the crossing of the Rhine over the famous Hohenzollern Bridge at Cologne. He was three times wounded, nine times mentioned in Despatches, awarded the CB and CMG, and honoured by several other countries. He retired in 1920 with the honorary rank of Major-General, and lived at Hook and then Yateley, Hampshire, where he died in 1951.
(L-R) Douglas Cayley; Suvla Bay three days before evacuation showing the huge amounts of equipment that had to be destroyed; The 4th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment at Gallipoli (15.13)
Douglas and Jessie had one son, Richard Douglas Cayley (Dick), born in 1907 in India. He joined the Royal Navy and became a submarine officer. From January 1941 to April 1942 he was a Lieutenant Commander in charge of the submarine HMS Utmost. He became known as ‘Dead Eye Dick’. Most of this period was spent in the western Mediterranean. The patrol reports and logbooks make fascinating reading, showing what courage was required to attack enemy shipping and be attacked in turn, time after time. Some patrols involved helping the resistance movement in Tunisia, and others attacking land targets, mostly railways, in Italy. In October 1942 Commander Cayley returned to the Mediterranean from Britain in the new submarine HMS P311 which was as yet unnamed but was due to be called Tutenkamen. She was fitted to carry two Chariot human torpedoes intended for an attack on Italian cruisers at Maddalena. Unfortunately, around 2 January 1943 she hit an Italian mine and was not heard from again. In May 2016 a diver discovered the wreck off Tavolara Island near Sardinia13.
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Report of the discovery of the Submarine P311 captained by Richard Cayley and confirmation of its dreadful end (15.8)
The prow had been damaged by an explosion but the hull was intact, meaning that the crew would have died of suffocation inside the vessel. During his career Commander Cayley was awarded the DSO and 2 bars. His name is on the war memorial at Yateley, Hampshire. He married Nancy Violet Coutts in 1933 at Fleet, Hampshire. She was probably born at Kobe, Japan, where her parents were married in 1903 and where her father was a broker. In 1919, aged 8, she sailed to the UK with her mother and sister. Dick and Nancy had a daughter Jennifer Jane Cayley, born in 1934, who married Arthur Doggett, a Squadron Leader in the RAF, with whom she had children. Nancy married again, to Herbert Samuel Gild, who was a Surgeon Lieutenant Commander during World War 2 in the South African Navy. Nancy died at Alnwick in 2006. William Duff Gibbon was the last surviving child of William Duff and Katherine Murray2. Born in Kandy, Ceylon in 1880, he was educated at Robert Gordon’s College, Aberdeen, and at Dulwich College, London. In 1899 he went up to Trinity College, Oxford, where he read mathematics. He joined the University contingent of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and served with the regiment as a private soldier throughout the South African War. Afterwards he returned to Oxford to read modern history. After taking his degree, he taught for a short time at Winchester, before joining the staff of his old school, Dulwich. He remained there until the outbreak of war in 1914, when he served in the Worcestershire Regiment, the regiment of his brother-in-law Douglas Cayley. He saw service in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and Persia. Box 15.2 gives a small vignette of life as an infantry commander during World War One. The daily Regimental Diary for the Ninth Battalion mentions William frequently and also gives a frightening picture of what it was like to be a front-line soldier in that war. In due course, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, William was appointed to command the Ninth Battalion of his regiment. In the spring of 1919 he was made Chief Instructor at the Senior Officers’ School at Baghdad. While there he was asked to undertake a special mission into the wilds of Trans-Caucasus, which he described in Blackwood’s Magazine in an article called Antranik 10,14. General Andranik Ozanian was a leader of the Armenian national liberation movement, which had just been crushed by the Ottoman Empire. This led to a desperate refugee situation, especially for the Armenians. William’s job was to report on how they could be helped. His description of the tens of thousands of refugees caught in the winter mountains makes harrowing reading as he sees them, with few clothes, no food, dying in front of him. A brief account from the Regimental History is given in Box 15.3 but the article in Blackwood’s Magazine is fuller and more personal. Subsequent political machinations by the major powers including the British in the region did little to help the long-term situation. William returned to Dulwich with an MC awarded in 1916 for his performance at Sari Bair in Gallipoli and a D.S.O. awarded in 1917 for action at the Battle of Kut. He was mentioned in despatches a total of five times. Known in Dulwich as Scotty Gibbon, he was revered as one of the finest rugby coaches in Britain, training a succession of Blues and Internationals. When a serious shoulder injury prevented him from playing rugby at first class level, he wrote two books on the art: First Steps to Rugby Football and Rugby Football in Theory and Practice. CH 15 : WILLIAM DUFF GIBBON & KATHERINE MURRAY 221
In 1922 William was appointed headmaster of Campbell College in Belfast. One of his obituaries records that he knew that there was some tension between the Anglicans and the Presbyterians on the Governing Body, so when, at the first interview, he was asked which Church he belonged to, he was at once on his guard, and replied that, like the King, he attended the Church of England when in England and the Established Church of Scotland when in Scotland. His unconventional methods made an immediate impression. He taught the boys to show courtesy to strangers visiting the school by acting out on the stage the wrong and the right way. To know the boys better he would walk round the dining hall at lunchtime and sit in the first empty place he found. To stimulate the school teams he arranged short tours in England both in winter and in summer; he accompanied the tours himself and visited the Officers’ Training Corps in their annual camp at Tidworth or Strensall. Commenting on his work with schoolboys and with Boys’ Clubs a friend wrote: He possessed the ability to recognize the possibilities as well as the limitations of each individual life which he touched, and to find pure gold in the most unlikely places. He also made a strong contribution to public life throughout Ulster through his work with the training of teachers, the Army Cadet Force, and youth organizations. His sister Annie Grace Gibbon, who kept house for him at Belfast and during his retirement at Fleet, Hampshire, shared his enthusiasms. He died in 1955, four years after Annie. Samuel Beckett, the famous playwright and author, taught French briefly at Campbell College in 1928. This was not a success. Many of his students’ papers were marked with such caustic and ascerbic comments that William Duff Gibbon wrote his own comment upon them, asking the student and his parents to disregard Beckett’s opinions. After one particularly nasty series of remarks, headmaster William entreated Beckett to take his teaching more seriously, for he had been entrusted with the education of young men who were ‘the cream of Ulster’. ‘Yes I know, Beckett replied dryly, ‘all rich and thick’16.
Portrait of William Duff Gibbon, born 1880, when he was head of Campbell College. (LEFT) W. D. Gibbon’s influential book on rugby & (TOP) Wheeling (to the Right), an illustration in the book. (FAR L) Obituary of William Duff Gibbon (15.9)
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BOX 15.2
WILLIAM DUFF GIBBON IN MESOPOTAMIA 1917 (Taken from the Worcestershire's Regimental War Diary, it describes one day in the life of an infantryman during World War One.) In Mesopotamia the 9th Battalion of the Regiment had seen no fighting of any importance during the Summer and Autumn of 1916. The disastrous campaign for the relief of Kut had left both the opposing armies exhausted; and the heat of the ensuing months had been too severe to permit much movement of troops. So, both armies, British and Turkish, lay quiet and waited for the cooler weather of Winter. Then the move forward to the front began. The troops marched in small columns of all arms, covering the miles from Amara to the front in ten days. Next morning (December 15th) came orders for the 38th and 39th Brigades to advance up the eastern bank of the Hai towards the enemy’s entrenchments. After a sharp skirmish with some Arab snipers, the advance began about 10.0 a.m. The 9th Worcestershire were detailed as support to the Brigade. The troops in front of them came into action and there was heavy firing; but the 9th Worcestershire were kept back in the rear till almost midday. Then orders came for two companies to be sent forward to fill a gap which had opened between the inner flanks of the two Brigades. Accordingly “C” and “D” Companies under Major Gibbon moved up to the right flank of the 39th Brigade and were put under the command of the 7th Gloucestershire. As Major Gibbon’s two companies advanced, they were met by a sharp fire of shrapnel and of heavier shells (No other troops were moving at the time and consequently the Turkish artillery concentrated upon them); but the Worcestershire platoons continued their advance across the open until they were in line with the 7th Gloucestershire, who were lying deployed within 500 yards of the enemy’s position. The Turkish trenches were strongly held and well protected by wire. The two Worcestershire companies came into action, fire being kept up by the Lewis guns while the remainder of the two companies dug cover with their entrenching tools. As they lay working for dear life, the Turkish high explosive burst among the labouring soldiers and shrapnel was rained upon them. Men were hit right and left. Gradually the survivors made cover for themselves, but before they were reasonably secure the losses had been very heavy. Of the two companies over a hundred had been killed or wounded. While Major Gibbon’s two companies had thus been under fire, the remainder of the 9th Worcestershire had moved forward, and by nightfall had established a support position some 500 yards behind the front line of their Brigade. By dawn next day the position of the British forces on the eastern bank of the Hai was fairly secure.
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BOX 15.1
JOHN MURRAY GIBBON John Murray Gibbon was a prolific writer and publicist and an influential figure in creating the early identity of Canada5,6. He was born in 1875 at the tea estate of Oodewella, Ceylon, but his mother brought him and four siblings to Aberdeen for their education. John was educated at Gordon’s College and then at Kings College, part of Aberdeen University. He showed an aptitude and interest in music and languages and the wide Scottish education system clearly suited him. He won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a first-class degree in classics. During the summers he studied in Germany, at the University of Gottingen, and he also studied art in Paris during long weekends. In Germany he became interested in folk culture, especially as expressed through song. He was influenced by writers such as Rousseau and by Von Herder, who thought that folk traditions were probably the greatest assets of any nation and should be collected, preserved and used. By this time in his life he had shown a talent for networking and for making friends which was to be a strength for the rest of his life. On coming down from Oxford, John started to write novels and joined the staff of the leftist London weekly, Black and White, of which he became editor. Around 1901 he developed tubercular nodules in his neck. These were surgically removed and he spent several months in Northern Africa to recover. He then had six weeks at an artists’ colony in Cornwall, in the company of his eldest brother, during a break in the latter’s career in banking. Upon his return to London, Gibbon moved to the Illustrated London News, for which he wrote a political column. While in London he continued his interest in music and art, especially in folk song and folk art. He became a member of the Langham Club, usually reserved for artists. In 1907 he was employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as supervisor of its publicity in Europe. His knowledge of French and German and his extensive travels on the continent helped him to prepare for this post. One of his first jobs as advertising agent was to accompany twelve European newspaper editors on a train journey across Canada. Gibbon enjoyed the trip so much that in 1913, when the president of the CPR asked him to move to Montréal to become the General Publicity Agent for the CPR, he jumped at the opportunity, travelling east via the Trans-Siberian Railway. He continued in this post until his retirement in 1945. When war broke out in 1914 he tried to enlist to fight overseas, but at 38 he was considered too old. Instead he volunteered to help raise money for the Victory Loan campaign, developing advertisements. Gibbon was a long-time enthusiast of folk culture and of exploring the importance of the Canadian cultural mixture. In the 1921 census he entered himself and his children as ‘indienne’ i.e. ‘native american’. While continuing his outstanding work in advertising, he found time for research into the traditional folk-songs of French Quebec, many of which he translated and published in Canadian Folksongs, Old and New. He organized a series of sixteen folk-song, dance and craft festivals sponsored by the CPR, starting in Quebec and spreading right through Canada, the events being held in CPR hotels. Other musical writing included the libretto for the ballad opera Prince Charlie and Flora (1928). His composition Melody and the Lyric won a Prix David in 1931 from the Quebec government. He was a member of the Canadian Music Council7. Among Gibbon’s numerous other writings are Steel of Empire: The Romantic History of the Canadian Pacific; a number of history books including Scots in Canada, Canadian Mosaic and The Making of a Northern Nation; five novels, including Hearts and Faces about Aberdeen University, and Drums Afar, set in Oxford. In 1921 John Murray Gibbon became the founding president of the Canadian Authors’ Association. Established in an attempt to rectify the lack of recognition for Canadian authors, this has played a key role in the support and development of the Canadian writing community. He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by McGill University, Montreal. John Murray Gibbon’s lasting legacy was to be the first to see Canadian culture as a ‘mosaic’, in which different cultural identities coexist and contribute to a unified whole, allowing the evolution in Canada of a bilingual, multicultural, national culture8. His biographers say that his book Canadian Mosaic had a strong influence on the Canadian government’s multiculturalist policies involved in the creation of a
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White Canada. Here we must recognise that, like so many others in this book, John Murray Gibbon, was a man of his times, and cannot be judged by present-day attitudes. In Canadian Mosaic there is a chapter about every kind of white immigrant national group making up the new Canada. But there is no mention of the indigenous population, nor of any other groups such as Asian or Chinese. Not until 1960 were aboriginal Canadians allowed to vote in federal elections. Government policy during John Gibbon’s lifetime included a serious attempt at complete cultural genocide of much of the indigenous population, who were placed in reserves. For a century or more, children of Canada’s indigenous peoples were systematically removed from their families, prevented from learning about their own culture, and often physically and sexually abused in the terrible boarding school system which was imposed on them and administered by Christian churches. About 30 per cent of indigenous children (around 150,000) were placed in residential schools. The last of these schools only closed in 1996. Many of the legacies of this policy remain. The same scheme was operated in White Australia. Interestingly, in the 1921 census John Murray Gibbon declares himself as an Eskimo and his four children as Indienne. Is this a joke or a political statement? The Canadian mosaic has changed since Gibbon's time. As well as a belated recognition of indigenous Canadians, the present mixture includes many additional nationalities, especially from Asia, with very different attitudes towards multiculturalism. John Murray Gibbon, while very much a man of his time, still appears as a remarkable figure. (L) John Murray Gibbon (15.12) (BELOW) John’s grave at Banff Town Cemetery in Alberta
John Murray Gibbon produced a wide variety of publications over his career as this selection shows.
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BOX 15.3
WILLIAM DUFF GIBBON AND THE ARMENIANS (Taken from The Worcestershire Register in the Great War by H. Stacke, 192814) The peoples of the mountain lands around the Caucasus were always historically divided as to their allegiance as well as their race and religion. By 1919 the collapse of the Russian and Turkish Empires added to the complex of white and brown; Semite, Aryan, and Mongol; Greek Church, Armenian Church, and Islam; Russian subject and Turkish subject; all added to Bolshevik, Tsarist and Nationalist agitation. The area rapidly split up into a myriad of unstable regional, provincial and local governments. Into this welter of antagonisms, in 1919, a small British force was thrust to supervise the withdrawal of the Turkish troops and to keep the peace. Britain also had a deep interest in the region in order to secure continued oil supplies for the navy. Some of the British soldiers sent were from the 9th Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel William Duff Gibbon. He was given the task of making a special mission to see what could be done about the plight of over 30,000 Armenian refugees, the remnants of a much larger group, caught up in the high mountains and in danger of being massacred in the same way as some 1,500,000 Armenians had been murdered by the Turks in the genocide of 1915. (L) General Andranik Ozanian or Antranik the famous Armenian leader whom William Duff Gibbon met after World War One.
Religions in 1914 Muslims (Sunni, Shia & Alevi)
Greek Christian
Armenian Christian
Other Christian
(L) Distribution of religious groups in Armenia in 1916 showing how intermingled they were.
General Antranik was one of the prominent leaders of the Armenians of the mountains, who since the massacres of 1915 had been maintaining a desperate struggle for existence and independence among the wild highlands to the south-west of Baku. The Armistice had brought little change in their situation. Antranik and his small force of fighting men were at Gerusi in the mountains of Zangezeur, together with the refugees of his race. Between them and the British at Baku lay their enemies the Musselman Tartars, with headquarters at Shusha. Between Serusi and Shusha extended a wide ‘No Man’s Land’ of desolate mountains. On December 13th Colonel Gibbon, then commanding the 9th Worcestershire, was ordered to proceed to Zangezeur and clear up the situation. His force consisted of a small detachment in light armoured cars. With him there went representatives of the local governments. The little force went by rail to Eviakh and then struck south by road into the mountains. After a certain amount of diplomatic work at Shusha, the cars were left behind and the party worked on across the mountains to Antranik’s headquarters at Gerusi. There they were well received. Negotiations between Gerusi and Shusha took up every hour until New Year’s Day. Serious disturbances then arose and the British officers who had returned to Shusha were fired at by Tartar irregulars. After further negotiations Colonel Gibbon decided to push on with a small party across the mountains to Nakhichevan to endeavour to organise a line of withdrawal in that direction for the Armenian refugees. On the road the little party were fired on, and with difficulty escaped with their lives. They were kept prisoner for two days in a Musselman village until help came.
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On arriving at Nakhichevan Colonel Gibbon held a conference of the local authorities. It became clear that movement of the Armenian refugees without the protection of British troops would only lead to a general massacre. So, the Colonel and his party made their way by road and rail through Musselman and Armenian territory to Tiflis, at which city the headquarters of the 27th Division were then located. He reported and made arrangements and then returned by way of Evlakh to Shusha. Colonel Gibbon was then ordered back to Baku where he was kept for a month by other urgent work. Early in February he received a report from Antranik that the food in the mountains had failed, that the evacuation of the Armenian troops could no longer be delayed, and that the Mussalmans at Shusha were preparing for a general massacre of the Armenian refugees in Zangezeur following the withdrawal of Antranik’s little army. So Colonel Gibbon again went into the mountains and assisted in organising the retreat of Antranik’s troops. In the first few days of April he accompanied them through the deep snows across the mountains, by way of Karakalisse, Kushi, Keshishkend and Zingerlu to the railway at Davalu, and thence into the territory of the Armenian Government of Erivan. There Antranik’s troops were demobilised. Some weeks later the Armenian leader himself left for Paris, to plead the cause of his ruined race at the Peace Conference. In his article in Blackwood’s Magazine William Gibbon made several observations about the Armenian refugees that he encountered: On the upper slopes the stone and grass shelters made last summer by the refugees from Turkish Armenia and Nakichevan were still visible. Since the snows began to fall the survivors had been housed in cattle-sheds and outhouses in villages in the valleys. At one time between thirty and forty thousand had been camped out on the hillsides: about a quarter of these had died of famine, exposure, and disease. Our train broke down about thirty versts from Alexandropol and waited there till a trainload of refugees from Erivan for Kars picked us up. Their condition was appalling – open trucks, snow, and practically no food or clothing. The news that the refugees with Antranik would probably follow him to Erivan was received with consternation by the relief authorities. The Americans in that district, under the leadership of a band of great-hearted missionaries who were formerly in Turkish Armenia, were already hardly able to cope with the appalling conditions there. In some places there were unpleasant rumours of cannibalism. The addition of another 25,000 to the starving population would probably mean death by starvation for all. I rode over to Bernagout to see the refugees there. Their situation was deplorable. They were crowded for the most part in cattle-sheds and outhouses. There was practically no grain, and the money distributed was really of little use, as money had no value. Where the snow had melted the able-bodied spent their whole day digging for roots, which they boiled to keep them alive. Starvation, coupled with lack of clothing and fire, had produced good soil for the ravages of deadly typhus. One room we went into had recently held eighteen: now there were only four survivors, and two of them were sick with typhus. There was no hope of getting seed grain out to the Armenian villages in the mountains in time for this year’s sowing. The greater part of them cannot now survive next winter. There are those who sit at home and say: ‘The Turks have been misled by the Germans. They are really a brave honourable race, more sinned against than sinning.’ Would they could see, if only for five minutes, the damnable works the Turks have done and are doing still. By a process more deadly and more sure, they are completing the task of destroying the remnants of the Armenian race that they have failed to destroy by massacre.
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Cable sent by Harold Imray to London to say that he had successfully arrived in Montreal.
CHAPTER 16
AMELIA GRACE GIBBON AND HAROLD IMRAY The second daughter of Charles William Gibbon and Mary Ann Wheeler (see Chapter 12) was Amelia Grace, born in 1860. In 1883 she married Harold, the fourth son of John Imray, a fascinating man with a distinguished career. After graduating from Marischal College, Aberdeen, John became an engineer in London. He married Jean Young, who apparently provided the money to buy a share in an engineering firm. John specialised in ventilation, before running a very successful engineering business in London from 1850 to 1867. In 1861 he described himself as an engineer and machinist and was employing 50 to 60 workmen. During that time, he was granted many patents for his inventions in the fields of railway engineering and steam engines. He later became a consulting engineer and patent agent, helping to found the Institute of Patent Agents, of which he was the second President. He collaborated with various well known people on a variety of inventions, for example in 1868 M.P.W. Boulton and Imray jointly patented inventions related to ‘Propelling Vessels’.
Amelia Grace
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 229
CHART 16: GIBBON / IMRAY
SEE CHART 12
Amelia Grace Gibbon 1860 - 1918 - M 1883 -
Harold Imray 1856 - 1902 [Patent Agent]
Millicent Young Imray 1884 - 1978
John Imray 1885 - 1905
Douglas Imray 1887 - 1962
Gladys Elizabeth Imray 1889 - 1971
[Engineer & Tea Planter]
[Teacher & Nun]
- M 1 c1921 -
Huru Takon - M2 -
Mina
Andina Beryl Imray 1922 - 1998 - M 1953 -
John Heaps Irvine 1925 - 1999
Douglas Ludwig Struan Keith Irvine 1954 - M1 1976 -
John Imray 1932 -
Jean Imray 1933 -
- M 1952 -
- M 1953 -
Janet Rose 1933 - 1996
David Shearer 1927 - 2003
Robert Harold S Imray 1949 -
Peter Douglas John Imray 1954 -
Fiona Shearer 1961 -
[Construction]
[Toolmaker]
Thomas Adrian Imray 1923 - 2016 [Engineer] - M 1945 -
Grace Margaret Seymour 1924 - 1960
Patricia S Jeffrey - M2 1983 -
Rosemary P Syms
230 AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY : CH 16
- M 1973 -
Jennifer Phillips 1955 -
Alison Hind
Peter Hind
Doris Miriam Imray 1891 - 1935
Jessie Margaret Imray 1892 - 1986
Irene Jean Imray 1894 - 1971
Henry Gibbon Imray 1897 - 1936
[Nurse]
[Civil Servant]
- M 1913 -
Alfred Edwin Bernard Godfrey 1885 - 1962
- M 1922 -
- M 1922 -
Edgar Richard Hind 1889 - 1971
[Stockbroker]
[Engineer]
Frances Olive Badman 1900 - 1992
John Richard Imray Hind 1927 - 2015 [Agriculturalist] -M-
Mollie Hind
Mollie Olivia Grace Imray 1923 - 2001
-M-
- M 1941 -
Michael ?
Stanley Harrison Barber 1915 - 2000
Patricia Alebonda
[Hairdresser]
Colin Henry Imray 1933 - 2020 [Diplomat] - M 1957 -
Shirley Margaret Matthews 1934 [Nurse]
Cheryl Ruth Harrison Barber 1947 - M1 1967 -
Derek Alfred Houlson 1941 - 1998 [Teacher]
Anthony Paul Imray Barber 1947 [Landscape Gardener] - M 1980 -
Carola L Schueler
Lisa Dawn Barber 1962 - M 1992 -
Robert A E McLeod 1958 -
Christopher Henry Ernest Imray 1959 -
Frances Margaret Raphael Imray 1960 -
Elizabeth Mary Imray 1962 -
Alison Imray 1965 -
[Doctor]
[Teacher]
[Doctor]
- M 1988 -
- M 1988 -
- M 1982 -
- M 1988 -
Sylvia Yarwood-Brown 1960 - 2020
Timothy King 1952 -
David Phillips 1958 -
Karl Colyer 1963 -
[Teacher]
[Engineer]
- M2 1985 -
Jonathan Mathys
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 231
A good illustration of the haphazard way in which genealogical history is passed down can be found in one letter of a descendant, where the only fact remembered about John Imray was that his wife had a magnificent cockatoo about 100 years old. More pertinent to our story, John was a grandson of the Rev Robert Memmes (or Memess), the Episcopal minister at Stonehaven for 63 years from about 1755 to 1818, a time when, as we have seen earlier, the Gibbons were very active there1. Another connection was that John’s father, the Minister at Longside in Aberdeenshire, was a close friend of the Rev Charles Gibbon (see Chapter 10); they had been contemporaries at Marischal College in Aberdeen2.
(FAR L) John Imray, born 1819, engineer and patent agent. Pen & ink drawing by Sebastian Evans. (L) Harold Imray’s patent giving him legal rights over 160 acres of land at Conjuring Creek, Alberta in 1902.
The 1871 census shows Harold at school at Longside, Aberdeen, living with his grandmother Catherine Imray nee Memess. By 1881 he was a patent agent working for his father and living in Finchley, London. 1891 shows him listed as a civil engineer, but also as an inmate in a ‘Home for Inebriates’ in Rickmansworth, Herts. Clearly he had problems which may have led to a confrontation with his father: in 1898 he headed off to Canada, leaving his family behind. His father then rewrote his will to exclude Harold ‘who has forfeited the position in life which I had secured to him’3. In Canada Harold registered to create a homestead or farm and was awarded a quarter section of land (160 acres) at Conjuring Creek about 60 km south west of Edmonton, Alberta. By 1901 he had cleared only 15 acres, on which he had a house 10ft by 8ft, a hen house, and a stable 22ft by 18ft with 2 horses and 15 pigs. This was the minimum required to gain legal ownership of the land. Meanwhile he also worked for a neighbouring farmer, who gave him a good reference. The next trace we have of Harold is of his death, from pneumonia and heart failure as a result of a snow storm, on 4 December 1902, in the gold mining district of Moyie, British Columbia. The press reported that he had been working on a section of the railway. The local Masonic Lodges arranged for his body to be buried in Cranbrook, the nearest town, and for his wife to be informed. The original correspondence about these arrangements shows an extraordinary compassion from these various Masons towards a stranger whose possessions seemed to consist of little except his masonic regalia. Why he left Conjuring Creek for Moyie we will never know, but as a present-day local writing of these pioneers said, ‘many just walked away in open frustration’.
232 AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY : CH 16
A report of Harold Imray’s death appeared in the Cranbrook Herald.
Map showing Moyie where Harold Imray died and Cranbrook where his body was taken.
When Harold took off for Canada, he left Amelia Grace, or ‘Milly’ as she was known, with eight children and very little money. Her younger brother Robert arranged for them to live next door to him and their Gibbon cousins in Segary Villas, Hadley Wood Road, New Barnet. The Gibbons and Imrays grew up almost as one family. They played cricket in Hadley Woods in the summer, and games around the dining table in winter. When the Gibbons’ mother died, shortly after the birth of her youngest child, Milly took charge of the baby. Milly died in 1918.
A selection of Imrays and Gibbons from the combined households at Segary Villas, New Barnet (see Chapters 12 & 17). From the left: Bruce Gibbon, Millicent Young Imray, Jessie Imray, Douglas Imray, Harry (Henry) Gibbon Imray, ‘Wifie’ or Mary Ann Gibbon.
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 233
Milly’s children, all of strong personality, were curiously varied, thought Geoffrey Gibbon. Millicent, always known as ‘Queenie’ to the Gibbons and ‘Billie’ to her siblings, was born in 1884. For several years she looked after the Gibbon children following the death of their mother.
(L) Millicent Imray (Queenie), born 1884, with her brother Douglas, born 1887. The boy is probably Peter Imray, their great nephew; (ABOVE) Doris Imray.
Later she and Doris, her sister, managed a small fruit orchard at Latchingdon in Essex. After Doris’ death in 1935 Queenie joined her widowed cousin Evelyn Gill at White Hall, a grand house near Braintree, Essex, where she grew Cox apples and raised chickens. Later she shared a two-bedroomed cottage with Elsie Peacock, a former World War Two land girl. In common with much British housing at the time, the cottage had only an outside loo and wash house. Visitors would sleep in a shed at the end of the garden. Queenie died in 1978. John, Milly’s eldest son, died at the age of 19 as the result of a fall two years previously when climbing near Beer, Devon. The second son, Douglas, born in 1887, became an engineer and spent about 30 years working in Assam. In 1922 he is described as a Saw Mill Manager and in 1929 and 1937 as a Tea Planter. He married two Indian ladies seriatim but, as was the custom, never brought either back to England when on leave. He had two children, Andina Beryl and Thomas, with his first wife Huru Takon, and another two, John and Jean, with his second wife. All four of Douglas’ children married and had offspring. In common with many colonial families, Douglas sent the children to Britain at a young age. The eldest girl, Andina Beryl, known as Robin, came to Britain in 1936 at the age of 15, employed as a child’s nurse on the voyage. Unfortunately, she broke her back while with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She was treated by Sir Ludwig Guttmann at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Sir Ludwig had fled Nazi Germany and ended up at Oxford, eventually becoming head of the Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville in 1943. In 1948 he organised the first Stoke Mandeville games for disabled people, which eventually became the Paralympics. Robin met her future husband, John Heaps Irvine, at Stoke Mandeville and they both competed in archery at the Paralympics, with Robin winning two bronze and one silver medal. Their son Douglas, born in 1954, was named after four of the doctors who had looked after them, and Sir Ludwig became Douglas’ godfather. Douglas worked for Oxfordshire County Council’s IT department. In 1938 Robin’s brother Thomas Adrian Imray joined the naval training ship Indefatigable at Liverpool as a cadet aged 14. A perennial problem with children sent ‘home’ for their education was where they could go during holidays. Douglas asked his sister-in-law Olive Imray, née Badman, to marry him after her husband, his brother Harry, died. Although she refused the offer, he helped with the school fees of her daughter Mollie, while his son Tom spent his holidays with her. Tom joined the Royal Navy in the war and took part in the Normandy landings. He also trained for the planned invasion of Japan. He then spent 25 years as a fitter and engineer on reconstruction jobs in England, before building a radio station 234 AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY : CH 16
in the Middle East for the Diplomatic Wireless Service, the communications network set up for use by the British Foreign Office and also to facilitate BBC overseas broadcasts. Tom retired to Colchester, remarried, and died in 2016. In 1945 Tom had married Grace Seymour, who died in 1960, and their only child, Robert Harold, born in 1949, emigrated to Australia, where he ran a successful construction company. Robert and his wife received some publicity when they escaped unhurt from the Costa Concordia shipwreck off Tuscany, Italy, in 2012. In October 1945 the 13-year-old half siblings of Andina and Tom, John and Jean, travelled from Bombay to Southampton. John married Janet Rose in Portsmouth in 1952 and their son Peter became a toolmaker, while Jean married David Shearer in 1953 in London. Gladys, the second daughter of Amelia Grace and Harold took a degree in English Literature and trained as a teacher. She taught in South Wales before going, in 1919, as a Missionary Teacher to South India, where she worked with the Sisters of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta until her health gave way and she returned to England. Later she went to South Africa, where she taught for many years at a Mission in the Transkei and joined the Community of the Resurrection based in Grahamstown. She then taught at one of the Community’s missions at a Training College at Penhalonga in Rhodesia, where she wrote basic English text books for Africans. She spent four years in East London before returning to South Africa and to the Community, where she spent the rest of her life, dying there aged 81. Within her Community she was known as Sister Bertha Maud.
(ABOVE) Gladys Elizabeth Imray (R) Gladys, Sister Bertha Maud, in her nun’s habit.
Jessie, the fourth daughter of Millie and Harold, born in 1892, was ‘small, trim and lively, with a quick mind and an even quicker tongue’, according to Geoffrey Gibbon. Another comment was that she ‘was besotted about her Scottish connections and everything Scottish’. She married Bernard Godfrey, a very tall and earnest stockbroker, the son of a Company Secretary. In 1911 Bernard was a bank clerk living at home. They married in 1913 in Barnet and lived together in Plymouth for nearly fifty years. Bernard often went to London, bringing back presents which varied in value, depending on his conscience about his activities in London. Bernard died in 1962 and Jessie in 1986.
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 235
Irene (known as Judy), born in 1894, trained as a nurse at what is now the Royal Northern Hospital. Her fiancé was killed in World War One. She nursed in Tanganyika and in 1921 was a nurse at the Royal Northern Hospital. She went out to India in October 1921 where the passenger list shows her as a Medical Student. She married Edgar Richard (Dick) Hind, in Calcutta in October the following year. He was the Superintendent of Sawmills at Murkongselek, Assam and probably a colleague of her brother Douglas. Dick was an engineer who travelled widely in his work. Irene took over a nursing home at Thetford, which prospered, and they eventually retired to a village near Cambridge. They both died in 1971. They had a son John and an adopted daughter Mollie, named after Mollie Olivia Grace Imray. John, a tropical agriculturalist, married Patricia Alebonda and had two children.
Irene Jean Imray with her son John.
Mollie Hind, the adopted daughter of Irene and Richard Hind.
Henry (or Harry) Gibbon Imray, born in 1897, was the youngest of the family of Amelia and Harold Imray. Robert William Gibbon, born in 1863, found him a good opening in the office of the Chairman of Lloyds. In 1915, although well under age, he gave up his job to enlist with the Seaforth Highlanders. He rose quickly to the rank of Second Lieutenant but his heart gave in and he was not passed for military duty. He recovered sufficiently to work in the marine insurance office of Robert William Gibbon, but when Robert’s eldest son Ronald, born in 1895, returned from the war as a partner, Henry had to leave.
Henry (or Harry) Gibbon Imray, born 1897.
236 AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY : CH 16
He then managed a garage in Wales for Charles Badman, an agent for a large mining company, whose daughter Frances Olive Badman Henry had met during his convalescence. They were married in 1922. When the Badman firm failed, Henry went to Sierra Leone as an Auditor in the Colonial service. Frances visited Henry in Sierra Leone but otherwise remained in Wales. Henry died at sea in 1936, on his way home on leave, leaving a daughter, Mollie, and a son, Colin. A fuller account of Henry and Frances’ life is given in Colin’s book Remember and be Glad4.
Frances Olive Imray, née Badman, with son Colin Helen Imray.
A postcard sent in 1910 by Geoffrey Gibbon, aged 9 to his cousin Harry Gibbon Imray, aged 13; Harry Imray with his son Colin Henry Imray, born 1933.
The Badman family taken about 1912. Frances Olive Badman, who married Henry Gibbon Imray, is in the centre,
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 237
In 1941 she met Stanley Harrison Barber, then in the RAF. As he was due to be sent to Africa, they were married in September 1941, although they effectively started their married life in Nottingham when Stanley was demobbed in 1946.
Mollie in 1961
Henry’s daughter, Mollie Olivia Grace, was born in 1923, in Crickhowell, Wales. When World War 2 started, Mollie was recruited by the Weapons Research Establishment at Tondu, a few miles from Porthcawl, where she lived.
Stanley was a brilliant hair stylist, winning and adjudicating competitions in New York and European capitals, often with Mollie as his model. He rapidly built up a chain of hair salons, and made a fortune. However, in the late 1960s he suffered a prolonged nervous breakdown and lost most of his money. They moved to Torquay, where Stanley died in 2000 and Mollie in 2001. They had three children: Cheryl, born in 1947, Paul, born in 1948, and Lisa, born in 1962. Cheryl, an artist, divorced her first husband Flight Lieutenant Derek Houlson, with whom she had a daughter, Lara, who died in 2010, and two sons, Matthew and Andrew. She is separated from her second husband, Jonathan Mathys. Paul, a landscape gardener, is divorced from his German wife Carola Schueler, whom he married in 1980. One daughter, Florence, is a bank manager in Devon; the other, Harriet, is a doctor in Plymouth. Lisa, a secretary, is separated from her husband, Robert MacLeod. She has no children.
(L-R) Mollie Imray in her role as model for her husband Stanley Barber, the hair stylist; Mollie and Stanley; The Barber family, including Cheryl and Paul, at a hairdressing competition.
Henry's son, Colin Henry Imray, born in 1933, married Shirley Matthews in 1957 and their life is outlined in Box 16.1. Shirley trained as a nurse and her father was a director of Westland Aircraft. They have four children, Christopher, Frances, Elizabeth and Alison. The eldest, Christopher PhD FRCS, FRCP, MB BS Dip. Mount. Med. (UIAA), Dip. Mnt. Med. (Univ Leics), is Professor and Consultant General of Surgery and Director of Research and Development at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. He has over 65 publications in peer-reviewed journals on a variety of subjects. At present he is the president of the Vascular Society of UK & Ireland.
Colin and Shirley Imray in Bangladesh, 1993.
238 AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY : CH 16
Christopher Imray on Mount Everest.
Alison Imray
Elizabeth, the third child of Colin and Shirley, like her brother, studied medicine, becoming MD, MSc, MBBS, BMedSci, FRCP(London), FRACP, MRCP (Edinburgh). She worked for 21 years in Northumberland, specialising in matters of the gut before becoming a Consultant Physician in Gastroenterology and General Medicine at Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, New Zealand. She married David Phillips, a water engineer and teacher, and they have three children, Rosie, Jonathan and Aidan.
Elizabeth Imray
Frances has degrees in theology from Oxford and London, and an MBA in School Management from Hull. She taught religious education at schools in London before also becoming involved in school administration. She taught in Guildford for a number of years, becoming head of department at Tormead School, Deputy Headmistress of St Mary’s, Ascot, and Headmistress of Heathfield School, Ascot. From 2008 to 2013 Frances was the Headmistress of Roedean School near Brighton, before moving to the Collège Alpin Beau Soleil in Switzerland. She moved from there to become the Headmistress of Mill Hill School in London. She married Timothy King and they have two children, Emily and Henry.
Frances Imray
One of Christopher's interests is the effects of high altitude and cold on the body. To investigate this he has undertaken numerous climbs all over the world. One was to Mount Everest, where he helped lead a medical team which spent the longest period ever recorded in the ‘Death Zone’ just below the summit. Christopher married Sylvia Yarwood-Brown and they had three children, Caitlin, Oliver, and Cameron. Caitlin is a doctor at the main hospital in Sheffield, where she trained.
Alison studied Religious Studies, specialising in Sufism, at University College, London. She progressed to a high level in Yoga, both spiritual and physical, which she teaches. She married Karl Colyer, a management consultant, in Cheshire. They have two children, Ben and Milly.
Genealogical pilgrims Elizabeth Phillips née Imray, son Aidan, and Colin and Shirley Imray in front of Lonmay Parish Church in 2011. Colin is holding a portrait of the Rev. Charles Gibbon, born 1789, who was the Minister there and a core ancestor in the Gibbon story (see Chapter 10).
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 239
BOX 16.1
COLIN HENRY IMRAY Colin Imray was born in 1933, the son of Henry Imray and Olive Badman. He spent his career in the civil service and when he retired he wrote a very readable memoir of his life4. This gives interesting insights into a time when Britain was relinquishing its empire and the traumas this involved, both for the British, and also for the various countries liberated. The memoir also gives intimate glimpses of various family members. Colin spent his childhood at Porthcawl in Wales before going to Highgate School in London in January 1945, while the threat of bombs was still present. His fees were initially paid by two aunts, and Robert Gibbon, his father’s cousin. Hubert Gibbon (born 1899) was a housemaster there and acted in loco parentis. Colin won the English Schools Junior High Jump in 1948. On leaving Highgate he spent a year on an English Speaking Union scholarship, based at Hotchkiss School in Conneticut, but allowing extensive travel. He was elected Valedictorian by his Class. During National Service, 1952 -1954, he was promoted senior under officer in the Seaforth Highlanders (his father’s regiment) and allowed to choose a posting in Sierra Leone, where his father had been based. From 1954 to 1957 Colin studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at Balliol College, Oxford5. On graduation, he married Shirley Matthews, a nurse whose father was a director of Westland Aircraft. Colin first worked for the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) in London before spending three years in Australia as Private Secretary to Lord Carrington and General Oliver, two of the Commissioners. After two years in London, he went to Kenya, again with the CRO, where much of the work involved helping the country through the transition period around independence. He returned to London in 1966 to the Personnel Department of the Diplomatic Service, at a time when the Foreign Office was being merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office. He then spent three years in Montreal, Canada, as Deputy Trade Commissioner. This coincided with a period of prolonged violence by the Free Quebec Movement, an anxious time, especially when he had to substitute for 11 months for his Head of Post, who was kidnapped by the FLQ. Promotion took him to Pakistan as Counsellor, Head of Chancery and Consul General from 1973 to 1977. He and his wife travelled extensively around the country as well as into Afghanistan, often with their growing family. Fortunately, this was a time of relative political stability in both countries. Colin then attended the Royal College of Defence Studies, with spells in Israel and London, before being appointed in 1980 as Deputy High Commissioner in Bombay, where he was made CMG for commercial work. He returned to London in 1984 as Chief Inspector before going as High Commissioner to Tanzania in 1986. This was a country at a different stage of development, as its first revered President, Julius Nyerere, had just retired, and Tanzania was facing the consequences of the sometimes over-enthusiastic implementation of policies adopted since independence 25 years before. In 1989 Colin was posted to Bangladesh, which presented yet another challenge at a time of political instability in a politically complex country. Bangladeshis believed he helped to overthrow their unpopular President and on his departure their lawyers presented him with a salver for the part he played in the restoration of democracy to their country. Colin retired in 1993. He was awarded the CMG in 1983, the KBE in 1992, Knight of St John in 1993, and the Freedom of the City of London in 1994. From 1993 to 1998 he was Secretary General, then Director of Overseas Relations of the Order of St John, which provides medical care throughout the Commonwealth. For some time he had particular responsibility for the management of their Eye Hospitals in East Jerusalem and Gaza. Later he was heavily involved with various trusts and charities, including being Chairman of the Royal Overseas League from 2000 to 2005. After moving to Wallingford in Oxfordshire, he was appointed High Steward there. In his memoir Colin stresses the importance of the diplomatic wife, and makes it clear what a great contribution Shirley made in each of his postings. She was active in a variety of ways, not just as part of the diplomatic scene, but also with initiatives of her own, some involving her medical interests as a trained nurse. On the Imrays’ retirement the Foreign Secretary said ‘She has been a considerable asset to the service as a whole’. Back in England she became a volunteer researcher at the Victoria and Albert Museum and spent many years researching her contribution to the book Indian Life and Landscape6. She was also President of the Order of St John in Abingdon, Wantage and Wallingford.
240 AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY : CH 16
(TOP L) Colin Henry Imray in 1981 receiving an earful from the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. (TOP R) Colin and Queen Elizabeth in 2002. (ABOVE) The Imrays enjoying retirement at Wallingford.
CH 16 : AMELIA GRACE GIBBON & HAROLD IMRAY 241
Barbara Gibbon as portrayed in pastel in 1941 by Richard Ziegler a well-known German artist who was living in exile in England during World War Two.
CHAPTER 17
ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON AND FRANCES EDITH SMITH Robert William Gibbon, born in 1863 in New Barnet, London, was the son of Charles William Gibbon and Mary Ann Wheeler. He went to the Old City of London School off Cheapside and at the age of 15 became junior clerk in a small marine insurance agency that acted for Swiss firms1. In 1899 he took over the agency himself, building it into a small but successful business in marine insurance involving broking, underwriting and average adjusting. Family legend has it that he held a small part of the insurance for the Titanic when it sank in 1912, but given that any such risk was normally spread carefully between numerous brokers, this was unlikely to have been a major problem.
Robert William Gibbon
The initial list for the insurance of the Titanic. Companies taking up a direct share of the risk would sign their names or initials and say the amount they wished to invest. Any evidence that the firm of R. W. Gibbon did invest has yet to be unearthed (17.1)
CH 17 : ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH 243
CHART 17: GIBBON / SMITH
SEE CHART 12
Robert William Gibbon 1863 - 1932 [Marine Insurance Broker] - M 1894 -
Frances Edith Smith 1871 - 1913
Ronald Turing Gibbon 1895 - 1970
Gerald Cedric Gibbon 1897 - 1914
Hubert John Gibbon 1899 - 1970
Robert Geoffrey Gibbon 1901 - 1987
[Marine Insurance Broker]
[Marine Engineer]
[Teacher]
[Anglican Canon]
- M 1937 -
- M 1979 -
Rosemary Sweeney 1896 - 1963
Nirvana Ayscough De Fawkes 1914 - 1984
Edward Crisp Bullard 1907 - 1980 [Geophysicist]
Sally Barbarina Lowe 1941 -
Mark Gibbon Lowe 1934 -
Julian Duff Sebastian Lowe 1935 - 1945
Jane Gibbon Lowe 1943 -
[English Teacher]
[Teacher & Publisher]
- M 1974 -
- M 1960 -
(M)
David Wyllie 1944 -
Maria Sartori 1935 - 2015
David Downey
[Community Worker]
[Lecturer]
Helen Clare Wyllie 1975 -
Alison Imogen Wyllie 1977 -
Katherine Alida Lowe 1961 -
Juliette Shahrezard Lowe 1962 -
Sangam MacDuff 1978 -
[Graphic Designer & Illustrator]
[Publisher]
[Architect]
[Health Practitioner]
[Lecturer]
(M)
(M)
- M 1993 -
- M 2008 -
Craig Lucas Warland 1980 -
Graham Haworth 1960 -
John Mark Edmondson 1961 -
Sabrina Dresti 1975 -
(M)
Simon Calum Walker 1976 -
[Architect]
[Business Analyst]
[Musician]
244 ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH : CH 17
[Tiler]
[Teacher]
Melina Clark
Florence Rosalie Gibbon 1903 - 1962
Phyllis Mary Gibbon 1905 - 1994
Edith Norah Gibbon 1908 - 1995
Arthur Henry Gibbon 1913 - 1994
[Housekeeper]
[Music Teacher]
[Health Visitor]
[Farmer & Priest]
Alice Barbara Gibbon 1907 - 1985
William Duff Gibbon 1911 - 2007 [Marine Insurance Broker]
- M 1932 -
- M 1940 -
John Stanley Lowe 1906 - 1996
Joan Betty Mowatt Payne 1916 - 1999
[Musician & Impressario]
Alexander Robin D Gibbon 1941 -
Elizabeth S Gibbon 1943 -
Gerald Gibbon 1946 -
[Shipping & Import Export]
[Nurse]
[Insurance Broker]
- M 1979 -
- M 1972 -
Nancy R Chown 1956 -
Maria Graciete Atilho Cerqueira 1949 [Marine Insurance Broker]
Jennifer Laura Gibbon 1983 -
James Christopher Gibbon 1986 -
Michelle Gibbon 1965 -
Ricardo William Duff Gibbon 1976 -
CH 17 : ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH 245
Like his father, Robert was deeply religious, tolerant, and unorthodox. As a young man he joined the Swedenborgian church, founded by followers of the Swede, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1722), whose numerous writings included a new interpretation of the Bible (see Box 17.2). Robert had a strong interest in Swedenborg’s writings and built up a considerable library. In 1894 he married Frances Edith Smith whose family were also Swedenborgians. The Smiths’ extended family worshipped and centred their social life at the New Churches in Camden Road and Argyle Square. This meant that they tended to marry other members of the church. A crucial element of their success was the extensive but close social network that their membership of the Swedenborg church gave them.
Camden Road New Church which was central to the lives of so many of Robert William Gibbon’s Smith in-laws.
The New Church in Argyle Square, the other church attended by the Smiths and Gibbons.
The 1833 pamphlet on cucumbers and melons written by Frances Edith Smith’s grandfather.
The strong influence of Frances Edith Smith on her Gibbon cousins is described in detail by Geoffrey Gibbon in John Smith and Company. Edith’s grandfather, John Smith, worked as a gardener near Ipswich, Essex, for Dykes Alexander, a member of a well-known Quaker banking family. Interestingly, Alexander made an unsuccessful claim for compensation for the loss of slaves in Jamaica. Evidently he saw no conflict between slave ownership and Quakerism. John Smith, a Swedenborgian and an educated man, was the author in 1849 of a pamphlet A Treatise on the Growth of Cucumbers and Melons2. His son John (Edith’s father), a coach painter and railway worker, married Mary Jane Carter and they had 15 children, 11 of whom reached adulthood. Mary had built up, from the humblest beginnings, the wholesale millinery firm of John Smith of London Wall, which was employing 45 people by 1881. Spreading the values of imagination and hard work, she created employment for at least seven family members. The success of Mary’s firm, together with the Swedenborgian network, helped launch the family into London’s professional circles. One daughter, Lydia Jane Smith, married the widely-travelled export manager for Carter Seeds. One son became a surgeon while two daughters went to the Royal Academy of Music. Another son, George Augustus Smith, became active in the Ethical Society and was an early member of the Fabian Society, playing an important role in London local politics, including serving on St Pancras Borough Council with George Bernard Shaw. The Fabians had decided that unless they were to be taken simply as a talking shop they should also become active in local politics. Another daughter, Anna Beatrice Smith, married Francis Black, who started life in the family business of lace making, but who went on to found various Art Schools including the Camden School of Art. Their daughter Phyllis Marguerite Black married Eric Coates, the famous light music composer, whose compositions included the Dam Busters March. An account of their courtship and life together is given in Eric’s fascinating and amusing autobiography Suite in Four Movements. Numerous grandchildren of John Smith and Mary Jane Carter ended up scattered over professional London.
246 ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH : CH 17
(L-R) Eric Coates who married Frances Edith Smith’s niece (17.2) The Dambusters’ March. One of the well-known patriotic pieces written by Eric Coates.
Frances Edith was the tenth of the eleven surviving children of John Smith and Mary Jane Carter. She was educated at North London Collegiate School, run by Frances Buss, the famous pioneer and advocate of education for girls, then at the Royal Academy of Music. When Edith met Robert William Gibbon, he was a shy and serious young clerk of twenty-three, living with his parents. Tradition has it that when Mary Jane saw her youngest daughter’s attraction to this humble clerk, she sent her to study in Dresden for a year to get over it. Edith, however, did not get over it: she and Robert were married in 1894.
Robert William Gibbon and family photographed probably at the end of 1908. From left to right: Ronald Turing Gibbon, born 1895; Gerald Cedric Gibbon, born 1897; Florence Rosalie Gibbon, born 1903; Phyllis Mary Gibbon, born 1905; Alice Barbara Gibbon, born 1907; Robert William Gibbon, born 1863; Robert Geoffrey Gibbon, born 1901; Frances Edith Gibbon née Smith, born 1871, holding Edith Norah Gibbon, born 1908; Hubert John Gibbon, born 1899.
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In 1898 Robert and Edith moved to the semi-detached Woodside Villa in Hadley Road, New Barnet. Robert’s mother Mary Ann took the other half, Beechwood Villa, and the two houses were knocked into one. After Edith’s death the double house was re-fronted and enlarged. The house next door, 2 Segary Villas, was taken by Robert’s widowed sister, Amelia Grace (Milly) Imray, and her eight children (see Chapter 16), to create one vast family. Gibbons and Imrays in Hadley Woods, near Hadley Road in New Barnet, London where the two families lived plus various visiting cousins. From left to right: Henry Gibbon (Harry) Imray, born in 1897; Irene Jean Imray, born in 1894; Jessie Margaret Imray, born in 1892; Bruce Scott Gibbon, born in 1888; Doris Miriam Imray, born in 1891; Gerald Cedric Gibbon; Charles William Gibbon, born c1892.
Later, Frances’ youngest brother, Fred Smith, took a house higher up the road to extend the clan yet further. By 1911 Robert and Edith had nine children, with cook, housemaid and children’s nurse all living in. In April 1913, six weeks after the birth of her tenth child, Edith died. The Imrays next door then came to the rescue. Amelia Grace (Milly) Imray and her daughter Doris took charge of the new baby, and her eldest daughter Millicent (Queenie), came to live with the Gibbons and take charge of the household. Three months after Edith’s death there came a sharp break with the Swedenborg Church: the two youngest children were baptised, and another son was confirmed, in the Church of England. Robert even became a churchwarden of Monken Hadley parish church. He died in 1932 from heart problems. To the end he went up to the office two or three times a week, taking a taxi to and from the station. He also still frequently read his Swedenborg. Ronald Turing Gibbon was the eldest son of Robert and Edith. Ronald served in France during World War One, in the Labour Corps because of his poor eyesight. When he was demobilised, he joined his father in marine insurance in what became R.W. Gibbon and Son. The controlling interest was sold to E.W. Payne & Co. in 1938 but the name lasted until 2009. When World War Two started in 1939, Ronald added the duties of Air Raid Warden to those of the family firm. He was lured by his fellow Wardens into the North London Bowling Club in Fitzroy Park and soon became an addict and an expert. When he was bombed out of the house he was sharing with his sister Phyllis, they took a flat in Highgate where another sister, Norah, later joined them. Ronald was a keen bibliophile and art connoisseur. He died unmarried, in 1970.
Certificate showing Ronald Turing Gibbon’s release from the Territorial Army in 1919. It also shows his time in the Labour Corps in France. Ronald’s bookplate. He was a keen collector of paintings and books.
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The next child, Gerald Cedric Gibbon, born in 1897, went to Aberdeen to serve a marine engineering apprenticeship with Hall Russell and Company, the engineering and shipbuilding firm, which had a direct connection back to the Gibbon shipbuilders of the previous century. In 1914 he died suddenly from influenza, coupled with a cerebral haemorrhage. In his brother Geoffrey’s papers, there is a letter from Gerald aged 16 to Geoffrey aged 12, written in mock Doric:
19 Bon Accord Crescent Aberdeen Nov. 29 1913 Dear Geoff, Aw’m gey fashed I hinna vreiten till ye afore, ye maun think me a glaiket loon, but fen ye hinna ower muckle time ye dinna aye mind fat ye oucht till dee. An een gin we hinna muckle wark gaeing on at the warks, we dinna get any mair time till oorsels bie’t. But we wullna threpe’t intill yer, or maybe ye wullna thole’t. There’s aboot as muckle wark deeing awa doon’t Hall Russell’s usual, ‘at is a’maist naething for me till dae, but I maunna compleen as aw wud get sair forforchen gin I hed till wark overtime, especially gin I hed till wark a’ nicht as we dee whiles, but nay aftin. But ye hae till be eichteen afore ye maun dee’t, an’ noo aw’m on’y seventeen, sae I hae aboot towmon yet afore I wull hae till dee’t, an I’m richt glad. We had a right bonny sunset the streen an nay sae bad a sunrise. But the morn’s morn I wull hae the pleasure a’ being i’ bed, as ‘twull be the sawbath, the bonniest day o’ a’ the ouk. Get oop at haut past-nine, hae an ‘ours rest i’ the efternoon, an’ gae till bed at nine, fat cud be better I dinna ken. Aye, aye, it gets gey caul i’ the morn.
Hubert John Gibbon of the Grenadier Guards (17.3)
Hubert John Gibbon, the next son left school in July 1917 and was commissioned after three months in the ranks as a subaltern in the 3rd Grenadier Guards. He had apparently impressed the senior Guards Officer who had inspected the school cadet force, and was offered a commission in the Regiment. He was posted to the 3rd Battalion and went to Northern France in April 1918. The London Gazette of 1st February 1919 carried the following report of his winning the Military Cross: 2nd Lt. Hubert John Gibbon, G. Gds., Spec. Res., attd. 3rd Bn. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on 27th September, 1918, on the slag heap east of Demicourt. He, with only two men, rushed a strong point, killing the teams of two machine guns and clearing the way for the advance. He then went on beyond his objective and put a third machine gun out of action.
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Another entry for September 1918 from a history of the Grenadier Guards8 says: Second Lieutenant Gibbon with three men took half a dozen prisoners, and sent them back down a trench. As the last German disappeared round its traverse, he treacherously drew a bomb from his pocket and threw it at Second Lieutenant Gibbon and his men, who had just enough time to run round another traverse. In a letter to one of his younger brothers he said: Just after the Armistice, November 1918. 3rd Grenadier Guards, Tuesday. At present we are at Maubeuge which we captured on Saturday morning at 4.15 a.m. It was a bold and daring exploit. We pushed on four miles into the blue beyond the front line right through his protective screen and captured the city, leaving lots of his fellows absolutely cut off. We had a most wonderful reception, just like the rot they write in the papers only even more so as we came absolutely unexpectedly. It was a damned fine performance as we had been fighting hard every day that week in pouring rain and some of the time against stout resistance. Thank the Lord it’s all over now. I suppose you heard that I’ve picked up an MC. It’s rather nice as it does show you’ve been in the war. I hope with any luck to bag a Croix de Guerre or something as except for my runner, who was a yard ahead of me, I was the first of our army to enter the city. I was in charge of the point of the advanced guard to the battalion and had the unpleasant task of going first over all the bridges and cross roads practically all of which had been blown up or blew up during the course of the night. It was quite a panicky job. We now hear that we are moving next week to garrison Coblenz. Hubert did not get a Croix de Guerre. He became part of the Army of Occupation in Cologne and was later stationed at the Tower of London He was promoted to Lieutenant on 28 May, 1919, but relinquished his commission on 1 April, 1920, and went up to Pembroke College Cambridge, whose records state that because of his war service, he was excused a year’s residence. Much of his time at Cambridge was spent playing on the sport field. On graduation in 1922 he joined the staff of Highgate School, where he was to stay for 43 years. In 1937 Hubert married Rosemary Sweeney, a nurse of long experience, who helped undertake the care of the 30 or 40 boys of The Lodge, the Boarding House of which Hubert was in charge from 1929 to 1957. A memoir published in 2012 shows that Hubert was held in high regard by the hundreds of boys who had passed through his house at the School3. One contributor wrote: Our primary image was of a very senior, stern, elderly gentleman. Although he was then about the same age as our fathers, he seemed much older, aloof and distant. Discipline and duty were fundamental to our existence; many were the lectures about self-discipline, regularity of habits; there were doubtless rules to contain 30 to 40 small unruly boys in a modest house, but they were never published, never questioned, never challenged. Conversation was always direct and to the point, usually illustrating some shortcoming on our point, never a word of idle chatter or flip commentary on the events of the day. Another wrote: In later years there were more conversational discussions, but always purposeful and focussed, never a social chat. Always serious; laughing and frivolity were highly suspect. One of his nephews, Mark Lowe, said that Hubert had once told him: Other schools teach boys to think for themselves, but we go one better: we teach them what to think for themselves. Like so many schools during the war, Highgate was evacuated from London. Hubert and Rosemary went with the school to Westward Ho!, in Devon. Rosemary died in 1963 after a long illness. Hubert, who had suffered a severe heart attack, went to live with his brother Geoffrey in Gloucestershire. He died suddenly in the summer of 1970 after five years of village life.
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(CLOCKIWISE FROM TOP L) Hubert John Gibbon teaching at Highgate School (17.4); Robert Geoffrey Gibbon aged 75; Geoffrey was Canon of Salisbury Cathedral in Rhodesia and wrote this biography of his colleague Archbishop Paget; An obituary of Geoffrey (17.5); The gravestone of Geoffrey and Hubert at Somerford Keynes in the Cotswolds; Mark Lowe with his uncle Geoffrey.
The next child was Robert Geoffrey Gibbon. At the age of seventeen he entered Merton College, Oxford in 1918 as a Postmaster (Scholar) and took first class Honours in Modern History in 1921. In September 1923 he joined the staff of Wrekin College, an evangelical school in Shropshire, where he spent nine years. In 1932 he entered Wells Theological College. He was ordained in 1934 in Southwark, serving for three years in the parish of St Peter’s Church at St Helier, in Jersey. When he volunteered for service overseas, he was accepted by the London office of the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia Missions, and sent to Southern Rhodesia. He became Canon of Salisbury Cathedral in Rhodesia and was responsible for the building of many churches all over the country. He returned to England in 1965 and took over the parish of Somerford Keynes in the Cotswolds. His brother Hubert joined him there as a ‘lay brother’. When Geoffrey retired in 1971, he joined his younger sisters, Phyllis and Norah, in their Highgate flat. In 1973 he published a biography of Archbishop Paget of Rhodesia, with whom he had worked4. In 1979 he married Nirvana Ayscough De Fontenelle Fawkes, born in 1914, the widow of his cousin Patrick Crichton Gibbon, born in 1913. Geoffrey produced several publications on church history as well as his accounts of his immediate family- Gibbon of Lonmay; Letters from My Father and John Smith and Company - which are widely quoted in this book. Nirvana died in 1984 and Geoffrey in 1987. Florence Rosalie Gibbon, the eldest daughter, was educated at St Leonards School in St Andrews. On leaving she took charge of the household at home, releasing Queenie Imray from her devoted service as housekeeper to the family. In 1954 Rosalie went out to Southern Rhodesia to keep house for her brother Geoffrey. She died in 1962 after a road accident.
Florence Rosalie Gibbon, born 1903.
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Phyllis Gibbon, born 1905.
Phyllis Mary Gibbon was born in 1905 and, like Rosalie, went to St Leonards. She then studied at the Royal College of Music and taught at St Leonards Junior School until her health broke down and she gave up her teaching post. She made a trip to Ceylon to help recover, visiting her various cousins there. She spent the remainder of her life in Highgate, teaching private piano pupils and playing the piano for old people’s services. She was very religious, going to church almost every day, and she had a particular interest in St Francis. She died in 1994.
Alice Barbara Gibbon, born 1907.
Alice Barbara Gibbon, the next daughter, was born in 1907. After St Leonards, she gained a First in history at Girton College, Cambridge, though only graduated officially after 1947, when degrees were finally awarded to women. After Cambridge, Barbara was awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship for two years’ study in the USA. On her return she worked in London producing texts in Basic English. This was a system developed by C.V. Ogden and I.A. Richards, popular in the 1930s and 1940s, for learning English as a second language. She also spent some time at the East London Settlement, a social work charity. In 1932 Barbara married John Lowe, a music master at Eastbourne College (see Box 17.1). John did not possess the tolerance of his Swedenborgian in-laws. According to his son, he refused to meet Eric Coates, the famous light music composer who was married to a cousin of Barbara. After the sudden death of their younger son, John joined the Roman Catholic Church, followed some years later by Barbara. This conversion featured strongly in both their subsequent lives. Barbara taught English and General Studies in various schools in Malvern and Birmingham. She also worked as an examiner, and latterly, in Cambridge as an indexer of new editions of Ricardo, Keynes and other political economists. According to Geoffrey Gibbon she had a fine intellect, a quick understanding, wide interests, great enthusiasm and great powers of patient and accurate work. Barbara died in 1985 and John in 1996.
(L-R) Barbara Gibbon’s painting of the music camp where she met her husband John Lowe; Julian Duff Sebastian Lowe who died aged 10.
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(L-R) Mark Lowe, born 1934. The photograph was taken by Lisel Haas who worked for the Birmingham Rep Theatre. She had fled with her father in 1938 from Gladbach, Germany after Kristallnacht when violence to Jews escalated; Mark and his wife, Maria née Sartori; Barbara Lowe (Gibbon) holding (we think) baby Mark.
Barbara and John had four children. The eldest, Mark Gibbon Lowe, born in 1934, went to Kings Choir School in Cambridge and then to Clifton College in Bristol. He was an early member of the National Youth Orchestra as an oboist. He was commissioned in the Devonshire Regiment during his National Service and served in Kenya during the Mau Mau Emergency (see Box 17.3). He wrote an article in the Clifton School Magazine claiming that he saw no horrors personally in his time in Kenya but admitted later that he knew that they were happening. He briefly had to guard a prisoner cage but otherwise his active involvement seems to have been low. He tells one story of his time as an ADC to Brigadier the Lord Thurlow, who was the commander of an operation about to start. We surrounded the Aberdare Mountain with soldiers and police and then sent patrols sweeping through the forest, catching the Mau Mau hiding there. Before the sweep began, a group of American journalists were invited to visit us at our Brigadier’s Command Post, where he explained the plan. After he had finished, one of the journalists asked him; ‘What are you most hoping for today?’. He answered ‘A private plane to Ascot’ (pronounced Askert). Complete bemusement of journalists. The Brigadier was the ultimate smooth, confident, insouciant, arrogant, aristocratic, Old Etonian officer, beloved of the soldiers. Mark then studied Moral Sciences and Music at Cambridge, before joining the British Council, with postings in Persia and Argentina. On his return to London he worked for Longmans and various other publishers in Britain and the USA, specialising in textbooks for English as a Foreign Language. Later he taught and administered at schools in a variety of countries including Saudi Arabia, Poland, Estonia, China, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Mark married Maria Fausta Amelia Sartori, born in 1935 in Trentino, Italy, whom he met while studying music and teaching English in Italy. They had two daughters, Katherine Alida born in 1961 and Juliette Shahreza born in 1962, both in Persia. Both went to Camden School for Girls (another school started by Miss Buss). Katherine studied architecture at Cambridge and practises in London, including involvement in the renovation of the Houses of Parliament. With her partner Graham Haworth, she had three children. The eldest, Eliott, studied Zoology at Manchester and is a writer. The second, Daniel, is a tailor and menswear designer in Saville Row, London. Having been appointed a Director of Maurice Sedwell in 2018, making him the youngest director of a Savile Row tailor, he set up his own studio in 2019. Katherine’s youngest, Alida, studied at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia before moving on to an MPhil in International Relations at Oxford.
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Mark and Maria’s younger daughter, Juliette, studied Psychology at Edinburgh University before training in various medical therapies such as acupuncture and setting up her practice near Inverness. She married John Edmondson and they have two daughters: Aila Catriona, born in 1996, who is training through a high skills apprenticeship to be a Chartered Accountant; and Felicity Clare, born in 1998, who is studying Social Work in Aberdeen. The second child of Barbara Gibbon and John Lowe was Julian Duff Sebastian Lowe (known as Bossy), born in 1935, who died suddenly in Dorset in 1945. Barbara’s third child was Sally Barbarina, born in 1941. Her father was Sir Edward Bullard FRS, as the result of a wartime relationship. Sally went to school at the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus in Birmingham and thence to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English. She taught for several years in London and Istanbul before marrying David Wyllie with whom she spent several years in Tanzania and Mexico before settling down near Edinburgh. Sally taught English, mainly at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh. David studied at Edinburgh, Iowa State and Cambridge Universities before returning to Edinburgh where he lectured at Edinburgh and also acted as an overseas consultant in agriculture, training and rural development. They have two children, Helen Clare born in 1975 and Alison Imogen born in 1977. Helen, a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, has two children with her partner Simon Calum Walker: Sula Janet Wyllie born in 2012 and Corran Achilles David Wyllie born in 2014. Imogen is a publisher for the company Pearson Education, producing material for teaching English as a Foreign Language. She lives in London with her partner Craig Lucas Warland. John and Barbara’s fourth child, Jane Gibbon Lowe born in 1943, joined Sally at the convent school in Birmingham. On leaving, aged 17, she taught English in the Briam Institute in Madrid before taking to the air as a stewardess with BOAC, flying mainly to Peru where she loved the high mountains of the Andes. In 1967 Jane had a mental breakdown and for seven years suffered from bi-polarism. In 1975 she went to India and sat with Osho (Rajneesh19) for six years, healing to a great extent. She now lives in Findhorn, Morayshire, where she practises as an energy healer. Jane had a son with David Mahant Downey: Sangam MacDuff was born in 1978, took a degree in English at Cambridge, and teaches English Literature in Geneva where he completed a PhD on James Joyce’s epiphanies. Sam married Sabrina Dresti, a teacher from the famously Scottish Italian village of Gurro near the Swiss border, and they have a daughter Sofia Mathilda MacDuff, born in 2011. Sam has another daughter, Lilly Olivia Clark, born in 2002, with Melina Clark. Jane Gibbon Lowe, born 1943. Photo by Lisel Haas
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Sally Barbarina Lowe aged 17. Photo by Lisel Haas.
Tea at the Lowes around 1958.
John Lowe had another child, Jo Hamilton, born in 1946, the daughter of Bernice Hamilton, a member of his choir. Despite severe disability caused by cerebral palsy, Jo took a degree in English Literature and French at York University. In 1981 she married John Austen, a Church of England clergyman, broadcaster, and chaplain at Birmingham University. Jo died in 2013. Edith Norah Gibbon, born in 1908, was the fourth daughter of Robert William Gibbon and Frances Edith Smith. Known to her family as Tommy, she also went to St Leonards School. Norah trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, and became a health visitor in Hornsey. She lived in Highgate with her sister Phyllis and died in 1995. William Duff Gibbon, the fifth son, born in 1911, was educated at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. At 17 he began work in the City, where his brother Ronald took him into partnership in the marine insurance business. Ronald, who had taken over the firm of R. W. Gibbon, later handed it on to Duff. The company has now been absorbed into a large broking firm. During World War Two, Duff joined the Fire Service where he met Betty Payne, whom he married in 1940. Having always had poor eyesight, Duff retired before he was 60. He went blind in old age and was latterly in a home in Ipswich, where he died in 2007. Duff and Betty had three children. The eldest, Robin, born in 1941, worked in various business enterprises including a shipping company and as an importer of processed wood. He is now retired to Suffolk. He married Nancy Chown in 1979 and they had two children, Jennifer born in 1983 and James born in 1986. When Geoffrey Gibbon died, Robin was given the care of various precious Gibbon heirlooms which had come down through the ages from the Rev Charles Gibbon of Lonmay, including pictures and a grandfather clock. (L-R) Betty Payne, who married William Duff Gibbon; William Duff Gibbon, born 1911, with his two boys Gerald, born 1945, and Robin, born 1941.
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Elizabeth Gibbon, Robin’s sister, was born in 1943. She trained as a nurse at the London Hospital and now lives in Montreal, Canada. She was Ombudsman as well as a nurse at Montreal Children’s Hospital and after her retirement in 2005 she remained active within the hospital with documentation of the archives and as a Volunteer. She has a daughter, Michelle, also a nurse. Coincidentally their cousin John Murray Gibbon (Chapter 15) wrote a book called Three Centuries of Canadian Nursing published in 1947. Robin and Elizabeth’s brother Gerald, born in 1946, went to Highgate School in London and joined a large firm of insurance brokers. He married Maria Graciete Cerqueira, from Portugal, who worked in the same field of insurance. They spent most of their working lives in Portugal, where they still live. They have one son, Ricardo William Duff Gibbon, born in 1976, who studied Business Management at Edinburgh University.
Left to right: Sally Wyllie née Lowe, Grace and Gerald Gibbon.
Arthur Henry Gibbon, or ‘Robin’, the youngest of the ten siblings, was born in 1913. Like Duff he went to Aldenham School. He decided to take up farming and went to a Norfolk farmer in 1931 as a pupil. After a year in Canada, tired of farming, he went up to Hatfield College, Durham, and in due course was ordained, serving as a curate in East London. In April 1944 Robin was commissioned as an Army Chaplain, stationed for a time in Germany with the Army of Occupation. Two or three years after his return to England, when he was the chaplain for a naval cadet training centre, he was ejected from the Church and the training school, for homosexual activities, which then was illegal in Britain. After a period of difficulty, he returned to the land, where he worked on a farm near Dengue on the Essex coast. He died in 1994.
Arthur Henry (Robin) Gibbon, born 1913.
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BOX 17.1
JOHN STANLEY LOWE (From his Obituary in The Times5) John Lowe was a distinguished musician and musical administrator. He will be remembered particularly for his achievements in setting up the BBC Third Programme Music Department after the war6, and in directing the Coventry Festival for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in 1962. Born in 1906 in Grantham, he studied music at Cambridge. After a spell as music teacher at Eastbourne College, he became Director of Music at Homerton College in Cambridge. While working there, he was also a tireless and dedicated conductor of the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. Those who heard them still speak of performances of Bach’s B Minor Mass with the then relatively unknown Kathleen Ferrier and Peter Pears, and of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with Kathleen Ferrier as the Angel. In 1947 John Lowe joined the BBC as Director of Music for the Third Programme, where he set the pattern for the future. He organised concerts conducted by Richard Strauss and Toscanini, pioneered series devoted to early music, and gave opportunities to leading young musicians such as Benjamin Britten. In 1950 he moved to the Midland Region of the BBC, where he ran the Music Department until 1961. His time there is still remembered for the development of the BBC Midland Orchestra and Chorus, and for a series of concerts devoted to the music of Vaughan Williams and Edmund Rubbra. He played an active part in Birmingham musical life, collaborating closely with Rudolph Schwarz, conductor of the CBSO at that time. His next move was to the directorship of the 1962 Coventry Festival. This was a triumphant success, involving the commissioning and performing of many new works, most notably Michael Tippet’s opera King Priam and Britten’s War Requiem, in which the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, the German baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and the English tenor Peter Pears sang together to symbolise reconciliation and peace. John Lowe converted to Catholicism, and during his time in Birmingham contributed strongly to Catholic life as Director of Music at the Birmingham Oratory. He was also a devoted family man, married for over fifty years to Barbara Gibbon, a historian and teacher who was one of the early Commonwealth Fellows, and who died in 1984. They had four children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. John had, too, a gift for friendship, and had many close friends among the musicians of his time, including Edric Cundell, Steuart Wilson and Edmund Rubbra. He was an excellent pianist and particularly enjoyed playing chamber music. In the mid-sixties ill health forced John to retire and he spent the later years of his life very quietly. In his last five years he found serenity in Scotland, where his daughters live, deriving much comfort from the Latin Mass and Gregorian Chant at Pluscarden Abbey.
John with Zoltán Kodály, the Hungarian composer and musicologist; John conducting the Midlands Youth Orchestra. In the foreground the oboe player is his son Mark Lowe.
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BOX 17.2
THE SWEDENBORGIAN CHURCH For many of the Gibbons who arrived in London to pursue their careers, the Swedenborgian Church was very important not only for religious reasons but also because, for a short period, it provided a readymade social circle. It is worth exploring why the Swedenborgian Church was so successful. Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a Swedish nobleman, started his career as a widely admired scientist and engineer, the author of several well-respected scientific works. In 1736 he started seeing visions of angels and spirits and of heaven and hell. Ten years later he resigned from the Swedish Bureau of Mines to devote the rest of his life to researching and writing about his spiritual discoveries. He wrote his many books in Latin; these were translated into English by the Swedenborg Society in England. Swedenborg did not himself found a church: this was done by people who had read his books. John Welsley, the famous Methodist, was impressed by his writings: I began with huge prejudice in his favour, knowing him to be a pious man, one of strong understanding, of much learning, and one who thoroughly believed himself. But I could not hold out long. He is one of the most ingenious, lively, entertaining madmen that ever set pen to paper. But his waking dreams are so wild, so far remote both from Scripture and common sense, that one might as easily swallow the stories of Tom Thumb or Jack the Giant Killer. Others might argue that Swedenborg could have the same said about Welsley. Certainly, Swedenborg’s writings had considerable influence on the work of visionaries such as Blake, Browning, Kant, Goethe and Yeats. Swedenborg taught that there is only one God, who came to earth as Jesus. The three elements of the Trinity are God’s love, wisdom and energy. The Bible is to be understood chiefly for its spiritual teachings and is generally not to be taken on literally. Only certain books of the Bible are divinely inspired. Swedenborg taught that the soul is immortal and that after death we go immediately to a spirit world, the spiritual body being the true self, and eventually to heaven or hell. If you live and practise the correct life of faith, love, friendship, forgiveness, helpfulness, honesty, courage and self-denial, you can achieve recognition in the spiritual world and eventually gain heaven. He is recognised by some New Age movements who respect him as a deeply spiritual mystic, especially for his belief that everything in the physical world has a spiritual value. His very radical views on sex and concubinage appear to have been conveniently forgotten by the church members. The heyday of the Church in Britain was around 1900 when it had some 100 churches. There are few active churches now, but Swedenborg’s writings continue to be studied7. A curious side to Emmanuel Swedenborg’s life was his involvement as a secret agent for Sweden, which enthusiastically supported the Jacobite cause in both the 1715 and 1745 rebellions. Swedenborg made various journeys around Europe as part of Sweden’s support and was posted to London in 1744 as a secret Jacobite spy. Recent releases of Masonic archives reveal how closely the Swedish, Scottish and other Jacobite supporters were connected through secret societies. Swedenborg continued to pursue his mystical studies and published a Journal of Dreams in 1744 in which he described his visions of the coming of the Jacobite restoration9.
(L-R) A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, and of the Wonderful Things therein... an example of one of Emanuel Swedenborg’s works which proved so popular in Britain at a time of religious fervour. This cover is from a modern reprint. Swedenborg House in Bloomsbury, London, home of the Swedenborg Society.
258 ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH : CH 17
BOX 17.4
SIR EDWARD CRISP BULLARD (Adapted from the Dictionary of National Biography18) Edward Bullard was born in 1907. His father was a member of a Norfolk brewing family and his mother was the daughter of Sir Frank Crisp, a solicitor and first president of the Linnean Society. He was educated at Repton school and Clare College, Cambridge where he obtained first class honours in natural sciences. He was then a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory before being appointed a Demonstrator in the new Department of geodesy and geophysics. He gained his PhD in 1932 and was the Smithson research fellow of the Royal Society from 1936 to 1941. His achievements from 1931 to 1939 were outstanding. He began by examining the scattering of slow electrons by gases before turning his attention to new and improved methods for experiments in geophysics. These included surveys in East Africa and applying new methods of seismic studies. He made measurements of the flow of heat out of the Earth in boreholes in South Africa but his most significant work was undoubtedly his successful attempt to make seismic studies at sea using two Brixham trawlers, leading to the geophysical study of the ocean floor. At the outbreak of war Bullard was appointed to HMS Vernon and was responsible for much of the very hazardous initial investigation of German magnetic mines which led to the demagnetising of ships. The latter part of the war he spent in operational research in the Admiralty, becoming assistant director of naval operational research from 1944 to 1945. He returned to Cambridge as a senior research fellow and took up many of the investigations that he began before 1939 and especially marine geophysics with seismic gravity and magnetic studies. His investigation of the magnetic field of the Earth required large calculations leading to an interest in the application of electronic computers to geophysical data. Throughout his career he concentrated on the problems of the oceans and, while later ideas of plate tectonics came from others at Cambridge, his work provided the ground on which they could develop. After two years in Toronto as professor of physics he became, in 1950, the director of the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, returning to Cambridge in 1956. In 1964 he became the first professor of geophysics. After his retirement from his Cambridge chair, Bullard spent much time at La Jolla, California, where he died in 1980. During his career Bullard received many honours and medals including election to the Royal Society in 1941 and a knighthood in 1953. The Dictionary of National Biography concludes by saying that Bullard’s scientific work was marked by inspired simplicity that always went to the heart of a problem. He was always very quick to see the point of anything he was being told, and then often advised his informant how to do better. He was at times forgetful or oblivious, but with that there went informality, enjoyment of the absurd, and a complete freedom from pomposity. He was very sociable and witty, but these traits covered also a deep seriousness about science and scholarship and the academic life. He was a great innovator in geophysics and an inspiring supervisor and director; the geophysics department at Cambridge still bears his stamp as do many of the distinguished geophysicists who worked there in his time.
CH 17 : ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH 259
BOX 17.3
THE MAU MAU REBELLION IN KENYA The Mau Mau rebellion, as it became known, was the result of years of suppression of the Kikuyu, Meru and Emba tribes, who were driven off their own ancestral lands and restricted to Native Reserves on poor land, often rocky and subject to erosion. British settlers took over the fertile land in the Rift Valley that became known as The White Highlands, creating European farms and denying the black population any political representation. After a long struggle, the uprising by a section of militant Kikuyu who became known as the Mau Mau was eventually suppressed by the British Military, using tactics developed in a recent uprising in Malaya, helped by extensive use of air power. By the end, only 32 white settlers had been killed as compared to some 900 members of the security forces, mostly African. In excess of 25,000 Kikuyu were killed of whom 1,090 were hanged. Mau Mau violence was more often directed against other Kikuyu than against the British authorities or the Kenyan settlers and over 1,800 Africans were killed in this way being seen as ‘traitors’ for not joining the cause. An academic argument still rages over how many victims there were but there is no dispute that around 150,000 Africans, including thousands from Nairobi, were swept into horrific detention camps, often for years. There was shocking brutality on both sides, with some inexcusable actions by the British. Monetary awards were offered for ‘kills’ of Kikuyu with competition between units and ‘kill’ scoreboards. The Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment offered £5 for the first ‘kill’ and sanctioned cutting off the hands of the ‘kills’, ostensibly for fingerprint identification. Many of the worst atrocities were carried out by units containing a high proportion of white settlers. Some British soldiers wrote home that the settlers and their lifestyle were so nasty as not to be worth saving. When Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP, heard the facts, he said, ‘this country no longer deserves an Empire’. In a letter to his wife, General Erskine, who had been sent out to restore some kind of discipline, said: The administration in Kenya is rotten and dominated by members of the settler community. I hate the guts of all of them, the civil servants and police should be immediately replaced. The settlers are racist and their wives and girl-friends are jumped-up middle-class sluts and harlots, who for generations have brutally exploited the land and labour of an indigenous people who are finally striking back. I hate them all, they are virulent racists and not fit to rule over anything let alone a British colony. Kenya is a sunny land for shady people. In fact, many of the settlers were upper middle class or even aristocratic; on their uppers before they left Britain, possibly, but social status in Britain has never been measured by wealth. A surprising proportion had been educated at public schools, including Eton14. The use of unmitigated violence against the Kikuyu caused some British soldiers to question the morality of their mission. A soldier in The Devonshire Regiment wrote to his family: the violence shown by the police to prisoners is shocking, they treat them like animals and goodness knows what happens to these poor buggers when they get them behind closed doors. Some of my colleagues let their prisoners go rather than commit them to the ‘care’ of the notorious Kenya Police or Kenya Regiment. The dreadful horrors documented in various accounts are almost beyond belief10,11,12,13. For many years during the emergency and before, there were lies and cover-ups in a conspiracy of silence between the white British establishment in Kenya, including the Church, and some very right-wing politicians in Britain who thought that the British Empire could be maintained. Around 1954 publicity in Britain eventually forced action, with the realisation that the British needed to negotiate with the Kikuyu and that the case for Kenya as a British colony could no longer be sustained. By 1960 the Mau Mau were thoroughly defeated. Nevertheless, the very reforms that nationalists had been pressing for before the uprising were by then underway. By 1963 Kenya was independent.
260 ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH : CH 17
It took 50 more years of investigation exposing incidents of rape, castration, torture and casual mutilation, and a protracted human rights campaign, before any significant compensation was offered to the victims of the brutality. ‘Lost’ Foreign Office archival material was finally brought to light, while yet more was discovered to be missing. (The files also provided details of British human rights abuses - torture, rape, execution - in its former colonies during the final stages of empire, not just in Kenya). Former district colonial officer John Nottingham said17: What went on in the Kenya camps and villages was brutal, savage torture. It is time that the mockery of justice that was perpetrated in this country at that time must be righted. I feel ashamed to have come from a Britain that did what it did here (in Kenya). Finally, in 2013 some 5,000 elderly Kenyans received £14 million compensation from the British government. The accepted view of Britain’s decolonisation hitherto has been that it was done in a comparatively dignified, enlightened and consensual way. With the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to argue this so glibly as details become available of the role of the British Government in the years leading up to independence not only in Kenya but elsewhere, in India15 and Malaya, for example. To end on a positive note, the account by Colin Imray16 (see Box 16.1) of his time in Kenya as a diplomat helping with the transfer of power after independence is a pleasure to read as he shows sane and sensitive people were then representing British interests.
(TOP L) The Devonshire Regiment subduing a village in Kenya during the Mau Mau Emergency, probably not their greatest moment. Mark Lowe was with the Devonshires during this time. (TOP R) Kenya's Governor, Evelyn Baring, during the Mau Mau Rebellion. (L) Lieutenant General Erskine, Commander-in-Chief, East Africa (centre), observing operations against the Mau Mau.
CH 17 : ROBERT WILLIAM GIBBON & FRANCES EDITH SMITH 261
The Convict Transport Register showing that John Pearsall had been sentenced in Stafford to transportation to Australia for life (18.1)
CHAPTER 18
KEITH YOUNG Colonel Keith Young was the son of Sheriff Clerk William Young and Elizabeth Forbes (see Chapter 7). He was born in 1764 in Stonehaven and baptised by the Rev Memmes of the Episcopal Church, an Imray ancestor (see Chapter 16). After attending Marischal College in Aberdeen, he joined the Army as an ensign in the 98th Regiment, before becoming a Lieutenant in the 71st Regiment of Foot, aka the 71st Highlanders. He left them as Lieutenant-Colonel in 1798 to become Acting Adjutant General at Fort St George, the Madras Army headquarters at Madras in India.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP L) View of St Thome Street in Fort St George, 1804 (18.2); Government House inside Fort St George from a 1798 print by Thomas Daniell (18.3); An 1810 depiction of a sepoy of the Madras Native Infantry and his wife. Aquatint by Francis Swain Ward (18.4); Fort St George at Madras, the East India Company base, as portrayed by Jan van Ryne in about 1750 (18.5)
CH 18 : KEITH YOUNG 263
CHART 18: KEITH YOUNG
SEE CHART 7
Keith Young 1764 - 1827 [Army Colonel] - M1 - M2 - Catherine Duthie
c1780 - ? - M3 1806 - James Catherine Ogilvy
c1788 - 1871
Marshall Keith Young 1793 - 1818
William Young 1806 - 1874
James Young 1807 - 1891
[Ship Captain]
[Baker] - M 1828 -
- M1 c1833 -
Agnes Smith c1805 - 1857
Isabella McBain 1803 - 1878
- M2 1870 -
Margaret Fowler c1846 - 1872 - M3 1873 -
Jean Spiers Currie 1837 - ?
Elizabeth Catherine Young 1838 - 1911 - M 1870 -
Alexander Youngson 1841 - 1933 [Schoolmaster & Church of Scotland Minister]
264 KEITH YOUNG : CH 18
Mary Murray Young 1841 - 1867
James Murray Young 1843 - 1894 [Ship Captain] - M 1868 -
Mary Jane Marr 1846 - 1912
Isabella Young 1829 - 1876
William Young 1830 - 1917
- M 1845 -
- M 1855 -
Benjamin Pearsall 1818 - 1907
Eliza Jane Belbin 1833 - 1917
Philip Russell Young 1834 - 1853
William Baird Young 1809 - 1893 [Captain Royal Artillery]
Elizabeth Forbes Young 1810 - ?
- M1 1831 -
Mary Trelawny ? - 1849
Mary Catherine Young 1811 - 1893
James Keith Wellington Young 1813 - 1851
- M 1837 -
[Captain, Rifle Brigade]
Alexander Morison 1810 - 1879
- M2 1855 -
Grace Julia Young 1820 - 1905 - M 1845 -
Philip Carlyon 1811 - 1913 [Anglican Minister]
Lilias Blackwell c1817 - 1907
Keith Ogilvy Baird Young 1858 - 1959
Matilda Mary Young 1832 - 1913
Lewis Young 1837 - 1906 [Farmer & Grain Merchant]
[Royal Artillery & Landowner
- M 1859 -
- M 1895 -
Rachel Sandford 1840 - 1887
Isma Frances Lidwill Brown c1862 - 1948
Clement Carlyon 1838 - 1857
Philip Carlyon 1846 - 1917 [Clerk in Holy Orders] - M 1866 -
Williamena Ellen Webster c1844 - 1926
Ethel Hay Young 1861 - 1946 - M 1892 -
Moir Tod Stormonth Darling 1844 - 1912 [MP & Law Lord]
Alexander Keith Carlyon 1847 - 1936
Harold Baird Carlyon 1850 - 1937
Katherine Ogilvy Carlyon c1852 - 1935
Jessie Morison Carlyon 1854 - 1942
Julia Winstanley Carlyon 1861 - 1958
[Barrister]
[Private Secretary]
- M 1883 -
- M 1878 -
- M 1885 -
Joseph Chapman c1850 - ?
David Nicholl 1854 - 1882
Henry McLeod Young 1857 - 1899
- M 1873 -
Julia Carlyon c1848 - 1931
[Church of Ireland Minister]
[Doctor]
[Army Captain]
CH 18 : KEITH YOUNG 265
His son, Marshall Keith Young, born in 1793 at Madura, Madras, became an Indian Army cadet in 1809 and a Lieutenant in the 7th Native Infantry. Marshal Keith Young died in 1818 when homeward bound on the Rose. Colonel Keith Young returned from India in 1804 and had two sons with Catherine Duthie: William, born in 1806, and James, born in March 1807, both at Rosehearty, Aberdeenshire.
Map by John Thomson in 1832, showing Rosehearty (18.6)
In December 1806 he married James (sometimes called Jane) Catherine Ogilvy, the only child and heiress of James Ogilvy of Ascreavie, near Kirriemuir, Angus, where the Ogilvys had lived for over three hundred years. (J. M. Barrie’s grandfather was born at Over Ascreavie in 1788). The Ogilvys were connected by marriage to the Gordons of Newton, who were prominent slave owners in Jamaica and Tobago. Keith Young died in 1827 at Le Mans in France. His brother James and his cousin Dr Alexander Morison (Box 19.3), who later married Keith’s sister, had set off to France but arrived just after Keith died. Morison describes in his diaries having to open Keith’s will in case there was anything immediately relevant. Jane died in 1871 and there is a memorial to them both in Kingoldrum Churchyard, Angus. Keith Young’s son William Young, born in 1806 in Edinburgh, was a ship’s captain. Based originally in Aberdeen, he later operated from Dundonald in Ayrshire. Married three times, he had six children by his first wife Agnes Smith, from Rosehearty. He died in 1874 at Craighaugh House, Rosehearty. William’s elder daughter, Elizabeth Catherine Young, married Alexander Youngson, who was for many years a schoolmaster at Skene, Aberdeenshire, before becoming a Church of Scotland Minister. He ministered at Skene, Canisbay, John of Groats, and finally at Strathy, Sutherland, where he died in 1933. Material from his diaries written at Strathy have recently been incorporated into a book about Strathy2. He and Elizabeth had six children. One daughter married a road contractor in Vancouver, Canada, while another, Emilie, married John Hay Begg, the son of the owner of the Lochnagar distillery on Speyside, Aberdeenshire. Rev. Alexander Youngson. (R) The church at Canisbay near John o’ Groats in Caithness. (BELOW) Strathy in Sutherland.
266 KEITH YOUNG : CH 18
John was initially also a distiller, living for a time in Stonehaven and working at the Glenury distillery. This had been started by Robert Barclay in 1825 and named after the local glen. At some point John left to farm in Australia. He died in 1920 at Lochnagar, Stanthorpe, Queensland, from ‘a long illness contracted when he was in the Australian Infantry Force’ in World War One. William Young’s son James Murray Young, born in 1843, a ship’s captain, lived in Dundonald, Ayrshire before moving to Glasgow. He married Mary Jane Marr, the daughter of an Irvine ship’s captain, in 1868 in Troon, Ayrshire. They had two sons who both studied medicine at Glasgow. James, born in 1869, became a District Medical Officer in Perthshire. He married Alexina Sim, the daughter of a solicitor and bank agent from Cullen, and they had four children. He died in 1927 and Alexina in 1941. James’ brother William, born in 1871, pursued a medical career in India. He married, in Calcutta in 1896, Amelia (Amy) Kerr Marr from Irvine, Ayrshire when he was a Surgeon Lieutenant and civil surgeon at Manipur, North West Province. He eventually became a Colonel in the Indian Medical Service. He retired to Perth, Scotland, where he died in 1922. James Young, born in 1807, the second surviving son of Colonel Keith Young, became a baker in Aberdeen before emigrating to Tasmania, Australia, in 1833 with his wife Isabella McBain and daughter, also called Isabella. They sailed from Leith to Hobart at a cost of £20 for steerage passengers. In Tasmania, daughter Isabella, born in 1829, married Benjamin Pearsall, the son of a convict who, the convict transportation register shows, had been transported for life in 1803 for ‘stealing a calf and other goods’.
(L) Hobart, 1828 by Augustus Earle (18.7)
Isabella Young, born 1829.
Hobart, Tasmania. 1817 print by Charles Jeffreys (18.8)
Watercolour of Hobart in 1829 by Louis A de Sainson.
CH 18 : KEITH YOUNG 267
Three of Benjamin and Isabella’s sons became farmers in Tasmania, and there are many descendants. William, the eldest son of James and Isabella, was born in 1830 in Aberdeen, and remained there when his parents emigrated. In 1853 he came out to Tasmania, where he married Eliza Jane Belbin with whom he had eleven children. William claimed to be a great grandson of the 5th Duke of Gordon, but there is as yet no evidence for this (although the Duke had three acknowledged illegitimate children). William died in 1917 and Eliza ten days later. There is a memorial to them at Rokeby, Tasmania. William’s youngest brother Lewis, born in Tasmania, was a farmer and hay and grain merchant. He married Rachel Sandford with whom he had children and he appears to have married again. He died in 1906. Colonel Keith Young’s second wife, James Catherine Ogilvy, had five children. The eldest son, William Baird Young, born in 1809, retired as a Major from the Royal Artillery. He built the present Ascreavie House, a mansion in the Elizabethan style, in 1851-52.
Ascreavie House built by William Baird Young in 1851-52.
A collection of his diaries from 1851 to 1881 is in the Scottish National Library. The Youngs lived at Ascreavie until the 1940s, when it was purchased by the circus-owning family of Bertram Mills. The house was sold on in 1949 to Major George Sherriff (1898-1967), the famous plant collector and gardener, who introduced many of his plant finds to the gardens. William Baird Young’s first wife was Mary Trelawney, daughter of Henry Trelawny, the 7th Bart, who became a preacher but changed sects four times. Henry's father was the Governor of Jamaica. William and Mary’s daughter Matilda, born in 1832, died unmarried in 1923. William’s second wife, Lilias Blackwell, was the daughter of an Edinburgh advocate. They had two children. Keith Ogilvy Baird Young, born in 1858, became an officer in the Royal Artillery before retiring to manage his estate. In 1895 he married Isma Brown, the daughter of a landowner in County Clare, Ireland. Ethel Hay Young, born in 1861, married Moir Tod Stormonth Darling, who became a Law Lord in Edinburgh. From 1888 to 1890 he was Member of Parliament for Edinburgh and St Andrews Universities and served as Solicitor General for Scotland. From 1890 to 1908 he was a Lord of Session and served on many public and private bodies. Ethel claimed to be a relative of Brigham Young of the Church of the Latter Day Saints1.
10 Great Stuart Street in New Town, Edinburgh, where Moir Tod Stormonth Darling lived with his family. The New Town was where many professional families lived.
268 KEITH YOUNG : CH 18
William Baird Young’s sister, Mary Catherine Young, born in 1811, married in 1837 Alexander Morison from Bognie Estate in Aberdeenshire, where the family had lived for over 500 years. Alexander was born in Tobago in the West Indies where various family connections had slave plantations although Alexander’s family received no direct slave compensation. He became a cadet officer In the Bombay Army in 1827 but resigned early to devote himself to managing the Bognie estate. Mary’s brother James Keith Wellington Young, born in 1813, joined the Rifle Brigade as a volunteer in 1828 and purchased his Captaincy in 1840, but it is not clear where he served. He died unmarried in 1851, at Exeter, Devon, at the home of his sister Grace. Grace Julia Young, the youngest sister, was born in 1820 at Herstmonceaux, Sussex, presumably at the house of her uncle James Young the architect (see Chapter 19). In 1845 she married Philip Carlyon, who came from a long-established Cornish family. After studying at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he became a Church of England Minister with spells at St James’s, Exeter, Revelstoke and Widdicombe in the Moor, Devon, where in the 1861 Census he is listed as ‘Perpetual Curate and Revelator’. After a long period at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, he and Grace retired to Edinburgh, then Falmouth, where they both died, Grace in 1905 and Philip in 1913. Grace and Philip had seven children. The eldest, Clement, died aged 19. His brother Philip married Williamena Webster from Aberdeen, a barrister’s daughter. They do not appear to have had children. The next brother, Alexander Keith Carlyon, born in 1847, was a solicitor in St Austell, Cornwall, and then a barrister in London, where the author R. M. Ballantyne was a neighbour. He became the High Sheriff of Middlesex and was awarded a knighthood. He married a distant cousin, Julia Carlyon, born in 1848, who, in 1931, left land to her son Tristrem, a retired Army Lieutenant-Colonel. Tristrem was a member of the Royal Field Artillery in World War One and was awarded a DSO. Julia and Alexander had five other children, including a daughter who married a Church of England curate, and another who studied horticulture and went to Kenya. The next brother, Harold, born in 1850, became a private tutor and then a private secretary before retiring to Falmouth. He was unmarried. His sister Katherine married, in 1883, a Church of Ireland clergyman, Joseph Chapman, who was then the vicar of Donamon-with-Fuerty in Roscommon. They moved to Devon when Joseph was appointed the incumbent of Post Bridge, Dartmoor. In 1901 they lived at Infracombe in North Devon and in 1911 at Meavy, again on Dartmoor. The next sister Jessie, born in 1854, married David Nicholl, a Doctor in Wisbech. After David’s death in 1882, Jessie lived in Bristol, London and finally Falmouth, where she died in 1942. Their son Charles Carlyon Nicholl went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge and worked as an actuary in Singapore and London. He served with the Royal Army Service Corps in France from 1915 to 1918, and in Italy from 1918 to 1919, becoming a Captain in 1919. He was mentioned in despatches and awarded an OBE.
Cap badge of the Royal Army Service Corps
The youngest of the family, Julia born in 1861, married her second cousin Henry McLeod Young born in 1857, the son of Col Keith Young, born in 1806 (see Chapter 19).
CH 18 : KEITH YOUNG 269
The British troops and their Indian allies rushing into one of the breaches in the walls of Delhi on 14th September 1857 (discussed in Box 19.1)
CHAPTER 19
JAMES YOUNG AND ELIZABETH WALKER The entry in Fetteresso Church of Scotland Parish Register of the baptism of James Young in 1869 even though he had been baptised by the Episcopalian Minister Dr Memess.
James Young, born in 1769 at Mill of Forest, near Stonehaven, was the youngest son of Sheriff William Young, Senior. William wrote the following happy note in his diary: Monday 15 May 1769. Mrs Young brought me a son about 5 minutes before 8pm, Janie Thomson being Accoucheur. Mrs Farquharson of Coldneck and Mrs Elmer at Mill of Stonehaven attended. Baptised the 19th by Mr R Minies qualified Episcopal Minister in Stonehaven with the name of James. Witnesses James Farquharson of Coldneck and John Lawson20. James practised as an architect and surveyor in London. His elder brother William, born in 1762, remained all his life in Stonehaven but tried to keep in touch with James. Dr MacNaughton1, the collector and antiquarian doctor in Stonehaven encountered earlier (see Chapters 5 and 6), recorded various letters from William to his brother James from Cheltenham, Mill of Forest and London, as well as a rare one from James to William. In one dated 1797, William writes: ‘Have you lately seen anything of our fellow passengers Mr & Miss Gibbon & what are they doing? Present to them our best remembrances and say that we shall be glad to find them still in London when we are able to explore our way back again.’ While it is not clear which Gibbons he is referring to they were probably from Aberdeen. Letters in 1805 and 1807 were addressed to James Young at The Imperial Fire Office, where James was presumably a surveyor for the company, a common start for young architects. James was evidently very successful and confident. In 1800 he and James Savage of London, both young architects embarking on their careers, submitted from Young’s address in Great Shire Lane, London two designs for the major restructuring of the centre of Aberdeen, creating a North and South Street to connect the rivers Dee and Don. Although they did not receive the commission, second prize went to James Savage, and James Young received 20 guineas for designs ‘that might be useful or beneficial for part of the planned new streets’2.
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 271
CHART 19: YOUNG / WALKER
SEE CHART 7
James Young 1769 - 1852 [Architect & Surveyer] -M-
Elizabeth Walker
Elizabeth Ann Young 1792 - ? - M 1817 -
Joseph Gwilt Young c1793 - 1828
James Young 1797 - ?
Mary Young 1799 - ?
George Adam Young 1801 - 1877
Helen Young 1802 - 1832
[Architect, Builder & Surveyor]
- M 1822 -
- M 1844 -
Francis Garden 1791 - 1843
William Nimmo 1777 - 1839
Mary Anna Louisa Downes 1818 - 1889
[Baker]
[Advocate]
SEE CHART 20
William James Nimmo 1818 - 1884 [Painter] - M 1842 -
Sarah Goddard 1821 - 1885
Louisa Elizabeth Young 1845 - 1923
Emma Keith Young 1847 - ?
Keith Downes Young 1848 - 1929 [Architect]
272 JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER : CH 19
Mary Anna Young 1850 - 1931 [Hospital Matron]
Fanny Georgina Young 1851 - 1930
Morgan Henry Young 1853 - 1927 [Architect]
- M 1871 -
- M 1879 -
Emily Cornelia Ash 1848 - 1926
Elizabeth Andriah Casson 1848 - 1940
William Young 1804 - ?
Keith Young 1806 – 1862
Jean Young 1807 - ?
Grace Young c1810 – 1899
James Catherine Young 1812 - 1898
[Judge Advocate General, India]
- M 1851 -
- M 1844 -
- M 1852 -
Alexander Morison 1779 - 1869
John S Taylor c1818 - ?
[Doctor]
[Architect]
Frances Mary Henderson 1829 - 1914
Arthur Young 1815 - 1906
Clare Young
[Surgeon, India] -M-
Elizabeth Georgina Pollock 1837 - 1929
SEE CHART 21
Keith Henry St George Young 1853 - 1893
Arthur Henderson Young 1854 – 1938
Henry McLeod Young 1857 – 1889
[High Commissioner]
[Army Major]
[Army Captain]
- M 1885 -
- M 1885 -
Evelyn Anne Kennedy 1851 - 1936
Julia Winstanley Carylon 1861 - 1958
Rose Young c1854 - ? - M 1880 -
Margaret Young c1856 - ? [Nurse]
Clara Young c1858 - ?
Helen Constance Young 1859 - 1943
Margaret Keith Young 1861 - 1930 -M-
James Argyll Spalding Inglis 1848 - 1883 [Army Major]
Esther Harriet Young 1861 - 1944
Ellis Young 1862 - 1900
[Hospital Matron]
[Tea Broker]
George Paterson c1846 - 1916 [Merchant, Dublin]
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 273
James Young’s unsuccessful design for central Aberdeen (19.1)
James Savage3,4,5 later became the better known of the two architects, who probably did not collaborate further after the Aberdeen project. In 1809 James Young’s office was at New City Chambers, Bishopsgate Street, London. In 1815 he was at 32 Percy Street, St Pancras calling himself a builder. In 1816 he was invited to submit plans for a Chapel to be built in King Street, Aberdeen, to replace St Andrews Chapel, which had become overcrowded when the restrictions imposed on Epicopalianism after the 1745 rebellion were lifted. It seems that James Young never did submit a plan, but the request shows his continuing links with the North East (it probably helped that one of the trustees was married to a Young relative). James married Elizabeth Walker around 1791. We know little about her but we learn from the letters of William, her brother-in-law, that he appreciated her home-made cherry brandy1. She was possibly the daughter of John Walker from Auquhirie, Dunnottar. While it is not clear what buildings James Young designed, Pevsner mentions several buildings in the east of London by an architect of that name. James moved his family to Herstmonceaux, Sussex, presumably a sign of his prosperity. He appears to have lived at Lamb Farm. At some point after 1841 he moved back to London, where he died in 1852. His will sees him leaving £2,000 plus the household goods, plate and linen to daughter Mary (a spinster) and £100 to daughter Clare, of whom we know nothing. Daughter Catherine, who married architect John Taylor, had already received £1,000. The remainder of James’ money went to son George Adam Young, born in 1801. In his will James also asks his family to look after his ‘afflicted son William’. James and Elizabeth Young had thirteen children. The eldest, Elizabeth Young, born in 1792, married William Nimmo at All Hallows, London Wall, in 1817, the year in which he was admitted to the Company of Bakers. He had received the Freedom of the City of London in 1791. His son William James Nimmo was a house painter and later became a building clerk of works. He married Sarah Goddard, the daughter of a tin plate worker, and they had at least eight children, two of whom went to Australia. One of those, Walter, was a porter at the Old Bailey before emigrating. A third son was a costermonger (street seller), and later shopkeeper, in Hackney. Elizabeth died some time before 1852. James and Elizabeth’s second child was Joseph Gwilt Young. All we know of him is that according to the gravestone in Fetteresso kirkyard he died aged 35 (see Chapter 7). He may well have been named after Joseph Gwilt, the famous London architect.
George Adam Young, born 1801, and Mary Ann Downes.
The next son to survive to adulthood was George Adam Young6. From letters between James and his brother William we can gather that George was sent at a very tender age to live with his unmarried uncle William for several years at Stonehaven, where he went to school. In 1851 he was a builder in London employing 100 men; later he calls himself an architect and surveyor. He was a partner in the architectural firm of Young, Hall and Rouot. He lived in the City of London but later moved out to ‘Dunnottar’, Kings Road, Richmond. He married Mary Downes, the daughter of an Army Agent, and they had eleven children.
274 JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER : CH 19
Keith Downes Young (19.2)
The eldest son, Keith Downes Young, went to Tonbridge School, and worked as an architect in the same firm as his father from 1865, and in partnership with him from 18726. By the time of his death in 1929, the firm had become Messrs Young and Hall following a partnership with Henry Hall. He practised for over 50 years, chiefly designing and reconstructing hospitals, although he contributed a chapter to a book about private homes7. In the 1880s Young and Hall were the architects for several pioneering circular hospital wards. The design improved ventilation and cleanliness, the idea being that air, like dirt, can get stuck in awkward corners. The Miller Memorial Hospital in Greenwich, built in 1884, was the first such building25.
Plan and side view of the pioneering circular wards designed by Keith Downes Young for the Miller Memorial Hospital in Greenwich, 1884.
Keith married Emily Cornelia Ash, the daughter of a false teeth manufacturer who employed 25 men in 1851. This business had been started by Emily’s grandfather Claudius Ash8, a goldsmith who in 1820 began making dentures from porcelain and later from vulcanite. Previously, dentures had been made from ivory, which was prone to discolouring, or from human teeth. Ash’s dentures, mounted on gold plates, with gold springs and swivels, were considered far superior. Regarded as Britain’s foremost manufacturer of dentures, by the mid-19th century he dominated the European market.
(ABOVE) A Century of Dental Art, a history of the Ash Company published in 1921. (RIGHT) Illustrations from within. Upper drawing entitled "Then"; lower drawing "Now".
(TOP) The Ash false-teeth factory in Anglers Lane, Kentish Town, London, 1899. (ABOVE) The Ash headquarters in Broad Street, London, 1899.
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 275
Keith and Emily had six children. One son became a doctor. One daughter married an engineer. Another, Winifred, married John Conway Blatchford, an artist who taught at Halifax, Leeds and Newton Abbot. He was the son of a Unitarian minister who wrote many hymns. Keith’s youngest son was Roland Keith Young, an actor, born in 1887. He started his acting career in 1908 in London, then went to the USA, where he worked on Broadway before serving with the American Army in World War One. He made his silent film debut in 1922 and his first talkie in 1929, continuing to appear in movies until the 1940s. He married twice and died in New York in 1953. George Young’s fourth child, Mary Anna Young, born in 1850, trained as a nurse and in 1891 was Matron of a private hospital in Cambridge. She was unmarried, as was her sister Fanny Georgina Young, born around 1851, who was also in Cambridge in 1891 as Assistant to the Matron of Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Their brother Morgan Henry Young, born in 1853, a surveyor and architect, was articled to his father and eventually also joined the family firm of Messrs Young, Hall and Rouot. He married Elizabeth Casson, the daughter of a Dublin merchant, and they had six children. One of these, Edgar, was ranching in Alberta in 1907 but by 1921 was a commercial photographer at Calgary. One son became an accountant and another a quantity surveyor. The youngest son, Arthur, became a vicar and lived in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. He married Joyce Webb, the daughter of a Bristol ship broker whose father had owned and managed a tobacco factory there. Morgan’s sister Rose Young, born in 1854, married George Paterson, a merchant. They lived in Dublin and had eight children. Another sister, Esther, became a nurse and was appointed Matron of St Guy’s Hospital, London9. She was unmarried and died in Bournemouth in 1944. Ellis, the youngest son, was articled by 1881 to a tea broker in London. He later emigrated to Vancouver, Canada, where he died in 1900.
(ABOVE) Morgan Henry Young, born 1853. (FAR L) Roland Keith Young, born 1887, an actor in both silent and talkie films. (L) Esther Harriet Young was appointed to the prestigious post of Matron of Guy’s Hospital, London in 1900.
The next child of James Young and Elizabeth, Helen Young, born in 1802, is discussed in Chapter 20. Her brother William Young, born in 1804, was described as ‘afflicted’ in his father’s will. The diaries of Dr Alexander Morison23 (see Box 19.3), who was related to the Young family and eventually married William’s sister Grace, show that he was asked to look at William. The diaries describe in detail several encounters with William between 1825 and 1827 and show how severe his mental illness was. An entry for 16 January 1836 says ’Called on James Young and gave him paper to get filled up about William’. We have no idea what happened to William thereafter. Possibly he was placed in one of the private houses that took in such patients; Dr Morison had many such contacts.
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The next brother, Keith Young, born in 1806, is featured in Box 19.1. He married Frances Henderson the daughter of Henry Barkley Henderson, a Colonel in the Indian Army. They had five children. The eldest, Keith Henry St George Young, was living in 1861 with his brother Arthur at his uncle John Taylor’s house at Lambeth, London, presumably while they went to school. Keith joined the Indian Army as a cadet and was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant to the 40th Foot in 1872, becoming a lieutenant in the 46th Foot in 1876. In 1883 he became a Captain in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, which was created in 1881 by the merger of the 32nd (Cornwall Light Infantry) Regiment of Foot and the 46th (South Devonshire) Regiment of Foot. He died in Edinburgh in 1893, after becoming paralysed. The life of Keith Young’s brother, Arthur Henderson Young, is shown in Box 19.2. A third brother, Henry McLeod Young, born in 1857 in Simla, India, at the height of the Indian Mutiny, spent most of his career with the 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. As a member of the armed forces, it was important for him to have been presented at Court. In 1878 the Standard newspaper shows that Second Lieutenant Young was duly presented to the Prince of Wales, the very last in a very long list. After a spell as a Lieutenant and instructor of musketry at Hythe, he was seconded in 1885 as an Adjutant of Auxiliary Forces and became a major in 1893. Where he was based is unknown. In 1885 Henry married his second cousin Julia Carlyon, born in 1861. He died in 1889 and Julia in 1958. They had two sons. Henry, the elder, became a Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Navy and served on H.M.S. Argus, a coastguard vessel. The other son, Francis, joined the army in 1908 and in 1914 was a Lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Regiment. Wounded in France in October that year, he became a Major in 1927, retired in 1935, and died in 1961.
A group photo, of which the military is so fond. 1st Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment with Lieutenant Francis Harold McLeod Young fifth from the left at the back.
The memorial to James Inglis at Copley Churchyard in Calderdale.
Margaret Keith Young, the youngest daughter of Keith and Frances Young, was born in Delhi in 1861, just after the Indian Mutiny. She married James Argyll Spalding Inglis, who joined the 4th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry as a lieutenant and became a Major in the 71st Highland Light Infantry. He became the Commissioner for Nicosia in Cyprus, where he died in 1883, aged 34. There is a memorial to him in Copley Parish Church, Calderdale. In 1891 Margaret was living with her son in Edinburgh along with her mother and her sister Helen, who died unmarried in St Andrews in 1943. Margaret and James Inglis had one child, James, born in Edinburgh12. At the age of 17 he enlisted in the Roughriders Imperial Yeomanry, and fought in the Boer War, obtaining a medal and five clasps. On his return home from South Africa he enrolled in the Highland Light Infantry as a Sub-Lieutenent. In 1911 he resigned his commission and became a mining engineer at a phosphate mine on the island of Makatea in Tahiti. When war broke out in 1914, he immediately returned home and re-joined his old battalion. He was attached for duty to the Seaforths and joined the headquarters of that Regiment only a few days before his death on 9th May 1915 at the battle of Aubers Ridge. He was one of 21 officers and 509 men in his division killed that day. This was an unmitigated disaster for the British Army and demonstrated everything that was wrong with British army leadership at that point in the war.
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 277
James married Ida Kerr from Melbourne, Australia, and they had two daughters. At the time of his death Ida was working in a Red Cross hospital in France. There are various descendants, including some in Australia and the USA. The next daughter of James and Elizabeth Young of whom we have any information was Grace Young, born in 1810 at Hackney, London. On 30 March 1851, she was living with her married sister Catherine and family in Marylebone, London. On 25 April the same year she married Sir Alexander Morison M.D. (see Box 19.3) at All Souls, Marylebone. She was his second wife. They were married by the Rev. Thomas Bacon, the curate of the church and formerly soldier, barrister and canon at Gibraltar who corresponded with Charles Darwin. Sir Alexander Morison was a prominent doctor specialising in mental disorders (see Box 19.3). Grace had no children and died in 1899. Morison describes first meeting Grace in Stonehaven in 1826 as Grace was his second cousin and he socialised with her family. Alexander Morrison's diaries from 1858 onwards suggest a quiet and contented life for them both, with Morrison becoming less frenetically active once he retired. The sixth daughter, Jane Catherine Young, born in 1812, is dealt with in Chapter 21. We do not know when daughter Clare was born but she was married by 1852 according to her father’s will, but to whom is also not clear. James Young and Elizabeth Walker’s sixth son Arthur, born in 1815, studied medicine. He went out to India where he had difficulty in obtaining employment until his brother Keith, who was living in the newly conquered area of Scinde (or Sindh) found him a job there in 1843 as an ‘uncovenanted Assistant Surgeon and Administrative Officer’17. This meant that he had not gone through the normal East India Company entry procedures but was appointed by applying to the Court of Directors. His obituary, given in Box 19.4, makes no mention of his wife Elizabeth Georgina Pollock, whom he married in 1855, at Erinpoora, Rajistan. She was the daughter of a Captain with the 71st Native Infantry, who died leaving Georgina to receive a Company orphan allowance. Arthur and Elizabeth retired to Torquay (renamed East Devenport), Tasmania with their six surviving children, naming their house ‘Fetteresso’. The only son became a farmer and one daughter married a schoolmaster. The other girls never married.
278 JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER : CH 19
BOX 19.1
KEITH YOUNG AND TWO MUTINIES Keith Young entered the Bengal Army in 1823. He served with the 50th Native Infantry until 1841, apart from two years as interpreter for the 68th Native Infantry. In 1837, when he was a Brevet Captain, he was appointed Deputy Judge Advocate General of Division. In 1843 he was posted to Scinde (or Sindh), which had just been invaded by the British under Sir Charles Napier. Like so many other local commanders in India in search of glory, Napier had exceeded his orders by annexing Scinde for the East India Company (See also Chapter 22). He was said to have announced his action by sending a telegram to Headquarters saying ‘peccavi’ (I have sinned). However, this telegram was a hoax, existing only as a short paragraph in Punch magazine - with no cartoon despite the narrative of many history books10. Keith Young spent eight years in Scinde and extracts from his letters and journal written during his time there give a fascinating insight into both the development of the new British administration of Scinde and his role and life there17. Several letters see him trying to gain influence to further his brother Arthur’s career showing the importance of personal networks. Arthur was eventually given a job in Scinde as a Deputy Collector of Revenue, an important job in the Company. Keith was appointed as a Colonel to the post of Judge Advocate-General for the Bengal Army, in which position he was the legal and judicial chief. He was involved in suppressing the Indian Mutiny in 1857, when the people and soldiers of Oudh rebelled against the British, being stationed outside Delhi throughout the siege, as well as being present at the relief of Lucknow (see Box 26.3). Alexander Gibbon (see Chapter 22) was also part of the invading force in 1843 as an army assistant-surgeon. In 1852 at Simla, Keith Young married Frances Henderson, the daughter of Henry Barkley Henderson, who became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Indian Army and wrote Sketches of Society in the East and several volumes of poems. In 1902 his wife, assisted by General Henry Wylie Norman (see Chapter 26), published some of Keith Young’s letters to her from Delhi, describing the advance on Delhi by a small British relief force, the siege and the final desperate storming and capture of the city11. She also includes letters from Keith Young to his father-in-law in London. These give an interesting insight into the perceived causes of the Mutiny and the day-by-day progression of events, from the point of view of someone firmly at the centre of British rule in India.
(L) An illustration of the defeat of the sepoys on 23rd June 1857 as they tried to attack the siege train approaching Delhi. Taken from Battles of the Nineteenth Century designed for British readers and especially featuring the military exploits of the Empire; (R) Map of Delhi in 1857. The red markings at the top show the vulnerable position of the British troops, who were not so much carrying out a siege as maintaining a presence until they were reinforced. What is often forgotten is that only one third of the force besieging Delhi were British the rest being Indian allies. (19.3)
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 279
BOX 19.1... After the Indian Mutiny was crushed, the British Government decided to take over the governing of India from the East India Company18. The resulting amalgamation of the British Army with the European regiments of the three Company Armies proved unexpectedly difficult, leading to open unrest and in some cases open rebellion by the soldiers. Although the officers were equally unhappy, and made their feelings known, few openly rebelled. However, officers’ lives were dominated by the desire to secure not vast riches but merely ‘the modest competency of staff allowances, a bonus and a pension’16. The British Army had generally inferior conditions of service to Company European Regiments, who did not want to see a reduction in their conditions especially in regard to pensions and the special opportunities available for advancement to numerous other posts within the Company administration. However, the Company Army was cumbrous, over regulated, and imbued with inertia. Automatic promotion within regiments, rather than on merit, led to large numbers of incompetent officers, and there was much looser discipline and a completely different culture and type of soldier. Another problem for the Government was the hundreds of unemployed officers whose sepoy regiments had been disbanded during the Mutiny. There were also numerous petty jealousies and misunderstandings between the two forces. The proposals for amalgamation were extremely badly managed and eventually the British Government had to give way and allow about 10,000 troops to be paid off. The army unrest became known as the ‘second white mutiny’ (see Box 1.2). In 1859 because of the precarious situation with the troops, Keith Young was called in as Judge Advocate-General to conduct a Court of Inquiry at Meerut. He was widely recognised as having conducted the inquiry in a sympathetic and sensible manner. Unfortunately, it took place at the height of the hot season and, together with the hardships of the Delhi Siege, is thought to have led to his early death. Keith had a house at Simla where he died aged 54 and where there is a gravestone to his memory. There is another memorial at Edinburgh, where Frances died in 1914.
(L-R) As Delhi began to be besieged in 1857, troops were rushed there from wherever possible. The vast majority of reinforcements were Indian from the Punjab. Without their help the weak British forces besieging Delhi would never have been able to take the city (19.4); Delhi could not be overcome without the use of heavy siege guns to create a breach in the walls (19.5) (L) A lithograph by Bequet Freres after R de Moraine of the storming of the Cashmere Gate, published by E Morier, Paris, 1858. There was world-wide demand for historical scenes, and artists who were first on the market could make considerable sums (19.6) (ABOVE) The British batteries at Delhi were under constant enemy fire and there were regular casualties. The British artillery proved effective. From The Campaign in India 1857-58, a series of lithographs by several artists published that year in London (19.7)
280 JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER : CH 19
(L) Keith Young (19.21) (TOP R) Keith Young’s account of the Siege of Delhi (19.8) (ABOVE R) India Mutiny Medal with a Delhi clasp, awarded to those who fought at Delhi.
An 1858 image entitled Camp Scene gives an idea of the comforts enjoyed by the officers in India. Taken from The Campaign in India 1857-58 (19.9)
This 1857 image entitled Interior of a Tent shows the constant battle against the heat in much of India (19.10)
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 281
BOX 19.2
Captain Sir Arthur Henderson Young, GCMG KBE, had a distinguished career in the Colonial Service, first in Cyprus and later in Malaya and Singapore. Born in 1855 and educated at Edinburgh Academy and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst19,20 he was a rugby internationalist who joined the 27th Inniskillings as a sub-lieutenant in 1874, becoming a lieutenant in the following year. He entered the Colonial Service in 1878 and was first appointed to command a Military Police unit in Cyprus. He spent the next 27 years based in the colony, holding successively the positions of Assistant Commissioner at Paphos and Commissioner at Famagusta. While in this last post he stood for election as a member of the Legislative Council of Cyprus. He lost the election but went to court, claiming that the opposition had intimidated the voters and that senior religious figures had applied powerful pressure by threatening to curse anyone voting for Young. The judges agreed that the election was unfair, but raised more serious questions as to why a senior British Commissioner was running for office. Despite this setback Young next became Chief Secretary to the Government of Cyprus13. For six months in 1895, and for lesser periods in 1898, 1900, and 1904, he was in charge of the administration of the Government of Cyprus. In 1902 he went on a special mission to St. Vincent in the West Indies. Young now transferred his base further east. From 1906 to 1911 he was Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements in Singapore, before becoming Colonial Secretary of the Federated Malaya States. He then became British High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States and Governor of the Straits Settlements, based in Singapore. His administration was tested by various events including revolution in China, which fanned the nationalist fervour of the local Chinese community in Singapore, resulting in the 1919 May Fourth Movement riots in Singapore and Malaya14. Young also had to deal with the February 1915 Indian mutiny in Singapore, when Britain was engaged in World War One and fearful of a rise in agitation for independence in India. In Young’s time several major municipal projects were completed in Singapore to his credit, including giving the island’s shipping a tremendous boost by the modernisation of the harbour that resulted in the completion of two major docks. There is a fine bridge in Singapore, built in 1921, called ‘Sir Arthur’s Bridge’. Young was invested as a Knight Grand Cross, Order of St. Michael and St. George (GCMG.), and as a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE). When he retired in August 1919, he had been the longest serving governor of the Straits Settlements. In 1885 he married Lady Evelyn Anne Kennedy, daughter of Sir Archibald Kennedy, the Marquess of Ailsa. She died in 1936 and Arthur Young died in Sunningdale, Berkshire, in October 1938. A very warm obituary was published in the Singapore Free Press and Advertiser15, stressing his strong dislike of injustice and unfair dealing and describing him ‘as a stern foe of all intrigues and ugly shapes which sometimes raise their heads in official life. There have been many Governors of the Straits but none have left behind them a more blessed memory’. The obituary also quoted the parting words at the funeral service, the Irish prayer ‘may the sod lie lightly on his head’. A later assessment of Arthur Henderson Young described him as ‘ a man so bland and inoffensive, even sarcastic caption-writers had nothing to offer.’ However, his image is made more colourful by the fact that he had a bird named after him, the Chestnut-crowned Warbler Seicercus casticeps ssp youngi. (L-R) Raffles Place, one of the main thoroughfares in Singapore, photographed in 1901. It was named after Thomas Stamford Raffles (see Box 7.3) (19.14); A 10 cent Malay Stamp from 1911; Chestnut-crowned Warbler Seicercus casticeps ssp youngi.
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(19.13)
ARTHUR HENDERSON YOUNG
BOX 19.4
ARTHUR YOUNG From his obituary in the Tasmania Examiner 31 March 1906. Arthur Young was born in Percy Street, London, on December 15 1815. After a few years failing to obtain a large medical practice in the north of London, he went to India, at the request of his brother, then Civil Judge Advocate under Sir Charles Napier, Commander-in-Chief in Scinde (or Sindh). Here he at once obtained medical charge of the newly-raised Sindh Camel Corps, which was ordered to hasten to the Punjab to assist in the Sikh war, then taking place. The regiment arrived at Chilliamoalla a few hours after the completion of that last of the Sikh battles, though they had marched 50 miles a night for five nights, hoping to be on time. On its return to Sindh the corps was disbanded as no longer needed, and Dr Young was given a magisterial appointment as Deputy-Collector. This he held for about nine years. There being no rules or regulations then for the uncovenanted service, Major Young advised his brother to enter the Army Medical Service. A commission was sent to him by the Court of Directors in London, and he had to go to Calcutta to join the Bengal service, hoping he would be allowed to return to his appointment in Sindh. This the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, would not permit, so he accepted the loss and began life again at the bottom of the long list of assistant surgeons. After serving for a short time with a battery of artillery at Umballa he was appointed to the medical charge of the Jodhpore Legion in Rajpootana. This regiment consisting of a thousand infantry, 300 cavalry, and a camel battery of two guns, was a grand sight on the parade ground. It was the last regiment to mutiny in 1857. The Governor-General’s agent for Rajpootana, Sir George Lawrence, had scattered half the regiment in detached places for several months; but, thinking that Delhi must fall in a few days, he called in the detached companies to the foot of Mount Aboo, and ordered Dr Young to leave headquarters and inspect them and report to him. After doing so he went up the hill to the General. That night the whole detachment mounted the hill, were joined by the several guards stationed on the hill, mutinied, fired into the Commandant’s house, murdered a European Sergeant-Major, looted the treasure chest, and marched at once to headquarters at Erinpoora. Here they were joined by the other half of the corps, who after burning the station started for Delhi. There being no regiment or station, the officers remained on Mount Aboo with Arthur in charge of the sanitorium there. At this point Arthur and Elizabeth had a small daughter but they would have been in considerable danger. A few weeks after this, the General received an urgent call from the officers and their wives who had taken refuge from other stations, with the Maharajah of Jodhpore, to send them a doctor. There were three unmarried doctors on Aboo at the time, and all refused to undertake the dangerous journey, seeing that they would have to pass close to the camp of the mutinous regiment, so Dr Young offered to go, and he had to travel on camelback night and day, and on one night saw the campfires of his own regiment. On his return he applied for another appointment and was gazetted to the Nasseri Battalion at Pitagh, in the Himalayas. After the Mutiny the Nasseri Battalion was disbanded. It was at this time that an order was sent out from England by Sir Charles Wood that the Governor-General was to appoint any man to any appointment for which he was specially fitted, no matter to what service he belonged. Dr Young at once applied for a Civil appointment to the Oudh Commission. With the help of his brother who for some years had been Judge Advocate-General of the army at headquarters, and the recommendation of Sir Bartle Frere, civil and acting military member of Council, his old chief in Sindh, he was sent to Oudh as first-class Assistant Commissioner, this appointment being an unprecedented innovation, challenging the privileges of both military men and civilians already in place. After being allowed to use full powers he was suddenly told that he must pass an examination in the native languages, and the penal code. Dr Young was passed at the head of the list with credit after his name. Soon after he was promoted over the heads of three seniors to the office of Deputy Commissioner. After ten years’ service in the Oudh Commission, Dr Young retired having reached the age limit of 55 years. He moved to Tasmania, where he served as a territorial magistrate, as a stand-in doctor and as a member of the House of Assembly. He died in 1906.
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BOX 19.3
SIR ALEXANDER MORISON Alexander Morison has two claims to inclusion in this account21. He was the husband of Grace Young, a Gibbon descendant, but he is also central to a historical period when the treatment of the mentally disturbed was being debated and eventually radically changed. Alexander was the grandson of a tenant farmer from Troup, Banffshire. His father Andrew, the eleventh of twelve children, became a lawyer in Edinburgh, helped by Francis Garden of Troup, also an Edinburgh lawyer, who later became a Law Lord with the title Lord Gardenstone. As happened frequently in Scotland then, local notables such as Lord Gardenstone would sponsor clever local boys such as Andrew and help them to progress to university. This allowed Andrew to become a member of the professional classes and in Scotland little interest would be taken in his origins. Andrew married Mary Herdman, a ward of Lord Gardenstone, whose family had been left destitute because of their involvement with the Jacobites. Their son Alexander, one of nineteen, went to the High School in Edinburgh then aged 13 to Edinburgh University, which at the time offered two years of general education followed by specialisation. He studied medicine, after which he was apprenticed to a surgeon for five years. He continued his studies at several London hospitals. A strong influence was a Dr Crichton, who prompted his interest in insanity. In 1804 Morison visited Crichton in Russia, where he was Physician-in-Ordinary to Tsar Alexander. For the next fifteen years Alexander struggled to earn a living as a general physician in southern England. At the same time, however, he developed contacts among the aristocracy and people of influence, aided by a network of family and friends. His eventual success can be seen by his appointment as physician to the Duke of York, Prince Leopold, and Princess Charlotte of Wales. He was knighted in 1838 as a result of his court contacts. In his diary23 he records for 27 November 1826 ‘Went to Court. King sitting – bowed. He bowed’. Along with his success as a general physician, he always retained an interest in mental disease and was planning a career in that field. For many years he tried to obtain a public position in the treatment of the insane, but this proved difficult and he continued to serve as a physician to the wealthy. As a source of income, he started a series of lectures in Edinburgh and later in London. In the early days these were attended by physicians who had private patients, but later general physicians also attended, and eventually those who worked in asylums were given special lectures. A dedicated educationalist, when he retired he sold property, including his house at Larchgrove, Currie to fund an annual series of lectures at Edinburgh University. There is a painting of the house in the archives of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. In 1825 he published Outlines of Lectures on Mental Disease based on his lectures, expanding them over four editions to 1848. He believed that physiognomy helped with diagnosis and in 1840 after seeing plaster casts of patients in France, he published a book showing artists’ drawings of the faces of his mental patients. Throughout his life Morison travelled extensively on the Continent, always pursuing his interest in the treatment of mental diseases. One of the most positive features of his career was his constant interest in learning from visiting anywhere that mental diseases were treated. Everywhere he went he would try to visit the local mental asylum. The entry in his diary for 17 September 1826 says: Looked at the Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen in which last night a female patient hanged herself on the projectory head of the bed with her handkerchief on which account all these heads are to be sawn off. As Morison became established in the mental disease field, his work with private patients increased. Many were upper-class clientele to whom he offered discreet treatment. He would organise lodgings for patients, avoiding publicity, meanwhile acting as their physician. Asylums were rough places and many families wished to avoid the stigma and gossip of having a mad person in their midst. As an example of his attention to detail, he records in his diaries an examination in 1825 of William Young (son of James Young the architect): Examined Latin, counting, drawing, memory of events, dates, days of the week and month. Got a history of care, preceding headaches, convulsive attack after attack of delirium, amendment of position of hands from side like child progressively to placing them on the table – to humming a tune.
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19.11
From 1827 onwards, he was appointed as Visiting Physician to several public and private asylums including Bethlem. He also pioneered students visiting asylums as part of their studies However, younger doctors were emerging with different ideas about the treatment of mental patients. They argued that non-restraint of patients should be universal and that modern asylums were essential so that the secret world of the private patient, and with it the opportunity for abuse by the families of patients, could be eliminated. Morison and his colleagues fought a rearguard action accompanied by much public debate, but eventually the new view prevailed. Morison was dismissed from his public posts and retired to Scotland. Evidence from various reviews of the system shows that he was diligent in his duties, but was overtaken by a wider political struggle within the profession. However, as Schull et al21 point out, ‘once asylums became non-curative warehouses, the younger doctors lost much of the credit they had accumulated as their vulnerabilities were ruthlessly exposed’. One example was that their policy of non-restraint was unfeasible. In 1799 Morison had married Mary Anne Cushnie a 17-year-old second cousin who, like her mother-in-law, had a strong Jacobite background. Seven of her relatives had gone to Jamaica in 1745 after supporting the Jacobites. They had developed a sugar estate there of which Mary eventually inherited one third. However, income steadily dwindled to nothing and the estate was sold in 1822. Mary’s grandfather was George Herdman, steward to Marischal Keith at Stonehaven, who was banished for his support of the Jacobites in 1715. Along with William Gibbon (see Chapter 5), George was called as witness to possible treasonable activity at Dunnotar Castle during the rebellion. By the time Alexander and Mary were married in 1799 any Jacobite connection was not a problem. But the marriage was a strange one. Mary spent much time alone as Morison migrated back and forth in pursuit of his career. However, he was at home enough for Mary to have sixteen pregnancies. Eventually in 1803 she was established in her own house at Bankhead, Currie, and later at Larchgrove, Currie, the latter being built by Morison. She brought up her huge family with little help although became careworn in later life. Mary died in 1846 from an insect bite. Five years later Morison married Grace Young, the daughter of James Young, the London architect. Morison had known Grace through much of her life and wrote in his diary about meeting her in Stonehaven in 1826. He would have known her well by then, given that he was a close friend of the family and had been treating her mentally ill brother William. Although this second marriage is said to have distressed several of his daughters, Morison’s diaries which resume in 1859 after a gap, show various daughters visiting Grace and Alexander in Scotland and behaving perfectly amicably. Morison kept detailed daily diaries which combined professional observations with private family doings. One trait that features throughout is his restless energy. Constantly on the move, he regularly made exhausting journeys between Edinburgh and London to lecture, often spending the night on top of a coach open to the elements. Another element of the diaries is his assiduous nurturing of professional and family contacts, making frequent visits to his various relatives, close and remote, such as the Forbes of Craigievar or the Gordons of Gordon Castle. He kept particularly close touch with the various Youngs connected through the Gardens and his mentor Lord Gardenstone. Georgina Gordon, whose uncle he was by marriage (see Chapter 11), called him her ‘Dear Uncle Sandy’24 evidence of his affable and sociable nature. Alexander Morison died in 1866 and Grace in 1889. 1852 Portrait of Morison painted as a retirement gift by the Victorian artist Richard Dadd22 who painted a series of remarkable images while a patient in Bethlem Hospital, sometimes known as Bedlam, of which Morison was a governor. Dadd incorporated images by Morinson’s daughter of Anchorfield House, Newhaven, Edinburgh, where he was born (19.12)
Hill House, Balerno, Edinburgh, where Morison died.
CH 19 : JAMES YOUNG & ELIZABETH WALKER 285
The Birthday of James Hogg as imagined by Sir William Allan. Walter Scott is shown leaning against the table. Like Robert Burns Hogg became a Scottish icon with different resonances for different people. His daughter married William Garden, a Gibbon descendant (20.1)
CHAPTER 20
HELEN YOUNG AND FRANCIS GARDEN Map showing Braco Park to the west of Fraserburgh (20.2)
Helen Young, daughter of the London architect James Young, married Francis Garden, an advocate in Aberdeen, another example of the continuing link with the North East maintained by most of the expatriate Scots. Francis lived at Braco Park in Pitsligo parish just west of Fraserburgh, where his father had been factor and surveyor and had married Elizabeth Logie, the daughter of Sheriff George Logie, whose widow Elizabeth Forbes had married William Young, born in 1770 (see Chapter 7).
CH 20 : HELEN YOUNG & FRANCIS GARDEN 287
CHART 20: YOUNG / GARDEN
SEE CHART 19
(SIMPLIFIED CHART)
Helen Young 1802 - 1832 - M 1822 -
Francis Garden 1791 - 1843 [Advocate]
William Garden 1823 - 1904
Helen Garden 1826 - 1905
- M 1866 -
- M 1848 -
Mary Gray Hogg 1831 - 1911
James Murdoch 1818 - 1905 [Free Church Minister]
Patrick John Murdoch 1850 - 1940
Francis Garden Murdoch 1852 - 1934
[Church of Scotland Minister]
[Ship Captain]
- M 1882 -
Annie Brown 1856 - 1945
James Murdoch 1853 - ? [Surgeon]
William Garden Murdoch 1856 - 1868
Ivon Lewis Murdoch 1858 - 1880
[Ironfounder] - M 1887 -
Annie Esler 1866 - 1938
Katharine Alice Murdoch 1879 - 1957
William Garden Blaikie Murdoch 1880 - 1934
William David Murdoch 1888 - 1942
[Writer]
[Art Critic & Writer]
[Concert Pianist]
Christina Elizabeth Murdoch 1890 - 1941
- M 1913 -
- M3 -
John Benjamin Davis 1883 - 1948
Antonia Dorothea Simon 1893 - 1953
[Merchant & Teacher]
George Murdoch 1882 - 1891
Keith Arthur Murdoch 1885 - 1952
Francis Garden Murdoch 1887 - 1933
[Journalist & Newspaper Executive]
[Clerk]
- M 1928 -
Elisabeth Joy Greene 1909 - 2012
Andrew Chrystal Murdoch 1859 – 1905
Annie Louisa Catherine Blaikie 1850 - 1882
Margaret Brown 1863 - 1939
Erik James Murdoch 1878 - 1878
[Laundress]
- M 1877 -
- M 1893 -
Eliza Jane Murdoch 1855 - 1937
- M 1913 -
Eugene Frederick Eberbach 1884 - 1973 [Engineer]
Alec Brown Shepherd Murdoch 1888 - 1920
Ivon George Murdoch 1892 - 1958
Alan May Murdoch 1894 - 1971
[Farmer]
[Management Executive]
- M 1911 -
- M 1921 -
Eva Chloe Foster Stamp 1886 - 1969
Hilda Annie Munro 1892 - 1969
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Daughter Murdoch
Helen Nora Murdoch 1861 - 1924
Keith Arthur Murdoch 1862 - 1882
Isabella Agnes Murdoch 1864 - ?
Hugh Murdoch 1865 - ?
[Cookery Writer]
Grace Young Murdoch 1867 - 1958 [Music Teacher]
Amelia Morison Murdoch 1870 - 1880
[University Chancellor] - M1 1897 - Violet
- M 1891 -
Cameron Hughston 1872 - 1952
David Curle Smith 1859 - 1922
- M2 1962 - Barbara
[Electrical Engineer]
Francis Andrew Murdoch 1892 - 1893
Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch 1874 - 1970
Marshall Cameron 1901 - 2000
Harry Keith Murdoch 1894 - 1949 [Salesman] - M 1917 -
Myrtle Janet Inkster 1892 - 1970
Ella Jean Dorothy Murdoch 1899 - 1974
Marjorie Isobel Murdoch 1903 - 1971 - M 1935 -
Eric Wilmot Brooks 1909 - 1984 [Gardener]
William Garden Murdoch 1901 – 1950
Catherine Helen Murdoch 1904 - 2000
[Journalist]
[Radio Broadcaster]
- M 1928 -
- M 1930 -
Jean Hamilton Virtue 1901 - ?
Alexander King 1904 - 1970 [Professor of English]
CH 20 : HELEN YOUNG & FRANCIS GARDEN 289
After their mother died young in 1832, the two children of Francis and Helen, William and Helen, spent much of their early life with their great aunt at Braco House. William, born in 1823, then lived at Braco Park Farm as a farmer, surveyor and factor. In 1866 in Glasgow he married Mary Gray Hogg, the youngest daughter of James Hogg ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’ (See Box 20.1). They retired to Aberdeen, where William died in 1904 and Mary in 1911.
Memorial in St Nicholas’ Churchyard, Aberdeen to Helen Garden née Young, born 1802, and to her daughter-in-law Mary Gray Garden née Hogg, daughter of James Hogg.
Francis and Helen’s second child, Helen, married the Rev James Murdoch, the Free Church minister at Pitsligo, and had fourteen children. The eldest, Patrick, born in 1850, graduated from New College in Edinburgh and was ordained in 1878 as Minister at Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire. He married Annie Brown at Cruden Bay in 1882 and in 1884 the family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia. Patrick became Minister of the West Melbourne Presbyterian Church, remaining there for 40 years.
(L-R) Rev. Patrick John Murdoch, born 1850, Presbyterian minister in Melbourne for over 40 years. Image from The Age (Melbourne); Keith Murdoch born 1885 (20.4); Keith & Elizabeth Murdoch with children Helen, Rupert and Anne, 1936.
Patrick and Annie had seven children. The eldest, George, died in childhood. The second son, Keith Arthur Murdoch, had four children, three of whom had descendants, one being Rupert Murdoch, born in 1931, the media magnate1. Keith Murdoch's life is described in the following extract from the Australian Dictionary of Biography7: Born in 1885, Keith Murdoch grew up in semi-rural Camberwell, Victoria, near Melbourne, in the stringent economy of a clergyman’s large family. He was afflicted with a humiliating stammer which made for extreme shyness, difficulty in making friends and possibly unusually determined ambition. His parents were ambitious for him and when Keith decided to take up journalism, his father helped him secure a place on The Age. He worked at this successfully for four years before sailing for London in 1908, primarily to seek advice for his stammer. Keith spent eighteen miserably lonely months in London. His sheaf of introductions led to little journalistic work, while treatment improved his stammer only a little. ‘The survival of the fittest principle is good because the fittest become very fit indeed’, he wrote home. ‘I’ll be able to learn much here … and with health I should become a power in Australia’. He returned to Australia, his stammer now under reasonable control, and became Commonwealth parliamentary reporter for The Age. He was soon on close terms with many senior politicians. In 1915 he transferred to London as managing editor of the
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United Cable Service for The Sun and Melbourne Herald. The Australian Government commissioned him to investigate Australian Imperial Force mail services and associated matters, in the course of which he visited Gallipoli for four days. Several journalists and others were determined to expose the conduct of the Gallipoli campaign and he became involved in this, eventually writing a long report. This lavishly and sentimentally praised the Australians and attacked the performance of the British army at all levels, but included many errors and exaggerations. It suited many in power in Britain to support Murdoch’s line and at the age of 30 he began to hob-nob with men of great power. One important friend was Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper magnate. On Australian Prime Minister Hughes’ visits to England in 1916 and 1918 he acted as his publicist, fixer and runner, helping him with speeches and editing a volume of them (1916), and giving private dinner-parties for him with such guests as Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Milner and General Sir Henry Wilson. He acted as intermediary between Hughes and Lloyd George and relayed confidential information to Hughes in Australia. Despite campaigning for conscription, Keith was not prepared himself to serve in WW1, although he was fit to do so. He spent most of the war in London, with his valet. Murdoch visited the front irregularly as an unofficial war correspondent. Some of his dispatches, in 1918 especially, were vivid though opinionated, and he interfered with Australian war politics in a highhanded and ignorant way. For example, he wrote on 21 May 1918 to General Sir W R Birdwood a British soldier who was then in command of the Australia Corps in France. We were of course pretty well preparing for the translation of Monash. I understand that Mr Hughes may opt for the postponement of these changes until he arrives in London as he was not personally informed that they were imminent; and of course, there are very large questions of Australian policy now involved. Personally, I never had any doubt that Monash would make a good Corps Commander, but whether he would be better in another position with White as Commander of the Corps is possibly an open question10. In 1920 Murdoch was appointed chief editor of the Melbourne Evening Herald. He quickly had the general manager demoted by the board and himself made managing editor. He remodelled the paper on the lines of Northcliffe’s Daily Mail and Evening News, including many more pictures and ‘human interest’ stories and thoroughly overhauling it. The Herald’s circulation increased by half in four years. The Sporting Globe was established in 1922 and various other acquisitions were made. In 1928 ‘Lord Southcliffe’, as he was known, became managing director and the same year he married Elisabeth Joy Greene, daughter of a Melbourne merchant. From then on, the Murdoch empire grew, with papers all over the country being bought, controlled, or amalgamated into a national media chain. For example, by 1931 he had an Adelaide newspaper monopoly and by 1935 Murdoch and the Herald had an interest in 11 of the 65 commercial radio stations. The Murdoch press took an increasingly active role in trying to influence national politics, especially those of a populist and conservative nature. As this bias became more overt, Murdoch was criticised more and more. Despite this hostility he was knighted in 1933. In 1940 he was briefly Director General of Information for Australia but he was not a success in this role. He did, however, did set up an American division of his department, aiming to entice the U.S.A. into the war. Murdoch’s newspapers constantly attacked government running of the war effort and he expressed his fervent patriotism in writing extensively and ponderously for his chain under his own name, exhorting, calling on the ‘spiritual sources’ of the nation, and pontificating on military strategy. In his most Messianic mood he wrote almost incoherently. He incessantly attacked the Labour Prime Minister John Curtin and various other prominent figures. General Douglas Macarthur even described him as a quisling. Labour’s sweeping victory in 1943 muted Murdoch. In his later years his campaigns were as extreme as ever - attacking bank nationalization, immigration policy and the communists, whose outlawing he vehemently favoured. One of Murdoch’s interests was in the arts. He successfully spent considerable time in trying to loosen up the visual art and gallery scene. Murdoch retired in 1949 from almost all his posts and died in 1952, survived by (Dame) Elisabeth, charity worker and philanthropist, his son Keith Rupert and three daughters. When Elisabeth died in 2012 she was survived by 77 descendants, including 50 great grandchildren and 6 great-great-grandchildren.
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The luck of being in the right place at the right time, together with powerful friends and family contacts gave Murdoch a great start to his career. His enormous capacity for work, limitless driving ambition, a phenomenal memory and belief in himself carried him on. His Presbyterian upbringing remained basic - he was strait laced and easily shocked - and he sought a high moral purpose for his newspapers. He was a ‘big thinker’, with close contacts with many international leaders, and strove to further Australia’s long-term interests. But his judgement was faulty and he had no real ‘social philosophy’. Murdoch hired young reporters personally and many liked and admired him. Others regarded him with some cynicism or detested him. One concluded that Murdoch was essentially ‘a calculating, undeviating, insatiable seeker after worldly riches and temporal power’. But his detractors would usually admit, ‘At least he’s a newspaperman’. The next son, Francis Garden Murdoch, born in 1887, spent his career in Sydney with Gibbs, Bright and Company. Founded in 1808, the firm was based on trade with Spain and its colonies. It had enjoyed mixed fortunes up to 1840, when it began to import guano, the phosphate-rich droppings of seabirds. This proved very profitable, allowing the company to achieve prominence in mining, stevedoring, pastoral investment, shipping and exporting wool and timber. Francis married Eva Stamp in 1911 and they have descendants. Eva’s father, Richard Bulmer Stamp, was a participant in the great land boom which swept southern Australia in the 1880s, leading to Melbourne’s great financial crash and depression in the 1890s which ruined thousands of investors in Australia and abroad. It is described by Cannon2 in his book The Land Boomers as ‘an incredible trail of corruption and roguery rarely if ever equalled in any parliamentary democracy’. Richard Bulmer Stamp was a shady financial agent and manager of the Commercial Financial Property Co. Ltd in Melbourne, which borrowed heavily from other institutions, ‘lost the lot’, and quietly paid 6d in the £1. He received Cabinet’s backing to stand for Parliament in 1892, but withdrew when exposed as ‘a secret insolvent’. He was also involved in insider dealing and deception, including signing fictitious names.
(FAR L) Richard Bulmer Stamp, corrupt Land Boomer and father-inlaw of Francis Garden Murdoch. Murdoch gravestones at Kew, Victoria, naming various members of the family including James Murdoch, born 1818, and Alec Brown Shepherd Murdoch, born 1888
Alec, the next son, born in 1888, was a farmer at Shepparton East, Victoria. He died in 1920 aged 31 and is buried in Boroondara General Cemetery, Kew. His brother Ivon George Murdoch, born in 1892, achieved fame in World War One and his life is described in an article in The Age newspaper on 11 November 2007 written by his granddaughter Anna King Murdoch6: Every so often during my life, I have heard vague talk of my grandfather’s terrible war in France on the Somme. My father, who was a soldier in New Guinea during the Second World War, said nothing about his own war to me and nothing about his father’s. And I never thought to ask. Then, some years ago, my father died and there was no one left to ask. Rummaging in a drawer at my mother’s recently, I discovered tucked carefully at the bottom an old, disintegrating velvet box with a rubber band around it. Inside, lying with its faded ribbons, was a Military Cross and Bar from the First World War. The bar, so delicate, had fallen to the side. I took it out to my mother and asked why they had been awarded to my grandfather. She said: ‘I don’t know. I asked him a couple of times when I first knew him and he didn’t want to talk about it’. All I could remember was a rather gruff, pipe-smoking farmer in New South Wales, Wantabadgery East. I could see him outside his house on the hill that looked out over lush flats and the then-full Murrumbidgee River. There was charm; he had the daredevil in his eyes. By the time I was six, he was dead.
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He was the son of a Presbyterian minister from Scotland and was a young Victorian farmer by the time he joined the Australian Imperial Force in France in 1915. His older brother, Keith, the future famous newspaper proprietor, was covering the war as a journalist not too far away. I contacted the National Archives of Australia through the Australian War Memorial to find out what my grandfather had done to earn this old medal and the tiny bar. A young woman rang me back and asked if I would like her to read out to me what she had found. This is what I heard: For the Military Cross: On the morning of 2nd April, 1918, four officers and 54 other ranks raided the enemy position south-east of Ypres. Lieutenant Murdoch was in command of the group detailed to penetrate to the furthest position of the enemy’s defences and led his men with great gallantry and skill. This included an attack on a pill-box containing 23 of the enemy, 20 of whom were killed and three taken prisoner. He remained in the enemy position until all his men were clear then assisted the wounded of another group to return to our lines. On returning, it was ascertained that a member of another group was missing. Murdoch volunteered and led a party out immediately in search of him, penetrating the enemy’s position again, and searching No Man’s Land and the enemy wire until daybreak. On 27 March, this officer patrolled No Man’s Land in vicinity of objective and penetrated the enemy’s wire at all times of the night. His courage and resource in dealing with hostile patrols gained for us the mastery of No Man’s Land, and the valuable information gained by him on his patrols was a very large factor in the success of the operations. The success of the operation was directly due to Lieutenant Murdoch’s gallantry and great devotion to duty. For the Bar: For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during the attack north of Rosieres on 9/8/18. Lieutenant Murdoch was in charge of a platoon of one of the attacking companies throughout the advance and displayed fine leadership and courage. He skilfully led his platoon to the objective, together with the platoon of another company that had lost its officer. When it became necessary to clear the edge of Crepey Wood so as to silence the enemy machine-gun fire and place a post to command the field guns we had captured there, Lieutenant Murdoch led the enterprise. He gained his objective and caused severe casualties to the enemy, placing his posts so skilfully that all further attempts by the enemy to remove the field guns were futile. During the attack on Lihons on the 11/8/18, Murdoch again showed fine leadership and courage. He led two platoons skilfully to the final objective and when the enemy strongly counter-attacked his company’s position he crept forward with a Lewis gun and succeeded in enfilading the advancing line of the enemy. His action caused the enemy many casualties and threw them back in confusion, thus preventing them making a more concerted attack on the company’s position. Throughout the operation Lieutenant Murdoch set a splendid example for his men by his courage and devotion to duty. As she read, I saw my grandfather again at 70 standing at the top of the hill looking out over Murrumbidgee country. He was dying of cancer. It was his last great battle. And he had the daredevil in his eyes. The next brother, Alan May Murdoch, born in 1894, served with the Australian Infantry Force from 1915 to 1919. In June 1916 he embarked for France with the 37th Infantry Battalion. and later that year he was made 2nd Lieutenant. He became a Lieutenant in April 1917 and earned his Military Cross in the fighting at Messines on 7-9 June 1917 where ‘he led his platoon through most intense enemy machine gun and artillery fire to capture an enemy line. When more senior company officers became casualties, Alan took over the company and showed inspiring ‘coolness and total disregard for danger’ while remaining on duty with his company for three days’. He was wounded in 1918. After the war he re-joined the Australian Mercantile Land and Finance Company, a large company which had started as wool brokers, becoming the assistant general manager10. He married Hilda Annie Munro in 1921. Their son Alexander became an advocate, and their daughter Annabel married James Cran, an engineer. Alan May Murdoch during the First World War (20.5)
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Returning to the children of the Rev James Murdoch and Helen Garden, the second son, Francis Garden Murdoch, born in Pitsligo in 1852, gained his ship master’s certificate in 1881 at Fraserburgh, and was the second chief officer aboard the Ptosi, when it arrived in Australia in 1883. He married Margaret Brown in 1893 at Dundee. In 1901 with three young children he was farming at Aldie Farm, Cruden, Aberdeenshire. By 1918 he was living with the family at Aldie, Guelph, Ontario. He also travelled to the USA and was the captain of the Lake Yelverton which sailed the Atlantic, arriving, for example, in New York from Glasgow in September 1919. Francis died in 1934 and Margaret in 1939. There is a family gravestone in Clinton Cemetery, Ontario. Francis’ brother James Murdoch, born in 1854, studied medicine at Edinburgh and became a surgeon. In 1877 he married Annie Blaikie, the daughter of a Professor at the Free Church College in Edinburgh. James became a Free Church minister and he and Annie moved to New Zealand around 1879. Annie died in 1882 at the First Church Manse, Otago, and is mentioned on the Blaikie family memorial at Rosebank Cemetery, Edinburgh. They had three children. James and Annie’s daughter Katharine was described in 1930 as a magazine writer. She married John Davis who was a dry goods merchant, then high school teacher, in Oklahoma before moving to Arkansas and becoming a college teacher. He had been born in Indian Territory before it became Oklahoma and he was an authority on the history and customs of the Cherokee Indians. In 1948 he had just resumed his old career of running a store when he was run over by a truck. They had two children. Katharine’s brother William Garden Blaikie Murdoch had a prominent career in Edinburgh as an art critic and writer. He wrote books on a variety of topics, including the Stuarts and Jacobites, whose image he seemed determined to improve. His name is on the Blaikie Memorial at Rosebank Cemetery in Edinburgh.
(L) William Garden Blaikie Murdoch, born 1880, painted by Horace Brodzley (20.7) (ABOVE L) An example of one of William Murdoch’s publications refurbishing the reputation of the Stuarts and the Jacobite movement. (ABOVE R) William David Murdoch, born 1888, concert pianist (20.6)
Helen Garden and James Murdoch’s fourth child and eldest daughter, Eliza Jane, born in 1855, was a laundress who spent much of her life near Camberwell, then an agricultural area and now a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. In her early years she was surrounded by other family members, but they had scattered elsewhere by about 1910. Andrew Chrystal Murdoch, born in 1859, the next brother for whom there is any information, served an apprenticeship with an ironfounder in Bendigo, Victoria and eventually, started his own ironfoundry at Eaglehawk with two others. Eaglehawk was full of Murdochs as his uncle and family were all involved with ironfoundry businesses. Andrew married Annie Esler and they raised five children.
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The eldest, William David Murdoch3, born in 1888, became a well-known concert pianist. He married three times, leaving two sons and two daughters. His second wife petitioned for a divorce in 1925, saying ‘Murdoch went to play golf. He did not return and sent a letter card stating he would be away a couple of days. He did not return but wrote from Geneva - asking for a divorce’. William’s sister Christina (Teenie), born in 1890, married Eugene Eberbach, a municipal engineer who worked in various locations including Broken Hill. Her brother Harry, a salesman, married Myrtle Janet Inkster and had children. The next sister Ella remained unmarried. The last in the family was Marjorie Isobel Murdoch born in 1903, who married Eric Wilmot Brooks, variously described as a farm worker, factory employee and gardener. Andrew’s next sister, Helen Nora, married David Curle Smith, an electrical engineer, born in Aberdeen and who studied engineering at Glasgow University where, according to his obituary, ‘he had the honour of being chosen as a demonstrator of the practical uses of electricity by Lord Kelvin the world-famous scientist’. On coming to Australia, he worked for an electrical engineering business in Melbourne but in 1896 he moved to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, during the Gold Rush, intending to make his fortune as a miner. Instead he established and ran the municipal electricity supply for the town. Kalgoorlie sprang to fame when gold was discovered in 1893, for a period becoming a boom town. The town survived the boom and mining is still being carried out nearby. Kalgoorlie has an interesting history, famed in the past for its brothels, and makes an interesting stop for those on the Sydney to Perth train.
Helen Nora Curle Smith (née Murdoch) and David Curle Smith, who married Helen.
Smith invented a pioneering electric stove, which he patented in 1906. To promote the stove, in 1907 his wife Nora wrote the world’s first cookbook for electric stoves, Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy4, featuring 161 recipes and operating instructions for the stove. Nora Curle Smith was also a noted painter and was praised for her Red Cross work during World War One. David Curle Smith largely succeeded in navigating the factional politics of Kalgoorlie, although at one point, as a friend of the Mayor, he found himself in the midst of a classic vicious Australian newspaper campaign, in which the administration was accused of using public money to promote electrical stove distribution in the area.
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(FAR L) An illustration showing how the cooker worked, from the cookery book written by Helen to support the use of the electric cooker invented by her husband (20.8) (ABOVE) An example of how Curle Smith was attacked by The Sun Newspaper.
Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch
(L) A painting by (Helen) Nora Curle Smith.
Another sister, Grace Young Murdoch born in 1867, was a music teacher. The last child in the family was Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch8, who was a popular essayist and university professor and chancellor. After early childhood at Rosehearty, Aberdeenshire and in England and France, he arrived with his family in Melbourne, aged ten. At the University of Melbourne (B.A., 1895; M.A., 1897), as a member of Ormond College, he gained a first-class honours in logic and philosophy. Murdoch’s academic career began with appointment as a Melbourne University assistant lecturer in English. As well as writing academically, he also wrote a weekly column for the Melbourne newspaper Argus under the title Books and Men. 1911 marked a turning-point in Murdoch’s life. Passed over in favour of an overseas applicant for the re-created Independent Chair of English at Melbourne University, he spent the next year as a full-time member of the Argus’s literary staff. He was then selected as a founding professor of the University of Western Australia, where lectures began in 1913, and continued for many years, in tin sheds in the heart of Perth. On the young campus Murdoch had a considerable following outside his own department and his immediate academic colleagues. Sympathy for underdogs and a willingness to champion lost causes extended beyond his academic environment. It coloured his second major contribution to Western Australian life: his association with several other funder members in building closer links between the university and the community. His most effective medium was the column he contributed to the West Australian newspaper on alternate Saturday mornings. Together with occasional day and evening talks on radio from 1933 - he was to prove a very effective broadcaster - and appearances on public platforms, frequently in the chair, this brought him a wide and varied local following. Murdoch’s essays should be seen in the first instance as part of the community activities of the University of Western Australia. They were directed at the widespread literate, but by no means academic, population of the still very isolated State. But Murdoch’s audience did not stop there. Indeed, the West Australian articles had begun to reappear in the Argus in 1919, and the essays in varying forms found a a wider Australian market when Murdoch succumbed to the persuasion of his flamboyant nephew (Sir) Keith Murdoch, and his writings were syndicated on the Melbourne Herald network. Walter Murdoch's essays later came to be inculded in collections and books.
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In addition to his academic teaching and the benefits which the young university obtained from his extramural activities, Murdoch was to remain a member of its governing body after resigning from his chair in 1939. Chancellor in 1943-48, he was appointed a Knight Commander of St George in 1964 and the university awarded him an honorary D.Litt. in 1948. He actively opposed the idea of secession from the Commonwealth as a solution to Western Australia’s economic ills. Much later, in 1950-51, he vehemently fought the attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. When in the month of his death he was given a bedside message from the premier that the State government was to name its second university after him, he was able to send an appreciative acceptance. He added, sotto voce, ‘It had better be a good one!’ On 8 March 1962 at Perth Registry Office, Murdoch married his secretary-companion and nurse, Barbara Marshall Cameron. Survived by her and by the two daughters of his first marriage, to teacher Violet Catherine Hughston in 1897, he died in 1970 at South Perth and was buried in the Anglican section of Karrakatta cemetery. Walter Murdoch had three children by his first wife Violet Hughston. The only son to reach adulthood, William Garden Murdoch born in 1901, became a journalist in Western Australia. He began working for the Melbourne Argus and the Melbourne Herald. He then joined the West Australian in 1921 where he spent the rest of his life. Under the initials W.G.M. but sometimes 'Alan Breck', he wrote on a wide range of subjects. For about 20 years he reported the law courts. He was said to be most in his element when espousing a cause or assailing an evil. He hated sham and hypocricy. He married Jean Hamilton Virtue, an accountant’s daughter, and they had children. He died in 1950. Walter and Violet’s other child was Catherine Helen a prominent community educationalist and broadcaster. She gained distinction as a pioneer of Australian educational radio which has led the world in reaching out to a widespread rural audience at an appropriate level. For many years Catherine was associated with the Kindergarten Union and was a part-time lecturer at the Kindergarten Teachers College. She helped organise a Parent Education Group all over Western Australia and in the 1930s with the help of her husband who was already involved with radio broadcasts she began a series on Parent Education. What had begun as a small project to interest parents in providing quality reading soon turns into an influential programme recommending good books for young readers. In 1942 Catherine started a radio programme aimed directly at young children in Western Australia called the Kindergarten of the Air which became famous. Later Catherine’s daily radio programme was called the ABC Women’s Session and included music, live interviews and discussions on subjects from science and arts to cooking and parenting. It was based on the premise that women who were not in the paid workforce were thinking people with wide interests and concerns. She also travelled widely around Western Australia to meet her listeners. In 1966 she was awarded an OBE. She married Alexander King, an Englishman who emigrated to Western Australia where he taught English, eventually becoming Professor of English at the University of Western Australia5 and who also became deeply involved in reaching out through radio to a wider audience. In 1966 he took up the second chair of English at Monash University, Melbourne. Catherine and Alexander had two sons.
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BOX 20.1
JAMES HOGG - THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD James Hogg is a famous poet and novelist. The second child of Robert Hogg, a shepherd and farmer, and Margaret Laidlaw, he was born in 1770 at the farm of Ettrick Hall in Selkirkshire. His education at the parish school being cut short by his father’s bankruptcy, from childhood he had to work as a farm labourer. ‘At the age of 18’, he wrote ‘the little reading that I had learnt I had nearly lost’. His early experiences of literature and storytelling came from the Bible and his mother’s and uncle’s stories. In 1784 he purchased a fiddle with money that he had saved, and taught himself to play. In 1785 he served a year working for a tenant farmer at Singlee. The following year he went to work for Mr. Laidlaw of Ellibank, staying with him for eighteen months. In 1788 he was given his first job as a shepherd by Laidlaw’s father, a farmer at Willenslee. He stayed there for two years, reading while tending sheep, and being given newspapers and theological works by his employer’s wife. For ten years from 1790 he was a shepherd at Blackhouse Farm in the Yarrow Valley, where he formed a lifelong friendship with his employer’s son William Laidlaw. Given free access to the Laidlaw library, and to a local lending library, he read voraciously and began to write poems, plays and songs, some of which were published. He also helped collect traditional ballads for Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1803), which led to a friendship that lasted until Scott’s death in 1832. It was at this time that James, his eldest brother and several cousins formed a literary society of shepherds. Hogg next worked in Dumfriesshire in south-west Scotland, an area closely associated with Robert Burns, whose widow Jean Armour Hogg came to know. He continued writing, both poetry and farming manuals. In 1810 when his agricultural ventures failed he moved to Edinburgh, hoping to establish himself as a professional writer. For a year from 1810 to 1811 he published a weekly newspaper, The Spy, containing a variety of essays, fiction and poetry mostly written by himself. While financially less than successful, Hogg was thus brought into contact with radical Whig political circles, which gained him several valuable supporters. These included Dr Andrew Duncan, a specialist in the treatment of the mentally ill. This friendship probably contributed to the penetrating portrayals of madness that features in Hogg’s writings. For the first few years in Edinburgh, Hogg had difficulty making ends meet. However, his financial situation improved greatly with the publication in 1813 of The Queen’s Wake, a book-length narrative poem about Mary Queen of Scots, which helped establish his reputation as one of the leading poets of the age. Spice was added to his fame by the puzzle of his background and upbringing – how could these works be written by a common shepherd who had had no formal education since the age of seven? Hogg next turned more to prose fiction First came two collections of stories, dealing vividly with various aspects of Ettrick society, past and current. Three full-length novels: The Three Perils of Man (1822); The Three Perils of Woman (1823); and the work for which he is best known, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), a searing attack on the soul-destroying restrictiveness of the Scottish Calvinism of the age. A major outlet for Hogg’s later writings was Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. But Hogg’s considerable fame derived almost equally from his portrayal in Blackwood’s as the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’. In a series of articles purporting to record the table-talk of the magazine’s contributors, the fictitious Hogg emerges as a vain, boastful and bibulous oaf but with the poetic inspiration and insight of a child of nature. Throughout his literary career, Hogg continued to farm, his income from writing subsidising his agricultural ventures despite bankruptcy. In 1820 he had married Margaret Phillips, who was twenty
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years his junior, and they had five children. To provide for them (he was now sixty), he planned a collected edition of his writings. The first volume appeared in 1832. Unfortunately his publisher then went bankrupt and the project was aborted. In the autumn of 1835 Hogg contracted jaundice. He died at his home, Altrive Lake Farm, on 21 November 1835, and was buried in Ettrick Churchyard, a stone’s throw from his birthplace at Ettrick Hall. James Hogg was undervalued in his lifetime because of prejudice against his radical views and poor social origins. Collected editions published after his death were so incomplete and sanitised as to offer only a bland and lifeless version, even of Confessions of a Justified Sinner. However, since the later twentieth century his reputation has risen dramatically, especially with the multi-volume research edition inaugurated at Edinburgh University Press in 1995. Like Burns, Hogg questioned and subverted aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment, and revived the traditional culture of the old Scottish peasantry. Like Burns and Scott, he made a distinctive contribution to European Romanticism9.
Frontispiece from James Hogg’s book The Confessions of a Justified Sinner which explores the most extreme strain of the Calvanist and Scottish Presbyterian doctrine of predestination, which implies that as one of the elect you may never truly sin. James Hogg, born 1770, the Ettrick Shepherd. The portrait was painted in 1830 by Sir James Watson Gordon, who gives Hogg a shepherd’s crook and a plaid to wear over his gentleman’s clothes (20.11)
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A visualisation of Colonel Edgar Thomas Inkson, grandson of Jane Catherine Young, winning his Victoria Cross in 1900. This was one of a series of post cards of military heroes produced for the British public.
CHAPTER 21
JAMES CATHERINE YOUNG AND JOHN TAYLOR James Catherine Young, known as Catherine, the daughter of architect James Young, was born in 1812. When she married the architect John S. Taylor in 1844 in Hornsey, James Young settled £1,000 on the couple. John came from a family of architects: his father, John Henry Taylor, was an architect and Borough Surveyor in Westminster and later in Lambeth. Among his works were churches and chapels, a bank, Lincoln Central Station and an orphanage (or asylum as it was called then) for the St Anne’s Schools Society at Brixton Hill. What son John designed is not clear, but he appears to have taken over his father’s practice, where he was joined by two architect brothers. In 1837 he exhibited two drawings at the Royal Academy, one being a drawing of Herstmonceux, where his future father-in-law lived, so he may well have known Catherine’s family for some time before they married. Jane’s father James and uncle Arthur were witnesses to the wedding.
(ABOVE) John S Taylor’s projected design for St Anne’s Orphanage at Brixton Hill in London. (R) The Central Station at Lincoln, the major part of which was designed by John H. Taylor in 1841 in Tudor revival style.
CH 21 : JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR 301
CHART 21: YOUNG / TAYLOR
SEE CHART 19
James Catherine Young 1812 - 1898 - M 1844 -
John Taylor c1818 - ? [Architect]
Catherine Alice Taylor 1845 - 1933
Edith Elizabeth Taylor 1846 - ?
- M 1864 -
- M 1869 -
James Inkson 1835 - 1898
Edgar Gibson Clark 1830 - 1883
[Indian Army Surgeon]
[General, Indian Army]
Hilda Catherine Edgar Clark 1870 - 1947
Mildred Henrietta Edgar Clark 1872 - 1952
- M 1920 -
Peter Greaves Cawley 1859 - 1939
Ellen Norah Taylor 1848 - 1902
John Wilford Taylor 1849 - 1930
[School Teacher]
[Insurance Inspector] - M 1881 -
Alice Graham Robinson 1847 - 1936
Emma Mabel Edgar Clark 1873 - 1874
Irene Marion Edgar Clark 1875 - 1929
Olive Mary Edgar Clark 1881 - 1968
- M 1913 -
- M 1909 -
- M 1902 -
Charles Joseph Edwards
Robert Lindsay Megarry 1879 - 1952
Percy Jones 1869 - 1917
[Army Major]
[Clerk in Holy Orders]
Alice Gordon Inkson 1866 - 1937 - M 1886 -
Robert Franklin Allen 1860 - 1916 [Colonel, Royal Engineers]
Catherine Maud Inkson 1868 - 1944
Mary Inkson 1870 - ?
- M 1887 -
Eliot Philipse Johnson 1866 – 1925
David Norton 1851 – 1929 [Indian Civil Service]
[Captain, Indian Army]
[Civil Servant]
- M 1892 -
[Brigadier General, Royal Engineers]
302 JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR : CH 21
Edgar Thomas Inkson 1872 – 1947 [Army Surgeon] - M 1904 -
Ethel Maud Bromley 1879 - 1976
Jane Charlotte Inkson 1875 - 1944
Patrick Morrison C Inkson 1979 - 1932
Agnes Grace Taylor 1851 - 1925
Florence Marion Taylor 1853 - 1935
Ada Emma Taylor 1855 - 1939
- M 1875 -
- M 1888 -
Thomas Robert Redfern 1848 - 1926
Robert Thelwal Peake 1856 - 1931
[Judge in India]
[Merchant, Malaya]
Basil Wilford Taylor 1883 - 1949
Keith Wilford Taylor 1888 - 1961
Arthur William Redfern 1876 - 1954
[Company Secretary]
[Rubber Planter]
[Civil Servant, Rhodesia] - M 1905 -
Margaret Alice Gardiner 1882 - 1981
Mary Ethel Peake c1889 - 1946
Robert Wilford Peake 1890 - 1953 [Civil Enginer]
Edith Redfern 1878 - 1966 [Civil Servant, Rhodesia]
Ethel Maud Keith Taylor 1857 - 1940 [Schoolteacher]
Alan Faulkner Redfern 1880 - 1968
Robert Ainsworth Redfern 1897 - 1966
[Major, Army]
[Schoolmaster]
- M 1909 -
- M 1916 -
Hastings Norman Victor Harington 1855 - 1930
Mary Marjorie Harington 1881 - 1934
[Colonial Indian Medical Service]
Ada Florence Peake 1893 - 1922
John Thelwal Peake 1895 - 1915
Dorothy Edith Peake 1877 - 1980
[Soldier]
CH 21 : JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR 303
John Taylor and Catherine Young had eight children. The eldest daughter, Catherine Alice Taylor, born in 1845, married James Inkson. Born in Banffshire, he was a surgeon in the Army in India who served in the Russian (or Crimean) War with the Baltic Expedition of 1855, when a combined French and British fleet bombarded various Russian fortresses, including that of Sveaborg outside Helsinki. Arthur Farquhar, the Captain of HMS Malacca, also took part in this action (see Chapter 7). The Bombardment of Sveaborg during the Crimea War in 1855 as painted by J. W. Carmichael. This action involved the widespread use of steamships and the print shows steam tugs pulling sailing vessels into position (21.1)
During the Indian Mutiny James Inkson was Assistant Surgeon for the 37th Foot (North Hampshire) Regiment. The regiment sailed from Ceylon, where it had been involved in suppressing a local rebellion, and arrived at the start of the Mutiny, sailing up the Soane River to help raise the Siege of Arrah (see Chapter 26). On arrival the force made an extremely rash night march without reconnoitering ahead, fell into an ambush, and had to retreat in confusion. Out of 415 men, 172 were killed, a disaster, especially as every European soldier was needed at this critical period. James Inkson was involved in the capture of Jugdespore and in subsequent actions in the Ghazipore area. Later, in 1865, he was with the 80th Regiment of Foot in the latest in a series of invasions of Bhutan by the British, forcing the country to cede even more territory and independence to Britain. Eventually becoming Surgeon-Major-General, he retired in 1893, lived briefly in Malta, and died in London in 1898. Catherine Taylor married James Inkson in 1864 at Nawabgunge, Bara Banki in Bengal, when James was an Assistant Surgeon to the 80th Regiment. James and Catherine had six children, three of whom were born in India. Alice Gordon Inkson, the eldest, married Robert Franklin Allen, a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, in 1886 in Calcutta. After a palace coup and rebellion in which three British officials were killed, Alan was the Chief Royal Engineer of the Kohima Column of the Manipur Field Force sent to restore order.
Map showing the remote position of Manipur
(L-R) A rare 1891 image, source unknown, of the British who had just retaken control of Manipur alongside the ruling family, some of whom were later hanged for their rebellion. History opens a new era when soldiers on relief columns carry cameras; Another wonderful 1891 photograph of the British re-established in power in Manipur alongside those they had defeated.
304 JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR : CH 21
In 1891 this force made its way through mountains, rivers and jungles to the small and very remote hill state of Manipur, tucked between Burma and Assam. Manipur was a typical example of a ‘separate state’ under ‘British protection’ Also typical for the time, the Force had not only 4,000 men, but also 13,000 pack animals, 500 bullock carts and ‘very many coolies’. There was little glory for the soldiers as the British found the capital Imphal deserted. The affair did not reflect well on either the British military or the civil officials in India. Their treatment afterwards of the Manipur leaders was seen as morally dubious, with ‘sharp practices by very senior officers’5. Interestingly an appeal by Queen Victoria, the Queen Empress, to spare the lives of two of the rebelling princes was overruled by the Government in India. Robert Allen was mentioned in despatches. In 1903 he fought in Somaliland where the British were constantly having to defend their interests in the Horn of Africa against the Dervishes. He was awarded a DSO and again mentioned in despatches for his involvement in the Battle of Jidballi in January 1904. Again, he was the Chief Royal Engineer. He retired as a Colonel. Katherine Maud Inkson, the second daughter of Catherine and James, married David Norton, a widower, who was in the Bengal Civil Service and spent most of his career in Burma, occupying several senior positions. The third daughter, Mary Inkson, married Eliot Philipse Johnson, also a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and the son of Lt-General Sir Charles Johnson of the Indian Staff Corps. He fought in the Chin-Lushai Expedition between 1889 and 1890 when local tribesmen started to kill or abduct labourers working at the developing Assam tea estates. These Chin and Lushai tribesmen had a tradition of slavery as well as of raiding, which there had been previous attempts to suppress. In 1889 three British columns were sent into the area and succeeded in quietening it temporarily. An important part of the campaign was to build roads which would have been the primary task for Eliot Johnson, He fought in the Somaliland Campaign of 1903 at the same time as Robert, his brother-in-law. Their task as Sappers was principally to build roads and develop water supplies. In 1907 Eliot was sent to help quell unrest on the North-West Frontier and was twice mentioned in despatches. During World War One he spent time in Mesopotamia, where he was three times mentioned in despatches and was awarded a CB. He also received the Romanian Order of the Star. He retired as an Hon. Brigadier-General and died in 1925 at Upton-on-Severn. His grandson became the Seventh Baronet Johnson of Bath.
Edgar Inkson V.C.
The eldest son of James Inkson and Catherine Taylor was Edgar Thomas Inkson who, like his father, became an Army surgeon. He won the DSO, and in 1900 the Victoria Cross, as a Lieutenant in South Africa. He was left in a railway cutting with two wounded officers of the Inniskillings. Inkson carried one of the officers 400 yards to safety under heavy fire from the Boers. He then served through World War One, commanding No 2 Ambulance from 1915 to 16 and General Hospitals until 1919, and retired as a Colonel in 1926. He married Ethel Bromley, the daughter of a tea merchant and grocer, in 1904. His sister Jane never married and his younger brother Patrick died at the Crichton Royal Hospital, Dumfries in 1932.
The second daughter of John and Catherine Taylor, Edith Elizabeth, born in 1846, married Edgar Gibson Clark in 1869. He had been a Lieutenant in the Indian Army with the 21st Bengal Native Infantry when he married his first wife, Elizabeth Parker, the daughter of an Indian Army Major. When the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857, they were stationed at Gondah, near Baraitch, Oudh.
(L) Map of Oudh or north Bengal showing the principal centres of unrest during the Indian Mutiny. (R) One of the many imaginative prints made to meet huge public interest in the Mutiny. This purports to show the taking of Lucknow.
CH 21 : JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR 305
The ladies of the station, including Elizabeth (Parker), were sent for safety to the Lucknow Residency, but they were trapped when it was besieged by the rebels. Elizabeth died from privation before the relieving force arrived. Her baby, also Elizabeth, born at the Lucknow Residency on July 20th, died 12 days later on August 2nd, and her son, Edgar Matthew Clark, born in 1855, also died from want of proper nourishment. During the siege they lived and died in the Begum Khoti. They were buried in the Cemetery attached to the Residency, along with all those who died during the siege. There is a moving account of Elizabeth’s death in the diary of Katherine Bartrum1, whose husband, a doctor, died just before entering Lucknow as one of hte relieving force. Katherine's was one of the many diaries to be published afterwards: July 20. Mrs. Clark was confined today; what a scene does our room present: nine of us in it, and poor Mrs. C. so ill that she ought to be kept perfectly quiet... July 29. Mrs. Clark seemed easier this morning: we fancied she was better, but it was not really so. She told me she wanted to sit up, and asked me to bring her boxes and pack them up as she was going on a long journey and must have everything prepared. I did what she wished, sorted her things and put them back in the boxes. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘now I am quite ready: the doolie is here, but the bearers have not come.’ Yes, she was ready to depart and the angels were waiting to carry her to her bright home above. I gave her some arrowroot, and from that time she never spoke again, but seemed to be quietly dozing all day. In the evening we saw that she was rapidly sinking: Mr. Harris came and read some of the Visitation prayers and baptized the little babe; there was no one to ask what it should be named, and we called it after its mother. Oh! it was a mournful scene: that poor young thing and her child dying far away from all she loved. She was one of those gentle beings who could not struggle through hardships and trials such as we then had to endure... She was unconscious for some hours before she died, and about midnight her spirit gently passed away to ‘that land where the inhabitant shall no more say I am sick.’ Now we have two motherless children left to our care. July 31. My poor friend has been carried to her last abode this morning. The infant is sinking: it is strange it has lived so long... A scandal, alluded to in various survivors’ accounts, was understandably hushed up as it reflected badly on the public image of the British. It was discovered that, because food supplies had not been pooled centrally and groups were scattered and somewhat isolated over the sixty-acre site, some groups, especially that of Mr Gubbins the civilian leader, had been hoarding plentiful supplies of food, while other groups, such as that of Elizabeth Clark, were dying from malnourishment and disease. Ruutz Rees, a Calcutta merchant and not part of the Establishment was more open6. He described the entrance of General Baird into Lucknow:
Dr Brydon, siege of Lucknow survivor (21.2)
Mr Gubbins, among others, pressed forward to meet the General, who, according to what we heard, was invited by him to a dinner, which was accepted. It is said that there were champagne and claret, saucisses aux truffes, hermetically sealed, and truffled provisions of all kinds, vegetables and meat in plenty, provided for his excellency’s palate; but Sir Colin, far from feeling pleased at the splendid repast spread out for him, refused to partake of it. “How is it, Mr Gubbins, that these things were not given to the starving garrison?” were his words. Among survivors of the siege were Dr William Brydon and his family. He was one of the very few survivors of the retreat from Kabul in 1842 when Dr William Duff was killed (see Chapter 2). After the Mutiny, Edgar Clark continued in the Indian Army, mainly in the Bengal Staff Corps, and became a Major General. He married Edith Taylor at Lucknow, India in 1869 when he was Settlement Officer at Khree. They had four daughters who survived to adulthood, the last one born in Kent, two years before Edgar died at Eastbourne in 1883 aged 53. Daughter Hilda, born in 1870, married Peter Cawley, a Clerk in Holy Orders, at Eastbourne in 1920. Hilda died in 1947 and her husband in 1939. Of Hilda’s sister Mildred, born in 1872, we know only that she was unmarried in 1911.
306 JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR : CH 21
In 1909, the next surviving sister, Irene, married Robert Lindsay Megarry from Belfast, a civil servant in the Board of Education. They had two sons. The elder, Sir Robert Edgar Megarry, born in 1910, had a very diverse and distinguished career in London as a civil servant, barrister, teacher, writer, and senior High Court judge, becoming Vice-Chancellor of the Chancery Division2. He married Iris Davies, the daughter of a wholesale clothing merchant, and they had three daughters. His brother Peter Lindsay Megarry became an accountant in Valparaiso, Chile, where he died in 1952.
Sir Robert Edgar Megarrry’s 1951 portrait by Anthony Morris at Lincoln’s Inn.
The last daughter of Edith Taylor and Edgar Clark was Olive Mary Edgar Clark, born in 1881. She married Percy Jones, the son of Alfred Stowell Jones, who won the Victoria Cross on 8th June 1857 at Delhi during the Indian Mutiny. Alfred had been a Lieutenant in the 9th Lancers when they charged the enemy, captured one of their guns and turned it successfully back on them. It was cited as ‘a wellconceived act, gallantly executed’. Later he became a Lieutenant-Colonel serving on the Staff at the Cape. His son Percy studied engineering at King’s College, London and then served as a Corporal in Lumsden’s Horse during the South African Campaign. When World War One broke out, he was a Captain in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers (Behar Light Infantry), attached to the Duke of Connaught’s Lancers (Watson’s Horse). In July 1916 the regiment was sent from the North-West Frontier of India to take part in the Mesopotamian Campaign in present-day Iraq. As Britain’s navy was heavily dependent on oil, defending the oilfields near Basra was seen as crucial. Percy was killed on 3 November 1917 in the initial stages of the battle of Tikrit. He was buried at Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery and is named on the war memorial at Mayfield, Sussex. Olive died in 1968 in Finchampstead, Berkshire, where there is a memorial to her. Returning to the children of Jane Young and John S. Taylor, Ellen, born in 1848, became a school teacher. She died unmarried, in 1902 at the Crichton Royal Hospital near Dumfries. Her brother John, born in 1849, worked in insurance, becoming an Inspector of Agents for an insurance company. He married Alice Robinson, the daughter of a solicitor, and they had two sons. The eldest was Basil Wilford Taylor, born in 1883, an accountant and company secretary who seems to have travelled frequently overseas as part of his employment. During World War One he served in the 28th Division Field Artillery firstly in France in the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Loos. In 1915 he was ordered to Salonika, where he remained until the end of the war. He was mentioned in despatches and awarded an OBE. Anglo-French forces were sent to the Greek port of Salonika to provide military assistance to the Serbs who had recently been attacked by combined German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies. The intervention came too late to save Serbia. After a brief winter campaign in severe weather conditions on the Serbian frontier, the front line of trenches remained more or less static under miserable conditions of extreme heat or cold until September 1918, when a third offensive was launched, concluding with the surrender of Bulgaria. Malaria proved to be a serious drain on manpower during the campaign. As the campaign was regarded by the War Office as of low priority the assistance rendered by voluntary medical organisations, such as the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, proved invaluable. Basil’s brother Keith Wilford Taylor was a rubber planter at Malacca (or Melaka) in Malaya who retired to Sussex, dying at Seaford in 1961. The next daughter of Jane and John Taylor, Agnes Grace Taylor married Thomas Robert Redfern, a Judge in the Indian Civil Service. They married in 1875 at Oudh, India, and retired to Eastbourne, Sussex. Their eldest son, Arthur William Redfern, born in 1876 in India, married Margaret Gardiner, the daughter of a Wiltshire vicar, in 1905, at Bulawayo, Rhodesia. He was a civil servant in Rhodesia and was elected unopposed (because it was wartime) in 1940 for the all-white Rhodesian Parliament. His predecessor had won the seat, which had a total of 410 votes, the vast majority of the indigenous population being disenfranchised - as was normal in the British Empire, and also in Britain until after World War One. Arthur was awarded an OBE.
CH 21 : JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR 307
He and Margaret had three sons, one of whom, Alan Gardiner Redfern fought in World War Two, with the Rhodesian Forces in the Winter War in Finland. This remarkable conflict started in November 1939, when Russia invaded Finland and after a long struggle forced her to sign a peace treaty and concede the province of Karelia. Britain did not want to be seen as taking up arms against Russia but the Rhodesians, being volunteers, could not be linked directly to Britain. Alan then fought with the long-range desert patrol in North Africa. He was killed defending Leros, Greece. His medals were sold at auction in 2008. Alan Gardiner Redfern, born 1907, who led an adventurous life which eventually led to his death in 1943 at the hands of the Germans in the Aegean (21.3)
Arthur’s sister Edith, born in 1878, married Hastings Harington in 1909 at St Thomas’ Cathedral, Bombay. She was his second wife. He became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Indian Medical Service and retired eventually to British Columbia, Canada in 1914. He supposedly bought apple orchards but this appears to have been a real estate scam, in that the area was still virgin forest. Edith and their son Leonard, born in 1913 in London, joined Arthur in Canada but Edith and Leonard soon returned to England, from where they went to Southern Rhodesia, where she worked as a civil servant, as did her brother Arthur. Edith’s brother Alan Faulkner Redfern, born in 1880, joined the Devonshire Regiment and served in South Africa during the Second Boer War. He then joined the 7th Ghurkha Rifles of the Indian Army as a Lieutenant taking part in the Tibet Expedition of 1903-4 as a Lieutenant. This involved the invasion of Tibet, ostensibly to counter a non-existent Russian threat, the ever-present spectre of Indian Colonial Government. Unlike most of these incursions, which were largely to satisfy the local British armed forces’ desperation for money and glory, this campaign was initiated by Lord Curzon, the expansionist Prime Minister. All the indifferent Tibetans wanted was to be left alone. Almost as usual with such invasions in this aggressive period of the British Empire, the locals, armed with antiquated weapons such as hoes and stone slingshots, were mown down by modern rifles and Maxim machine guns while attempting to block the British advance with stone walls. Some five thousand locals, monks and peasants, were killed, the majority while fleeing. In contrast there were only 5 British casualties. The British leader, Colonel Francis Younghusband, was a very strange, callous individual who justified such massacres by saying ‘The Empire cannot be run like a tea party’3. Hilaire Belloc summed it up succinctly: Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.4 When the British met other enemies shortly afterwards, the odds were more equal and the favourite British Imperial tactic of charging straight at the enemy led by junior officers proved a disaster, as exemplified by the Battle of the Somme. Francis Younghusband was the unfortunate, but not uncommon, product of strict and undemonstrative Victorian parents. He was sent to Clifton College which at that point was one of the public schools most infuenced by the evangelistic fervour sweeping Britain, known as ‘Muscular Christianity’. These schools were in large part producing the men who went on to expand the British Empire. This probably led to Francis’ pre-occupation with mysticism in later life. He wrote several very strange books. As a result of the Tibet Expedition, Alan (Faulkner) Redfern suffered from ill health. However, on the outbreak of World War One he served on the Gold Coast of Africa in the Cameroons, where again he was mentioned in despatches. This campaign involved chasing the Germans out of their colony and dividing it between France and Britain. Redfern later transferred to the Army Service Corps, retiring with the rank of Major in 1921. In 1916 he married Mary Marjorie Harington, his niece by marriage (see Chapter 26), who was born at Trimulgherry, Madras in 1882. Her first husband, Captain Edward Hornby Ovans, of the 125th Napier’s Rifles, died at the battle of Neuve Chapelle in France, in March 1915. One of Alan’s sons joined Bomber Command in World War Two and was killed over Germany in July 1944. Alan’s brother Robert Ainsworth Redfern, born in 1897, joined the Royal Marines in 1916 but transferred to the Flying Corps in 1917 and became a Lieutenant. After the war he was a schoolmaster. He died in 1966.
308 JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR : CH 21
The fifth child of Jane Young and John Taylor, Florence Marion Taylor, born in 1853, was unmarried. Her sister, Ada Emma Taylor was a painter before she married Robert Thelwal Peake, born in 1856, the son of a Chief Clerk in Chancery. Robert worked for the firm Gilfillan, Wood and Co. later Adamson, Gilfillan & Co. which had a wide variety of interests in Singapore and Malaya, including shipping and insurance. Robert spent much of his career in Malaya and was a member of the Penang Chamber of Commerce. However, at the outbreak of World War One he was a director in London. Robert and Ada had three daughters, none of whom married, and two sons. The elder son, Robert Wilford Peake graduated in 1914 with an engineering degree from Imperial College, London. In September of the same year he enlisted and served in the First World War as a sapper with the Royal Navy Divisional Engineers in Gallipoli, and subsequently as a Royal Engineer officer in France and Salonika. He relinquished his commission ‘on account of ill health contracted on active service’, went out to Argentina and became the District Engineer of the Central Argentine Railway. The second son, John Thelwal Peake, born in 1895, joined the Artists Rifles in 1914 and received a commission in the 2nd Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment in March 1915. He was wounded on 9 May 1915 at the Battle of Aubers Ridge, in France, and died of wounds at Boulogne on May 11. He is listed in the Roll of Honour of the Artists Rifles. The youngest daughter of Catherine Young and John Taylor, Ethel Maud Keith Taylor, born in 1857, became a school teacher. She was unmarried and died in 1940.
Alan Faulkner Redfern’s medals: A Queen’s South Africa Medal with bars from Cape Colony and the Transvaal and a Tibet Medal.
(TOP L) The English ordered the Tibetans to appear before them to submit. This imagined impression appeared in the newspaper Petit Journal on 14 February 1904. (TOP MIDDLE) Map showing the position of Cameroon next to Nigeria on the Bight of Africa. (L) John Thelwal Peake who died in 1915 after the Battle of Aubers Ridge during World War One. This photo appears in the Tonbridge School Memorial Register. (ABOVE MIDDLE) Colourful labels identified bales of cloth treated by Dunbartonshire firm United Turkey Red Ltd and destined for distribution in south-east Asia. This label, showing a frog carrying a mouse on its back balanced on top of a fungus with the aid of a reed, was designed for Adamson, Gilfillan & Co. Ltd. (21.4) (ABOVE R) Malayan postage stamp showing rubber tapping, one of the main commercial interests of the British.
CH 21 : JANE CATHERINE YOUNG & JOHN TAYLOR 309
A 1661 map by James Gordon showing Torry village on the south side of the river Dee. At that stage Torry was virtually the only place that shipbuilding could take place, even if only on the side of a shallow tidal river. The ‘Fishers Boate Haven or Pockraw’ latterly became the site of the Hall Russell shipyard (22.1)
CHAPTER 22
THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS: ARTHUR GIBBON AND ELIZABETH GARTLEY Although this account deals chiefly with the ‘Stonehaven’ Gibbons, we must also include the ‘Aberdeen’ Gibbons as the two branches are almost certainly related. Both strands probably came from the area to the west of Aberdeen. They attended the same churches and both groups were heavily involved in the shipping industry, either as merchants, ship builders or ship captains. In addition to joint ventures there were several intermarriages. Although somewhat truncated for space reasons, Charts 22, 23 and 24 outline the genealogical framework. The first firmly identified Aberdeen Gibbon in the records is Arthur Gibbon, born about 1674, whose father probably came from Echt. He worked as a ship’s carpenter, as the early ship wrights or builders were called. His family lived at Torry, the small hamlet across the river Dee from the Aberdeen side, building their ships at their yard on the shore of the river. The people living on either side of the River Dee together effectively formed their own community with its own social life. They were not properly integrated into the City until the harbour and roads improved. The development of Aberdeen as a port is explored briefly in Box 22.1; and Gibbon association with various ships in Box 22.2. Arthur Gibbon and his wife Elizabeth Gartley are thought to have had seventeen children, a large proportion of whom and their descendants were involved in the shipping industry10. Two daughters married ship’s captains from Aberdeen. The elder, Margaret, married Thomas Innes and they had at least three children. She was probably remarried to a Mr James, with whom she had at least two more children. One of her daughters by her first marriage married John Cormack, a mariner, and they had at least two children.
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 311
CHART 22: GIBBON / GARTLEY
Arthur Gibbon 1674 - 1747
(SIMPLIFIED CHART)
[Ship Builder] -M-
Elizabeth Gartley
William Gibbon c1700 - c1774
Alexander Gibbon ? - c1793
[Ship Builder]
[Ship Builder]
- M 1729 -
-M-
Margaret Innes
Janet Dalgarno
Ann Gibbon
Margaret Gibbon - M1 -
- M 1737 -
Thomas Innes [Ship Captain]
- M2 -
George Duncan [Ship Captain]
? James
SEE CHART 23
Arthur Gibbon c1730 - 1800
Jane Gibbon c1732 - ?
- M1 1755 - Jean Meldrum
William Gibbon 1734 - 1818
Robert Gibbon 1738 - 1821
Elizabeth Duncan 1738 - ?
Ann Duncan 1740 - ?
[Captain & Merchant]
[Ship Owner & Captain]
-M-
-M-
-M-
James Grant
John Coutts
- M 1773 -
? - c1786
Isobel Young 1747 - 1822
- M2 1798 - Jean Cumming
Christian Gibbon 1756 - 1832
Margaret Gibbon 1761 - ? -M-
Isabel Gibbon 1798 - 1816
[Ship Captain]
Barbara Yeats 1749 - 1791
1759 - 1832
Robert Gibbon 1778 - ?
Arthur Gibbon 1801 - ?
Alexander Gibbon 1779 - 1811
Ann Coutts 1782 - 1847
William Gibbon 1772 - 1823
Jane Gibbon Knox - M 1820 -
Charles Gibbon 1782 - ?
-M-
[Surgeon]
Hugh Knox 1784 - ?
George Gibbon
[Ship Captain]
[Lawyer]
Peter John Knox
Margaret Duncan 1748 - ?
[Ship Owner & Merchant]
Colin Allan ? - 1850 [Army Surgeon. West Indies]
- M 1797 -
Margaret Forbes c1777 - 1852
Margaret Gibbon 1775 - 1872 - M 1799 -
Ann Gibbon 1778 - 1856
William Livingston c1760 - 1822 [Professor of Medicine]
Arthur Gibbon 1780 - 1861
Robert Gibbon 1781 - 1848
[Merchant]
[Ship Captain]
- M 1814 -
- M 1807 -
Elizabeth Montgomery 1796 - 1870
Hannah Joanna Harrison 1788 - 1846
5 children died young
Barbara Yeats Gibbon 1808 - 1891
SEE CHART 24
Margaret Gibbon 1818 - 1911 - M 1850 -
Charles von Stenksch-Prittag ? - c1865
Georgina Montgomery Gibbon 1823 - 1850
Arthur Augustus Gibbon 1829 - 1907
William Henry Gibbon 1832 - 1894
[Civil Servant]
[Road Inspector]
- M 1846 -
- M 1861 -
Adolphe de Roeder
Mary Isabell Elizabeth Kerr 1838 - 1900
- M1 1854 & 1856 -
Flora Elizabeth Francisca Fogolari 1832 - ? - M2 1883 -
Sarah Elizabeth von Niekerk 1849 - 1930
- M 1840 -
Anthony Scott 1802 - 1882 [Pottery Manufacturer]
James Gibbon
Arthur Gibbon
Peter Gibbon 1721 - ?
Robert Gibbon c1720 - ?
George Gibbon 1721 - ?
[Ship Builder] - m 1747 -
Isobel Paterson
Isobel Duncan 1752 - 1820
George Duncan
Rebecca Duncan ? - 1826
- M 1776 -
Christian Duncan
Arthur Gibbon 1748 - ?
- M 1769 -
Alexander Gibbon 1752 - 1810
Alexander Gibbon 1752 - 1810 [Ship Captain] -M-
James Miller
[Ship Owner & Merchant]
Ann Gibbon 1784 - ?
James Gibbon 1786 - 1811 [French Prisoner]
Anna Gibbon 1757 - ?
Charles Gibbon [Ship Builder] - M 1772 -
Margaret Mackie
Isobel Duncan 1752 - 1820
[Ship Captain]
John Gibbon 1784 - 1846
Robert Gibbon 1755 - ?
Isabel Christian Gibbon 1788 - 1862
Elizabeth Gibbon 1789 - ?
Arthur Gibbon 1790 - ?
Isabel Gibbon - M 1794 -
Andrew Gray [Ship Captain]
Charles Gibbon 1782 - 1860
4 other children
[Ship Captain] - M1 1806 -
Ann Mackie 1776 - 1837 - M2 1840 -
Elspet Brodie 1792 - 1864 Elizabeth Gibbon 1785 - 1859
Barbara Gibbon 1789 - 1879
Alexander Gibbon 1810 - 1890
6 children died in infancy
Isabel Gibbon
Andrew Gibbon 1808 - 1882
[Surgeon, India]
[Farmer]
- M 1862 -
- M 1844 -
Helen Lumsden Pirrie 1838 - 1918
Elspet Murray c1818 - 1886
Charles Gibbon 1810 - 1842
Brebner Gibbon 1813 - 1899 - M 1840 -
James Mackenzie 1782 - 1859 [Farmer]
William Gibbon 1815 - c1848
James Gibbon 1818 - 1835
Isabella Gibbon 1822 - 1911 - M 1849 -
John Wallace c1825 - 1882 [Ship Captain]
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 313
Margaret’s sister Ann’s husband, George Duncan, is recorded as making voyages to London and Campvere (see Box 7.1). His son George followed him as a ship’s captain. Ann and George had six other children. Elizabeth Duncan married James Grant; Ann Duncan married a ship’s captain, John Coutts; and their daughter Ann Coutts married her cousin Alexander Gibbon, born in 1779; Isobel Duncan married Alexander Gibbon, born in 1752, the father of the Alexander above; and finally Christian Duncan married James Miller in 1769.
(TOP L-R) A map made by William Roy around 1750 showing the city of Aberdeen and the tidal mudflats of the river Dee. Torry village is marked, as is Nigg Kirk at the bottom right. This was the parish church for Torry and remained the Gibbon burial place even after they were based in Aberdeen. After the 1745 Jacobite rebellion had been suppressed it was realised that good maps were essential for the future pacification of Scotland and William Roy's Military Survey of Scotland was begun (22.2); Gravestone in Nigg graveyard to the family of Alexander Gibbon, born 1779. The inscription says: In memory of Alexander Gibbon shipmaster in Aberdeen who was lost in the river St Lawrence on the 6th July 1811 aged 32 years. also of his widow Ann Coutts who died on the 19th May 1847 aged 64 years. This stone is erected by their only son Alexander. (ABOVE) A View of Aberdeen by William Mosman painted in 1756. This is a somewhat romanticised view of Aberdeen, with Torry village hidden from view behind the ridge (22.3)
314 THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS : CH 22
Three sons of William Gibbon and Margaret Innes, Arthur, William and Robert, all worked in the family shipping business. They were all at some point ship’s captains as well as ship builders, owners and/ or agents3. Arthur, born around 1730, is probably the ship’s carpenter who was a witness at the baptisms of several of his nieces and nephews. The electoral roll of 1795 shows Arthur living at the Crooked Quarter, Aberdeen. Most of the other Gibbons lived in the Footdee Quarter. There is a record of William Gibbon, born in 1695, the Stonehaven Jacobite rebel, borrowing money in 1754 from the Stonehaven Masonic Lodge, of which he was a member, under the security of Arthur Gibbon, carpenter, Aberdeen. When he died Arthur was also owed £158 by Lieutenant Meldrum from Arduthie, Stonehaven who was probably a relative of his wife Jean Meldrum and this is perhaps how the Stonehaven connection arose. Arthur and Jean had two daughters. Christian, the elder, was unmarried and died in Aberdeen in 1832. She died intestate and her estate, valued at about £600, went to her niece Jane. Her sister Margaret had married Peter John Knox, an Aberdeen doctor who was described as ‘formerly surgeon at Santa Cruz’, presumably in Tenerife, where there was a thriving British merchant colony. Their only daughter, Jane, born on St Croix in the West Indies, married in 1820 Colin Allan, an Army Surgeon who had been surgeon to the Hill Force of the 7th West Indian Regiment. His father was a goldsmith and watchmaker at Footdee in Aberdeen. In 1836 Colin was the Principal Medical Officer at the Halifax Station, Nova Scotia. He died in 1850 at Frederickton, New Brunswick while Jane was at Halifax. After Jean Meldrum died in about 1786, Arthur remarried to Jean Cumming, with whom he had two children. One died aged eighteen, the other, Arthur, became an Aberdeen lawyer. When Arthur senior died in 1800 his main wealth lay in his 1/16 share of the Aberdeen Whale Fishing Company including the two ships Latona and Hercules. He also had a half share in the Lark, a brigantine that had been converted from an open lighter built by himself. He left equal shares to his children and the furniture was shared between his daughter Christian and his wife Jean. Jean was left an annuity of £5 per annum. The second son of William Gibbon and Margaret Innes, also William, married Isobel Young, a member of a prominent Aberdeen family1. Her father's firm, James and William Young, manufactured stockings, one of the biggest industries in Aberdeen at the time. William, a ship’s captain who lived at Footdee at the harbour became the Berthmaster at the Port of Aberdeen, controlling the shipping within the harbour. He was also a merchant, though it is not clear what his exact interests were. He was active in the Shipmaster Society2, a charity which helped seafarers (see Chapter 9), and was President in 1792, Boxmaster from 1799 to 1801, and Treasurer in 1801. At his death his inventory reveals that he had issued many promissory notes in the months before he died, a number of them to his family. showing that he was still actively involved in organising his finances. William and Isobel were both buried in Nigg graveyard.
The early Gibbon ships were built on the riverside without the need for elaborate shipyards. These examples show how relatively large ships could be built in this way, although the early Gibbons only built smallish ships at Torry. Clockwise from top left: building in the Netherlands, the USA and Australia.
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 315
The third son Robert, born in 1738, a merchant and ship’s captain, was involved in trading with the Netherlands among other places. Johnston’s Memoir1 of 1860 mentions the Gibbons of this period: ‘a few of them were particularly fortunate in acquiring wealth during the French Revolutionary war, chiefly through the employment of their vessels in the transport service’. During the French and American wars, the British Government transported large numbers of troops and vast amounts of supplies with the help of a complex and efficient system of contracting commercial shipping and using commercial suppliers12. Robert and his immediate family would have been at the centre of this activity. Their new wealth and confidence certainly helped launch the family to new social heights. In 1769 Robert married in Rotterdam Barbara Yeats, the daughter of a Scots merchant living there. They had 13 children, six of whom died in infancy. Barbara died in 1791, and Robert in 1821, a wealthy man with shares in nine ships through his holding in his company, Robert Gibbon & Sons. He distributed his money round his family with the two brothers William and Robert receiving the lion’s share. Gravestone of the family of Robert Gibbon, born 1738, and Barbara Yeats. The inscription reads: Sacred to the Memory of Robert Gibbon, Merchant in Aberdeen, who died the 2nd Day of August 1821 aged 83 and to Barbara Yeats his wife who died on the 13th day of November 1791 aged 43. William their eldest son died on the 19th day of July 1823 in the 51st year of his age and is interred near this spot. Elizabeth, Alexander, Robert, Isabella, Jane, Barbara and John Allison died in Infancy. Robert died at Portobello 31st Dc 1848 aged 67. Ann died 12th March 1856 aged 77. Elizabeth Gibbon died 15th of Febry 1859 aged 73. Arthur Gibbon died in London April 2nd 1861 aged 80. Margaret Gibbon relict of William Livingston, MD Professor in Marischal College, Aberdeen died 2nd Decr 1872 aged 96 and buried in St Nicholas Churchyard, Aberdeen. Barbara Gibbon died 28th Febry 1879 and buried here, aged 89.
Robert and Barbara’s eldest son William is dealt with separately in Chapter 24. Their daughter Margaret married William Livingston, Professor of Medicine at Aberdeen University with a marriage contract of £1,000. William invested in shares in several Gibbon boats. Margaret’s brother Arthur15 was involved in the business of Robert Gibbon & Sons. On 11 September 1814, aged 34, he married the extremely wealthy and well-connected 18-year-old Elizabeth Montgomery, the niece of the 11th Earl of Pembroke. Her future inheritance was to be several million pounds in present-day money. They married at Gretna Green on the Scottish border, where couples could get married under Scottish law without a church service or lengthy notice. According to the parish records they were also married at Bedlington, Northumberland, on 3rd October 1814, presumably to make the union respectable. Eventually Arthur and Elizabeth decided to leave Aberdeen and the firm of Robert Gibbon and Sons was dissolved and the various creditors dealt with. They moved to Northumberland, probably in 1829 when they advertised their house for sale, later reducing the upset price when no buyers appeared. In 1834 Arthur and brother Robert Gibbon are registered as Coal Owners at Felton, where they operated the North Togston Colliery. Arthur and Elizabeth lived very grandly in Northumberland for about nine years before auctioning most of their possessions and moving to the Continent and later to London. Elizabeth introduced Arthur to a new aristocratic circle as reflected in their children’s marriages. Their eldest daughter Margaret Gibbon married Baron Charles von Stenksch-Prittag. They lived at Lannach Castle near Graz in Austria, although Margaret’s gravestone is in Innsbruck. The next daughter to reach adulthood, Georgina, married Baron Adolf de Roeder from Duisberg, a town in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany. Both sisters had children. Their brother Arthur Augustus Gibbon, a civil servant at the War Office in London, died in 1907 and left many descendants. The next brother, William Henry Gibbon, had an adventurous life. He went to school in Germany, saw action with the Austrian Army, and served in the British German Legion before emigrating to Alexandria, South Africa, where he became an inspector of roads and remained for the rest of his life. He married an Italian lady, Flora Fogolari, in Venice in 1854. They remarried in Colchester, Essex, in 1856, but they divorced. William later married Sarah von Niekerk, of Afrikaner origin.
316 THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS : CH 22
A copy of the marriage register at Springfield, Gretna Green, where Arthur Gibbon and Elizabeth Montgomery were married in 1814. In England a bride had to be aged twenty-one and the marriage had to be in a church, while in Scotland a marriage by declaration or hand-fasting ceremony with two witnesses was sufficient.
(L-R) East side of the gravestone in Nigg churchyard to Arthur Gibbon, born 1780, and family. The inscription reads: In Memory of Arthur Gibbon who died in London 2nd April 1861 aged 80 years; West side inscription reads: Sacred to the memory of Emily Augusta, Robert, Elizabeth, Robina, Barbara Yeats and Catherine the beloved children of Arthur Gibbon and Elizabeth Montgomery his wife, Georgina Montgomery, Baroness de Roeder, their youngest daughter died at Innsbruck, Tirol 8th December 1850 in her 28th year.
The next son of Robert Gibbon and Barbara Yeats was Robert, born in 1781. A ship’s captain, he moved south from Aberdeen to Sunderland, where he was presumably involved with the expanding coal trade. He was there when his father died in 1821. He later lived in North Queensferry, Fife, and then in Portobello, near Edinburgh, where he died in 1848 possibly in the cholera outbreak which was raging there at the time. His daughter Barbara Yeats Gibbon married in 1840 Anthony Scott, one of the Scott family who produced the famous lustreware at their potteries near the River Wear in Southwick in the centre of Sunderland. There is a painting by D. F. McLea in Sunderland Museum, painted about 1860, which shows the Scott potteries as well as ships being built at the adjoining riverside shipyard13. Robert’s sisters Elizabeth and Barbara were unmarried and lived in Aberdeen. Two examples of lusterware from about 1750 made in the Scott Pottery at Southwick, Sunderland. Lustreware involved applying a metallic glaze and the Scott pottery was particularly known for this. Barbara Gibbon married Anthony Scott, one of the proprietors in 1840 (22.4)
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 317
Alexander Gibbon, the second son of Arthur Gibbon and Elizabeth Gartley, is discussed in Chapter 23. Alexander’s brother Robert, born around 1720, worked in the family shipbuilding business at Torry and married Isobel Paterson. Robert’s second son, Alexander, became a ship’s captain and later a merchant. This Alexander was the subject of a newspaper report in 1790 which recounts how he had saved 84 of the crew of a Swedish East Indiaman off Elsinore. Sadly about 300 others drowned. When he died in 1810, he held only a quarter share in the brig Spring. Alexander junior married his cousin Isobel Duncan. Their son Alexander, born in 1779, also married his first cousin, Ann Coutts (see above). He was the captain of the ship Fame and is described as having arrived in Halifax, Canada ‘after a long and boisterous voyage’. Shortly after this, on 6 July 1811, the bad weather caused another ship to be wrecked and Alexander set out in a ship’s boat with three others to rescue the crew. Unfortunately, the boat overturned and they were all drowned. The bad weather continued and five days later 34 more ships were wrecked in a hurricane, also on the St Lawrence. A week after this report was received in Aberdeen news came of the death of Alexander’s brother James Gibbon, born in 1786, who had been a prisoner in France ‘for some years’. We do not know how he became a prisoner but he may well have been on a ship captured by the French. Alexander’s son, also Alexander, born seven months before his father’s death, was brought up at Inverkeithny, Banffshire. He studied medicine at Marischal College, graduating in 1828. The Aberdeen University Archives have a copy of his lecture notes in natural philosophy, taken in 1826-27. He became a surgeon and went to India, entering the Company Bengal Medical Service in 1836. He served in various places in the Benares area and was attached to the 36th Native Infantry. He was awarded medals from the Scinde (or Sindh) invasion of 1843, when Sir Charles Napier took it upon himself to conquer the province on behalf of the then expansionist East India Company (See also Chapter 17). He was then an Assistant Surgeon but augmenting his income by acting as Post Master. He must have been there at the same time as Arthur Young, also a surgeon but not working as such (see Chapter 19). In 1843 General Napier was described as being prostrate from a coup de soleil and being unable to move, but a report of a successful action by his troops ‘had done as much good as Dr Gibbon’14. In 1847 Alexander was appointed official medical advisor to Sir Charles. In March 1856 he arrived in Ghazipur as the surgeon. The Scottish National Archives have two letters written by Alexander to his aunt Isabel in Aberdeen. The first describes the town and the British living there as well as a visit to an old lady with a wonderful rose garden. Ghazipur at that time was famous as a centre for otto (or attar) of roses. It also had one of the two vast opium factories run by the East India Company, the one at Ghazipur being still in operation and run by the present Indian Government. The second letter, written on 1 June 1857, with much wilder handwriting, describes hearing of mutiny at Meerut, Delhi, Lucknow and Allyghur. He writes: ‘I am most thankful that this station is still peaceful and quiet and the sepoys of the 65th behave as well as we could desire’. Little did he realise what lay ahead for the rest of that year. Although Ghazipur escaped the initial violence, the 65th was increasingly not trusted and was expected to revolt at any moment. However, it did not and Ghazipur was saved but the regiment was shipped off to China as a precaution. Where Alexander was during the rest of the mutiny is not clear. In military history surgeons only rarely get mentioned. He and his aunt were obviously both very religious, quoting biblical texts; Alexander writes: ‘I cannot but believe that it’s all God’s doing. He is working out this for his own purposes’. Alexander rose to be the Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals in the Bengal Medical Service. On his retirement to Aberdeen at the age of 52 he married Helen Lumsden Pirrie, aged 24, the daughter of the Professor of Surgery. Over 100 of Alexander’s letters back to Aberdeen were auctioned in 2010 and he was cheekily described by the auctioneers as the son of Edward Gibbon the historian writing back to his mother in Aberdeen. John Gibbon, the fifth son, born in 1784, became a ship owner and merchant in Aberdeen with shares in the Aberdeen and Hull Shipping Co, the ships Bromby and Fox, and in various enterprises. He died in 1846. Returning to the children of Robert Gibbon and Isobel Paterson, their son Charles, like his father, was a ship’s carpenter (or builder). He married Margaret Mackie and they had six known children. Their daughter Isabel married Andrew Gray, a ship’s captain, and her brother Charles also became a ship’s captain and merchant. He married twice: first to Ann Mackie in 1806 and second to Elspet Brodie in 1840. Elspet, the daughter of a seaman, was illiterate. Despite the claims made for Scottish education, illiteracy was still very common, especially among women. Charles and Ann had six children. The eldest, Andrew Gibbon, became a farmer. In 1841 he was working at Newlands Farm, New Machar Parish north of Aberdeen, as an agricultural labourer to the 90-year-old farmer Andrew Mackie, his grandfather. In 1844 he married Elspet Murray, a carpenter’s daughter.
318 THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS : CH 22
They farmed at Gausiehillock Farm, also in New Machar, a typical farm which, in 1871, had 78 acres arable and employed three workers. In 1840, Andrew’s sister Brebner married another farmer, James Mackenzie. He farmed at Torryleith, which adjoined Gausiehillock, with 115 acres and employing three workers. James was thirty years older than Brebner and he or his father had been a witness at her sister Isabel’s baptism. Brebner's brothers Charles and William went to sea. Charles died at sea and William died at Dog River, near Mobile, Alabama where cotton was the main export. The youngest child of Charles and Ann, Isabella, married, in 1849, John Wallace, a ship’s captain. An 1886 map showing the farm of Gausiehillock farmed by Edward Gibbon, born 1808, and the neighbouring farm of Torryleith where his wife Elspet Murray was brought up (22.5)
There is a gravestone in Hatton of Fintray graveyard which reads: Erected by their children in memory of their affectionate mother Ann Mackie, died 15 March 1837, aged 55, only daughter of Andrew Mackie, many years in Sittiton. Said Andrew Mackie, died 31 August 1845, at the advanced age of 98; his spouse Jean Johnston, died June 1783, aged 24, their grandson James Gibbon, died Seatin (sic), January 1835, aged 16; William Gibbon who was lost in Dog River, America 16 June 1848, aged 32, Charles Gibbon who died at sea. (On the back) In memory of Andrew Gibbon, late farmer, Gauceyhillock, died 16 October 1882, aged 73. Inscribed by his widow. The said Elspet Murray, died 17 December 1886, aged 68 years. Erected in memory of Mitchell Duncan who died at Torryleith on the 1st of February 1838 in the 63rd year of her age, for more than 32 years the amiable and affectionate spouse of James Mackenzie farmer there who died at Torryleith the 18th of March 1859 aged 77 years, Brebner Gibbon, wife of the above born 13th February 1813 died 17th May 1899. How exactly the various shipping Gibbons organised their cargoes is obscure. Did they arrive in a port to pick up specific, planned goods? What proportion of their operations was speculative? Some of their voyages would suggest that they indulged in ‘tramp shipping’, picking up traffic from port to port, rather than taking defined routes with specific cargoes. There are many advertisements for Gibbon ships sailing from Scotland to specific parts of the world and calling for cargo or passengers. There were also many advertisements for auctions of cargoes which they had transported to Aberdeen such as wood or flax which were clearly speculative. What is also unclear is the crucial network, which must have existed, of agents in each port, insurers and underwriters for both cargoes and ships, and the specialised business of money transfer.
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 319
BOX 22.1
ABERDEEN AND THE SEA Aberdeen’s Port had to overcome many difficulties during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was not really until 1818 and the final defeat of the French that the port could flourish properly. And it was the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries that saw the rise of the shipping Gibbons in Aberdeen, including the ship captains, ship owners, merchants and agents described in the main text. By 1830 most of these Aberdeen Gibbon families had drifted away to other activities and parts of the world. During the 17th Century the activities of Aberdeen Port were severely reduced through continuous conflict, including wars with Spain, Holland and France, and the Civil War. Loss of markets and the risks from privateers made for a very depressed commercial picture. During this time England also had a near stranglehold on Scottish trade, preventing access to the most profitable markets, including emerging ones in Africa and the East Indies, although there was still some trade with countries including, France, Netherlands and the Baltic States. Nevertheless, at that time, Aberdeen was an importing rather than an exporting port, with most of the transport carried out by ships of other countries9. In 1626 Aberdeen boasted 10 ships, but by 1682 this was down to two flat-bottomed boats of 30 tons each. This miserable picture was not helped by the outbreak of bubonic plague in Aberdeen in 1647. In addition, there was no real harbour at Aberdeen, the shallow and tidal river Dee limiting the size of the ships that could anchor in the river at Torry. The Treaty of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 removed the English veto over whom Scotland could trade with and gave free access for ships to overseas markets, as well as creating a tsunami of Scots heading out into the emerging British empire. In the first half of the century there was a surge in trade with the American Colonies, although this dropped back as Glasgow became dominant in tobacco and sugar imports. The major exports from Aberdeenshire traditionally were woollen products, especially stockings, linen, woven plaiding, and later other manufactured goods. Exports to closer markets traditionally included salmon, pork and skins. Until the effects of the agricultural revolution could be felt towards the middle of the 18th Century, there was no large quantity of surplus agricultural produce with which to trade, although throughout the 17th Century there were always some grain exports. Until the 18th Century the Scottish countryside presented a very depressing economic picture compared to England; a long period of famine at the end of the 17th Century led to nearly 25% of the population of Aberdeenshire emigrating or dying. After 1745 and the removal of internal political disruption, trade improved dramatically, a key factor being the steady improvement in the harbour facilities. While markets and trade opportunities were now plentiful, privateers still proved a major problem. Privateers were private ship owners who preyed on shipping from other countries under government licence. From 1757 to 1763 the coast swarmed with French privateers, joined later by American ones, making sea-going a very risky business. There are several accounts of Gibbons falling foul of privateers. The excessive activity of the Royal Navy press gangs was another problem. By 1757 Aberdeen had only about a dozen able-bodied seamen left. However, things improved: between 1772 and 1786 there were 69 to 86 ships involved in the coastal trade, trading up and down the (mostly) east coast ports of Britain, but after 1810 the coasting trade grew still more rapidly, with 49 to 65 ships sailing overseas. This foreign trade was principally with Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and later Russia. Flax and wood in different forms were the principal imports until North America became the main source of wood imports. Aberdeen’s northerly position gave it an advantage with the Baltic trade. For the most part, however, Aberdeen in 1810 would have sent salmon, cod, ale, thread and stockings to London, as well as granite stones for paving and building. The town’s commercial prosperity rested chiefly on her coasting trade: from 1800 to 1804 not a single ship left the port for the Mediterranean or for any British settlement abroad, and trade with the West Indies was almost at a standstill.
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Few articles from abroad reached the port directly but imports reached Aberdeen through the medium of other east coast towns. Even in 1818, when the threat of privateers had disappeared, only 123 vessels entered the harbour directly from foreign parts out of a total of 991. Meanwhile, the early years of the century saw increasing contacts and trade with North America, especially Canada, and the beginning of a market taking emigrants abroad10. The French wars, from 1793 to 1818, and the dangers of capture by the French and their varying allies, meant that merchant ships frequently sailed in convoys protected by the Royal Navy. During this time 32 merchant ships from Aberdeen were captured. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, peace should have allowed an expansion of trade. However, the markets had to make major adjustments to the new conditions10 causing trade to become depressed. These times were clearly too dark for most of the Gibbons who, by 1830, had largely given up - just before the golden age of Aberdeen when the building of a new harbour allowed the passage of larger ships, including the first Clippers. However, many of these Gibbons, while rejecting the sea, successfully navigated the opportunities offered by the changing world both within Britain and abroad in the expanding British Empire.
Map showing the early state of Aberdeen Harbour (22.6)
Aberdeen Harbour from Torry in an 1822 print by William Daniell. It shows how larger vessels were able to come to Aberdeen following continual improvements to the Harbour. But they were still subject to the tide.
The lighthouse built in 1833 at Girdle Ness, the mouth of Aberdeen Harbour. This was a major improvement for the safety of shipping. It was designed by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the author Robert Louis Stevenson.
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 321
BOX 22.2
GIBBON INVOLVEMENT WITH VARIOUS SHIPS
The list below gives a glimpse into the activities of the Gibbons as shipbuilders and operators. Though incomplete, it is what can be gleaned from newspapers, the records of the Aberdeen Maritime Museum, and wills written by various Gibbons. There are very few easily accessible reports earlier than 1740. A search of the port books from 1742 to 1753 gives the details of all the ships entering Aberdeen Harbour11. There are no Gibbons shown as Captains but the list shows that most of the trade was with the east coast of Scotland, with further voyages to the Baltic, the Netherlands, and more occasionally to places such as Virginia for tobacco. For each of the ships listed here, the dates given are the first and/or last mention of the ship in the records with Gibbon involvement. Sometimes ships were rebuilt, or a new ship launched with the same name, or there were several ships of the same name from other ports, which makes for occasional confusion. 1757
William. The London Chronicle 21 May 1757 reported: Aberdeen May 14 Yesterday about 12 at Noon a small Brigantine (supposed the William of this place), (Captain) Arthur Gibbon (coming from) Leith) was taken 6 miles to the Southward by a Privateer snow of 8 Carriage Guns, 12 Swivels and 90 men. The Brigantine, on seeing the Privateer, stood on close under the Rocks which the Privateer declined following but they met with a Gourdon boat. He took her and put 20 of her hands on board who soon came up with and after firing some small arms boarded the Brigantine and eventually stood off to join another snow at some distance at sea, supposed to be another larger Privateer of about 16 Carriage Guns and all three went past this place to the Northward. The Boat was dismissed but one of the hands carried off on board the privateer by accident. PS By an express just arrived from Peterhead we have advice that the above ship is ransomed at 150 Guineas and came in there this morning. Some other ships narrowly escaped.
1758
St Andrew. Captain Arthur Gibbon. ‘Aberdeen to Jamaica is taken by a Sallee cruiser and carried into Sallee. A Danish ship was taken by the same cruiser but released due to two Danish men of war being in the harbour’. Sallee is in Morocco at Rabat and these were Barbary Pirates who operated freely at that time. No indication is given as to what happened afterwards but the Public Advertiser 28 March 1759 said ‘St Andrew for Jamaica taken by the French in the West Indies’.
1761
Jupiter. An advert, typical for the time, in the Aberdeen Journal of 9 February 1761 says: ‘Kingston in Jamaica. The snow Jupiter of this Place, Arthur Gibbon, Master, will certainly sail on or before the twenty-fifth of Febry curt, with or without Convoy.-For Freight or Passage apply to the said Commander who will serve them on the same terms as for London, Glasgow or Leith. If any tradesmen such as Smiths, House-Carpenters, Bricklayers, Mill-Wrights or Coopers who cannot pay their Passage and chose to indent of a Term of Years, will apply to Captain Gibbon, they will have all due arrangements.’ The Jupiter returned to Aberdeen in November. The following year it sailed to London and back via Newcastle. There was a later Jupiter in Aberdeen but with no seeming connection to the Gibbons.
1762
Francis. Captain Gibbon. Aberdeen to Yarmouth and other coastal harbours.
1762-1767 Fortune. Captain Gibbon. Various voyages from Aberdeen to Campvere and Rotterdam. The Jupiter and the Fortune both arrived at Aberdeen in Oct. 1762 both with a Captain Gibbon. Another, larger, Fortune sailed later from Aberdeen built in 1795. 1765-1766 Three Brothers. Captain William Gibbon (born 1734). Aberdeen to Falmouth. 1767
Charles. Captain William Gibbon.
1767-1770 James and Mary. 1767 Captain William Gibbon. Aberdeen to Rochelle; 1770 Captain Charles Gibbon. Aberdeen to London. 1768-1785 Jolly Batchelor. A coaster which operated up and down the east coast from London to Aberdeen and various points in between such as Sunderland and Alloa. Various captains including Robert, William and Charles Gibbon. 1771-1792 Diligence. Aberdeen to London, Campvere and Dordt, Netherlands and Elsinore, Denmark. Captains included William and James Gibbon. 1772
Squirrel. Captain Robert Gibbon. Later voyages by Alexander Gibbon to London.
1773
Ann. London to Leith. Captain Alexander Gibbon, who would have been aged 21. Later voyages with mixed goods.
1773-1779 Swallow. Aberdeen to London. Captain Charles Gibbon. 1776
Thetis. Captain Gibbon. Aberdeen to Peterborough. In 1778 the Thetis under Captain Gibbon took a cargo of stone (probably granite) to London.
1777-1779 Charlotte. Captain William Gibbon. Aberdeen to London. 1779
Littlejohn. Captain Charles Gibbon. Aberdeen to London.
1781
Favourite. Captain Christopher Gibbon (we are not sure who he was). Aberdeen to London.
322 THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS : CH 22
1781
Venus. Brigantine owned and mastered by Arthur Gibbon. Built in 1781. Aberdeen to London and Archangel, Russia.
1782
Liberty. An Aberdeen ship captained by a Gibbon which delivered naval stores from the Nore to Edinburgh.
1783
Hercules. This was owned along with the Latona by the Aberdeen Whale Fishery Company (see Box 25.3) in which both Alexander and James Gibbon had shares.
1783-1833 Latona. Whaler, two-masted and brigantine-rigged, and owned, like the Hercules, by the Aberdeen Whale Fishery Company. The Gibbons appeared to be the major shareholders from 1819 to 1831 when voyages were made to Belfast, Plymouth, Liverpool, Riga, Quebec, Falmouth and South Shields. 1784-1791 Providence. Captain Gibbon from Aberdeen to Campvere, several voyages. In 1784 the Aberdeen Burgh Records report that ‘the Providence of Aberdeen cleared with a cargo of beer for Danzig, but the pilot, instead of carrying the ship to sea, brought her alongside the Ambassador, which was lying at the new quay near the mouth of the harbour, and loaded with coals from Sunderland, for which coast duty had been paid. It was discovered that coals were transferred from the Ambassador to the Providence, the fraud being committed in order to avoid the overseas duty on the coals. Later John Davidson, master of the Providence of Aberdeen, reported his vessel from Campvere with flax, grass seed, almonds, pitch and other articles, the importation of which from the Netherlands was forbidden. The ship was arrested, but as neither skipper nor merchant were aware of the prohibition, application was made to the Board of Customs to liberate the ship.’ There is a record in 1786 of Alexander Gibbon, Captain of the Providence of Stonehaven which is possibly the same ship. The Providence was captured during the Napoleonic wars. 1787-1810 Minerva. In 1788 the Minerva under Captain Gibbon arrived at Portsmouth from Ivice in the Balearic Islands. This may be the same vessel as a snow owned by Robert Gibbon & Co although James Gibbon (b1741) had 50% in 1807. Sailed under Captain Gibbon to Barcelona, Ancona, Peterborough, and St Petersburg. In 1803 and 1810 it sailed to Tobago and Surinam. It was It was apparently captured in 1815 although Robert Gibbon (b1738) had a 14/32 Share share in a ship of that name in 1821. Another Minerva was built by Hall in 1813. 1792-1794 Alert. Captain Gibbon. Aberdeen to Elsinore, Denmark and Campvere. 1794
Lark. Open lighter built in 1794 by Arthur Gibbon (bc1730) and later converted to a Brigantine. Arthur Gibbon owned a half share when he died in 1800.
1795 Fortune. Brigantine built in 1795 by Robert Gibbon & Sons. They operated the ship to their own account and it sailed mainly on the east coast. In 1811 it was advertised as ‘new armed and coppered’ and about to sail for Jamaica. It was one of the 32 Aberdeen ships captured during the French wars up to 1818. 1797-1800 Neptune. Among the Captains were Alexander and Robert Gibbon. Aberdeen to London, Elsinore, and Riga. In Sept. 1798 ‘Captain Gibbon sailed to the Baltic under naval protection in a convoy of 50 sail.’ In Jan 1800 the Neptune, Captain Gibbon of Aberdeen, was wrecked at bay of Nigg. Wrecked in the storm of 2nd and 3rd Jan, Crew all lost. An Aberdeen ship called the Neptune was captured during the same wars. 1796
Phoenix. Captain Gibbon at Elsinore arrived from Rostock. A large number of ships were at Elsinore showing the importance of the Baltic trade and possibly also waiting to be convoyed.
1798
Dolphin. Sloop owned by Alexander and James Gibbon. James Gibbon had a 1/4 share in 1807. Lost in 1837.
1802-1817 Atlas. Brigantine 1802 Captain Gibbon Aberdeen to Riga with Coals; Sept 1802 Captain Gibbon, Aberdeen to Danzig in ballast and from Riga to Lisbon with masts then from Danzig to Aberdeen with, timber. In 1808 the Atlas, Captain Alexander Gibbon Junior, sailed from Aberdeen to Quebec with passengers. An advert in the Aberdeen Journal 22 Oct 1817 for the new coppered Atlas says ‘Young men wishing to join the Patriot Army in South America cannot have a better opportunity than by the Atlas Apply to Messrs Robert Gibbon & Sons.’ 1805- 1824 Ruby. Brig or a snow, built in 1805, and made voyages from Aberdeen to Ramsgate, London, Dublin and Halifax. In 1822 it carried 125 emigrants from Cromarty to Pictou. In 1824 Alexander and James Gibbon each had 16/64 shares. 1806-1811 Fame. Snow built in 1806 or a Brig built in 1810. Alexander Gibbon (b1779) was the captain in 1811 on a voyage to Canada but he lost his life trying to save the crew of a wrecked ship in the St Lawrence River. In 1815 it carried emigrants to Halifax. 1807
Hercules. Purchased in 1783 from London and sailed regularly as a whaler for the Aberdeen Whale Fishery Company with Captain Gibbon as Master. James Gibbon (b1741) had a 1/8 share in the Company in 1807. In 1815 the Hercules is listed as having managers A. & J. Gibbon on behalf of Union Whale Fishing Company. It was sold in 1834 and the Hercules made several voyages to Quebec with emigrants between 1831 and 1840.
1807
Latona. The second Aberdeen Whale Fishery Company ship involving James and Alexander Gibbon. It sailed regularly as a whaler before being used as a merchant ship making voyages to a number of places including Riga and Quebec. Ownership changed in 1831.
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 323
BOX 22.2 1808
Tyne. Sloop built in 1808. Alexander and James Gibbon were the major owners in 1824 and 1830. In 1830 it brought timber from Gottenburg to Aberdeen.
1808-1827 Fancy. This ship was two-masted and brigantine-rigged. In 1808 it sailed from London to Gibraltar and later to Rio de Janiero, Montreal, and Dublin. In 1816 it carried 15 emigrants to Quebec. The main owners initially were Gibbon & Co. with Robert Gibbon owning 14/32 in 1821 but in 1827 the shareholders were Robert Gibbon Jnr, Farmer, Kinmundy, Newmachar, 8 shares; Arthur Gibbon, Merchant, Margaret Livingston nee Gibbon and Ann Gibbon, Margaret’s sister, all Aberdeen, 28 shares. Other Shareholders in 1827 included William Forbes Gibbon and Robert Gibbon, both City of London merchants. 1810
Spring. Brig in which, in 1810 Alexander Gibbon (b1752) had a 1/4 share. In 1811 it carried 15 passengers to Quebec before returning with timber its normal cargo.
1813
Jolly Batchelor. Brig originally owned by Robert Gibbon & Co with Robert having 14/32 shares in 1821. It voyaged to Gibraltar, Leghorn, Madeira, Oporto, Lisbon, and Cork, In 1826 Arthur Gibbon, Margaret Gibbon, Margaret Livingstone nee Gibbon and Ann Gibbon were the shareholders. It was possibly shipwrecked in 1830.
1814-1832 Ocean. Brigantine of 400 tons built by Robert Gibbon & Co. in 1814. Sailed to Jamaica, New York, Quebec, Sicily, London, and Rio de Janeiro. The list of owners in 1826 is worth showing in full as it shows how shares in ships became family affairs. ‘Arthur Gibbon, Margaret Gibbon otherwise loving relicts of the now deceased Dr William Livingston, Physician and Ann Gibbon, Spinster, all Aberdeen, 28 shares, Executors of Robert Gibbon, Late Merchant in Aberdeen, their father together with William Abercrombie of Bircher Lane, Ships Agent and Thomas Edwards of Nicholas Lane, Mahogany Broker, both of the City of London as assignees on the bankrupt Estate of Arthur Gibbon, Merchant in Aberdeen and William Forbes Gibbon and Robert Gibbon of the City Chambers in the City of London, Merchants, Dealers, and Chapmen, 36 shares.’ 1814-1818 Timandra. Barque built by Gibbon & Co which voyaged to Bombay before it was sold. 1815
Bromby. Smack owned by the Aberdeen and Hull Shipping Company in which John Gibbon had shares. It was a coaster running between Aberdeen, Hull, and other ports on the east coast. It was sold in 1839.
1815-1821 Nautilus. Brig in which William Gibbon (b1747) had a 12th share. Sailed to Rostock, Sunderland, Belfast. 1816-1821 Charles Forbes. Brigantine built in 1816 by Stephens and owned by Alex., James and William Gibbon in 1821 when William had a 19th share. 1816-1824 Good Intent. An Alexander and James Gibbon brigantine that sailed regularly to Canada for timber. It carried emigrants to Pictou or Halifax in 1816, 1817, and 1824. In 1824 Alexander Gibbon, ‘merchant’ owned 1/8th. 1817-1831 Waterloo. Brigantine. It sailed as a coaster between Aberdeen and London-in 1821 under ‘Captain Gibbon’. In 1824 Alexander Gibbon owned 1/8th. In 1833 the ship was advertised for sale ‘Apply Alex and John Gibbon’. When Alexander died in 1833 he still owned a share. 1818-1833 Norval. Alexander Gibbon Junior had a 1/8 share in 1818 and still held a share in 1833 when he died. The Norval made voyages mainly from Liverpool to Montreal, Brazil, Gibraltar, Quebec, Guyana and Baltimore. 1818
Castle Forbes. Built in 1818 by Robert Gibbon & Co specifically for the lucrative East Indies trade this was the biggest ship, at 440 tons, to be built in Aberdeen up to that time and shows a mounting confidence and expertise. It was owned by Robert Gibbon & Co i.e. Robert, Arthur and William Gibbon. In 1818 it made a voyage from London to Bombay. In 1819 it carried 136 male convicts to Tasmania and 4 to Sydney. The voyage between Cork and Sydney took 116 days. In 1822 it carried settlers to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and the Morning Chronicle of 20th November 1822 reported ‘Letters have been received from Van Diemen’s Land from settlers who went out from Leith in August last year by ship CASTLE FORBES. Giving most favourable accounts of the rising colony.’ In 1823 it again carried 140 male convicts, this time to Sydney and then took a contingent of the 40th Regiment which had been stationed in Australia to India. Also on board, as far as Mauritius, was the famous French naturalist Prosper Garnot. The voyage from Sydney took 4 months and 5 days. The Caledonian Mercury of 17th January 1825 contains the following snippet from the confession of Alex Pierce for murder and cannibalism. ‘In the 26th year of my age I was convicted of stealing six pairs of shoes and received sentence to be transported for seven years. I arrived in Van Diemen’s Land on board the ship CASTLE FORBES from Sydney.’
1818-1823 Rebecca. Snow/Brigantine built in Fraserburgh She sailed with a Captain William Gibbon (b1772) throughout. She supplied coals out of Sunderland principally to Aberdeen and made two trips to Sheerness with ‘stones’ i.e. granite. In March 1820, following a storm, it ‘passed twenty wrecks on his passage’ When William Gibbon died in 1823 he was still the master and held a £5 share in the Rebecca. He was drowned in Sunderland Harbour 3rd May 1823. 1818
Isabella. In April 1818 a voyage to Quebec was advertised with interested parties to apply to Alexander and John Gibbon.
324 THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS : CH 22
1819
Fox. This smack was built in 1819 and was owned by the Aberdeen and Hull Shipping Company and so partly owned by John Gibbon. It acted as a coaster and was sold in 1832.
1820
Fly. A schooner built in 1820 it served as a Leith or Londonderry coaster. Robert Gibbon (b1738) owned 14/32 in 1821. It apparently foundered in January 1822 in the Firth of Forth but must have been re-floated. It was owned by Gibbon & Co. In 1823 the Captain was A. Gibbon.
1821
Jason. In 1819 it voyaged from Archangel to Belfast being damaged at Orkney on the way. In 1821 Robert Gibbon (born 1738) owned 14/32 shares through Robert Gibbon & Sons. In 1822 it was wrecked off Ushant.
1821
Aid. In 1821 Robert Gibbon (born 1738) owned 14/32 shares through Robert Gibbon & Sons. It was a small ship judging by the valuation in 1821, similar to that of the Fly. Another ship of the same name sailed later from Aberdeen.
1821
Damson. Robert Gibbon (born 1738) had 14/32 shares in this through Robert Gibbon & Sons. No details but it must have been a brigantine judging by its valuation.
1826
Good Intent. Brigantine in which Alexander Gibbon had 1/8 share. An advert in 1826 offered ‘the sale of 1/8th share in the brigantine Good Intent. Apply Messrs Alexander & James Gibbon’s Office, Quay.’
1827-1833 Queen of Scotland. Built in 1827 by J. Duffus and Co. this was the first of the Aberdeen steam vessels. It served as a steam packet from Aberdeen to London. Alexander Gibbon Junior (1773-1833) had a share in 1827 and still had a share on his death in 1833. 1829
Duke of Wellington. Paddle steamer. Alexander Gibbon Junior had a share in this and still had on his death in 1833. This operated from Aberdeen to London. The Times August 20, 1829 reported: ‘EXTRAORDINARY DESPATCH. The Aberdeen and London Steam Navigation Company’s steam ship, the Duke of Wellington sailed from Aberdeen about 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon, the 1st inst., and arrived at London at 1 o’clock on Monday forenoon the 17th inst., performing the distance of about 540 miles in 46 hours, beating the mail about 17 hours. Salmon caught and grouse killed on Saturday forenoon were delivered at their respective destinations on Monday afternoon.’ Unfortunately, in 1833, the ship had a spectacular collision in the Thames with an East Indiaman causing huge damage to it.
There are other reports of ships sailed by a Captain Gibbon or owned by a Gibbon. Some may possibly be from Aberdeen but many are not. For example, Gibbon of Liverpool was a large concern which featured in the Atlantic trade. Their warehouse in Liverpool burned down in a huge fire in 1826. Another sailed out of Hull to London and there were also Gibbon yards in Ireland. In 1760 the Tweed sailing from Berwick to Barcelona under a Captain Gibbon was captured by two galleys under French colours and taken into Algeciras. In 1781 there was a fishing smack called the Tweed from Berwick captained by a Thomas Gibbon.
Queen of Scotland Steamship
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 325
BOX 22.3
TYPES OF GIBBON SAILING SHIPS This is designed to give some idea of the types of ship that the Gibbons built and sailed. Those shown below could vary greatly and brigs, brigantines, or barques sailed by the Gibbons in the 18th Century could be from 50 to 200 tons burden.
FULL RIGGED SHIP Three or more masts all square-rigged
BARQUE Three or more masts with the foremost two squarerigged. The rear mast is fore and aft rigged. BRIG Two-masted with both masts square-rigged
BRIGANTINE Two-masted with the foremast square-rigged and the mainmast with a fore and aft mainsail plus two other sails SNOW Two-masted with both masts square-rigged plus a snow mast immediately behind the main mast
326 THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS : CH 22
SCHOONER At least two masts the foremast one usually being smaller. Fore and aft rigged.
CUTTER Single mast and fore and aft rigged with two or more headsails and a bowsprit.
SLOOP Single mast and fore and aft rigged. Single headsail with mast further forward than a cutter.
SMACK (OR COASTER) Single mast and fore and aft rigged
BOX 22.4
THE ABERDEEN SHIPBUILDING GIBBONS When Arthur Gibbon, born about 1674, or possibly his father, started building ships in 17th Century Aberdeen, this was at the little village of Torry where most shipping activity took place at that time7,8, across the river Don from Aberdeen town. In 1741 it was described as a ‘small yard’, but it was evidently successful, with few rivals. When Aberdeen City set up some yards on the other side of the river, these included a Gibbon yard near Pocra, where a pier had been erected and the water deepened to allow bigger ships to be built. In 1788 the original Gibbon house and yard at Torry was sold by private bargain. Over the next 100 years the port was steadily transformed as the town invested money in facilities, but it was only after successive improvements between 1775 and 1800 that ships of more than 100 tons could navigate successfully in the harbour. Most of the vessels built at the end of the 18th Century were still quite small, ketches, sloops, cutters and small brigs, ranging from 40 to 140 tons. Arthur Gibbon’s sons, William, Alexander and Robert, became involved in the family business and built several smallish ships. William’s sons, Arthur, William and Robert, built many ships at their shipyard and rope walk on the Quay and also operated several other ships, eventually forming the centre of an impressive trading network. By the beginning of the 19th Century their firm Robert Gibbon & Sons was the dominant ship-building business. Most of their ships were brigantines and barques, both very manoeuvrable and capacious enough to allow profitable foreign voyages. Many ships were built to order, but some were built speculatively, to be sold when completed. In 1826, at a time of economic depression, the eight shipbuilders in Aberdeen each had two ships on the stocks unsold. The high point for the Gibbon firm came in 1818, when they built and operated the Castle Forbes of 839 tons, the largest ship yet built in Aberdeen made especially for the East Indies trade but used also to transport convicts to Australia. Shortly after the deaths of Robert in 1821, and of his son William in 1823, the firm was dissolved, citing the names of Arthur Gibbon, William Forbes Gibbon, and Robert Gibbon. All three were sons of William and grandsons of Robert. The two last named had moved to London, where they were acting as shipping agents. The name of the firm lingered on but over the next few years the various assets were steadily disposed of as the family focus moved elsewhere. Another shipbuilding concern was that of Alexander Gibbon, son of Arthur, born about 1764, who was in partnership with James Cochar, as Cochar and Gibbon. Both died in 1793 and the firm eventually became Hall & Co. Carpenters, run by Alexander Hall, who had served as an apprentice with Cochar and Gibbon and who had married James Cochar’s daughter. Later, in 1839, Alexander Hall’s son, William, became the designer of the ‘Aberdeen’ clipper bow, thus ensuring Aberdeen’s place in shipbuilding history. Clipper ships could sail extremely fast and revolutionised trade for many goods such as tea. Alas, no Gibbons remained to share the glory. Many of the Aberdeen Gibbons were ship captains (or shipmasters). Most of them seem to have acted in this capacity at some point in their lives, before either continuing as captain, or devoting more time to shipbuilding, or acting as agents and merchants. Several of the Gibbon daughters also married ship captains, mostly of merchant ships. When a local teacher of navigation, Andrew Mackay, published a book on navigation in 1793 among the subscribers were five Gibbons: Arthur; Charles and William, shipmasters; Robert and William, merchants. By 1835 the active Gibbon involvement in Aberdeen shipping had ceased, although numerous relatives still played passive roles by holding shares in various ships.
Map showing Torry and the churchyard at Nigg (22.7)
CH 22 : THE ABERDEEN GIBBONS 327
Photographs of officers recently killed in World War One, including Captain Cochran. Little did anyone know how many would be killed later, their deaths instead being marked with long lists in the newspapers. 328 ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO : CH 23
CHAPTER 23
ALEXANDER GIBBON AND JANET DALGARNO Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno had ten children, but little is known of four of them. The eldest, Arthur, was born in 1731 and his nephew, Alexander Gibbon born in 1793, drew up an outline tree of the Aberdeen Gibbons. Arthur’s sisters Mary, born about 1732, and Anna, born in 1733, were both unmarried. The next sister, Elizabeth, born in 1734, married Thomas Brebner, a ship builder who became a ship’s captain, at Aberdeen. They had four recorded children. The eldest, Janet, born in 1766, possibly married a James Macpherson and had children. A son, James Brebner, may well be the one of that name who became a prominent merchant in Aberdeen with shares in several vessels. The next daughter of Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno, Martha Gibbon, born in 1737, married Hugh Cochran, a ship’s captain, later a ship owner and merchant. He was active in the general east coast trade, especially coal, but in 1812 he advertised for apprentice sailors to man the ‘coppered and armed brigantine Francis employed by Government as a Transport’.
CH 23 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO 329
CHART 23: GIBBON / DALGARNO
SEE CHART 22
Alexander Gibbon ? - c1793 [Shipbuilder] - M 1728 -
Janet Dalgarno
Arthur Gibbon 1731 - ?
Mary Gibbon
Anna Gibbon 1733 - ?
Elizabeth Gibbon 1734 - 1829
Martha Gibbon 1737 - 1826
James Gibbon 1741 - 1806
- M 1767 -
- M 1765 -
- M 1766 -
Hugh Cochran c1741 - 1826
Thomas Brebner [Ship Captain]
Sophia Gibbon 1745 - 1801
[Ship Owner & Captain]
SEE CHART 25
Janet Brebner 1766 - ?
Alexander Brebner 1769 - ?
Jean Cochran 1768 - ?
Hugh Cochran 1770 - 1819
- M 1790 -
- M 1800 -
Robert Welsh c1765 - ?
Charlotte Hamilton Scott 1777 - 1837
[Shipmaster]
[Shipmaster]
Jane Welsh -M-
Hugh Welsh 1791 - ?
John Williams
James Brebner 1771 - ?
James Cochran 1772 - ?
Martha Cochran
Mary McKenzie c1767 - ?
Thomas Brebner 1773 - ?
Alexander Cochran 1775 - 1837
Sophia Cochran 1778 - ?
[Merchant & Shipowner]
Margaret McKenzie 1768 - ?
Mary Cochran
- M 1807 -
- M1 -
John Thomson
Elizabeth Roger 1789 - 1809
[Ship Captain]
- M2 1818 -
Elizabeth Campbell 1784 - 1848
James Francis Edward Cochran 1802 - 1827
Louisa Scott Cochran 1807 - 1808
Hugh Cochran 1810 - 1811
Francis James Cochran 1809 - 1870 [Advocate] - M 1839 -
Elizabeth Smith 1816 - 1899
Alexander Cochran 1840 - 1893 [Advocate] - M 1807 -
Mary Hamilton Campbell 1840 - 1891
Elizabeth Cochran 1841 - 1925 - M 1861 -
James Gibbon Anderson 1830 - 1907 [Opium Agent]
Francis Cochran 1843 - 1914 [Colonel, India] - M1 1874 -
Alexandrina Kelland 1851 - 1877
- M2 1881 -
Amy Isabel Gray Compton 1854 - 1940
Margaret Gordon Cochran 1844 - 1896 - M 1865 -
George Pirrie 1837 - 1902 [Captain, Indian Army]
Robert Gibbon
Margaret Gibbon 1744 - 1832
Agnes Gibbon
Charles Gibbon 1747 - 1800 [Ship Captain]
- M 1766 -
John McKenzie c1732 - 1812
- M1 1775 -
[Ship Captain]
- M2 1792 -
Margaret Nicol Rachel Susan Farquhar 1768 - 1812 SEE CHART 26
Janet McKenzie 1770 - 1847
Isabel McKenzie 1771 - ?
Charles McKenzie 1773 - ?
James McKenzie 1778 - 1809
Hugh McKenzie 1778 - 1796
John McKenzie 1782 - 1796
Elizabeth McKenzie
Alexander Gibbon 1793 - 1877 [Advocate]
- M1 -
- M 1835 -
John Stephen 1761 - 1799
Margaret Allardice Innes 1809 - 1882
[Ship Captain] - M2 -
John Younghusband 1771 - 1834 [Ship Builder]
Mary Stephen 1795 - 1796
John Stephen 1798 - 1825
Charles Younghusband 1807 - 1840
James Thomas Younghusband 1809 - 1829
John Younghusband 1812 - 1833
Elizabeth Abercrombie Gibbon 1842 - 1922 - M 1865 -
David Alexander Pearson 1829 - 1905 [Lawyer & Landowner]
Hugh Cochran 1846 - 1863
Anne Farquharson Cochran 1848 - 1910
Robert Cochran 1851 - 1924
- M 1873 -
- M 1881 -
Edmund Boyd Osler 1845 - 1924
Lucy Darling 1857 - 1939
[Broker]
[Financier & Politician]
CH 23 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO 331
(ABOVE) Notice about the Shipmaster Society (see Chapter 9) which appeared in 1804. Most of the names here were related to the Gibbons through marriage or had close business ties.
(ABOVE) A 1783 advert in the Aberdeen Journal for apprentice sailors. The coastal coal trade was increasing, with Sunderland one of the most important ports fed by the nearby coal mines. Coal was needed to drive the industrial revolution principally through steam driven machines. (R) 1812 was the height of the French Wars which, despite the risks, created excellent opportunities for ship owners to sign lucrative government contracts for the transport of troops or supplies.
The captain was his son Alexander. Government contracts to transport troops or supplies during the Napoleonic wars proved a very lucrative business for the Gibbons and other Aberdeen shippers1. Hugh and Martha both died in 1826 in Aberdeen. The Nigg Register of Burials says that Martha died from ‘decline of nature’.
The inscription on this family memorial in Nigg Graveyard says: In memory of Hugh Cochran and Martha Gibbon who lived in matrimony for 58 years and who died in 1826, also of their son Alexander Cochran shipowner in Aberdeen who died 19th October 1837 aged 62 years and of Eliz. Campbell his second wife who died 1st Augt 1848 aged 63 years.
In his will Hugh left a piece of ground at the Quay to his only surviving son Alexander. This was next to land owned by Martha's cousins, William and Robert Gibbon (see Chapter 22). It was also next to the Sugar House, where raw sugar from the West Indies arrived after a number of merchants in Aberdeen formed a public company in 1776, which operated for about twenty-five years. Martha and Hugh Cochran had seven children. The eldest, Jean or Jane, born in 1768, married Robert Welsh a ship’s Captain in Sunderland, an important port of the east coast coal trade. Their daughter, also Jean, married John Williams, a haberdasher in Aberdeen. In 1826 they were living at Carmarthen, Wales. The eldest son of Martha and Hugh, also Hugh, became a merchant and shipmaster in Hull. He sailed regularly to the Baltic and advertisements from 1804 to 1806 announced that he would sail in convoy to Riga, Elsinore and elsewhere. This Baltic trade was crucial to Britain as the Continental markets had been closed to them by Napoleon. It was also dangerous, hence the need to sail as a convoy. Either this Hugh or his father was supposed to have spent some years as a prisoner at St Petersburg. He married
332 ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO : CH 23
Charlotte Hamilton Scott the daughter of an Aberdeen merchant in 1800 in Danzig (now Gdansk), then part of Prussia until Napoleon captured it in 1806. Her uncle, James Francis Edward Scott, was a General in Prussia where he spent over 55 years and became a friend of Frederick the Great. Her family was most probably Jacobite judging by his name and he would have known others who fled before him to Prussia including the two famous Keith brothers from Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven, sons of the Earl Marischal, who lost everything after 1715 (see Chapter 9). Hugh Cochran died in 1819 by which time his son, James Francis Edward, had returned to live in Aberdeen although he died only eight years later aged 24. Martha and Hugh's son Alexander Cochran, born in 1775, succeeded his father in the Aberdeen business as a ship owner and merchant. He married Elizabeth Roger, who died giving birth to their first child in 1809. In 1818 Alexander married his second wife Elizabeth Campbell, and they had four more children. Selected descendants are described below. Alexander’s first child, whose mother died in childbirth, was Francis James Cochran, who became an advocate in Aberdeen4. He had seven children. One of these, Alexander Cochran, born in 1840, also became an advocate in Aberdeen, and another, Elizabeth, married her second cousin James Gibbon Anderson, the son of an indigo grower in India. James became an Opium Agent in India (see Chapter 26). Another of the six children, Francis Cochran2, born in 1843, joined the 37th (The North Hampshire) Regiment of Foot in 1862, remaining there for the rest of his career. In 1866 he went to India, where much of his time was said to have been spent shooting big game and fishing. Back in Britain, while he was based at the Staff College, he studied law part time and was called to the Bar in 1884. He later became the Army Judge Advocate in India and published a book on military law. After succeeding to the command of the regiment, he served in 1888 in Northern Burma, engaged in suppressing dacoit or bandit activity in the Ruby Mines District on the banks of the Irrawaddy river. His obituary says: The work was very arduous, involving great responsibilities. It was the period after the taking of Mandalay. The whole country was in a state of ferment and Col Cochran had the difficult task of organising columns to go out through the villages to capture the dacoits and subjugate the people.5 He again served in India, then Ireland, and finally England where he was appointed Deputy Judge Advocate. He retired as a Colonel in 1902. His first wife Alexandrina Kelland, whom he married in 1874 in Edinburgh, was the daughter of the Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh. In 1881 he remarried to Amy Compton, the daughter of Thomas Compton, a Bombay Civil Servant, the Judge of Poona.
(L-R) The book on military law written by Francis Cochran. It unfortunately coincided with a larger official volume on the same subject but still served to bring him to the attention of senior command as someone with a knowledge of the law; Francis Cochran’s account of his time in North Burma chasing dacoits or bandits, most of them Chinese; Lionel Cochran in his uniform of the Punjabis from a photograph in the Imperial War Museum (23.1); The bronze memorial plaque presented to the families of soldiers killed in the First World War.
CH 23 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO 333
Their son Lionel, born in 1882, joined the 3rd (Militia) Battalion Leinster Regiment in 1900 and served in South Africa and then with the Worcestershire and Hampshire Regiments. He transferred to the Indian Army in 1905 and was posted to Burma, becoming a Captain in 1909. In 1914 he was sent with the 72nd Punjabis to guard the Suez Canal. He was killed in action against the Turks on 4 February 1915 at Tussum on the Canal. There is a memorial to him at St Mary the Boltons Church, London. His brother Herbert was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Middlesex Regiment who, in the spring of 1918 with the rest of the British Army, were desperately trying to slow down the massive German offensive launched as a last throw of the dice in the hope of a breakthrough before vast numbers of Americans arrived at the Front. He was killed on 24 March 1918 at Clery-sur-Somme. Herbert Cochran is named at Delville Wood Cemetery, Longeval. He was awarded the DSO and Croix de Guerre. The next daughter of Francis James Cochran was Margaret Gordon Cochran, born in 1844, who married in Aberdeen George Pirrie, a son of the Professor of Surgery. George was then a Lieutenant in the 17th Regiment of Madras Native Infantry in India. He became a Captain, but retired insane in 1873. He was an inmate of the Sunnyside Asylum at Montrose, Angus, until his death in 1902. The next child was Hugh, who died of diptheria aged 16. His sister Anne married Sir Edmund Osler in 1873 in Aberdeen. She spent the rest of her life in Ontario, Canada where Edmund was a well-known financier and politician3. Robert, the last child of Francis and Elizabeth, married Lucy Darling and they also lived in Ontario, Canada. The remaining surviving daughter of Hugh Cochran and Martha Gibbon was Sophia, born in 1778. In 1807 she married John Thomson, another shipmaster, who moved from Aberdeen to London, where in 1826 he was the master of the ship Sahis. They lived at Gravesend. Sophia was left £100 by her father when he died. Returning to the head of Chart 23, the second son of Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno was James Gibbon, born in 1741, who married Sophia Gibbon from Stonehaven. They are described in Chapter 25. Margaret Gibbon, the next surviving child of Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno, born in 1744, married a ship’s captain, John McKenzie. They had nine children. The family gravestone at Nigg details the deaths of four of the family, all in separate nautical incidents, showing how perilous sea voyages were. In 1796, Hugh, aged 18, and John, aged 13, both died at sea, John at Yarmouth Roads. In 1809, son James was also lost at sea aged 31. One daughter, Janet McKenzie, born in 1770, married in 1794 John Stephen, a ship’s captain, who also died at sea in 1799 when on a voyage from the West Indies. Their son John died at Batavia in 1825 aged 27. Janet married again to John Younghusband, an Aberdeen ship builder and ship owner, and they had three sons who all died as young adults. Some of the above are also mentioned on the gravestone of James and Sophia Gibbon (see Chapter 25). The next child of Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno was Charles Gibbon, born in 1747, a ship’s captain and merchant. He married twice. The first marriage, in 1775 to Margaret Nicol from Clackmannan, produced a son James, who went to India and is discussed separately in Chapter 26. Charles’ second wife, Rachel Susan Farquhar, had a son Alexander who became an advocate in Aberdeen. He featured large in the life of Aberdeen, first as an extremely active advocate and businessman, and then steadily becoming a grandee in the area. He succeeded to the small estate of Johnston, at Laurencekirk to the south west of Stonehaven, on the death of his uncle James Farquhar, MP for Aberdeen Burghs from 1801-1818. In 1835 Alexander married Margaret Allardice Innes, born in 1809, who came from the estate of Cowie, near Stonehaven. Her mother, Une Cameron Barclay of Ury, was an important figure in the lives of the Stonehaven Gibbons, being the wife of the local laird. She was also a descendant through her father of various Duffs whom we met earlier in Chapter 2. Alexander and Margaret had one daughter, Elizabeth Abercromby Gibbon, born in 1842 at Florence, in Italy. She married a lawyer, David Alexander Pearson, in 1865, and they moved to Johnston Lodge on the death of her father. They had five children.
334 ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO : CH 23
(ABOVE) McKenzie gravestone in Nigg Graveyard sited next to that of Hugh and Martha Gibbon. It is virtually unreadable but the inscription used to read:
Map by John Thomson published in 1832 showing Johnston Lodge or House near Laurencekirk (23.2)
Erected by Janet McKenzie in memory of her husband John Stephen later shipmaster in Aberdeen lost at sea on voyage from West Indies 15th May 1799 aged 38. Their son John died Batavia 23rd June 1825 aged 27. Daughter Mary died 29th May 1796 aged 8 months. Her father John McKenzie late shipmaster Aberdeen died 18th April 1812 aged 80. His spouse Margaret Gibbon died 16th August 1832 aged 87. Also her brothers Hugh lost at sea 1796 aged 18. John lost at Yarmouth Roads August 1796 aged 16. James lost at sea 29th August 1809 aged 31. Her second husband John A. Younghusband died 18th September 1834 aged 63. And their children James died 19th May 1829 aged 20. John died 29th June 1833 aged 21. Charles died 29th January 1840 aged 33. And also the above Janet McKenzie died 8th March aged 77.
CH 23 : ALEXANDER GIBBON & JANET DALGARNO 335
1938 map of the Birdpur estate and neighbouring area by Elfie Peppe. Birdpur was an area of jungle which the Gibbons undertook to develop in 1835 (24.1)
CHAPTER 24
WILLIAM GIBBON AND MARGARET FORBES Ordnance Survey map, 1886 showing Viewfield House (24.2)
William Gibbon Junior, or Youngest as he was known, born in 1772, lived at Viewfield House near Aberdeen. A ship’s captain and merchant in Aberdeen, he had a share in the collier Rebecca which he sailed up and down the east coast as part of the ‘coastal trade’, supplying commodities such as coal from Sunderland to Aberdeen. Many captains refused to ship granite because of the great danger of capsizing, but William made at least two trips to Sheerness with granite for the new dry dock being built there. His firm in Aberdeen was Robert Gibbon and Sons, started by his father. At one point he also had a share in the business in London, William Gibbon & Co (East India Merchants), run by his sons William Forbes Gibbon, born in 1800, and Robert Gibbon, born in 1802. When he died in 1823, he had a 9/32nd share in Robert Gibbon and Sons involving shares in six ships and in the local bank as well as a 1/16th share in the ship Rebecca. After William’s death in 1823 the two firms filed for bankruptcy. This does not seem to have been the result of poverty, as there was a steady sale of assets between 1826 and 1829. Probably it was simply a means of dissolving the partnership and enabling the two brothers to go their own ways, while also creating opportunities for the rest of the family. Certainly, going out to India with some capital behind you could make a huge difference to your prospects of success.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 337
CHART 24: GIBBON / FORBES
SEE CHART 22
(SIMPLIFIED CHART)
William Gibbon 1772 - 1823 [Merchant & Ship Owner] - M 1797 -
Margaret Forbes c1777 - 1852
Elizabeth Gibbon 1798 - 1888
Robert Gibbon 1799 - 1800
William Forbes Gibbon 1800 - 1853
Robert Gibbon 1802 - 1881 [Merchant & Agent]
[Merchant]
- M 1830 -
- M1 1839 -
Arthur Gibbon 1803 - 1804
- M2 -
[Indigo Planter]
[Indigo Planter] - M 1870 -
Angelina Boule 1844 - 1921
- M2 -
Maria Gibbon 1836 - ?
Elizabeth Gibbon
- M 1868 -
Aeneas John Macdonald
David Smith Russell
[Indigo Planter]
[Tea Planter]
Georgina Gibbon 1841 – 1936
Kate Coleburn Gibbon 1843 - 1910
Mary Wright Gibbon 1844 - 1915
- M 1862 -
- M 1869 -
- M 1865 -
James Gilbert McCrae 1833 – 1886
Richard Richardson 1838 - 1893
Charles Jean Lievin Coene
[Merchant, India]
[Chemist, India & Australia]
William Charles Alexander Gibbon 1871 - 1947
James Mitchell Crowther Gibbon 1875 - 1939
[Indigo planter]
[Artist]
- M 1901 -
- M 1906 -
Ethel Emily Laker 1876 - 1987
Gwendolen Mary Chafy 1874 - 1955
Edna Forbes Gibbon 1902 - 1974
Dora Ethel Gibbon 1908 - 1981
[Indigo Planter] - M1 1845 - Lucy ?
Elizabeth Boyson 1810 - 1887
William Forbes Gibbon 1840 - 1906
Thomas Gibbon 1807 - 1860
Mary Elizabeth Wright 1807 - 1871
Jane More ? - 1838
Thomas Mitchell Gibbon 1838 - 1921
Barbara Gibbon 1806 - 1869
[Manufacturer & Accountant, Belgium]
Lina Forbes Gibbon 1875 - 1953 - M 1907 -
Frederick George Clabon 1871 - 1939
Michael James Gibbon 1912 - 1987
Benjamin Westwood Gibbon 1914 - 1989
[Artist & Market Gardener]
[Artist]
John Pirie Gibbon 1847 - 1857
- M 1865 -
Elizabeth Maria Gibbon 1850 - 1923
Arthur Gibbon 1809 - 1833
George Gibbon 1811 - 1847
[India]
[Merchant, India]
Hugh Gibbon 1812 - 1844 [Indigo Planter & Estate Manager]
- M 1836 -
John Pirie Gibbon 1815 - 1848
James Gibbon 1817 - 1875
[Indigo Planter & Estate Manager]
[Merchant, India] - M 1847 -
- M 1834 -
Ann Freame 1816 - 1838
Fanny Forbes Gibbon 1835 - 1839
James Gibbon 1815 - 1815
Delia Patience Bond Claxton 1815 - 1892
- M2 1849 -
William Forbes Gibbon 1838 - 1908
Margaret Gibbon 1839 - ?
Barbara Weekes Gibbon 1841 - 1912
[Estate Manager, India]
- M 1872 -
- M 1872 -
William John Jones c1841 - 1911
George Francis Warren c1843 – 1917
[Indigo Grower]
[Estate Manager]
- M 1869 -
Margaret Ann Jane Vincent 1847 - 1930
Matilda Ferguson 1826 - 1897
William Peppe 1822 - 1889
Edwin Gibbon 1842 - 1849
Arthur Gibbon 1843 - ?
- (M)
Mary Jane Drew
Annie Jane Peppe 1850 - 1930 - M 1874 -
Lionel Henry P. de H. Larpent 1834 - 1907
William Claxton Peppe 1852 - 1937
Sarah Peppe 1854 - 1856
- M1 -
Caroline Ella Hill c1860 - 1932 - M2 -
Sophia Rosalie Hill 1863 - 1887
George Thomas Gibbon Peppe 1856 - 1924
Jane Gibbon 1848 - ?
-M-
- M 1891 -
Emily Frances Wadd c1868 - ?
Harold Fitzgerald Drummond 1849 - 1925
William Forbes Gibbon 1854 - 1927
Georgina Forbes Gibbon 1866 - 1961
4 children died young
[Indigo Planter]
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 339
William Gibbon and Margaret Forbes family gravestone in Nigg reads: To the Memory of William Gibbon of Viewfield, who died 19 July 1823 aged in his 51st year Robert, his eldest son died 25 March 1800 aged in the 1st year of his age Arthur, 4th son, died 2 July 1804 in the 1st year of his age James, 5th son, died 19 Sept 1815 aged in the 1st year of his age Arthur 7th son, died at Meerut, 27 April 1833 aged in the 24th year of his age Hugh, 9th son, died at Corrockpore, 4 October 1848 aged in his 33rd year George, 8th son, died at Calcutta, 16 February 1847 aged in his 35th year John Pirie, 10th son, died Corrockpore, 4 October 1848 aged in his 33rd year Margaret Forbes, widow of the late William Gibbon, died 1 July 1852 aged in her 76th year William Forbes, 2nd son, drowned on passage from Melbourne 1853 aged 52 years Thomas, 6th son, died at Tirhoot, 1 February 1860 aged 52 years Barbara, younger daughter, died 3 April 1869 aged 62 years James, 11th son, died at Chumparum, 3 November 1875 aged 58 years Robert, son of William Gibbon Esq., of Southsea, died 25 January 1881 aged 78 years Elizabeth, eldest daughter of William Gibbon Esq. born 20 June 1798, died 11 March 1888 aged 89 years
On his death his wife, Margaret Forbes, daughter of an Aberdeen merchant, moved immediately from Viewfield into Aberdeen, where she died in 1852. According to her granddaughter Annie Peppe she seems to have been a somewhat hard woman who thought herself and her Forbes ancestors superior to Delia Claxton, her India-born daughter-in-law, the daughter of a warrant officer, whom she treated with appalling rudeness. The descendants of William Gibbon and Margaret Forbes played a prominent role in the development of the economy of northern India. Seven of their sons went out to India. What prompted this mass exodus is anyone’s guess: perhaps they all dreamed of becoming ‘nabobs’, those rare beings who returned super-rich to Britain after their time in India, although that period had largely passed. A more likely explanation is that the serious economic depression after the French Wars prompted men to grasp any opportunity as general merchants. They had contacts in the indigo farming world; their second cousin James Gibbon, born about 1775 (see Chapter 26), had gone out a generation before and seemed to be successful (see box 24.2). Profits from indigo were not always guaranteed, but the good periods were very profitable indeed. The details of William and Margaret’s ‘Indigo Gibbons’ have been made easier to trace as two family members, Angelina Boule and William Peppe, both left fascinating accounts of the life, summarised by Michael Gibbon, expanded by Vivienne Peppe and made available by Neil Peppe.8 William and Margaret had two daughters, Elizabeth, born in 1798, and Barbara, born in 1806. They lived together in Aberdeen, where they both died: Barbara in 1869 and Elizabeth in 1888. These two unmarried ladies were an important feature in the lives of many of the young Gibbons sent back to Aberdeen to be educated, who saw them as affectionate aunts.
340 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
The eldest surviving son of William and Margaret Gibbon was William Forbes Gibbon born in 1800. With six other brothers he set sail for India in 1826 having taken out a bond for £2,000 as security for being allowed to do business in India, a requirement of the East India Company. On arrival in India he became a merchant in Clive Street, Calcutta. In partnership with James Cock he set up his own firm of merchants, buying, and successfully running, the bankrupt firm of Watson & Company, a wine merchant’s business, which he clearly used as a base for other enterprises. This allowed employment for several of the brothers. In 1842 the directors of the company included George, James and William Forbes Gibbon, as well as William Watson, who died in 1856 aged 39. William Forbes Gibbon was involved in the growth of the indigo trade and the ownership of various indigo factories. (Indigo growing is also discussed in Chapter 26). He was also interested in the agricultural development of India and played a central part in the affairs of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India. As a side venture, in 1835, when the East India Company offered development land on favourable terms, he collaborated with his brothers Hugh, born in 1812, and John Pirie, born in 1815, together with his partner James Cock, to take up the grants for the development of two jungle-covered areas totalling 33,000 acres. These were Birdpur and Doolah, about seven miles apart on the Nepalese border, in the Gorakhpur Terai region, recently ceded to the East India Company by the Nabob of Oudh. The area is 330km north west of Patna. William Forbes Gibbon’s marital history was complex in the extreme. In 1837 he married Jane More, who died in 1838 giving birth to their only son, Thomas Mitchell Gibbon (see below). When his business partner James Cock died in 1838, William lived with Cock’s mistress, Elizabeth Bowman, née Boyson. Elizabeth, born in Bangalore, India, in 1810, first married William Cockell, a Captain in the East India Company coastal and pilot service at Calcutta, with whom she had one son, also William Cockell, born in 1830. William senior died the same year and in 1831 Elizabeth married Captain John Bowman, of the same service. However, she left him and lived first with James Cock, who died in 1839, then with William Forbes Gibbon, who died in 1853. John Bowman died the same year, allowing Elizabeth to marry again at the age of 45 to William Crowther, aged 32, in London in 1855. He had joined the 63rd Regiment of Foot in India as an ensign in 1840. In 1845 he was court martialled at Bellary for failing to attend the officers’ mess regularly and for not appearing on parade. He was severely reprimanded but remained in the regiment. What happened to him thereafter is not clear but he was certainly living in London from 1881 until his death in 1899.
1832 map of Calcutta by J. B. Tassin. The star-shaped Fort William dominates the town. Originally it was much smaller but after capture in 1756 (along with the Black Hole of Calcutta) it was rebuilt and the land around it cleared to create the expansive Maidan (24.3)
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 341
(L-R) William Forbes Gibbon, born 1800, aged 24, by L. B. East; William as a dapper businessman; Elizabeth Boyson, who married William (24.4)
William Forbes Gibbon and Elizabeth had six children. In 1842 William chartered a ship to take himself, Elizabeth, their three children and several nephews and nieces to Britain. They probably lived in or near London for some years while the remaining children were born: Kate in 1843 at Lambeth; Mary in 1844 in Sunbury on Thames; John and Elizabeth in Kent, in 1847 and 1850 respectively. In 1851, when William described himself as a retired merchant, the family was living at Margate, Kent and being educated at home. A massive financial crash in 1847 in Calcutta had caused many of the British in India to lose their savings and many indigo concerns to be sold up. William does not seem to have been seriously affected as his will shows that he died a wealthy man. When his mother died in Aberdeen in 1852, William set sail on his own for the East on the ship Madagascar arriving at Melbourne, Australia on 11 June 1853, having left London on 11 March. The local newspapers had the practice of publishing the details of any cargo and listed ‘one box specie assigned to Wm Gibbon’. As this box of coins is unlikely to have been normal travelling expenses, William presumably had some plan in mind. This could have been to purchase land (see Chapter 11), but a more likely explanation is that he intended to purchase gold dust at a premium for ready cash and to ship it to Britain. The Melbourne area was in the middle of a gold fever and miners would have been keen to convert their diggings into ready money. William is listed as a First-Class passenger, on the Madagascar, which sailed back to London in August 1853. Just before the ship sailed a large amount of gold dust being carried to London was stolen. The robbers were a gang of ex-convicts from Tasmania some of whom had joined the Madagascar as passengers or crew. One of the gang had earlier robbed a miner of his revolver. This caused the police to board the ship just before it sailed and three of the robbers were removed possibly leaving others on board. The ship sailed with a cargo of wool plus more than 68,000 ounces of gold, worth in present values anything from £38 million to many, many, times that depending on the calculation used. The Madagascar had planned to sail via Cape Horn but failed to appear at Rio, presumably having foundered with all on board. The newspapers were full of speculation as to the cause. A strong possibility was that the ship hit floating ice. However, as many ships were also lost from storms at this time, the truth will never be known. It was even speculated that the cargo of wool on board had self-combusted. In September 1853 the trial of the three criminals who had been taken from the ship just before it sailed took place at Melbourne Supreme Court presided over by Justice Williams (Chapter 11) who, after the jury had found them guilty, sentenced them to death. William’s will, written in 1852, is worth exploring. He appoints eight executors; his ‘friend’ Elizabeth Bowman, his brother James Gibbon of Calcutta, his brother Robert in Portsmouth, his business partner William Watson of Calcutta, William Cockell of Meerut and James Cock, sons of Elizabeth by her previous marriages, and his sons Thomas Mitchell and William Forbes Gibbon. Little did he know that three of the five senior executors would turn out to be dishonest. William was a very rich man and made generous provision for his family including his mother, two nieces and all his offspring. He left his house in Thurloe Square, London to Elizabeth for her lifetime plus £150/year and his 50,000 Rupee life insurance policy. He recommended that his shares in the Birdpore and Doolah estates should not be sold as he saw them improving in value. An account book dated after his death shows that he was by then receiving considerable sums annually from them. The large sums appearing on his account in 1859 from Birdpore suggest that his executors ignored his advice and sold some of his shares. His dividend from Watson & Co. was also considerable. 342 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
Thomas Mitchell Gibbon, born 1838, is probably standing on the left with his halfbrother William Forbes Gibbon, born 1840, seated. They are startlingly similar (24.5); William, obviously taken the same day (24.6)
William Forbes Gibbon, born 1840. Portrait by James Gibbon (24.7)
William’s only son by his first wife Jane, Thomas Mitchell Gibbon, came to England on the ship WIlliam had chartered in 1842. His father’s will says that in 1852 he was at school with his half-brother William Forbes Gibbon (born in 1840) and step-brother James Cock at Runderoth in Prussia near Koln. Why they should all be studying there is as unclear as it is surprising. In 1854 Thomas returned to India, where he managed several indigo factories, some in collaboration with his half-brother William Forbes Gibbon, born in 1840. Together they built Moorla indigo factory at Champaran, Bihar. In 1867, at the urgings of the British officials, Thomas became Manager for the Raj of Bettiah in Champaran in an attempt to obtain better management of the estates, in other words, to produce more tax revenues for the British and make more land available to British planters. According to the British, the estates of the Raj, some fifty miles in length and thirty miles broad, were becoming increasingly indebted through dissipation and extravagance according to the British, and nothing was being invested in land improvement or commercial activity, which were becoming increasingly important to the Indian Government. The arrangements were criticised by John Beames, the local magistrate: The Maharaja appointed, as Manager, Thomas Mitchell Gibbon, a leading indigo planter, and experienced long-headed Scot from Aberdeen. I was not much pleased by him getting the appointment, but the matter was arranged behind my back. Relations between the ryots and the planters were becoming critical, and it was not desirable that a man like Tom Gibbon, himself a leading planter, should be able to wield the power which the position as Manager gave him, of granting leases to his fellow planters throughout the extensive estates of the Maharaja21. In 1885 Thomas negotiated a 37-year loan in London, for which part of the security involved 417 villages being permanently leased to indigo farmers, who paid their rents as interest on the loan directly to London2. Chaudhary13 says that Gibbon ‘defied legal authority with impunity’. According to Mishra2, at some point one of Thomas’ half-sisters was given one of these villages, which is ironic given that one of the complaints made by the British against the Raj of Bettiah was his habit of donating villages to members of his family. The deal struck by Thomas seemed also to involve preferential treatment for certain factories, some such as at Turkowlia seemingly occupied by other members of the Gibbon family. Tur Mishra also says: The planters thus obtained enormous powers through their permanent leases to force the farmers to grow indigo on terms dictated by them. Consequently, the discontent grew and they started putting up stiff resistance.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 343
This led to increasing agitation against the planters, and by 1907 the resentment had reached such a level that an indigo manager was murdered and another badly beaten. Eventually, in 1914 and 1916, tens of thousands of these farmers in Champaran, Bihar rebelled peacefully against being forced to grow indigo and other cash crops for low prices, instead of the food crops needed for their survival. Labourers were paid starvation wages, and rates for providing transport were too low. Ghandi, recently returned from South Africa, become the leader in 1917 insisting that the protest should be non-violent and that solidarity and discipline were maintained by the farmers. Remarkably this was the case and the Government was forced to intervene actively, unlike previous largely token gestures. The fundamental problem was that the indigo planters rarely had outright ownership of the land. Where they did, large scale farming could take place with modern machinery and management. Thomas Mitchell Gibbon became a member of the Viceroy’s Council and was awarded the Order of the Indian Empire. Whatever the peasant farmers thought of him, he seems to have had good relations with the Indian aristocracy and was a friend of the Maharajah of Nepal, who gave him a gold ring set with small diamonds and rubies when he retired. He never married and retired to Croydon, where his youngest half-sister ‘Tibbie ‘ or Elizabeth Maria, born in 1850, kept house for him until he died there in 1921. William Forbes Gibbon (1840), eldest child of Elizabeth Boyson and William Forbes Gibbon (1800), worked in indigo in various places until his retirement in 1887. He inherited his father’s share of Birdpur and Alidapur, but took no part in their management. He was known as ‘Shanghai’ after a visit to China. He played the fiddle and sang, accomplishments much in demand in planter society. In 1870 he married, at Motihari, Bihar, near the Nepalese border, Angelina Boule, whose brother George was in indigo. Their father had come to India via Russia, where he had been a member of the Czar’s army, and had settled down in Meerut, Bengal, where he became a schoolmaster. William died in 1906, and Angelina in 1921, both in London. William’s will shows that he owned a 5/16th share in the Birdpur estate and a half share of Aldipur and a payment in 1907 suggests that his two sons sold these shares. (L-R) Angelina Gibbon née Boule, born c. 1846, is seated. The other lady is labelled ‘Jinnie Gibbon’, and is possibly Georgina, her sister-in-law; Angelina with her daughter Lina Forbes Gibbon. This was taken in one of the studios of the famous photographic firm of Bourne and Shepherd which operated in India continuously from 1863 to 2016 (24.8)
(BELOW) William C.A. Gibbon, born 1871. (L-R) photographed in a studio in Mussoorie, India. Studios had a selection of costumes for customers to indulge their fantasies; photographed in London (24.9); painted by his nephew James Gibbon (24.10)
344 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
All images on this page © Manchester City Galleries (24.11)
William and Angelina had three children. The eldest, William Charles Alexander Gibbon, born in 1871 at Motihari, started in indigo but fell ill and returned to England. There he married Ethel Emily Laker, daughter of George Laker from Lingfield, Surrey, who was described variously as a grocer, coal merchant and general labourer. In 1911 William and Ethel were living in Sussex. Their daughter Edna married Frederick Walker, a distinguished surgeon, and had children. William and Angelina's other two children, James Mitchell Crowther Gibbon and Lina Forbes Gibbon, were twins. They were born in 1875 at Muckwah indigo factory to the south west of Champaran, Bihar. The births took place at the hottest season of the year in their standard-design bungalow with a thick thatch roof reaching all round a wide verandah. (L) Edna Gibbon, born 1902, painted by her cousin James Gibbon. (BELOW) Lina Gibbon.
(ABOVE) Ethel Gibbon née Laker, born 1876. Portrait by her nephew Michael James Gibbon. (R) Lina and James Gibbon photographed in Calcutta. (FAR R) Lina Forbes Clabon née Gibbon
James was sent home with his brother William about 1881 to live with his grandparents and go to school at Blackheath. After previously being rejected for the Army on health grounds, James enlisted in 1914. He was sent to India with the 5th Battalion of the Buffs (The East Kent Regiment), where he became a second lieutenant. In 1915 he came back and was commissioned into the Essex Yeomanry retiring as a Captain. On his return from the war he lived at Abberton Hall, Pershore, Worcestershire from where he corresponded with Geoffrey Gibbon on genealogical matters. He married Gwendolen Chafy, the daughter of a Church of England curate, in 1906 in London, and they raised two artist sons, Michael, born in 1912, and Benjamin, born in 1914. The Manchester City Art Galleries have portraits by James and Michael Gibbon as well as of various Gibbons from previous generations. Lina Forbes Gibbon married, in 1907, in London, Frederick George (Frank) Clabon, the son of a legal secretary who may have started his career as an actor. Frank died in 1939 and Lina in 1953. The second child of William Forbes Gibbon and Elizabeth Boyson, Georgina, was born in 1841 in Calcutta. In 1862 at Simla she married James Gilbert McCrae, a partner in the firm Peak and Allen, East Indian Merchants and Agents. James was the son of a Glasgow minister. He died in 1886 at Kilburn, London, and Georgina died in 1936 at Beckenham, Kent.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 345
Kate’s sister Mary Wright Gibbon, born in 1844 in Sunbury, Middlesex, married in 1865, in London, Charles Jean Lievin Coene, a wealthy Belgian accountant and manufacturer. Mary died in 1915 in Brussels.
Mary Wright Gibbon (24.12)
Georgina’s sister Kate Coleburn Gibbon, born in Lambeth, London in 1843, married Richard Richardson in 1869 in Umballa, Bengal. A chemist from Yorkshire, he had come out to India that year by steamship through the Suez Canal, which had just opened though it was unsuitable for sailing ships. The advent of steamships from then onwards revolutionised travel to India, cutting the journey of four to six months to four to six weeks by the end of the century. In 1885 Kate and Richard were living in Tasmania, Australia, but they moved to Kyneton, Victoria, where Richard died in 1893 and Kate in 1910. They had children.
Returning to the children of William Gibbon and Margaret Forbes, Robert Gibbon, born in Aberdeen in 1802, worked in London in the firm of William Gibbon and Company which operated in conjunction with Robert Gibbon and Sons of Aberdeen. In 1825 when Robert and William Forbes filed to dissolve the firm, Robert moved to Portsmouth, where in either 1826 or 1828 he became a merchant and shipping agent. Robert’s firm was Garratt and Gibbon, ‘General Shipping Agents and Agents to Lloyds and the Hon. East India Company’ which operated for many years, certainly from 1836 to 1858 and possibly longer. Judging by the regular newspaper advertisements over some 30 years the firm appears to have flourished. They also acted as receivers of droits of Admiralty, dealing with shipwrecks and prizes on behalf of the Crown. In 1854 for example they were dealing with the disposal of a captured Russian barque and its cargo of salt. The original partnership was dissolved in 1859, by which time a William Gibbon, probably Robert’s son, had joined the firm. At this point the firm of Garratt & Co. starts to trade. The name Garratt and Gibbon continues as Lloyd’s Agents though possibly without any Gibbons, who may have sold their share of the firm as the 1861 census shows Robert simply as a Fund Holder, i.e. living on his investments. He also became a member of Portsmouth Borough Council. When his brother William Forbes went out to India in 1826 Robert acted as a bond holder for him (everyone going to India was required to sign a bond guaranteeing their ability to survive financially). In 1830 Robert married Mary Elizabeth Wright, born in 1807 on the Isle of Wight. For some time, they lived on Battery Row in Portsmouth, then at Stubbington Lodge in a village near Portsmouth, where Mary died in 1871. Of their family of four, the only other son who might have continued in the business was William, born about 1833. However, he did not remain long in Portsmouth. In 1861 we find him as a farmer of 282 acres in Bosham, Sussex, living with his younger brother George, born in 1845. By 1871 he had married a local girl and retired and was also living on his investments. Robert and Mary also had a daughter who married a local timber merchant. His other children died young or were unmarried. The next surviving son of William Gibbon and Margaret Forbes was Thomas, born in 1807 and known as ‘Stuttering Tom’. Among other positions, he managed a sugar factory near Tirhoot. In 1842 he is listed as an indigo planter at Hautee, Tirhoot. Shortly before his death in 1860 he built an indigo factory at Pursa. In common with most of the Gibbons, he also bought and sold shares in indigo factories. A short memoir in Minden Wilson’s 1908 book of reminiscences and anecdotes includes the following1: Tom Gibbon was manager of Hatti Ousti factory when I first met him. He had spent a good number of his younger days at sea and had a goodly fund of amusing anecdotes of what he saw and heard during his wanderings He found his way like a good many others up to Tirhoot to indigo, and had been lured in to sugar - that golden dream that swamped so many good men in 1847-48. Old Tom Gibbon was very fond of talking about what he or his father or brothers had done, always going one better on anything put forward by others. At Bekonpur factory (Haryana) one day there was a
346 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
select gathering, among them Long Jimmy Cosserat, Tom Gibbon, old David Brown (nicknamed the Gooroo, as he was looked upon as a very knowing old chap) and one or two others. After dinner the wine cup having passed round pretty freely, Jimmy Cosserat started extolling the prowess of his father. Old Tom wished to come in with an account of what his father could do, but unfortunately the impediment in his speech which had become intensified by his excitement prevented his getting out what he wanted to say while Jimmy went ahead. At last Gibbon, thoroughly exasperated, managed to blurt out “D-D-Damn your father!” This aroused Jimmy’s ire. “What! You damn my father, sir?” he cried “Ye-Ye-Yes!!” replies Tom. “D-D-Damn your father, and your mother too, by Jove.” This was too much and nothing but blood could wipe out such an affront, so old Gooroo loaded (or pretended to do so) a pair of pistols, the seconds arranging that as it was night the affair should come off in an empty room then under repairs. So they were marched off by their respective seconds and each posted up in the opposite corner of the room and a pistol handed to each. They could not well leave the corners as they were too top heavy, so old Gooroo, extinguishing the light, shut the door, and left the two antagonists in the dark. The remainder of the party then retired to bed. Next morning, they went to see how things were, and to their alarm found the two men stretched on the floor with their pistols beside them. The first idea was that the joke had been carried too far, but a gentle snore from Tom quickly responded to by Jimmy showed that they were still asleep and working off the extra liquor they had imbibed. They had in their exhaustion each quickly subsided on the floor as they stood and gone off to sleep. The old Gooroo thought it would be advisable to clear out and get away from the combined wrath of Cosserat and Gibbon, which he did before they awoke. I never heard if there was ever any sequel. Thomas Gibbon had a daughter Maria born in 1836 at Tirhoot, Bengal. The name of the mother is unknown. Her uncle left money to Maria who was living with her uncle James Gibbon at Calcutta around 1852. Maria married in 1868 Aeneas John Macdonald at Bettiah, Champaran, Bengal. He was the son of a well-known judge, lawyer and politician in Canada and was an indigo planter. Their daughter Eva married a policeman in Dinapore in 1894. In 1845 Thomas, now a widower, married a 17-year-old girl called Lucy at Goruckpore. Her surname was not recorded and she may well have been Indian. They had a daughter Elizabeth who married in 1865 David Smith Russell a tea planter. Thomas and Lucy also had a son, Ibrahim Gibbon, born in 1847 but he died aged 9 months at Bescharatpore. The next son of William and Margaret, Arthur Gibbon, born in 1809, died in 1833 at Meerut, Utter Pradesh, aged 24 years. He is described as a Merchant and was presumably part of H. Gibbon & Co. at Meerut. He was living in a bungalow on Tonat Road and lived quite sparsely judging by his probate. His brother George Gibbon, born in 1811, joined the family firm of Watson & Co, wine merchants and agents on Clive Street, Calcutta. In 1838 he is listed as a merchant of Meerut, where the firm also operated and where, in 1841, he was also a partner of Gibbon & Co. wine merchants. In 1836, at Agra, George married Ann Freame, who died in 1838 at Mussoorie, Attarhakhand. There was a memorial to George, who died in 1847, in the Scottish Cemetery in Calcutta, known as the Scotch and Dissenters Burial Ground. George left his considerable money to his siblings and nephew and nieces. His will is extra-long as he tries to ensure that any deaths would not disadvantage anyone.
General view of the Scottish Cemetery in Calcutta where several Gibbons are buried. It is across the road from the South Park Cemetery where other Gibbons are buried (24.13)
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 347
In 1834 the next brother, Hugh Gibbon, aged 22, married the 19-year old Delia Claxton, who had been born in India. Her father was a Conductor of Ordinance, i.e. a senior warrant officer in the East India Company, stationed at Agra with the Bengal Horse Artillery. Hugh and Delia, together with Hugh’s brother John Pirie, set off to manage the Birdpur grant area mentioned earlier. The account by descendant Annie Peppe gives a vivid picture of life on Birdpur: It was 50 miles from the nearest town. There was no house for them. They were surrounded by jungle full of wild animals and malarial marshes. Fortunately, Delia was a young woman of iron determination and remarkably good health. The same cannot be said of Hugh who soon caught malaria. The association between malaria and mosquitoes was not made until much later in the century. Hugh Gibbon first planted indigo and sugar, the usual cash crops attempted by Europeans in North India. Later he tried horse breeding, for which large stables were required. Everything had to be done by transient labourers who would remain during the healthy season but trek off to their distant homes when the fever season began. Few could be induced to settle. Meanwhile nothing went right. Indigo did not do well. Elephants and pigs came in and ate the sugar cane. The horses died. Higher and higher grew the development costs financed by Hugh’s brother William Forbes, through Watson & Co. in Calcutta. The two oldest surviving children, William Forbes, born in 1838 at Birdpur, and Margaret, born in 1839, sailed to Britain with their uncle William in 1842. Later, Hugh and Delia followed with the younger girl, Barbara, born in 1841. They travelled to Britain by the overland route through Egypt, riding donkeys from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. They spent time in London, where Arthur John Gibbon was born in September 1843. He was to die of meningitis as a young boy at Gorakhpur. Leaving the children in Aberdeen with Hugh’s mother, they returned to Birdpur, where Hugh died of malaria in 1844. In his probate notice he is described as an indigo planter and appoints his brother George as executor. To aid his various interests he had started a company called H. Gibbon & Co., Meerut and in 1841 he and his brother George are listed as directors. He was succeeded as manager by his younger brother John Pirie Gibbon, born in 1815. However, he too died of malaria in 1848, aged 33. He left all his business assets to brothers George and James and his personal estate to nephew Arthur John Gibbon son of the late Hugh. This left Delia to hold the fort single-handed. She was able to do this as, from the outset, she had kept the estate accounts, and during the fatal illnesses of Hugh and John Pirie she had assumed responsibility for everything, riding all over the estate. No doubt, born and bred in India, she spoke fluent Hindustani and had some resistance to malaria. Her daughter Annie relates how she and her brother, as children in Calcutta during the Mutiny, had been sent to a dame school to learn English. A dame school was a private coeducational establishment operated by unmarried women or widows in private homes. William Forbes Gibbon, Hugh’s son, known by the nickname of Barrah Willie and later Doolah Willie, returned to India in 1854 and managed Barrah estate, then Turcowlia indigo factory and then Doolah estate in the Terai development area. The sheer size of these enterprises is seen by Barrah estate, which, by the end of the century, comprised 60,000 acres with 3,000 acres of indigo, 2,000 acres of sugar and 1,000 acres of wheat, oats, barley and tobacco. The rest was farmed by ryots, the local farmers. This large-scale agriculture was encouraged by the British Government, whose colonial policy post-Mutiny was to promote crops for export.5,6 In 1869 William married Margaret Ann Jane Vincent, who was born about 1847 at Meerut, where her father was a merchant. William’s address is given as Turkouleah (Turkowlia), Tirhoot. They had a daughter, Emily Vincent Gibbon, born in 1870 at Gorakhpur. William and Margaret retired to England, where William farmed a 240-acre farm at Seaford Grange, near Pershore in Worcestershire. In 1902 they filed for divorce on the grounds of William’s affair with Mary Jane Drew over the previous nineteen years. During this time Mary had two children by William, born in 1884 and 1888, both in Derby. William died in 1908 at Longford, Gloucestershire. In 1911 Margaret was living in Leamington, Worcestershire with her only child, daughter Emily, and her second cousin Florence Augusta Gibbon. She died in 1930 in Hampshire.
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Margaret Jones née Gibbon, born 1839 (24.15 & 16)
(L) William Forbes Gibbon, born 1838, and his wife Anne Vincent (24.14)
William’s sister Margaret, born in 1839, was still living in Aberdeen in 1861 with her maiden aunts Elizabeth and Barbara; but in 1872 she was back at Gorakhpur, where she married William John (Johnny) Jones. Born in Surrey, England, about 1841, he had gone out to India and become an assistant to Mr Bridgman, who owned several large estates near Birdpur. Johnny Jones lived initially at Newra, the estate that ran between Birdpur and Doolah as shown on the pictorial map (24.1) shown at the beginning of the chapter but he later developed indigo factories at Khampur and Saidpur in Ghazipur district. In 1891 Johnny and Margaret were back in Britain in St Helier, Jersey, with a son Bertram Owen Jones, born about 1876 in England. In 1904, in Calcutta, Bertram married Aileen Aubert De Vere, whose father lived at Albany, New York, USA. At this point Bertram was an assistant in a silk factory. He died of cholera in 1911 at Berhampore, Bengal the same year that his father died. The next child of Hugh and Delia was Barbara Weekes Gibbon, born in 1841 at Birdpur. In 1872 at Fort William, Calcutta, she married George Francis Warren, born about 1843 in Austria. His father, a diplomat, died in 1887 in a railway carriage between Stowmarket and Ipswich. George had become an estate manager in India, first in Bihar and then, like his brother-in-law, as an assistant to Mr Bridgman. The Bridgman estate, Bela Haria, adjoined Lehra, another Bridgeman estate some twenty miles from Goruckpore. This meant that by the 1870s there was, as Vivienne Peppe put it, ‘a colony of Gibbons’ in the neighbourhood of Birdpur’. Later George became the manager of Alidapur, succeeded by his son Fred, born about 1873. By 1891 they had retired to Suffolk, then to Penge, Surrey, and finally to Upper Norwood, London, where they both died. They had four children. After the deaths of his brothers and of James Cock, the original partner in the firm, William Forbes Gibbon remained sole grantee for Birdpur and Doolah. He appointed as the new manager William Peppe. Together with his brother George, William Peppe had been establishing a sugar factory and managing another Terai development estate, Bealumpore, forty miles to the south. Both brothers were from Aberdeen where they had both trained as civil engineers, coming out to India in 1843. When George fell ill and returned to Britain, William continued alone. However, when the ownership of Bealumpore changed, William, feeling undervalued, moved in 1848 to become manager of Birdpur estate, where Hugh Gibbon’s widow Delia was coping alone. William would have known Delia well by then; he may well have had another reason for moving in as he married Delia the following year. He described himself on the marriage certificate as an indigo planter, showing that they were still growing indigo even so far north. We follow the Peppe story in Box 24.1.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 349
Birdpur group, c. 1871. Left to right: Margaret Gibbon, born 1839, George Peppe, born 1856, William Peppe, born 1822, William Claxton Peppe, born 1852, with stick, Barbara Weekes Gibbon, born 1841, unknown (naming by Neil Peppe) (24.17)
The eleventh and last of the children of William Gibbon and Margaret Forbes to land in India was James Gibbon, born in 1817. In 1838 his address is given as Goruckpore i.e. Birdpur, along with his brother John, but he seemed to spend time at Meerut. He later become a member of Watson & Co, the Gibbon firm in Calcutta. According to Vivienne Peppe, in several of Delia Peppe’s letters from Calcutta to William Peppe at Birdpur during the Indian Mutiny, she mentions James Gibbon, who had been living at Calcutta with his wife Matilda and their child. She wrote in 1857: There is no doubt that James Gibbon will be transported (shipped to Australia or to the Andaman Islands as a convict) but as almost all Calcutta has signed a petition in his favour, he may get off with two years. He is now wavering between two and seven. And they say, was there anyone to push the matter Cockell would share the same fate for he is very similarly situated. Later she wrote that James Gibbon was not sentenced to transportation but sent to the house of correction for fifteen months. "Far worse than the former as no one can go and see him as he will be a Common Convict; neither friend or wife or even his attorney, or indeed anybody." James’ crime was to have attempted to steal insurance money due to his sister-in-law Elizabeth Boyson following the death of his brother William Forbes. The following is an extract from The Bengal Hurkaru and Chronicle 31 March 1858: BREACH OF TRUST - A case of considerable importance was tried at the Crown Side of the Supreme Court before the Chief Justice yesterday. Mr James Gibbon, a partner in the late Firm of Messrs. Watson & Co., the Wine Merchants, was indicted, under Section VIII of the Breach of Trust Act, for having converted to his own use upwards of Rs, (Rupees) 37,000, which he had received as an Executor to the Will of his deceased brother William Forbes Gibbon, in trust for a Mrs Beaumont, widow of a late Master Attendant of Calcutta, now residing in England. It appeared that the prisoner received 50,000 Rs on account of the trust, being the proceeds of a policy of Insurance on the Testator’s life, by a cheque from the Insurance Company, payable to himself or order, and that he endorsed it, as Executor of his brother’s estate, to Watson and Co. It was eventually cashed;
350 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
and with the proceeds, several pieces of Company’s Paper were purchased from time to time in the name of Watson and Co. the prisoner being in Calcutta, and in daily attendance at office of the Firm at the time. Not long after, Mr William Watson, a co-partner and a co-Executor, but now deceased, began pledging the Papers with the Bank of Bengal at frequent intervals, the prisoner being in Calcutta, and taking a part in the affairs of the Firm on the occasion of the first loan at least. Ultimately all the Papers were sold, to pay the loans advanced by the Bank upon them to Watson and Co., and hence the prosecution. The jury convicted the prisoner. The ‘Cockell’ mentioned in Delia’s letter was William James Cockell, James’ step-nephew, son of Elizabeth Boyson, born in 1810. Exactly how he was involved in the fraud to steal his mother’s money is not yet known but he was firmly implicated. More clearly involved was William Watson, a partner in the firm, who died before the trial. The financial accounts after William Gibbon’s death show an entry for September 1859 for the costs of pursuing the legal suit of Gibbon vs Cockell. This was presumably connected with the fraud as possibly was the entry for October 1858 for the 99 Rupees costs of Mrs Crowther’s request to a legal firm to enquire into the Estate. James Gibbon had at least five children in various places and died in 1875 in Mussoorie, where he was the Manager of the Pioneer Press. Founded the previous year, this was the firm which Rudyard Kipling later worked for in Allahabad. After the fraud case James and William were in business for a time together. In 1861 they ran the firm of Gibbon & Co., commission agents, auctioneers and general dealers in Rawalpindi and possibly elsewhere. James died in Champaran in north Bihar aged 58. In 1847 at Meerut, James Gibbon married Matilda Ferguson, the widow of John Boule, Angelina’s father. Of Scottish-Irish origin, she became ‘a terrible old lady’ according to her grandchildren. She had a memorial in the Scots Cemetery in Calcutta. As we have seen earlier, by her first marriage to John Boule she had two children. George became manager of a Gibbon indigo factory at Moorla, while Angelina married William Forbes (Shanghai) Gibbon, born in 1840. James and Matilda had at least seven children, several of whom died young. Jane, the eldest, was born in 1848 at Meerut; the date of her death is unknown. She married Harold Drummond, an opium agent, in 1891 at Bettiah in the opium/indigo-growing region of Champaran where Harold was stationed. He was the son of an indigo planter and died in 1925 at Dinapore. Another William Forbes Gibbon was born at Kidderpore near Calcutta in 1854 and died at the hill town Kasauli, Bengal in 1927. Another daughter Georgina Forbes Gibbon (or Georgie) was born in 1866 also at Meerut and died unmarried in Berkshire, England in 1961. As Michael Gibbon wrote: Georgie was the youngest, only five years older than her nephew Bill. She never married and latterly looked after her brother Willie at his tea garden at Parsonage Cottage, Kasauli, at Simla. After his death she remained there until the British Raj was wound up, when, in 1948, she ‘came home’ to England for the first time, aged 80. We all supposed she would die during the first winter. However, she lived to be 95. She was a tiny little old woman, speaking with an Anglo-Indian accent, very affectionate towards my generation but a tough nut all the same.
(L-R) James Gibbon, born 1817. 1844 portrait by T.T.Belmos, Calcutta (24.26); Matilda Gibbon née Ferguson, born 1826, who married James Gibbon (24.27); Map showing the House of Correction or City Jail where James Gibbon was incarcerated. It stood close to Fort St George in the centre of Calcutta (24.28)
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 351
BOX 24.1
THE PEPPE FAMILY William appears to have been a remarkable man, full of energy and foresight. Before any real progress could be made, it was essential to attract permanent settlers who would clear the jungle and cultivate the land. They came in increasing numbers, most of them former land holders in the neighbouring province of Oude, happy to escape the oppression of its Nabob through his landowners. Encouraged by nominal rents for an initial period, they started to clear the jungle, build themselves houses and plant rice. Mr Peppe made over to them what would in Britain be called small holdings within a large estate, with tenants paying rent and planting what crops they pleased, thus avoiding the disturbances which arose elsewhere where indigo farmers coerced farmers to grow indigo at a loss3,4. During this time three Peppe children were born: Annie in 1850 during a thunderstorm that burned down the stables and brought her into the world at seven months; then William Claxton Peppe, who in due course succeeded his father as manager of Birdpur; and lastly George. Michael Gibbon wrote: By 1857 the Peppes were living in a good house and enjoying the full confidence of the tenants. The jungle was fast vanishing, the land was becoming healthier with the drying up of the malarial marshes, and Birdpur seemed set for prosperity. But just then came the Indian Mutiny, with the family trapped in its midst. Delia and the children eventually made their way to Calcutta by boat while William Peppe battled with the mutineers alongside, and protected by his tenants, not a single one of whom deserted him. After many adventures, the Peppes returned to Birdpur, where the burned house was rebuilt, large-scale irrigation systems were installed, and the estate finally became a model for the whole of India. Following the Mutiny, William was given land by the Government ‘for Mutiny services’ in compensation for his assistance and losses. As he and his descendants bought other land and estates nearby, their land holdings steadily grew.
From left to right: William Peppe born 1822, William Claxton Peppe born 1852, George Peppe born 1856. Photograph taken in Aberdeen (24.20)
352 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
From left to right: Thomas Mitchell Gibbon born 1838; George Peppe; William Peppe; William Claxton Peppe. Photograph probably taken in Calcutta (24.21)
(ABOVE) After the Mutiny William Peppe lived in this house until Birdpur House was rebuilt (24.18) (R) The new post-mutiny Birdpur House as depicted by Elfie Peppe in 1943 (24.19)
Although when he started William was only a manager, he and his family progressively bought shares in the business when other shareholders, including the Gibbons, wished to sell out, so that the Gibbon interest progressively decreased. William also purchased two neighbouring estates so that his property extended to fifty square miles. William’s health deteriorated in old age and he died in 1889, apparently of sunstroke, on a voyage to Paris to consult doctors about his eyes. Delia died three years later at Birdpur. William is mentioned on a memorial at St Thomas’ Church in Gorakhpur; ‘He rendered valuable services during the troubled times of the Indian Mutiny’. Blunt9 in his note about the memorial says that ‘the Mutiny narrative only mentions him as burning a Muhammadan village (Mahua Dabar) whose inhabitants had murdered six British soldiers and officials, refugees from Fyzabad. He also rescued some other refugees’. Some modern Indian historians have shown that the village of Mahua Dabar had an interesting history as a refuge for handloom weavers in the early 18th Century who had fled from south Bengal, where the British were trying to stamp out the local textile industry and create a monopoly (including, rumour has it, cutting off the thumbs of weavers or the weavers cutting off their own thumbs to avoid being pressganged into winding silk). When William Peppe destroyed the village, it had about 5,000 inhabitants, but the British deliberately ensured that it was so completely destroyed that no trace of it remained and its existence was forgotten - until now. William also stated in support of his application for compensation and zamindar status after the Mutiny: On 26th June I attacked the village of Sauseepore, and destroyed it by fire… On 3rd July I destroyed the large village of Mowah Dabur … a few days after this I went and burned down the village of Tiljah. William had been appointed the Deputy Magistrate of Basti and given half the troops of the 12th Irregular Horse Cavalry which had been raised in October 1857 by a Captain Hockin. Nowadays these actions, which involved surrounding the villages and the slaughter of several hundred villagers, would be called war crimes but the British felt that these villages should not be allowed to escape unpunished. In 1859 William was rewarded by being granted the ownership of nearby Bheloungie Estate. Annie, the eldest daughter of William Peppe and Delia Claxton, married Major General Lionel Henry Planta de Hochpiel de Larpent in 1874 at Gorakhpur. Born in 1834, he was the grandson of John Larpent the Lord Chamberlain’s Inspector of Plays in London from 1778 to 1824.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 353
BOX 24.1 In 1851 Lionel Larpent joined the 21st Bengal Native Infantry of the Indian Army. During the Mutiny of 1857 he was at Narinji, where he was decorated. Ten years later he won a medal in the Abyssian Expedition. He commanded the 1st Bengal Native Infantry before becoming the Colonel of the 1st Brahams and retiring as a Major-General to Colchester, Essex. The Larpents were one of the extremely rich banking families in Calcutta caught up in the financial crash of 1847. Lionel’s cousin Sir Albert Larpent was a director of Cockerell and Larpent and of the Union Bank in Calcutta. Both collapsed because of the unregulated financial system where the savings part of the bank was not kept separate from the ‘casino’ or investment part where the potentially big profits lay. There had been several such crashes before and after 1847, but nothing had been learned and even the crash of 2008 was due to the same cause. Annie’s brother William Claxton Peppe married twice, his first wife dying at Birdpur after fewer than three years. His brother George assisted his father and later was manager at Bheloungie and Alidapur estates. He married Emily Frances Wadd, the daughter of a surgeon, in 1889 in Richmond, London. They filed for divorce in 1901 after Emily had an affair with a London stockbroker. George was given custody of their two sons Cyril and Frederick. After Indian independence most large estates were nationalised. As very little compensation was paid, the Peppes were forced to leave Birdpur.
Memorial to Lionel Larpent at Stanway, Essex. (FAR L) William Claxton Peppe, born 1852. Possibly taken in 1884 (24.22) (L) George Peppe, born 1856 (24.23)
Peppeganj Station, the local Birdpur railway link named after William Claxton Peppe (24.24)
354 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
A Birdpur shooting party (24.25)
BOX 24.2
INDIGO FARMING
Indigo is the rich blue dye produced mainly from two species of the Indigofera family, Indiofera tinctoria or Indiofera suffruticosa. Used principally as an essential dye for the textile industry, it has been in production in India from ancient times but became an important crop from early in the 18th Century. It offered high profits much of the time until the introduction of synthetic dyes in the 1870s. This encouraged many British men to go to India in the hope of making a good living as indigo planters. There were periods when indigo yielded little return but for those who persevered it was worth the effort. The rise of indigo coincided with the collapse in sugar production due to poor management and lack of knowledge6,16,18. The details of growing and processing indigo are well presented in Minden Wilson’s book of 19081 and in Thomas Machell’s journals10. Machell's vivid vignette of the processing is shown in Box 24.3. The harvested indigo plants were laid in large open concrete tanks. Branches of wood were laid criss-cross above them and water added. After fermentation, the workers in the tanks rhythmically agitated the mixture by swaying on the criss-cross wood. Later, steam engines were used. The sludge containing the dye was then pressed and dried and formed into small blocks before starting its long journey down to the sea. John Beames was sent as a Magistrate to Champaran and wrote an entertaining memoir of his time there among the indigo planters21. For planters of crops such as tea, coffee and indigo, he wrote: ...hospitality and heavy drinking were perhaps inherent in their lives, an essential antidote to the routine and monotony, a reward for missing out on what people in Britain might take for granted and a way of coping with the loneliness, the bad climate and their frequent ill health. In the winter months after the indigo had been dispatched, its planters liked to throw open the doors of their large bungalows and present open-hearted, lordly hospitality accompanied by swarms of servants and animals. Sometimes their parties would last for three or four days, riding and hunting in the light, followed by feasting on a grand scale, dancing, card-playing and of course, yarning into the night.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 355
BOX 24.2 The tea and indigo planters were almost all hostile or unpleasant to officials. They had acquired the sense of independence of pioneers, of men with a sort of frontier mentality, rugged individuals who were determined to run their lands and businesses without the interference of meddling officials. Many of them, especially the indigo planters, were essentially ‘Indianized’ – most did not dream of retiring to Britain, and sent their children to schools in Darjeeling, Lucknow and Calcutta – but Indianized also in a settler sense, as men confident that they knew the land, knew the people who lived on it, and knew how to run the one with the other. Notions of ‘native rights’ or social reform or any kind of trade union bargaining were completely alien to them. They were convinced that the only way to make the ryot or the ‘coolie’ work was coercion, a policy that all too often involved physical force. John Beames also wrote with unusual sympathy for the ryots: ‘the planters’ policy was to get rid as much as possible of the authority of the Magistrate, because it interfered with the despotic control which they considered essential to exercise over the ryots. This control, by these ‘ex-mates of merchant ships and ci-devant clerks in counting houses’, often degenerated into cruel oppression’. He did, however, say that Tom Gibbon was one of the few planters who stood by him (even though he was an ‘ex-mate on a merchant ship’). He also wrote that the original founders of the Champaran indigo ‘concerns’, as they were called, had made their fortunes and retired to England, leaving their concerns in the hands of managers, many of whom were rough, uneducated men, hard drinkers, loose livers and destitute of sympathy for the natives. A colleague of John Beames who was also exceptional in that he showed no special favours to the planters and treated the ryots as equals under the law was William Herschel. He was the magistrate at Nadia, Bengal at the centre of the Indigo Rebellion but he is best remembered for the discovery and development of fingerprints as a means of identification by himself and his Indian colleagues22. One of the features of nineteenth century indigo cultivation in India was the constant tension between land owners, tenants and processors, whether Indian or European. Very often violence was involved in the fight to secure land and an adequate supply of indigo plants. For much of the time British settlers were not allowed to own land in their own right, but had to operate through various levels of Indian interest in the land. From the very beginning, towards the end of the 18th Century, there are constant accounts of planters using coercion against the peasant growers in an attempt to increase the indigo acreage5,12. This culminated in the ‘Blue Mutiny’ in 1859, when the Indian growers in Bengal unanimously refused to plant indigo to be processed in the indigo factories3,5. Given the recent troubles of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, the Lieutenant Governor, Ashley Eden, set up a Commission of Inquiry which revealed widespread oppression and exploitation by processors and planters, both Indian and European. Growers were being forced into debt and fooled into signing long-term leases so that the processors could use their land and labour to grow indigo for their own profit. One of the statements made to the Commission said, ‘not a chest of Indigo reaches England without being stained with human blood’19. In a written Memorial the planters accused European missionaries of stirring up unrest4. However, the Governor came down firmly on the side of the peasant growers and new laws were passed. Indigo growing in Bengal virtually ceased for a period because the growers refused to produce it. Many of the planters switched to growing jute, became tea planters in Assam, which was then opening up, or moved their indigo operations north to Bihar, where conditions seemed to be somewhat more favourable. The land ownership system in Bihar was different, with more local landowners who could apply the necessary coercive power to the growers, and with no intervening money lenders to undermine the planters’ credit system, in which growers were encouraged to borrow money from the processors7. With many planters taking their aggressive ways with them to Bihar and continuing their exploitation there, the issue erupted again and again. In 1877 in northern areas including Sarun, Chupara and Tirhoot, indigo planters were accused of illegal dispossession and retention of land. Ashley Eden, still Lieutenant Governor, again dealt with these oppressive planters. A list of planters attending a meeting with Eden shows no Gibbons or their relatives, but they were certainly in the region and, we must assume, would have been no saints. The lessons from all this were not lost at Birdpur, where William Claxton (although himself an indigo grower in 1849) allowed the tenants to plant what they wished, which turned out to be almost wholly rice,
356 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Preparing the land for planting; British Museum model of an indigo factory (24.13); A typical planter’s bungalow; Loading the vats with the indigo plants.
These images and those on the following page are from an 1877 album by the French photographer Oscar Mallitte. They show some of the processes by which indigo was produced and the working world of the European planters (24.29)
and relationships were reasonably amicable. By contrast, in the neighbouring area of Champaran relations between planters and peasant farmers continued to be fraught and there was increasing agitation against oppression by planters. The militia or ‘bludgeon men’ of the landlords, British and Indian, were ruthless, while the Government imposed increased taxes making matters worse. It is argued that after the support of the indigo growers in suppressing the mutiny of 1857, the local magistrates and local administration, who shared the same social circle as the planters, tended to pay lip service only to the complaints5. A new phase now began with the Government determined to create a new colonial India, developing large scale investment projects such as roads, railways and irrigation systems and encouraging large farms and lucrative crops such as tobacco for export5,18. Growing indigo was never simply a British affair and increasing numbers of Indians and Anglo-Indians became involved, especially after a period of high prices in the 1860s. For example, in 1887 in the Azamgarh District north east of Patna, of 415 factories, 386 were owned by Indians who controlled about 80% of the productive capacity. Even at its peak there were probably no more than a few hundred British indigo farmers. By 1907 the economic situation for the peasant growers had become so intolerable that a planter was murdered. In 1914 and again in 1916 a mass movement arose when tens of thousands of farmers in Champaran, Bihar revolted against being forced to grow indigo and other cash crops for low prices instead of the food crops needed for their survival, especially during a time of famine2,14,17. These revolts took a different turn from the previous episodes described above when Ghandi cleverly organised passive resistance, which quickly became a mass movement characterised by a wonderful display of discipline and unity in the face of widespread evictions and sales of land owned by protesters. Although at the time the Government backed down, it is widely recognised that this movement played a key part in the eventual independence of India by showing how mass passive resistance could achieve political ends.
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 357
BOX 24.2 By the time of World War One, the traditional industry was in its death throes, doomed by the widespread use of synthetic dyes. From Britain the life of the indigo planter no doubt seemed, or even seems, a noble but hard one, producing wealth where there was little before and sustaining the Empire by producing export crops. Relationships with the locals were mixed. Machell10,11, when working in an indigo factory in 1846, writes about the great benevolence shown by the owner Mr Forlong towards his workers, and his establishment of schools and a hospital for the local population. Machell himself set up a school for his workers at another factory. While some growers may well have operated in such a benevolent and admirable manner20, a reading of detailed and disinterested histories such as that of Mishra2 reveals another side to the story of indigo growing, one of widespread manipulation, coercion, and lack of human empathy - a common story in the British Empire.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TL) Beating the indigo once water has been added to release the blue colour; Various devices were developed over the years to agitate the vats; Cutting the dried indigo into standard-sized cakes; Pressing the concentrated dye extract to dry it.
Indigo cakes ready for shipment
358 WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES : CH 24
BOX 24.3
OPENING DAY AT THE INDIGO FACTORY, 1846 (From the Journal of Thomas Machell 10,11) At last the preparations for the great indigo manufacturing business commenced at Patakabaree and everybody began to bestir themselves. Labourers (or coolies as we call them) came trooping into the factory, carts and boatswain (sic) were looked up in all quarters and put in order for the coming business. The vats were washed out, the Chinese pumps were erected, the pressing frames repaired and finally, all the workmen having arrived, a couple of goats were given to them with which they performed the ceremony of striking off their heads and sprinkling the blood on the vats which were about to be opened. They then sat down and soon had the animals cut up, dressed and eaten. Presently we heard the creaking and rumbling of the hackeries, loaded with indigo plants, the shouts and songs of the drivers, the shrill cries of the women and children and the restless clanking of the Chinese pumps. The whole factory presented a scene unlike anything I had ever seen before. Women and children flung sheafs of green indigo plants into the vats which were carefully and quickly stowed by the noisy coolies, the gratings spread over them and hove tight down by means of stout cross beams and iron pins and then as each vat was filled the reservoir sluice was opened and the water rushed in down narrow channels, but long before the last vat was filled the sun had disappeared in a red twilight glow. Illuminated by the light of many torches, the busy night scene was truly beautiful, the dusky figures of the labourers and torch bearers, the groups of women enveloped from head to foot in their white cloths looking like groups of spectres gliding amongst the dark trees, whilst here and there were dotted about the tall figures of the Burkandanses with their crimson turbans and sashes, their swords under their arms and shields on their backs. Oxen carts with their vociferous drivers kept up a constant bustle. Scattered in every direction were numerous little fires with dusky figures moving about them preparing the evening meal and at the end of the vats contemplating the busy scene stood the colossal figure of old Mooty the elephant quietly fanning himself. … as the first streaks of dawn appeared there was a sound of wooden mallets hammering at huge wooden plugs and then a rush of orange coloured water pouring into the lower vats. It is from this fermented Indigo juice that the dye is made by the dark skinned sons of India - the dye which may colour the purple robes of royalty or the blue coat of the charity boy, the fair forms of our northern beauties or the dark uniforms of the British soldier. This is the dye of the sailors’ blue jacket and labourers’ Sunday coat - a tide golden to those who far from here know not and care not for the toil and groanings of the thousands whose lives are spent in one long struggle of want and toil for the benefit of those who know not even of their existence. First the coolies flung out the plant from the steeping vats then one after another dropped into the beating vats into which the golden water was let off from the steeping vats. Now commenced the work of the day for to and fro round and round those men up to their waists in liquid now dark green stir these pools with their sticks. Now they worked it into waves. Now it foamed like a huge washing tub full of lather. Again you looked and blue streaks were seen on that lather and so they worked on now in silence, now breaking out into wild chants until the water turned to a dark inky blue - now the white plate was brought and we saw how the small indigo grains had formed … it was done and the purple skinned coolies emerged at last from their redolent bath. And so it goes on until the whole manufacturing season passes away when things are all put away pumps unrigg’d, vats clean’d and the manufacturing closed for the year. A typical small indigo factory in India. This 1863 watercolour by William Simpson is from India Ancient and Modern published in London in 1867 (24.30)
CH 24 : WILLIAM GIBBON & MARGARET FORBES 359
An official government map of Kenosha County drawn up in 1861 showing how the land was surveyed and laid out in one-mile square or 640 acre sections. Much of the Midwest of the USA was laid out in similar fashion. The Gibbons arrived in Kenosha and bought Government land shown on this map (25.1)
360 JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON : CH 25
CHAPTER 25
JAMES GIBBON AND SOPHIA GIBBON The second son of Alexander Gibbon and Janet Dalgarno (see Chapter 23) was James Gibbon, born in 1741 in Aberdeen. He married Sophia Gibbon from Stonehaven, born in 1745, the daughter of Alexander Gibbon, born in 1700, a ship’s carpenter, and Sophia Watt (see Chart 5).
Memorial, now smashed, to the family of James and Sophia Gibbon which lies under the east gable at Nigg Cemetery. The inscription reads: In memory of James Gibbon, Merchant in Aberdeen, who died 9th May 1806 aged 64 years and Sophia Gibbon his wife who died 16th August 1801 aged 56 years. Also their daughter Sophia Charlotte, who died at Inver 15th June 1804 aged 19 years and was buried within the walls of the old Cathedral, Dunkeld. Six of their children who died in infancy are interred near this spot. Also of James Gibbon, Merchant in Aberdeen, their son, who died 14th Decr 1848 aged 74 years. Also John McKenzie late shipmaster in Aberdeen who died 18th April 1812 aged 80 years, and his spouse Margaret Gibbon who died 16th August 1832 aged 87 years. Also of her brother Hugh lost at sea 29th August 1809 aged 31 years. Also of her second husband John A. Younghusband who died 18th Sept 1834 aged 63 years and of their children. James who died 19th March 1829 aged 20 years. John who died 29th June 1833 aged 21 years. Charles who died 29th Janry 1840 aged 33 years.
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 361
SEE CHART 23
CHART 25: GIBBON / GIBBON (SIMPLIFIED CHART)
James Gibbon 1741 - 1806 - M 1766 -
Sophia Gibbon 1745 - 1801
Alexander Gibbon 1773 - 1833
James Gibbon 1774 - 1848
[Ship Owner & Merchant]
[Ship Owner & Merchant]
Anne Gibbon 1777 - 1832 -M-
- M1 1815 -
David Scott 1774 - 1852
Jessie Ann Galloway c1797 - 1826
[Admiral, Royal Navy]
- M2 1830 -
Elizabeth Mary Martin c1780 - 1858
James Gibbon 1816 - 1816
Ann Gibbon 1817 - ?
James Gibbon 1819 - 1849 [Attorney, Guyana]
- M 1841 -
Alexander Galloway Gibbon 1820 - 1880 [Farmer, Wisconsin]
John Evelyn Green
-M-
[Presbyterian Minister]
Elspeth Spence 1835 - 1916
David Scott Gibbon 1858 - 1900 [School Principal]
Mary Louise Gibbon 1859 - 1931
William Sherman Gibbon 1865 - 1899
- M 1887 -
- M 1894 -
Mary Lincoln Bowker 1862 – 1954
Fannie J Smith 1866 - 1927
Smith Yule Hughes 1880 – 1958 Harriet Elizabeth Carroll 1883 - ?
Dorothy Stewart Gibbon 1892 - 1976
- M 1845 -
Seymour Clinton Keeler 1821 - 1899
James Yule 1818 - 1892
[Ship Captain]
[Farmer, Wisconsin]
Alexander Gibbon
Kenneth Reese Hughes 1884 – 1956
Lulu Mackintosh Lego 1885 - 1939
[Accountant]
David Scott Gibbon 1825 - 1826
Sophia Gibbon
Jessie Gibbon
[School Teacher]
- M 1908 -
Alexander Myron Gibbon 1896 – 1985
Jessie Ann Gibbon 1824 - 1854
-M-
Maude M Gibbon 1875 - 1924
[Professor of Agronomy]
- M 1906 -
Grace Gibbon 1888 – 1893
Harold de Mott Hughes 1882 - 1969
Sophia Gibbon 1822 - 1870
Margaret Emily Gibbon 1896 – 1957
[Confectionery Sales] - M1 1906 -
Lola G E Shamhart 1886 - ? - M2 1942 -
Ruth Woodford 1894 - ?
Elsie Florence Gibbon 1898 – 1968
Alexander Gibbon Hughes 1888 – 1959 [Farmer] - M 1911 -
Mabel Christopher 1892 - 1956
Ruby Beatrice Hughes 1889 - 1966 - M 1916 -
John Douglas Tothill 1888 - 1969 [Entomologist]
Isabella Gibbon 1781 - 1859
7 children died young
Sophia Charlotte Gibbon 1786 - 1804
- M 1810 -
Alexander Morice 1774 - 1814 [Sailor & Merchant]
Sophia Scott 1815 - 1831
David Scott 1817 - 1839
George Gordon Scott 1819 - 1908
[Bombay Marine]
[Admiralty Clerk]
Elspet Watt 1831 - 1914
- M 1873 -
-M-
Hugh David Hughes 1853 - 1940
Mary Susan Brandenburgh 1865 - 1949
Mabel Lloyd Hughes 1897 – 1959
Ivor Gordon Back 1879 – 1951
- M 1920 -
- M 1915 -
Howard Harper McKee 1890 - 1973
Bertha Winifred Nash 1887 - 1970
[Geologist]
[Army Surgeon]
Elizabeth McKilligan Cruickshank 1832 - 1912
[School Principal]
[Surgeon]
David Morice 1813 - 1897 - M 1876 -
Jessie Ann Yule 1852 - 1903
Caroline Elizabeth Skinner 1853 - 1931
David Morice 1812 - 1812
- M 1854 -
Alexander Gibbon Yule 1849 - 1925
James William Yule 1848 – 1881
James Gibbon Scott 1830 - 1872
- M 1878 -
[Farmer]
George David Scott 1855 - 1906 [Banker] - M 1888 -
Marianne Susannah Bradfield 1859 - 1929
Margaret Sophie Scott 1857 - 1939
Sophia Alexander Morice 1815 – 1876
Gordon Scott c1873 - ?
Ann Scott c1861 - ?
Jane Anne Morice 1858 - ?
[Stockbroker]
- M 1878 -
Francis Formby Back 1852 - 1913 [Merchant Banker]
Horace Aubrey Back 1880 – 1916
Howard Chaplin Back 1882 - 1946
Francis Leonard Back 1885 - 1924
[Army Lieutenant]
[Insurance Broker]
[Commander, Royal Navy]
Ebie Back 1886 - 1954 - M1 1931 -
George Jefford Fowler 1858 - 1937 [Lawyer]
Constance Back 1889 - 1971 -M 1910 -
Sidney Desmond Lea Smith 1880 - 1957 [Insurance Broker]
- M2 1940 -
Herbert Seymour Hatfeild 1888 - 1950 [Army Major]
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 363
James’ will gives a clear idea of his interests and wealth. He owned shares in one ‘ship’, four brigantines and a sloop (Diligence, Daphne, Dolphin, Minerva, Lynx, and Ruby) as well as shares in the Aberdeen Whalefishing Company and the whaling ships Hercules and Latona (see Box 25.2 for an insight into the Aberdeen whaling industry), amounting to over £4,000, a considerable sum for the time. He also owned a third of his company James Forbes & Company Rope and Sail Manufacturers and the rope works on the links, the sandy dunes near the entrance to Aberdeen harbour. He had a shipbuilding yard at Footdee, on land previously occupied by Arthur Gibbon, born in 1674, whose firm Arthur Gibbon & Sons closed in 1788 with the lease passing down to James. James was active in the Shipmaster Society9 (see Chapters 9 and 22) and was President in 1794 and 1802.
(ABOVE) An early print of rope-making. Sailing ships required rope for anchors and rigging, and could easily carry with them 35 kilometres (around 20 miles) of rope. Because the spinning of the fibres and the twisting of the yarns and strands had to be done in a straight line, the length of the rope was set by the length of the workshop. This resulted in strange looking narrow buildings which were typically 350 to 450 metres long by the 18th and 19th centuries. (L) Map of Aberdeen harbour area showing the rope works on the links which required a very long building (25.2)
The Gibbon ropewalk would have looked like this. In 1811 an advert in the Aberdeen Press and Journal called for apprentices aged 12 to 14 to join the rope and sail-making business of James Gibbon & Co.
This picture of a Belfast ropewalk was taken in 1949, showing how the basic technology had changed very little.
James and Sophia had twelve children, eight of whom had died by the time of James' death. The four surviving children, Alexander, James Junior, Anne and Isabella, each received a quarter share of any money realised from his shares. All the property was bequeathed to Alexander, with James inheriting if Alexander died. The two sons ran the family business in Aberdeen and embraced a wide range of commercial activities. In 1808 the lease for the shipbuilding yard at Footdee was advertised for sale with thirty-seven years still to run. This suggests that James’ two sons decided to come out of active shipbuilding. However, they held on to other Footdee land and houses inherited from Arthur, and both sons lived on the Quay. Alexander and James moved with the times and diversified their business interests considerably, as shown in Alexander’s will of 1833. He had shares in William Pirie & Co., woollen manufactures at Gordon’s Mills in Aberdeen. This reflects the continuing export market for Aberdeen woollen goods (which were initially hand-knitted by outworkers in outlying villages, including Stonehaven). Alexander also had shares in John Duffus & Co. iron founders and blacksmiths, who provided parts for the steam vessels starting to be built in Aberdeen. He had shares in the first two steam vessels built in Aberdeen, the Queen of Scotland and the Duke of Wellington, part ownership of two sailing vessels, and shares in James Forbes & Co, rope and sail makers. In 1824 Alexander and James sold all the equipment from the Rope Works on the Links owned by James Gibbon & Co.
364 JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON : CH 25
(L-R) A painting of the Queen of Scotland the first steamship to be built in Aberdeen; An advert in the Aberdeen Journal in 1830 for the regular steamship service to London (25.3)
The Gibbons' business interests expanded further when Alexander married Jessie Galloway in 1815. Twenty-four years younger than him, she was the daughter of a Glasgow merchant connected to the Ship Bank, Glasgow’s oldest bank, started in 1750 to help finance the tobacco trade. Such banks were essential for overseas trade, facilitating the transfer of money around the world. Alexander had lent money to Galloway, Lawson & Co., a firm in Demerara (now Guyana) which probably involved his in-laws, the Galloway family. One of Jessie’s brothers, Andrew Galloway, was an attorney in Georgetown, Demerara. It has been estimated that the Scots population of Guyana by 1810 was about 1,000 out of a total of less than 3,000 Europeans. The local crayfish were known as ‘Scotchmen’ for their habit of ‘clinging one to the other’10. From 1810 coffee and cotton diminished in importance in Guyana and sugar production increased by 25 per cent annually for the next ten years. Tobacco and sugar from North America were common cargos of the various Gibbons who sailed across the Atlantic, although in most cases the business was probably that of rum (but certainly involving slavery, as did so much of the south Atlantic trade). Alexander had also lent small amounts of money to William Cockerill, the surgeon in India, and to Robert Beaumont, the mining engineer then in Wales, both relatives on Sophia’s side of the Gibbons (see Chapter 9). The firm of Alexander and James Gibbon was dissolved in 1835. Jessie died in 1826 aged 28 and Alexander married again in 1830, to Elizabeth Martin, the daughter of a merchant in Rotterdam where she was born. Alexander died three years later and Elizabeth died in 1858 at Edinburgh.
The gable wall of St Fittock’s Church at Nigg showing two Gibbon memorials in neglected state. Photo taken in 1999.
The inscription of the memorial on the right, now completely illegible, read: In memory of Jessie Ann Galloway, the wife of Alexander Gibbon, Merchant in Aberdeen, who died 21st April 1826 in the 29th year of her age. Also of the said Alexander Gibbon who departed this life at Aberdeen on the 18th day of August 1833 in the 61st year of his age and also of their children, James their first child died 6th November 1816 aged 4 months. David Scott their seventh child 11th May 1826 aged 9 months.
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 365
Five of Alexander’s children made it to adulthood. Ann, born in 1817, married a Protestant minister, the Rev John Evelyn Green, who for a period had the remote parish of Ahamlish, Sligo, in Ireland. We know nothing about their children. Ann’s brother James, born in 1819, became a customs officer in Inverness and then, possibly through his Galloway relatives, in Georgetown, Guyana, where he was an attorney-atlaw. He died there in 1849 leaving a widow and son. He probably married a lady called Johnson. Their son, C. J. H. Gibbon, was born around 1843 and married a lady called Elizabeth, born around 1844 at Berbice, Guyana, who died after 1881. Alexander’s three youngest children all emigrated to Wisconsin in the USA. Alexander Galloway Gibbon, born in 1820, his wife Elspeth (or Elsie) Spence, various Spence in-laws, and his sister Sophia, born in 1822, all arrived in New York around July 1838. They settled in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier known as Westport, just north of Chicago, where the first settlers had arrived in 1835 and where land was available1,2,3.
(ABOVE L) The Gibbon house in Kenosha (25.4) (ABOVE R) Elspeth Spence, a daughter and the grandchildren (25.5) (FAR L) Alexander Galloway Gibbon (25.6) (L) Elspeth Spence, who married Alexander (25.7)
Alexander bought and farmed an 80-acre plot. He and Elspeth had seven children. One son, David Scott Gibbon, born in 1858 and named after his uncle who died young, became a school principal. He married Mary Bowker and they had three children. His brother William Sherman Gibbon, born in 1865, married Fannie Smith. William died in 1899 and Fannie was working as a hotel manager in 1927, when she died in Chicago. They had two daughters. Alexander and David now have descendants in various parts of Midwest USA. Their other sister Maude became a school teacher. Alexander Galloway Gibbon’s sister Sophia Gibbon, born in 1822, married Seymour Clinton Keeler, a steamboat captain on the Great Lakes who often called at nearby Westport which was then becoming an important shipping port. They married in Racine, Wisconsin in 1846 and moved to Onandoga County, New York State, where Seymour continued to be employed as a ship’s captain. They had two children there, one of whom married and had children. Another sister, Jessie Ann Gibbon, born in 1824, came out separately to join her siblings at Kenosha. She married James Yule, born in Rathen, Aberdeenshire, who emigrated with his parents to Somers, near Kenosha. On his marriage he bought 80 acres of land from the Federal Government at Millburn, Illinois, just south of Kenosha, where his brother William also bought 120 acres. Newly colonised states such as Illinois and Wisconsin were surveyed by the Federal Government in order to divide the land into small lots that could be sold or otherwise divested to raise funds for the federal government and to encourage settlement. The work was done using the Public Land Survey System which divided the land into sixmile square townships and one-mile square sections, making a whole section consisting of 640 acres4,5.
366 JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON : CH 25
Jessie and James had three children before Jessie died aged 30 in 1854. James remarried in 1860 to Mary Williamson, born in Scotland in 1837. They had several more children. James’ brother George worked for the famous Bain Wagon Company (see Box 25.1). James, the elder son of Jessie and James, became a School Principal. He married Lottie Skinner in 1873 and they had one son who died aged ten. James junior’s brother Alexander married Mary Brandenburgh in 1854. In 1910 we find them in Big Timber, Montana, where Alexander is the City Marshall. By 1920 they have moved to near Spokane, Washington, where Alexander has taken up fruit farming. He died in 1925 and five years later we find Mary employed as a maid in Spokane. Alexander’s sister Jessie married a farmer, Hugh David Hughes, and they had a family of six. The eldest, Smith Yule Hughes, married Elizabeth Carroll. In 1930 he was living in Utica, New York, and was the New York State Manager for carbide lighting (Carbide street lighting was used in areas where there was no electrification). The second son, Harold de Mott Hughes, became a distinguished agronomist and eventually Professor of Agronomy at Iowa State University. Iowa State in Ames is an example of one of the Land Grant Universities established by the American Government to promote education and extension in each state. Several, like Iowa State, are famous for high quality agricultural research. The Land Grant system also offered free higher education to anyone in the state. His brother Kenneth married twice, sold confectionery in a candy shop in Indianapolis and died in Florida. His brother Alexander was a dairy farmer at Antioch, Illinois, where he raised a large family with his wife Mabel.
The campanile at Iowa State University, which plays music using a tower of bells. Photo taken in 1965.
Jessie and Hugh's elder daughter Ruby married John Douglas Tothill, an entomologist with a fascinating career starting in Fredericton in Canada. They later moved to Fiji where John was with the British Colonial Service studying the Levuana moth, a pest which was destroying the coconut trees and hence the copra crop, a major industry. The devastation was only reduced when, in 1925, a pioneering biological control program was implemented by John which permanently reduced the moth population to negligible levels. This involved introducing a parasitic fly from Malaya which luckily, as it turned out, did not affect other parts of the ecosystem. He later became the Director of Agriculture for Uganda and had a spell in the Sudan before retiring to Scotland. He was awarded a CMG. They have numerous descendants. In 1956 Ruby published a book about her Hughes relatives called People Behind You. The last child of Jessie and Hugh was Mabel, born in 1897. She married Howard McKee, a geologist and engineer specialising in petroleum work. They lived in Queens, New York, and had five children.
(L-R) John Tothill, entomologist, who married Ruby Yule; The Levuana moth, controlled by John Tothill using a parasitic fly from Malaya. This is an example of the excellent network of agricultural research within the British Empire.
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 367
We now return to Scotland and the children of James Gibbon and Sophia. Anne, born in 1777, married Rear Admiral David Scott7, who was born in 1774 in Johnshaven, Kincardineshire. Scott entered the Navy as a Volunteer in 1793 and went directly to the West Indies, where he served on shore at the reduction of St Domingo, and was ‘severely wounded in the head at Tiburon’. On his return to England in 1794 he was promoted Master’s Mate in the Daedalus and sailed in charge of a convoy of transports retreating through Holland laden with supplies for the Army. Impeded by wind and ice, two months elapsed before the coast was reached. When the pilot ran the Frigate aground, Scott took personal charge of the convoy, conducting it safely to its destination. Scott next sailed in the Unicorn and in 1796, when cruising in company with the Santa Margarita off the Isles of Scilly, encountered the French frigates Tamise and Tribune and the corvette Legere. The French ran, the British pursued. After 14 hours the Santa Margarita captured the Tamise and after another ten hours the Unicorn captured the Tribune. In 1797 when Acting Lieutenant on the Endymion, Scott fought an action against the French ship Brutus. The following year he was severely injured when clearing away a mizzenmast. In 1800 he joined the Arethusa, serving in the Channel, convoying East Indiamen from St. Helena. In 1803 he became the senior Lieutenant of the Circe, which that year was wrecked on the Lemon and Ower shoals in the North Sea whilst in pursuit of the enemy. The Court Martial exonerated Scott from all blame and he was told by the president that several members of the court were ‘desirous of applying for him’. Ill health, however, kept him from immediate service and he joined the Sea Fencibles at Cardigan for a period. In 1804 he joined the Bellerophon, in which he was to fight at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. The ship achieved fame by successfully fighting simultaneously two French ships, the Monarca and the Aigle. Scott was injured with a splinter wound to the head and was obliged to remain on shore from April 1806 to October 1807.
Capture of the French Frigate La Tribune by HMS The Unicorn on the 8th June 1796.Painted by Nicholas Pocock (25.8)
368 JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON : CH 25
He was then appointed First Lieutenant of the Bedford, which in November of that same year escorted the Portuguese Royal Family in their sudden flight to Brazil. For this Scott became the first British subject to have received the Portuguese Cross of the Tower and Sword. He was again accidentally injured on the Brazilian Coast in 1808 this time nearly losing one of his legs and thus being forced to return to England. In 1809 he was appointed Flag Lieutenant to the Naval Commander of the abortive Walcheren Expedition and had sole charge of getting the huge flotilla of troop transports into the Scheldt. Promoted Commander in 1811, he received the command of the Morgiana, protecting trade on the North American Coast, and lost not one ship of the many convoys he escorted. There were frequent encounters with American vessels. During one such encounter Scott himself was struck down by lightning and for more than an hour lay insensible. In 1814 he was posted Captain of the Centurion, at Halifax. He returned to England in 1815, retired officially in 1846, and in 1850 advanced to Rear-Admiral. He died two years later at Berryden House, Aberdeen. He had always kept his base in Aberdeen. The Scott family gravestone is in St Nicolas' Graveyard in Aberdeen.
Rear-Admiral Scott’s medals, sold in 2015 for £34,000. They are a Naval General Service Medal with a clasp for Trafalgar and an Order of the Tower and Sword awarded by the Portuguese Royal Family after he helped escort them safely to Brazil.
The first daughter of Anne and David, Sophia, died aged 16. Her brother David Scott, born in 1817, joined the Bombay Marines and died in India aged 22 years while attached to the East India Company brig Palinurus. The third son James Gibbon Scott, born in 1830, became a gardener. The second son, George Gordon Scott, born in 1819, became a Senior Admiralty Clerk in London, with a short spell at Portsmouth. In 1854, he married Elizabeth Cruickshank, and they had four children. Both of the sons went into finance. The younger, Gordon, born in 1873, became a stockbroker and the elder, also George, was a banker. In 1888, while stationed in Hong Kong, George married Minnie Bradfield in Shanghai, where her father worked. She had been born in New Orleans. George’s eldest daughter, Margaret Sophie Scott, born in 1857, married Francis Formby Back, a London merchant banker with Back and Manson and one of the proprietors of The Egyptian Gazette, a weekly tabloid in English. He died in Cairo in 1913. They had several children. The eldest, Ivor Gordon Back, was a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War One and served at the 4th London General Hospital, the 54th General Hospital in France, and as a surgical specialist at Catterick Camp, Yorkshire. He later became a distinguished surgeon in London, being elected surgeon to St George’s in 1918, and becoming consulting surgeon on his retirement in 1938. Among Ivor Back’s fashionable circle of acquaintances was the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, and he had his portrait painted by Sir William Orpen. He was described by Gould and Uttley6 as: A typical example of the nepotism that was rife at St George’s. He was arrogant and theatrical by nature but nevertheless the pampered darling of the highest social strata. It was outside his professional duties that he became famous. Tall with a striking personality he had a high conceit of himself and made sure that everyone knew that he Ivor Back by William Orpen (25.9) was directly descended from the great Duke of Wellington albeit through his grandmother. Ivor’s brother Horace studied law at Brasenose College, Oxford, before practising law in Cairo from 1902 to 1911. When World War One started he enlisted as an Able Seaman in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve before being commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Regiment. He was posted to the 1st Battalion in France in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. He was killed just nine days later while commanding a fatigue party clearing the ‘Cork Alley’ trench to the east of High Wood. He is buried in Flatiron Copse Cemetery, Mametz.
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 369
The next brother, Howard became an insurance broker and spent most of his career in New York, becoming an American citizen. The fourth brother, Francis Leonard Back, joined the Royal Navy as a Midshipman in 1900 and spent some time with torpedo boats. His career took a knock when he was found guilty at a court martial of negligently stranding his ship, Torpedo Boat 059, during night manoeuvers off the Isle of Wight. However, he became a Commander and while on the Revenge battleship took part in bombarding the Belgian coast, attempting unsuccessfully to attack submarine bases and guns firing on the British army. When Revenge was damaged, Francis was appointed to the cruiser Active and then to the Drake. The latter was torpedoed and sank in Ratlin Sound, Northern Ireland. Five days later Francis was given command of the Aubretia, a submarine decoy vessel or Q-ship, where he remained for the rest of the war. He was awarded a DSO. He was involved in the Dwina River campaign of 1918-1919 in North Russia, where British troops were sent to fight the Bolsheviks. When this campaign proved unsuccessful Back covered the evacuation in September 1919. His last posting before he retired in 1921 was in the Mediterranean. He died in 1924. The medals of Commander Francis Leonard Back, which include a DSO and a Legion of Honour.
Francis’ sister Ebie Back married Sir George Jefford Fowler, a solicitor. He moved from Exeter to London and served as Chief Magistrate for Kingston upon Thames for thirty years. He retired as senior partner of the legal firm Fowler, Legg & Co. When he died in 1937, he left over £1 million8, although over 40 per cent of this had to be paid as estate duty. Ebie later married Herbert Hatfeild, a career officer in the 1st Kings Dragoon Guards. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1912 and when World War One started his regiment was at Lucknow, India. It was sent to France and saw action at the Battle of Festubert and the Second Battle of Ypres in May 1915 and the Battle of Morval in September 1916, returning to India in October 1917. It is not clear what Herbert Hatfeild did during these years. In 1919 he was involved with the Northern West Field Force involvement in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. It seems that he was then sent to Iraq. After World War One the British had established a colonial government to ensure supplies of Iraqi oil, the British Navy increasingly being powered by oil instead of coal. A major rebellion was suppressed in 1920 but hostilities continued until 1922. This was an extremely nasty episode in British military history. The insurrection was brutally, but successfully, suppressed by the bombing of civilians from the air. When he retired from the Army as a Major, Herbert farmed in Kent and acted as the Deputy Lieutenant for the County. Ebie’s sister Constance, born in 1889, married Sidney Lea Smith, a London insurance broker. The second daughter of Sophia and James Gibbon was Isabella, born in 1781. She married Alexander Morice, whose father was an Advocate and Sheriff Substitute for the county of Aberdeen. They were married in Rio de Janeiro on 8th July 1810, on board H.M.S. Foudroyant, the flagship of Admiral Michael de Courcy and famous for having been Admiral Nelson’s flagship. Alexander had gone to sea aged fourteen, had become a naval First Officer in the East India Company. He served on board the Hindustan and in 1792 made an extended visit to China with Lord Macartney’s embassy to the Emperor of Japan. The Macartney Embassy was the first diplomatic mission to China, sent by the British Government in an attempt to open up the country to British trade and create a market for British manufactured goods - not
370 JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON : CH 25
simply opium - although this became the primary commodity supplied by the East India Company (see Box 26.4). Macartney eventually met the Emperor but the mission failed in all its trading objectives with no trading base being granted nor any increased access to the Chinese market. Both countries had little understanding of the other although the British returned with detailed observations of what they saw. The story thereafter leads on to the Opium Wars and the humiliation of the Chinese. Alexander Morice, being a junior officer on the Hindustan, would have been restricted to his ship and would not have taken part in the long trek beyond Peking to meet the Emperor. Alexander later became a merchant in Brazil and London before returning to Aberdeen where he was a wine merchant. Isabella died in 1859 and Alexander in 1814, both in Aberdeen. Their son David, born in 1813, studied medicine at Edinburgh and in 1835 became an Assistant-Surgeon in the 60th Regiment of Royal Rifles. In 1837, while serving in Gibraltar, he was sent for two months to Malta to help with a cholera epidemic that had broken out. He retired in 1845 on half-pay. In 1876, at the age of 63, he married Elspet (Elsie) Watt, a blacksmith’s daughter from Boharm parish in Banffshire, who was aged 44. David died in 1897 in London and Elspet in 1914 in Wales. They are mentioned on a gravestone in St Nicholas’ Churchyard, Aberdeen. Elspet had a daughter, Jane Ann Morice, born in 1858. Her birth certificate lists the child as illegitimate but an amendment states that in a later court action that year, instigated by Elspet, the court confirmed that the father was Dr David Morrice (sic), whose address at the time of his birth was Aberdeen Lunatic Asylum. In 1911 Jane Ann was a principal teacher for Cardiff Council, unmarried and living with her widowed mother in Dinas, Powys. The last daughter of Isabella Gibbon and Alexandra Morice was Sophia Alexander, who became a nun in London in a nursing sisterhood and was known as ‘Sister Morris’. She died in 1876. The Sisterhood was that of St Mary and St John which in 1872 moved to the St Joseph’s Hospice for Incurables in Kensington.
The East Indiaman Hindustan off the coast of China by Thomas Luny c1793. This was the ship in which Alexander Morice visited China.
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 371
BOX 25.1
THE BAIN WAGON COMPANY The wagon train was key to the westward expansion of the USA. A large number of families, each with a wagon, or ‘prairie schooner’, would combine together and follow one of the established trails to the west. Supplying these wagons and also wagons for general rural use became a major industry and the Bain Company at Kenosha steadily grew to become the largest wagon manufacturer in the world5,6 having begun as a small wagon repair and manufacturing business. George Yule, the brother-in-law of Jessie Ann Gibbon, was first employed there aged 19. He had arrived from Aberdeenshire three years previously in 1843. In 1852 the company was bought by Edward Bain and renamed the Bain Wagon Company. As demand increased for wagons for farm transport and westward migration, the company grew rapidly.
A typical image of wagons heading west, in this case in Oregon. Notice how many people walked.
An early wagon train, in this case pulled by oxen. Oxen were slower but more reliable and tougher than mules or horses and could eat poor grass. About half to three-quarters of pioneer wagons were pulled by oxen.
Kenosha was within easy reach of the rich prairieland of the Midwest now being converted to growing crops and creating a huge requiremant for farm transport. In 1865 1,500 wagons were produced. Domestically and internationally the Bain Wagon was recognized as a superior product, with U.S. government contracts requiring that all wagons be ‘equal to the Bain’ in quality. By the end of the 19th century, the company was able to advertise that it produced ‘the best wagon in the world’. The company’s location in Kenosha near Lake Michigan and the Chicago & North Western Railroad allowed easy access to shipping. Bain also shrewdly established one of the nation’s first sales agencies in St. Joseph, Missouri, a city which was the point of departure for many of the westward travellers – as was Kenosha. George Yule was appointed Superintendent of the new company. He held this post until 1882 when the company was reincorporated and he became Vice President. When Bain died in 1898, the Yules bought a controlling interest with George as President and two of his sons in senior positions. By 1916 the company, helped by war-time demand, was producing 18,000 wagons a year, employing 450 men and occupying ten acres along the Kenosha Harbour. From this point, unable to adapt to compete with motor vehicles, the company rapidly declined. It is interesting that none of the horse-and-cart companies ever made cars or lorries.
(ABOVE) The Bain Wagon Company factory, Kenosha 1892 (25.10); (ABOVE R) An interior view of the factory (25.11)
372 JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON : CH 25
The Bain Company logo.
A typical Bain wagon.
BOX 25.2
WHALING AND THE GIBBONS Since the Bronze Age Scots have hunted whales, but in the mid-18th century demand was stimulated by the early effects of industrialization, increasing demand for whalebone in women’s fashions, and for oil in soap manufacturing, textiles, and domestic, industrial and public lighting. The Aberdeen whaling industry started in 1752 when a company, the Aberdeen Whale Fishery, was formed and sent out two ships to Greenland11,12. Traditional whaling involved harpooning or spearing whales using small, open whale boats, each with six or seven men. The dead whale would be towed alongside the ship and blubber cut off, which would be cleaned on shore or on board, stored in the hold in casks and melted down to produce oil13. In 1783 another company, the Aberdeen Whale Fishery Company, was formed with James Gibbon, born 1741, as a partner. They had two vessels: the Hercules, 400 tons, and the Latona. That year owing to severe weather the Hercules was in the south of England almost until the commencement of the whaling season. As a vessel of this size could not enter Aberdeen harbour save at high spring tides, Gibbon requested that, should the vessel arrive during low tide, she might be allowed to clear for Greenland without undergoing measurement, and that the tonnage as reckoned by the London authorities might be accepted for the time being10. The Aberdeen Journal of 1 Dec 1783 had the following advert: ‘Wanted. For a ship to sail from Aberdeen next season, several stout lads as apprentices in the Greenland trade who have been accustomed to the oar and if they have been at sea the better. Apply James Gibbon, Aberdeen’. Blubber was melted down in Aberdeen, which aroused some opposition. A letter to the Journal in 1784 regrets that this could not be done over the river and away from the town, given the ‘intolerable stench’ in the neighbourhood of the new pier. Adverts placed in Aberdeen newspapers by the Gibbons offer the residue of blubber after processing, for field manure. In 1786 the Gibbons sold whale oil, seal oil, whalebone and sealskins. In 1790 The Times reported the arrival of ‘Hercules, Captain Gibbon from the Fishery at Davis Straits with five fish yielding 185 common butts of blubber’. Despite the French privateers and the press gangs, the two ships continued to catch whales through the 1790s. In 1796 the Aberdeen Journal announced that James Gibbon at the Shore in Aberdeen would auction 100 tons of whale oil and 10 tons of whole whalebone. In 1801 the Latona and the Hercules plus two other ships imported over 326 tons of whale blubber into Aberdeen. Five years later five whalers returned to Aberdeen with the produce of over 80 whales and about 50 seals. The capture for 1808 amounted to 120 whales. In 1811 the Diamond of Aberdeen, built in Quebec and under the command of William Gibbon Junior, born in 1772, was engaged to go to the Greenland Sea the following season. In 1812 some shares in the business were offered for sale with applications to Alexander Gibbon, manager of the company. In 1817, 688 tons of oil were imported. The Aberdeen whaling industry continued until the 1850s although the peak was over some time before this owing to the dramatic decline in the whale population. The Scottish whaling industry continued until 1953.
(TOP L-R) Print showing the dangers of early whaling; North West Whale Fishery. 1789 Aquatint by Robert Dodd. The Gibbons did most of their whaling in the Davis Straits until the whales disappeared through overfishing; Harbour at Footdee, Aberdeen in 1859. Whale jawbones were seen all over Aberdeen. This is Alexander Hall's house, the shipbuilder whose firm was a continuation of one run earlier by the Gibbons. (L) Cross section of a whaling ship showing how the barrels of blubber, oil and other whale products were stored.
CH 25 : JAMES GIBBON & SOPHIA GIBBON 373
An imaginative drawing designed for the British public, eager for romantic images of brave British forces defending the Empire. The Volunteer Cavalry consisted of planters and European officials, including some in this book (26.1)
374 CHARLES GIBBON & MARGARET NICOL : CH 26
CHAPTER 26
CHARLES GIBBON AND MARGARET NICOL Many of the Gibbons made their careers and lives in India as servants of the all-powerful East India Company, which dominated every activity, whether commercial or military, until the Indian Mutiny (see Box 26.3). Many of the Gibbons discussed here worked in private enterprises such as indigo farming, but under the aegis of the East India Company, and after 1859, of the British Government administration. Later generations diversified into all kinds of other activities, notably with the Army in India. Here we focus on one of the two main branches who became indigo farmers: descendants of Charles Gibbon, born in 1747, and Margaret Nicol.
Memorial to the family of Charles Gibbon and Margaret Nicol on the east gable at St Fittock’s Church, Nigg. The inscription is now almost obliterated but once read: Sacred to the memory of Charles Gibbon Merchant in Aberdeen who departed this life on the 17th September 1800 aged 52, and of his first wife Margaret Nicol who departed this life on the 17th November 1779 aged 31 years: and of his second wife Rachel Susan Farquhar who departed this life on the 18th of Febry 1812 aged 42 years. Also of Mary daughter of Chas Gibbon by his first wife, who departed this life on the 25th December 1783 in her 5th year: all of whose remains are deposited near this spot.
CH 26 : CHARLES GIBBON & MARGARET NICOL 375
SEE CHART 23
CHART 26: GIBBON / NICOL (SIMPLIFIED CHART)
Charles Gibbon 1747 - 1800 [Ship Captain, Owner & Merchant] - M 1775 -
Margaret Nicol 1748 - 1779
James Gibbon c1775 - 1851
Mary Gibbon 1779 - 1783
[Indigo Planter] - M 1808 -
Mary Mackintosh 1777 - 1873
Eleanora Sophia Gibbon 1809 - 1890
Rachel Susan Gibbon 1809 - 1853
- M 1827 -
James Cosserat 1809 - 1874
Elizabeth Gibbon c1811 - ? - M 1 1834 -
- M 1833 -
Andrew Anderson 1792 - 1861
- M 1834 -
William Nisbet 1811 - 1835 [Lt, Indian Army]
[Indigo Planter & Opium Agent]
Ann Gibbon 1813 - 1855
James Gibbon c1821 - c1857 [Indigo Planter]
Ralph Smyth 1812 -1886 [Colonel, Indian Army]
- M2 1838 -
William Cooke 1809 - 1873
[Indigo Planter]
[Indigo Planter]
Eliza Ellen Nisbet 1835 - 1870
Mary Elizabeth Cooke 1839 - 1896
Claudine Cooke 1842 - 1921
- M 1852 -
- M 1858 -
- M 1860 -
Francis Booth Norman 1830 - 1901
Edward Oakes 1823 - 1874
John McNeill Walter 1820 - 1898
[General, Indian Army]
[Colonel, Indian Army]
[General, British Army]
Thomas Anderson 1828 - ?
James Gibbon Anderson 1830 - 1907
Mary Eliza Anderson 1832 - ?
[Civil Servant & Opium Agent] - M 1861 -
Elizabeth Smith Cochran 1841 - 1925
376 CHARLES GIBBON & MARGARET NICOL : CH 26
William Ernest Cooke 1844 - 1848
Harriet Anne Adelaide Cooke 1846 - 1927
Mary Elizabeth Randall Turner 1845 - 1890
Fanny Gibbon Turner 1849 - 1907
- M 1867 -
- M 1873 -
- M 1863 -
Lewis Pryce Delves Broughton 1836 - 1902
Albert James Leppoc Cappell 1836 - 1924
[Administrator General, India]
[Head, Indian Telegraphs]
George Carogan Thomson 1835 - 1896 [Colonel, Indian Army]
Lucy Maria Anderson 1834 - 1863
Mary Elizabeth Anderson 1837 - 1918
John Walker Anderson 1839 – 1870
Eleanora Sophia Anderson 1842 - 1920
- M 1852 -
- M 1856 -
- M 1866 -
George Augustus Williams 1829 - 1897
Robert Hope Moncrieff Aitken 1828 - 1887
[Police Superintendent, India]
[General, Indian Army]
[Colonel, Indian Army]
- M 1868 -
Mary Elizabeth Cosserat 1845 - 1909
Herbert Baring Harington 1831 - 1906 [Civil Servant, India]
Mary Jane Gibbon 1825 - 1862
Jemima Gibbon 1827 - 1919
Leonarda Zeigler Gibbon 1829 - 1904
- M 1845 -
- M 1853 -
- M 1848 -
Frank Turner 1813 - 1890
Peloquin Cosserat c1824 - 1884
Charles Frederick Smith 1822 - 1877
[General, Indian Army]
[Opium Agent]
[General, Indian Army]
Elinor Hay Turner 1851 - 1884
Annie Mactier Turner 1855 - 1946
- M 1882 -
- M 1881 -
William Rice M. Holyroyd 1836 - 1913
Charles Clavell Hore 1851 - 1925
[Lieutenant Colonel, Indian Army]
[Stockbroker & Barrister]
Frank Mackinnon Turner 1857 - 1907 -M-
Lucie Manners Smith c1858 - ?
William Minto Gibbon 1831 - 1863
Margaret Euphemia Gibbon 1833 - 1899
[Captain, Indian Army]
- M 1853 -
- M 1854 -
John Crawford Langford 1829 - 1908
Emma Helen Flyter 1837 - 1866
James Gibbon Turner 1859 - 1950 [General, Indian Army]
Susan Alexandrina Turner 1861 - 1944
- M 1887 -
Blanche Rose Boileau 1864 - 1951
- M1 1883 -
[Army Captain]
Alfred Crenville Burne Turner 1866 - 1948
3 other children
[Lieutentant Colonel, Indian Army]
Edward Blomfield 1853 - 1885 [Church Curate] - M2 1893 -
Robert John Maude 1853 - 1906 [Major, British Army]
Charles Frank Anderson 1845 - 1883
William Sturrock Anderson 1848 – 1918
[Police Superintendent, India]
[Major, British Army] -M-
Elizabeth Annabella Montgomery 1861 – 1937
5 other children
Lucy Susan Trevennon Cosserat 1855 - 1941 - M 1878 -
William Mackenzie c1848 - ? [Indigo Planter]
Mary J Cosserat 1863 - 1948
Annie Smith 1854 - 1934 - M1 1875 -
Barry Francis Domville 1844 – 1894 - M2 1895 -
Frederic William Capron c1860 - 1942
Charles Gibbon’s son James, born around 1775, went out to India in 1795 and became an early pioneer of the expansion of the Indian indigo industry (See Box 24.2). It is not known what took him there, or what contacts he had, but he first lived in the Gyah area, south of Patna, where there is a record of his having deposited a bond for 500 Rupees to be allowed by the East India Company to work there. In 1799 he moved to Assundpoor, again as an indigo planter. He must have accumulated some capital because in 1803 he bought the Singhia indigo complex east of Patna in Bihar, from a James Naysmith for 750 Rupees. This business had originally been established by the Dutch East India Company and by 1824 comprised three ‘factories’: Singhia, Bhyropore and Anarpore. A ‘factory’ was a relatively simple affair, consisting basically of buildings for processing the indigo plants. There might be a main factory with small 'out' or 'satellite' factories. Some had their own land for growing the plants; for others the indigo plants were grown under contract by surrounding farmers (see Chapter 25). James seems also to have had a plantation at Dinapore, near Patna, where he spent most of his life. Bihar was one of the leading production zones in imperial export commodities, opium, indigo and saltpetre from the late 18th Century, and grain and seeds in the 19th Century. For over 1000 years before the British arrived Patna was one of the great emporia of trade, with long and extensive trading connections, as well as being a famous centre of learning.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP L: Painting of a street in Patna around 1825 by Charles D’Oyly (26.5); Patna Main Street in 1814-15 (26.2); An atmospheric view of Calcutta from Garden House by William Hodges, 1781 (26.4); Calcutta in 1848 painted by Charles D’Oyly from his Views of Calcutta and its Environs (26.3);
In 1824 James Gibbon moved to Calcutta to act as a merchant. He remained there for some time. In 1825 he was an heir portioner, where he shared the estate, of his grandmother Mary Finlay, wife of J. Nicol, shipmaster in Aberdeen. In 1833 he wrote an excellent description of the agriculture of Bihar, which was published in 1836.2 In the same volume there is a thoughtful letter by James about the best way of drying seeds to be brought from Europe to India. He was clearly no run-of-the-mill indigo planter: his scientific curiosity makes him unusual. In 1808 James married Mary Mackintosh, sister of Lachlan Mackintosh, a merchant and agent in Calcutta and founder of the firm Mackintosh, Fulton and Company. Lachlan’s fellow directors were John Fulton, his brother-in-law, and Aeneas, his son. A letter book in the Scottish National Library16 contains copies of many of Lachlan’s letters, both business and personal, giving a real flavour of the business and of the times. In 1806 he wrote to James Gibbon giving him his approval to marry sister Mary. He
378 CHARLES GIBBON & MARGARET NICOL : CH 26
said that he did not approve of short engagements but given that he planned to leave the country soon he would make no objection - although the marriage did not take place until two years later. In 1808 the stiff-necked Lachlan apparently seems to have taken exception to a disparaging remark from James about Mary. However, Lachlan later apologised in a long, rambling letter about the proper roles of husband and ‘father’. Initially agents such as Lachlan dealt mostly with the safe investment and remittance of private savings of civilian and military servants of the East India Company. The Mackintosh agency started modestly in 1803 but it grew rapidly, and in time new partners took over. In 1819 the firm Mackintosh & Co. founded the Commercial Bank and by 1830 it was one of the seven largest agency houses in Calcutta. By now, like various other new agency houses, the company combined trade and commercial activities with banking and had started investing heavily in various enterprises, especially in indigo, which was seen as a gold mine. Unfortunately, production did not balance with demand and indigo started to be used as an item of remittance, i.e. a way of sending money to Britain, which forced up its price artificially. In the early 1830’s there was a massive financial crash and Mackintosh & Co. and the Commercial Bank went bankrupt in 1833. For a while the crisis caused chaos in the indigo industry, until it slowly recovered with many new owners. In December 1834 newspapers reported that various indigo factories owned by Mackintosh & Co. had been auctioned off for 35,000 Rupees, whereas before the crash they had been valued at 800,000 Rupees21. There were regular financial crashes thereafter in Bengal as lessons were not (and still have not been) learnt by financiers who are unable to resist gambling with savings money. The major victims were British people in India who were often left with nothing after a lifetime’s work. The implications of all this for the Gibbons are not clear, but must have been dramatic whether their savings were with an agency house or invested in an indigo factory, Lachlan escaped all this, having left for Scotland shortly after James and Mary’s marriage. He died without leaving a will in 1846, the court records revealing that he still held 280,000 Rupees in India which his only son Aeneas William would inherit. This large sum shows how rich many of the early merchants in India could become. Curiously, James Mathieson, the opium king, started his commercial life in Calcutta with his uncle Lachlan Mackintosh in 1815. One day he forgot to post a letter, so he was sacked by Lachlan and went to China instead. There he eventually started Jardine and Mathieson (See Box 26.1) and became a multimillionaire. Lachlan's son Aeneas must have survived commercially somehow, for in 1838 he is listed as a Merchant and Agent at Smith’s Ghant Street, Calcutta. He was probably the same Eneas (sic) Mackintosh who established the agency of Rickards, Mackintosh, Law & Co. in 1820. James Gibbon died at Burhamporah, near Doudpore Factory, Tirhoot in 1851, aged 75, unusually old for someone who had made his career in India. He was buried at Sabzibagh Cemetery, Patna. Mary Gibbon née Mackintosh appears in Minden Wilson’s reminiscences of indigo growers1: "Old Mrs Gibbon lived to a good old age. I remember seeing her when she was about 90 and it was wonderful what an active old lady she was". Mary died around 1873 and her will shows her distributing her money into nine equal parts for her eight married daughters plus the family of her son William Minto Gibbon, who had predeceased her. James and Mary had two sons and eight daughters who survived to adulthood. Their eldest daughter, Eleanora Sophia Gibbon, was born in 1809 and named after both her grandmother and her aunt Eleanora Sophia Robertson nee Mackintosh, who had died in 1807. She married an indigo planter, Andrew (commonly called John1) Anderson in 1827 in Aberdeen. He was somewhat of a pioneer in the indigo world and Minden Wilson mentions him in his history of Bengal indigo growers. He had been a major proprietor of Kumtoul many years. From there he bought and went to manage Hattowrie Factory taking with him a favourite peon whom he had made jermander. His name was Sunful Raie. At Hattowrie Anderson made money and went home once or twice. The last time he came out he did badly and had to give up Hattowrie. He, however, arranged to buy Nawadah Factory and Sunful Raie was to help him with the money. However, at the last moment Sunful Raie failed his old master. It was a terrible blow for poor old Mr Anderson for he died soon after, people said of a broken heart. Andrew and Eleanora Sophia went out to India straight after their wedding. Andrew had two daughters by a previous marriage who, though not strictly Gibbons, are included here. Both married indigo planters. The eldest, Elizabeth, born about 1822, married Robert Holmes Pittar.
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There are many accounts of the running battles involving European indigo planters and local growers and processors. Such disputes and violence were constant in the rough, tough, unromantic indigo world as the planters struggled (often literally) with the locals to obtain enough indigo plants for processing. This 1842 report from The India Mail shows a typical example of these where the planters took direct action and is worth showing at some length: In the Supreme Court, on the 18th December, Mr Merrick Arthur Gethin Shaw, a magistrate in the district of Jessore, Mr William Henry Rainey, lately an indigo planter at Khoolna, in the same district, Robert Holmes Pittar, Francis Thomas Reach (otherwise Rich), and Wm R Stevens, assistants at Mr Rainey’s indigo factory, were tried for making a riot and forcibly entering the dwelling-house of the prosecutor, Sibnauth Ghose, and expelling him from it. Sibnauth Ghose is the proprietor of several talooks [areas of land] in Jessore, and it appears there have been differences for the last two or three years between the prosecutor, some other zemindars, and Mr Rainey. On the 28th of April last, Mr Shaw in his capacity of magistrate came with the other defendants, accompanied by a number of the police and a large concourse of people, to the dwelling house of the defendant, broke open the doors, entered and seized the gomastahs [agents] of the prosecutor, and carried them to Mr Rainey’s factory, and afterwards committed them to prison, where they were detained some days. The jury found all the parties not guilty. Another report from the Indian Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register in 1843 adds to the story: The Supreme Court was occupied several days, commencing 16th December, in the trial of Mr Robert Holmes Pittar for having, at Luckpore, in Zillah Jessore, on the 9th July last (1842), feloniously shot at Nundolal Sing, with intent to resist the lawful apprehension of Issurchunder Ghose, under the order or warrant of George Ferguson Cockburn, the magistrate of Zillah. He was ultimately acquitted. Being British, Robert was, of course, acquitted. In 1846 Robert Pittar was managing the Pyke indigo factory. When tea planting became established and indigo farming became even more contentious Robert and Elizabeth, along with many other indigo farmers, moved to tea estates in Assam. They later moved to New Zealand, where Robert died in 1865. Elizabeth’s younger sister Jane, born in 1825 in Calcutta, married an indigo planter, Basil Ronald Landale, who was born in 1812 in Lancashire the son of a Customs officer. They married in Patna in 1842, had seven children. Jane died in 1874 at Goruckpore, Bengal and Basil died at Tulpigoree in 1878. One son became an indigo planter and a daughter married another. One of Jane and Basil’s sons, also Basil Ronald Landale, applied for a patent in 1887 for an ‘improved system of working punkahs’. A punkah (or pankah) was a large piece of cloth attached to a frame and suspended from the ceiling. When pulled backwards and forwards it acted as a fan. Traditionally it was operated by a ‘pankah wallah’ who would sit on the floor nearby pulling a rope attached to the punkah so that it moved backwards and forwards, hopefully rhythmically, creating a current of air to reduce the heat. One British resident wrote home that: You can have no idea of the irritation caused in a tropical climate by a sleepy punkah wallah at night. Just before you are asleep, the punkah wallah himself sleeps, and your punkah stops. Then you become food for mosquitoes on your face and sandflies on your feet, while the heat of the climate and the wrath at the punkah wallah irritates you beyond endurance. You have to get up to rouse your servant, which would make you thoroughly awake yourself, and then the process would be repeated once more so that you might not get an hour’s sleep all night28. For the British in India the heat was an ever-present feature, sapping energy and killing many. Those who could, escaped or sent other members of their family to hill stations to escape the heat of the plains where, in the pre-monsoon months, the temperature would regularly be above 40�C. Many, including most indigo planters, could not escape and had to endure the suffocating heat. Death or insanity from sunstroke and heat apoplexy were common and affected many people featured in this account. Life in India meant spending much time travelling at night and every diary and account of life in India has the heat as a constant feature to be battled with. During the Mutiny when British troops needed to march long distances, the high temperatures meant that large numbers died especially those newly arrived in India.
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Thomas Machell’s sketch of himself and a colleague called Indigo Planters After Tiffin. It is drawn from the perspective of the punkah wallah who was sitting on the floor.
Andrew and his second wife Eleanora had fourteen children, some of whom experienced times of fear and desperate privations. When the Indian Mutiny began, Eleanora managed to flee with her younger children to the apparent safety of Allahabad, along with many of the families of other indigo planters. In total there were 85 men, mostly planters, 30 ladies and 30 to 40 children. However, the sepoys in Allahabad also rebelled and many Europeans caught outside the fort were killed. Those inside the fort suffered severely, made worse by the outbreak of cholera, but were eventually relieved and two steamboats full of women and children were sent down the river to safety30. The leader of the British forces at Allahabad, Colonel Neill, an evangelical Christian, became notorious for sanctioning the casual killing of thousands of innocent Indians, many of whom he personally executed, in ‘retribution’ as part of a policy of pacifying the surroundings. During this he was appointed to the prestigious post of aide-de-camp to the Queen. James Gibbon Anderson, born in 1830, the eldest of Eleanora and Andrew’s children for whom we have any information, joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1847 and was appointed sub-assistant revenue surveyor, taking part in a major revenue survey in Bengal. In 1854 he became Surveyor-Deputy for the East India Company’s Opium Department at Cawnpore, which was designed to increase the lucrative export of opium from India to China (See Box 26.1). When the Indian Mutiny broke out, his obituary says that he ended up at Arrah, volunteering to stay behind and defend the town.3,4 50 Sikh policemen and fifteen other officials were besieged by about 3,000 sepoys in one of the buildings of Arrah, a two-storied billiard hall.
‘The House at Arrah’ which featured in one of the most celebrated actions of the Indian Mutiny. This lithograph is taken from a painting by William Taylor, the Commissioner of Patna. It shows the positions of the attacking party of mutineers, the house which they took possession of, and from which they attacked the small building in which the garrison defended themselves against 8,000 men.
They were relieved after eight days of very fierce fighting. This siege was later seen as a turning point in the mutiny, showing that the rebels could be resisted. Whether this gesture was worth the deaths of several hundred soldiers sent to relieve Arrah seems debatable. The definitive account by the leader of the group talks of the Mr Anderson present as a junior assistant in the Opium Department (although the obituary of a judge from Futtegarh called Andrew Anderson claimed that he was the Anderson that was there). James then joined the Volunteer Cavalry, composed mostly of officials or planters, and rode with General Havelock’s force to the relief of Lucknow.
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Two prints showing the British relieving forces approaching Lucknow to lift the siege, crossing the bridge of boats which was the main way of approaching the city: (L) by W. A. Crommelin; (R) Crossing the Ganges into Oudh by William Howard Russell, the Times war correspondent who had become famous during the Crimean War for his biting exposures of British incompetence (26.6)
The road Sir Havelock took when entering Lucknow to raise the first siege. This direct route caused heavy casualties and a more circuitous route the second time proved better. The photograph was taken soon after the mutiny ended (26.8)
(ABOVE) Map showing Lucknow at the time of the siege. (RIGHT) 1859 photograph taken by a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery showing the camp just outside Lucknow established by General Outram (26.7)
(ABOVE) One of many portrayals of the relief of Lucknow created in Britain for a public clamouring to buy images of the Mutiny. This is by J. Barker and shows Sir Henry Havelock greeting Sir Colin Campbell, head of the relieving forces (26.9)
(ABOVE L-R) 1857 photograph showing two sepoys of the 31st Native Infantry being hanged at Lucknow (26.10); Lucknow Medal. Three clasps were awarded to all those who participated in the three phases of the siege.
Unfortunately, the force lacked the strength to retire safely and had to remain under siege for some weeks. In September 1857 he was appointed as an assistant magistrate at Champaran, Bengal even although he was not an official civil servant. In the relatively peaceful Champaran, European indigo planters had carried out their business as usual during the mutiny, the troubles being further north in Oudh – although unrest over indigo was fermenting in Champaran. James was later appointed to the Oudh Commission, becoming Deputy Commissioner before ill health forced him to retire. In
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1861 he married in Aberdeen Elizabeth Cochran, daughter of Hugh Cochran, an Aberdeen advocate and granddaughter of Martha Gibbon, born in 1737 (see Chapter 23). James died in London in 1907. According to his obituary in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, ‘Mr Anderson was a keen sportsman and had shot a good deal of big game in India. He retained a keen interest in zoology all his life’. James’ sister, Lucy Maria Anderson, married in 1852 Lieutenant George Augustus Williams, the son of a Royal Navy Captain. He was with the 4th Sikh Infantry in Burma during 1853-4 and was caught up in the Indian Mutiny in 1857 (see Box 26.1). What became of Lucy during the Mutiny is not clear but after it George was given leave and they had a daughter, born in Bath in 1859. George later served in Bhutan in 1865 and in the Afghan War of 1879 -80. He became a Major-General on his retirement from the Bengal Staff Corps. The next sister, Mary Elizabeth Anderson, born in 1837, was trapped in Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny, as was her husband Robert Aitken (see Box 26.2).
One of the children, Herbert Hastings Harington, born in 1868 at Lucknow and educated at Malvern College, became a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welsh Regiment. In 1890 he was appointed to the Indian Staff Corps and joined the 92nd Punjabis, with whom he served for over twenty years in Burma. For five of these years he was attached to the Burma Police. He then served five years in India. A keen ornithologist, he published a book on the distribution of birds in Burma as well as writing various articles. He also discovered new varieties which were named after him, such as Polionetta haringtoni (a Burmese duck) and Garrulus glandarius haringtoni (a type of Burmese Jay) as well as publishing papers on the Indian White Eye butterfly. In 1914 he became a Lieutenant Colonel and in 1916 took command of 62nd Punjabis. He fought with the 84th Punjabis in Mesopotamia. He was killed on 8 March 1916 at the Battle of Dujaila, part of the campaign of early 1916 which was yet another shameful episode of appalling senior British military command.
Herbert Hastings Harington.
The next sister, Eleanora Sophia Anderson, was born in 1842, at Tirhoot, Bengal. In 1866 she married Herbert Baring Harington at Lucknow. He was born on Guernsey, the son of a rector. After Wadham College, Oxford, he was appointed as an assistant in the Indian Telegraph Office in 1857 in the same month as Albert Cappel (below), which may account for their both marrying granddaughters of James and Mary Gibbon. Herbert served as a Volunteer during the Indian Mutiny and from 1860 was with the Oudh Commission. He was a District Judge at Lucknow from 187981 before retiring in 1887. He died in 1906 and Eleanora in 1920, both in London. They had several children.
Herbert Baring Harington who married Eleanora Anderson.
Their brother, John Walker Anderson, was born in 1839 and christened at Patna, Bengal. In 1868 he married, at Fyzabad, his cousin Mary Elizabeth Cosserat, the third daughter of James Cosserat and Rachel Gibbon. He was then the Officiating District Superintendent of Police at Luckinpore in Oudh. He died of a fever two years later at Kheree, Oudh, after a few days’ illness.
Lord Curzon, a member of the war cabinet, suggested: ‘a more shocking exposure of official blundering and incompetence has not in my opinion been made, at least since the Crimean War’. Kipling wrote a biting poem about the campaign (See 26.23). One account says29: Sir Charles Townsend was in command, an insanely egocentric general who appears to have deliberately allowed his troops to have been surrounded: he wanted to make his reputation through a heroic and successful defence and lied about his situation to relieving forces. Inside Kut, Townsend became increasingly unbalanced, refusing to visit the hospital where many of his troops were lying. He spent much of his time in his house, emerging only occasionally to walk his dog, Spot. He banned his soldiers from sending messages to their families via wireless but dispatched frequent messages of his own asking for promotion. He made no attempt to break out of Kut and, after the surrender, showed little interest in what happened to his men. He and most of his officers were placed by the Turks in comfortable imprisonment, but the other ranks, two thirds of whom were Indian, were dispatched on a 700-mile forced
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march to Turkey during which many died from starvation, beatings, execution, or typhus and cholera. By the end of the war 70% of the British and 50% of the Indian troops captured at Kut were dead. Eventually, with new planning and leadership, Britain prevailed in Iraq.
Mesopotamia, 1917. Rudyard Kipling THEY shall not return to us, the resolute, the young, The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave: But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung, Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
Our dead shall not return to use while Day and Night divide— Never while the bars of sunset hold. But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died, Shall they thrust for high employments as of old? Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour: When the strorm is ended shall we find How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power By the favour and contrivance of their kind? Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends, Even while they make a show of fear, Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends, To confirm and re-establish each career? Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo— The shame that they have laid upon our race. But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew, Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
The Mesopotamian Campaign began, like Gallipoli, as an attempt to open a second front away from the Western Front with the aims of isolating Turkey from Germany, allowing supplies to reach Russia, as well as ensuring that Middle Eastern oil supplies were available to the allies. In November 1914 an army of British and Indian forces landed in the Persian Gulf. What then followed was one of the most shameful episodes of British military incompetence. Two monumental defeats led to two thousand British and six thousand Indian troops being sent off on a two-year march through the desert to Turkish prisoner of war camps, with more than half dying. Meanwhile the British army leadership lived out the war in comfort in a villa near Istanbul. Many of the incompetents involved in India and London were quietly protected and absorbed into other senior Government posts. The outrage in Britain when all this became known is reflected in Kipling's poem. A second expedition to Iraq was competently led and quickly occupied Baghdad and it was during this second campaign that Percy Jones, born around 1868, was killed in 1917 (26.23)
Herbert junior’s son was General Sir Charles Henry Pepys Harington, born in 1910, who had an interesting career during and after World War Two. He joined the British Expeditionary Force in France, commanding a machine gun company with the Cheshire Regiment. During the retreat towards the coast he won an MC and was evacuated from Dunkirk. He then held various staff appointments before commanding the 1st Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and fighting in Normandy and then through to Germany. He was awarded the DSO in 1945. One of his last postings was command of the 49th Infantry Brigade in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising in 1955 and 1956 (see Box 17.3). He married Victoire Williams-Freeman and they had three children. The next Anderson son, Charles Frank, died unmarried aged 38 of typhoid. He was the Superintendent of Police at Betul. His brother, William Sturrock Anderson, born in 1848 in Bengal, also had a military career. He joined the Army in 1869 and served with the Kings Royal Rifles, retiring as a Major. In 1880 he was in the force that performed the famous march under Lord Roberts from Kabul to lift the siege of Kandahar. 10,000 men of whom 2,800 were European, and 7,000 followers covered 320 miles at an average of just over 15 miles per day under very difficult conditions. They travelled light and had to endure freezing nights and baking days and subsist on little water or food. The march remains as a triumph of endurance and organisation. In 1882 he took part in the Egyptian Campaign, where a nationalist movement threatened the financial investments of
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General Charles Harington
They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain In sight of help denied from day to day: But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain, Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Britain and France as well as access to the Suez Canal. On the outbreak of the Boer War he volunteered for active service commanding mounted infantry. In 1897 he married Elizabeth Annabella Montgomery, the daughter of an Edinburgh advocate. They had two sons and a daughter. She died in London in 1937 and William died at Bedford in England in 1918. Returning to the children of James Gibbon and Mary Mackintosh, the second daughter, Rachel Susan Gibbon, married James Cosserat at Shapore, Arrah. He was the brother of Peloquin (see below), who married Rachel’s sister Jemima. Before leaving England, James started his commercial life in 1829 by making out the usual Bond for good behaviour to the East India Company. In this case it was for £2,000. He started as an indigo planter at Tirhoot, running the Motipure factory from 1839 to 1844 (see Chapter 24), before becoming an assistant in the Opium Department and then a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent at Patna. Rachel died in 1853 and James married again in 1860 to Annie Shelley born in South Africa, the daughter of a British Army sergeant. James then returned to indigo planting. According to a newspaper report of 186324 he was to be manager of a processing factory set up by the ‘Punjaub Indigo Company’ at Futtapoor as well as ’a large stock farm for the English troops and community to be established at the factory’. James retired to Bath where he died in 1874. James and Rachel Cossart had eleven children and numerous and widespread descendants. Three sons appear to have become indigo planters. Three others died young, including one who died at sea aged 15 on a passage from Calcutta. Many people died of illness at sea while returning from India to Britain, hopefully in order to recuperate. Another son, Thomas Gibbon Cosserat, born in 1839 at the Banhar indigo factory, Dinapore, worked for HM Inland Customs in India. In 1861 Thomas married Ann Wilford, born at Dinapore, Bengal and they left numerous descendants. Thomas died aged 35 at Sewree, Bombay. Lucy, the eldest daughter of James and Rachel, was born in 1834 at the Bhicanpore indigo factory at Tirhoot, Bengal. She was educated at the Catholic convent in Patna. In 1858 she married John Tulloch at Dinapore, with Mary Gibbon née Mackintosh acting as one of the witnesses. John Tulloch had an interesting career. In 1854, after studying medicine at Kings College, Aberdeen, he joined the 10th Regiment of Foot in India as an assistant surgeon. He was then caught up in the Indian Mutiny and saw action at Benares, the capture of Atroleea and the advance to Lucknow and its siege and capture. He took part in numerous other actions including the relief of Azimghur. In 1864 he was appointed Assistant Surgeon of the regiment on the island of St Helena before returning to India. He eventually became Deputy Surgeon General of the Indian Army. He retired in 1888 and died blind in Eastbourne in 1906. John and Lucy had five children one of whom became a Major-General. Another son trained as a doctor and served during the South African wars. He also died in 1906, the same year as his father, after becoming infected with sleeping sickness from a knife while conducting bacteriological experiments on the disease at Entebbe, Uganda. The second daughter of James and Rachel, also Rachel, became insane. She is featured in an extraordinary and harrowing book14 by a German lady, Margaretha Weppner, who undertook the epic and heroic task of escorting the often-violent 24-year-old Rachel from a Catholic convent in India to one in Germany. Among her other afflictions, Rachel had a fire mania. Margaretha had many memorable encounters and, refreshingly for the time, attacks stupidity and corruption wherever she sees it, from the ludicrous English class system to dishonest Catholic institutions. James Cosserat, Rachel’s father, does not come out of this story in a good light; he appears to have been hard and callous. The book was published the year after he died. In it, Rachel’s grandmother is described as being ‘half-caste’ i.e. AngloIndian but this seems to be an error unless it referred to her step mother. The youngest daughter of James and Rachel, Caroline Sophia Cosserat, born in 1847, married Francis William Rice Cowley in 1868 at Mozufferpor, Bengal. Born in 1843 at Fairford, Manitoba, Canada, Francis studied at Edinburgh University, then joined the Bengal Civil Service, working as a magistrate and collector at Patna and Chota Nagpur. He retired in 1897 and died at Cheltenham in 1920. Caroline died two years later, also at Cheltenham.
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William and Elizabeth Nisbet had a daughter, Eliza Ellen, born in 1835 at Saugar. She married Francis Booth Norman at Dinapore in 1852. He had joined the 14th Bengal Native Infantry in 1848, but when they rebelled at Jhelum on 7th July 1857 during the Indian Mutiny, he was away on Staff duty at the Dept of Public Works at Mooltan. He was then attached to the 14th Ferozepore Sikh Regiment and remained at Ferozepore for the rest of the Mutiny. In 1863 he took part in the Ambela Campaign and was mentioned in despatches. In the three following years he was engaged in the Bhutan Campaign, serving as Assistant Quartermaster-General. In 1868 he took part in the Hazara Campaign as second in command of the 24th (Punjab) Regiment. After an interval of ten years, the Second AngloAfghan War (1878-80) saw him commanding the 24th Regiment in the Bazar Valley, and in the defence of Jagdallak. He took part in the famous Kabul to Kandahar march of August 1880 under General Roberts (see above) and was at the subsequent Battle of Kandahar. During the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885, he commanded the Bengal Army brigade of the Upper Burma field force, assisting in the occupation of Mandalay and Bhamo. He eventually became a KCB and a Major General, dying in 1901. His brother was Field Marshal Sir Henry Wylie Norman26,27. Francis and Eliza Ellen had eight children, all born in India. Eliza Ellen died in 1870 at Rawalpindi in the North West Frontier Province. Elizabeth Nisbet nee Gibbon married again in 1838 to William Cooke an indigo planter. They were married at Hattowrie, where the Anderson indigo factory was and when William was living at Irwarrah. They had four recorded children, all born in Bengal. Mary Elizabeth, the eldest, born in 1839, married Edward Oakes in 1858. Her address is given as Bustee, Goruckpore, and Assistant Surgeon John Tulloch (see above) was a witness. Edward, a Major in the 6th Bengal European Regiment, came from an extremely rich family of ironmasters who had built Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthr Tydvil in Wales. He became a Colonel in the Bengal Staff Corps before they retired to England. He died at Cannes, France in 1874 and Mary Elizabeth at Brighton in 1896. The next child, Claudine, born in 1842 married John McNeill Walter in 1860. His father, also John, had fought with Wellington in Spain and had been in Paris for the peace talks. Son John started his career as an Ensign in 1835 and fought in the Kaffir Campaign of 1846-47 in South Africa with the Light Infantry. He was with the 53rd Regiment during the Transvaal Campaign of 1849, before moving to India. There he was at the battle of Goojerat, fought on the North-West Frontier against the hill tribes, and then served throughout the Indian Mutiny with the 35th Regiment, taking part in numerous actions. John became a General before returning to England. There is a description by an anonymous onlooker25 of his funeral in Folkstone in 1898: I was in Folkstone and witnessed a military funeral on a large scale. A brave soldier and successful general – General John McNeill Walker C.B. Colonel of the Royal Sussex Regiment – had died some few days before. Some eight hundred to a thousand soldiers, representing all branches of the service, with arms reversed, silently marched along. Then came the coffin on a gun carriage, covered with the Union Jack. Resting on it was a cushion bearing the decorations of the deceased general. Immediately followed the General’s black charger, the mourners in carriages, the band playing the muffled drums. John and Claudine had six children, one of whom, another John, also became a General in the British Army. He was with the Tochi Field Force in 1897 suppressing the tribes of Waziristan. He then served in the 2nd Boer War and was at the relief of Ladysmith in 1899 before becoming the Deputy Adjutant-General in India. Claudine’s younger sister Harriet, born in 1846, married George Carogan Thomson, a Colonel in the 1st Bengal Cavalry, in 1863 at Gorakhpur. Born in Cape Colony the son of a merchant there he joined the 51st Bengal Native Infantry in 1852 and was posted to command Fort Michnee near Peshawar in
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William Nisbet (26.11)
The third daughter of James Gibbon and Mary Mackintosh, Elizabeth Gibbon, born around 1811, married William Nisbet in 1834 at Shapore, Arrah. William, the son of a slater and burgess from Dunbar, Scotland, was a Lieutenant in the 64th Bengal Native Infantry. One of his brothers became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army and another was Commander and Captain in the Indian Navy. William died in 1835 at Saugar (or Sagar), Bengal.
Northern India. When the Mutiny started in 1857, he joined the Kumaon Battalion of Gurkhas which marched to Delhi to help capture the city. He distinguished himself in an operation to capture a battery of guns at ‘Ludlow Castle’ just below the city walls, and was mentioned in despatches. When Delhi fell, he joined the Bengal Irregular Cavalry, otherwise known as Skinner’s Horse. This regiment was founded in 1803 by Colonel Skinner who married a Rajput noblewoman in the days when the British were less colour conscious and more appreciative of Indian culture33. George was later at the fighting at Futteghur and the capture of Cawnpore. He died in 1896, and Harriet in 1927, both in London. Harriet and George Thomson had four children. One daughter married an army officer with the Somerset Light Infantry and her sister married Frederick Arthur Mulock, a well-known artist who spent much of World War One with the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve in Italy before being invalided out in 1919. He studied landscape and figure painting in Brussels and Florence and his work was exhibited widely. During the First World War, Frederick Mulock served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, commanding motor launches in Italy. In 1918 he was transferred to shore duties, his main role being as an interpreter as he was fluent in Italian and French. In 1919 he was suffering from colitis and after a spell at Haslar Naval Hospital, when he also contracted influenza and dysentery, he was invalided out of the RNVR. Claudine and George had two sons. James Gibbon and Mary Mackintosh’s fourth daughter, Ann Gibbon, born in 1813, married Ralph Smyth, then a lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery, who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He had become an India Cadet in 1826, and a Lieutenant in 1837. He wrote various reports about artillery including a description of the guns captured during the First Sikh War of 1845-1846.
(L) One of the drawings from Ralph Smyth's book on the guns captured at the Battle of Sutlej (26.12) (ABOVE) Photo of the same gun.
In 1851 Ralph was employed as a Revenue Surveyor and co-authored A Manual of Surveying for India. His co-author was a member of the Survey of India group, whose long struggle to map India makes exciting reading22. Ralph also wrote a piece in 1838 which appeared in the Calcutta Review: A Statistical and Geographical Report of the 24 Pergannahs Districts (near Calcutta), in which he comments on European clothes having become fashionable: a late introduction of pantaloons, stockings and patent leather shoes in an attempt to Europeanize themselves is to be seen amongst the young Bengalis in Calcutta. As it is unsuited to them, their own peculiar costume always obtains respect, which the innovation seldom does. Ralph and Ann retired to Ootacamund, where Ann died in October 1855, soon after their arrival. There is a gravestone to her memory in the graveyard of St Stephen’s Church at Ootacamund15. The British Library has a portrait of Ralph Smyth, catalogued with several illustrated journals by Ralph’s friend, the adventurer Thomas Machell10 (whose watercolour of indigo planters after tiffin appears earlier). There is a fascinating account of Machell's journeys in India, as revisited by Jenny BalfourPaul11. Her initial interest had been in the early indigo industry, Thomas having been a planter for a period. Box 24.3 shows an extract from the journals of Thomas Machell that colourfully describes life at an indigo factory. Machell was impressed and amused by the ‘fat major’ Ralph Smyth, ‘a very clever engineer who superintends the revenue surveys of Bengal’. Machell describes a long, slow journey typical of Indian travel at that time, made with Ralph in 1854 from Calcutta via Madras, where they visited the grave of one of Ralph’s children, then down to the Malabar Hills in the south east. Ralph was
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setting up two new coffee estates for himself in the Wynaad area, 84 miles north west of Ootacamund. Thomas Machell acted as a manager there, his work involving the jungle clearing and planting so familiar to the Gibbons in Ceylon. He made several illustrations for his journal of the Smyth estate bungalows, including one at Burdwan and another at Manantoddy.
(L) Major Ralph Smyth, who married Ann Gibbon. (ABOVE) Smyth became a Revenue Officer and in British India one of the most important tasks was to map out, in great detail, each area so that a new system of taxation could be imposed on individual land owners. Calcutta had been mapped before, but never in the detail he achieved in 1854.
Ralph and Ann Smyth had at least seven children, with five reaching adulthood. Ralph, born in 1836, was a colonel in the Royal Engineers. Amelia married William Goodenough Bayly, a missionary in India, who became a City Missionary in London. Jemima, born about 1840, married Robert Hill Ross in Goruckpore in 1863. A Lieutenant and later Captain in the 35th Foot, he took part in some fierce fighting near Arrah in 1858 during the Indian Mutiny20. Jemima died at Southsea, Hampshire in 1868. Charles Thuillier Smyth, born in 1848 and named after the co-author of his father’s Surveying Manual, was, at the age of twenty, an Assistant Superintendent 4th Class in the Telegraph Department. He became a teacher in New Zealand and died in 1900 in Auckland, where he is buried at Waikumete. Katharine Sophia, born in 1851, married Frederick Higginson, an Irish surgeon, in 1870 at Cawnpore. He was then the civil surgeon at Gondah. In 1858 Ralph senior married Harriet Cameron and they had three sons and a daughter. Ralph died in Ilfracombe, Devon in 1886 and Harriet in 1913 on the Isle of Wight. James Gibbon and Mary Mackintosh’s son James Gibbon, christened at Dinopore in 1821, was thought by Minden Wilson to have died of wounds during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. We have no confirmation of that. James had become a Lieutenant in one of the Volunteer groups at the start of the Mutiny and lived, like the Gibbon family, near Arrah. His name does not appear in the Casualty Roll of the Mutiny, possibly because he was a civilian. He is probably the J. Gibbon listed in 1838 as an indigo planter at Novada, Tirhoot and in 1842 as the manager of an indigo works at the same place. (In 1842 a D. Gibbon was listed as an indigo planter at Singetolah, Maldah, but it is not clear who this was). In 1847 James reappears in charge of the Burhamporah Saltpetre Works, near Patna. Saltpetre, a key component in the manufacture of explosives, was an important export from Bengal to Britain, especially during the earlier French wars. A list of the Futtyghur fugitives who were massacred at Cawnpore in 1857 includes a Mrs Gibbon but it is not clear who she is30. Among these victims were the families of several indigo planters34. The next daughter of James and Mary, Mary Jane Gibbon, born in 1825 in Aberdeen, married Frank Turner in 1845 at Dinapore. From 1830 he had a distinguished career in the Bengal Artillery, serving in the Afghan Campaigns of 1839 and 1842. During the Indian Mutiny he commanded the artillery of a movable column at the battle of Budleekeserie and at the siege of Delhi. He then commanded a detachment at the relief of Lucknow, the battle of Cawnpore, the action at Khodagange, the retaking of Futtyghur, the capture of Meangunge and the final siege of Lucknow. He became a General in 1871 and was made KCB in 1886.
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A dramatic image designed for a public shocked by the massacre of unarmed British at Cawnpore in 1857. The British had surrendered but were killed anyway, including women and children. This, more than any other report during the Mutiny, served to inflame the British and cause them to do the same themselves later. Tinted lithograph by T. Packer published in 1857.
Mary and Frank Turner had eight children who reached adulthood. The eldest daughter of Mary and Frank, born in 1845, was Mary Turner, who married Lewis Pryce Delves Broughton. He was the Puisne (or junior) Judge at the High Court in Calcutta from 1878-1882 and became the Administrator General of India, the senior legal figure. Her sister, Susan Alexandrina, born in 1861, married Edward George Blomfield an English vicar in 1883. He died two years later and she remarried in 1893 to Robert John Maude. He joined the Rifle Brigade in 1874 as a Lieutenant and eventually became a Major. He retired in 1897 and died at Lausanne, Switzerland in 1906 age 53. Like his brother-in-law Lewis, he was the son of a Church of England rector, both rectors having titled relations. Susan died in 1944 at St Leonards on Sea. Susan and Robert had three children. The second daughter was Fanny Gibbon Turner, born in 1849. She married Albert James Leppoc Cappel, who served with the Turkish contingent in the Crimean War in 1855-56. He then went to India, where he was appointed to the India Telegraph Department in February 1857, just before the Indian mutiny broke out. The telegraph had been introduced to India in 1850 and, along with the railways, had expanded rapidly, adding to the unease of the local population over increasing colonialization. Use of the telegraph proved to be of crucial importance throughout the Mutiny. One of the most dramatic moments was the rapid telegraphing of news of the outbreak to the Commander in Chief, General Anson. Unfortunately, not having seen action since Waterloo, he failed to grasp the strategic importance of receiving such early notice. William Brendish, the Anglo-Indian, telegraph operator who sent the message, was awarded the Victoria Cross. A short period of inaction probably allowed the mutiny to spread more rapidly, although accounts by General Anson’s friends take a more lenient view. Over the next few months there were constant and unrealistic demands for instant reinforcements from posts all over Bengal. Alexander Gibbon (see Chapter 22), in a letter of 1st June 1857 from Ghazipur to his aunt in Aberdeen, writes: ‘We cannot account for the delay in the Commander-in-Chief’s movements’. Albert Cappel eventually became the Director General of Indian Telegraphs, a post he held for six years. He was also made a Knight of the Order of the Indian Empire. When he retired in 1889, he joined the Boards of various Telegraph companies. He died in 1924 in London. There is a photograph of him in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Mary and Frank Turner’s next daughter, Elinor Hay Turner married William Holyroyd, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army in charge of public instruction for the Punjab. He was a widower with two children. Elinor died two years later. Her sister Annie Mactier was born in 1855 at Allahabad, India. In 1881 at Martindale, Westmoreland, she married Charles Clavell Hore, a stockbroker and barrister in London. He served a seven-year apprenticeship at Lincolns Inn, London before qualifying as a barrister. He eventually became a London stockbroker. In later years they lived in the 14th Century ‘Corner House’ at Dulwich, now demolished. Frank Mackinnon Turner, the eldest son, was born in February 1857 at Cawnpore and christened in May at Ambala, a town to the north of Delhi with a large military cantonment. A month before the Mutiny broke out in the Cawnpore area in May, a number of European bungalows were burned in nearby Ambala and Frank and his mother were lucky not to have been killed. Frank was a pupil at Wellington College in England and became an India Cadet. In 1876 he was appointed as a Lieutenant with the 25th Foot
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James eventually became the Inspector General of Artillery in India. He was in China in 1900 during the Boxer rebellion, an uprising in north China against the growing influence of the British and Japanese there. He served in South Africa in 1902 during the Second Anglo Boer War, when the British annexed the Transvaal and the Orange Free State from the Dutch settlers. From 1912 he was in command of the Risalpur Cavalry Brigade. He retired as Major General in 1919. James married Blanche Rose Boileau, a daughter of a Bengal Artillery Colonel. Their daughter Maud Valerie Turner married Henry Albemarle Vernon, who became a Lieutenant-Colonel. He was ADC to the Commander-in-Chief in India in 1914, and commanded the Signal Squadron of the India Cavalry Corps in France in 1914-15; the 23rd (Service) Battalion (1st Sportsman’s) Royal Fusiliers in 1916-17; and a Brigade during 1917-18. He was wounded in 1916. He inherited Stoke Bruerne Park, Northampton, where he and Maud had a son, Richard, who also had a distinguished military career12, and a daughter, Avril, who married Field Marshall Lord Bramall, a refreshingly clear thinker unafraid to speak his mind. Going back to the children of James Gibbon and Mary Mackintosh, the next child was Jemima, born in 1827. In 1853 she married, at Dinapore, Peloquin Cosserat, the brother of James above, who was an indigo grower living at Tillaryzillah, Dinapore. Later he worked for the Bengal Government as an Opium Agent. He was the son of a Torquay solicitor or ‘money scrivener, dealer and chapman’, who was declared bankrupt in 1828 and was central to a curious libel case at the local Dean (Church) Court, brought against one of his neighbours, a woman who had bizarrely accused the solicitor of having had
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Lord Bramall, who married Avril Turner
Frank and Mary’s second son, James Gibbon Turner, born in 1859, joined the Royal Artillery in 1878 and was appointed to the Indian Army in 1881, joining the 4th Bengal Lancers. He was a member of the Chitral Relief Force, rescuing Indian Army soldiers who had been sent to man a fort in a very remote region high in the mountains of north India. Britain constantly feared that the Russians might invade India. James took part in the Tirah Expedition of 1897-98 against the Orakzais and the Alfridis, also on the then north-west frontier of India, now a tribal area controlled by Pakistan. The locals who had rebelled against the British and captured the Khyber Pass eventually admitted defeat, but not before they had inflicted severe casualties on the British.
James Gibbon Turner
Regiment and went out to India, where Masonic records show that he was initiated into the Light on the Himalayas Lodge while a Lieutenant at Lucknow in 1879. In 1882 he was at Berwick upon Tweed with his regiment, formerly the 25th Sussex Regiment but renamed the 25th Kings Own Borderers. In April 1882 Frank found himself in the centre of a scandal when he attempted to elope with Lucy (or Lucie), a local solicitor’s wife. This led to a court case which was resolved in November 1882 by the solicitor divorcing his wife13. To obtain a divorce in those days ‘proof’ of infidelity was required and a carefully staged and closely observed weekend in Penrith provided the evidence needed for the divorce. Leaving Lucy’s two-year-old son to be brought up by his father Frank and Lucy left for India. They were married in a registry office in India. Lucy had been born in St Petersburg, Russia, in about 1858. Her father, Charles Grant Smith, was probably a member of the association of merchants known as the ‘British Factory’. In 1885 we find Frank, still a Lieutenant, a member of the Light on the Himalayas Masonic Lodge at Muree in the Punjab. In 1886 Lieutenant Frank M. Turner of the Kings Own Borderers was gazetted as ‘having ceased to be a probationer for the Indian Staff Corps, to be Lieutenant’. Frank was made a Captain in December of that year and in 1888 exchanged to the Reserve of Officers of the West Indies Regiment. The 1891 census finds Frank and Lucy, called May in the census, living at Hythe, Kent. Frank is now listed as a Captain in the 2nd West Indies Regiment. He resigned his commission in 1893. He appeared in court again in 1894 accused of assaulting several people at Whatmer Lodge, Sturry, Kent which he had rented in his wife’s name. He was found guilty and fined. The newspaper report gives an entertaining blow-by-blow account of Frank battling with several locals who he thought were trespassing. He died in 1907 at Colon, Panama, presumably on passage through the Panama Canal. When or where Lucy died is unknown. To complete the story, Lucy’s son by her first husband became a solicitor in Berwick and his father re-married to a lady from nearby Bamburgh.
a baby by his niece. Peloquin died in Bengal in 1884 and Jemima in Aberdeen in 1919. Peloquin and Jemima’s daughter, Lucy Susan Trevennon Cosserat, born in 1855, married William Mackenzie, an indigo planter. In 1878, at Bankipore, Patna; his address was then given as Illnasnuggar, Tirhoot. They retired to Aberdeen, Scotland where they were living in 1911. Lucy died in 1941 at Crail. The other child, Mary, born in 1863, was unmarried. In 1891 she was a lodger in the house of a straw-hat salesman in Edinburgh, but by 1901 she had moved to Aberdeen to live with her parents and grandmother Jemima. She died in Aberdeen in 1948. Jemima’s sister, Leonarda Zeigler Gibbon, born in 1829 in Surrey, England, married Charles Frederick Smith at Mozafarpur (now Muzaffarpur), in 1848. Christened in 1822, he was the son of a magistrate in Myomensing, now in Bangladesh. He was appointed Ensign in 1840, and was posted to the 39th Bengal Native Infantry. At the Battle of Punniar in 1843 the 39th Native Infantry was part of the force that defeated the Mahrattas who were entrenched in the hills about Punniar. The Mahratta wars enabled Britain to consolidate its grip on a large part of India. In 1845 when he was stationed as an ensign at Berhampore, his commanding officer was Christopher Fagan (Chapter 10). His regiment was disarmed and disbanded at Dera Ismail Khan in 1857, during the Indian Mutiny. For most of the remainder of his career Charles Smith was seconded to the Indian Police as a District Superintendent in Goorgaon, Punjab. He was promoted to Brevet Colonel in 1871 and retired from the Bengal Staff Corps in 1874 as a Major-General. He died on 6 December 1877, and was buried at the Ambala cemetery in Northern India. His gravestone says: Sacred to the memory of Major General Charles F. Smith Born 14th Jany 1823. Died 6th Decr 1877. Forgive us our tresspasses. The widow Leonarda came to England, and lived with her daughter Annie in London, where she died in 1904. Born in Lahore, Bengal in 1854, Annie married Barry Francis Domville in 1875, at Lucknow. Then a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery he later became a Lieutenant-Colonel. He retired through ill heath in 1891 and died in France in 1894. Annie and Barry had a daughter, Aileen Frances, born in London. Annie’s second husband was a London solicitor, Frederick William Capron, who featured in several high-profile cases. He was also the subject of a curious court case finally concluded in 1936. He had sued his brother and sister-in-law for continuing the libel over many years that he had falsified his father’s will. The case was thrown out and the two accusers had to pay him £1,000 damages. Frederick had a short career playing first-class cricket for the MCC. Leonarda’s brother, William Minto Gibbon, born in 1831, became a cadet with the 44th Native Infantry in 1847 and then a Lieutenant in the Bengal Army Staff Corps. On May 31st the 44th Regiment threatened to rebel and were disarmed at Agra. Whether William was at Agra then or had fled south from Delhi earlier is unclear but in early June a report said that he was safe at a village 30 miles south of Delhi. His movements thereafter are also unclear although officers of the former 44th were later fighting at Agra about 90 miles to the south and he probably ended up there. In 1854 at Dinapore he married Emma Helen Flyter, the daughter of an Indian Army Captain. How Emma fared during the Mutiny we do not know. William and Emma returned to England in 1863, William receiving a retirement promotion to Captain. He died in September of the same year in London aged 31. Emma also died young, aged 29, of tuberculosis in Perthshire. They had had three children, the youngest, a daughter, was born just before the Mutiny broke out. The two boys were educated at a school in Sculcoates, Yorkshire in 1871, and both died in India, William, aged 20, in 1876 at Kurseong, Darjeeling where he was a tea planter and Charles, aged 23, a Lieutenant in the 25th Regiment, of cholera at Peshawar in June 1879 on the North-West Frontier when Britain was fighting the Second Afghan War. The youngest daughter of James and Mary Gibbon, Margaret Euphemia Gibbon, born in 1833, married John Crawford Langford in 1853, when both gave their address as Dinapore. John joined the 36th Foot as an Ensign in 1848 and transferred to the 29th (Worcestershire) Foot Regiment in 1850. In 1854 he purchased a Lieutenancy. He later transferred to the 27th Inniskilling Foot Regiment, and then to the 17th Foot. He retired as a Captain to Crosthwaite Park, Dublin, where he and Margaret both died, she in 1899 and he in 1908. They have a gravestone in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin. They had twelve children and have many descendants, several of whom served in the armed forces. One son, also John Crawford Langford, was killed by lightning in Manitoba, Canada, and another son died near Calgary, Alberta.
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BOX 26.1
‘AN INCIDENT OF THE INDIAN MUTINY’ Throughout this account we have seen Gibbon descendants involved in many major wars and battles. However, we include this account because it is typical of many confused encounters from the early days of the mutiny, with isolated groups of soldiers and civilians fighting against overwhelming odds. It is written somewhat romantically for the British readers of 1858, who were agog for stories of bravery by British soldiers. As exemplified here, throughout the mutiny the majority of troops fighting the rebels were not British and included Sikhs and troops of loyal Rajahs. The Ludhiana Regiment featured here held Benares for the British throughout the period of the Mutiny. (From the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette 14 January 1897) BRAVERY OF THE LATE GENERAL WILLIAMS In our obituary we mentioned that General Williams was wounded during the Indian Mutiny. The adventure was one of the most heroic in the annals of the British Army, and a brief account of it (summarised from the pages of “Blackwood’s Magazine” of 1858) has a special interest at this time when we are mourning the loss of the brave officer who bore so conspicuous a part in it. A message having reached the Deputy Commissioner Mr George Ricketts, from Umballa, that the Jullundhur troops had risen and were marching down on Phillour, and that he must at once guard or destroy the bridge and protect the fort at Loodiana, he ordered off three companies of the 4th Sikhs under Lieutenant Williams, the second in command, with a small force of the Rajah of Nabba’s men, consisting of 50 cavalry and 150 artillery, with two light field pieces (one six-pounder drawn by horses and a nine-pounder by camels) to oppose the passage of the river – his great object being to resist the main body of mutineers in their attempt to cross, and thus throw them back into the hands of the column which he could not doubt would be in rapid pursuit from Jullundhur. On reaching the river bank Mr Ricketts and Lieutenant Williams learnt that the rebels were crossing at a ferry some four miles off. On they pushed; and what with heavy and knee-deep, broken ground and ditches, not always dry, it was nearly ten o’clock at night before they had accomplished the distance. Grasping each the arm of a guide Mr Ricketts and Lieutenant Williams pushed on until they came suddenly on the lair of the rebels, whose sentries began to fire upon them. The guns were at once unlimbered, but the horses attached to the six-pounder took fright, became unmanageable and bolted, dragging after them tumbril and ammunition into the midst of the rebels, where they were soon cut to pieces. The nine-pounder, however, was safe and quickly opened fire, sending a round of grape into the part where the rebels could be dimly seen in the clouded moonlight. They returned the fire with musketry, when the Sikhs rushed up into line and delivered two splendid volleys. Now, however, it was clear that the struggle was to be maintained by themselves alone, for at the first volley the Nabba Rajah’s cavalry and infantry bolted to a man. Directly the Sikhs opened fire the rebels rose up and spread out, right and left, in the form of a crescent. Lieutenant Williams at once threw out his men, who were not above 100 strong, into skirmishing order to prevent being outflanked. The imperfect light greatly favoured the Sikhs, for they could see the masses of the rebels and direct their fire with tolerable accuracy and effect, while the return volleys did but little execution upon their own thin scattered line. Nobly was that solitary nine-pounder worked. So rapid and well maintained was the fire that the artillery officers with the pursuing column thought there must be two, if not three guns at work. At one moment a volley from the right showed the rebels in force on that quarter; the gun was instantly pointed there and a charge poured into them. The next moment a volley would come in from the opposite side, when round swung the gun as quick as thought, repaying them with interest. For nearly two hours did Mr Ricketts and Lieutenant Williams, with a single gun and not above 100 Sikhs, hold their ground against 1,600 rebels, and keep them at bay, hoping that the pursuing force would soon be on the rear. But no signs of succour came. At length the ammunition began to fail; the fire of the gun slackened, that of the musketry became weaker: the men, too, were fagged; the long march of the night before, and the fatigues of the afternoon began to tell on them. Suddenly about mid-night the moon burst out from behind a cloud, disclosing their position and the weakness of their numbers. The rebels
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saw their opportunity; the bugle sounded the “close up” and drawing in on every side they poured in a murderous volley, to which the gallant Sikhs could reply but feebly. At the moment Lieutenant Williams whose escape up to this time had been most wonderful, waving his sword to cheer on his little band to make one effort more, received a wound under the right arm pit. The ball broke a rib and passed into the right lung, where it remained throughout the rest of his life. Writing to a friend at the time of his hair-breadth escape, Lieutenant Williams said “A very gallant little Goorkha native officer, wearing the Order of British India, was shot dead close by me; my bugler was hit by my side at the beginning, yet I was preserved to the end”. A Sikh caught Lieutenant Williams as he fell after he had received his wound; Mr Ricketts instantly sprang to his side, and they carried him off to the rear, and placing him on a camel sent him in to Loodiana. The struggle, was now over; with their officer dangerously wounded, and their ammunition spent, it became hopeless to hold out longer; and orderly retreat was all that remained for them. This they effected admirably under the orders of Mr Ricketts, who himself brought off in safety the old gun that had done them such good service. Seizing the only two remaining camels, he harnessed them to the gun carriage, and led them off the field. He passed the rest of the night looking to the wounds of the two brave officers of the Nabba’s force who had so bravely stood by throughout. The following morning the little force marched back into camp. The writer rejoices in being able to close his account of that night’s adventure by mentioning that both Mr Ricketts and Lieutenant G. A. Williams received officially from the Governor-General in Council the most flattering acknowledgement for their gallant and good service.
Sikh soldiers rendered great service to Britain during the Indian Mutiny. This is a very early photograph, taken in 1858 by Felice Beato, of soldiers in the 15th Punjab Infantry Regiment (26.20)
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BOX 26.2
ROBERT HOPE MONCRIEFF AITKEN VC Robert Aitken was born in 1828 at Cupar, Fife, where his father was a lawyer. He became an Indian Cadet and joined the 13th Native Infantry in 1847 as an Ensign. He served in the Second Sikh War (Punjab Campaign) in 1848-1849 and was at the battles of Ramanugger and Goojerat. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1853 and served during the suppression of the Santhal rebellion in 1855. In 1857 the 13th Native Infantry, with Aitken as adjutant, was stationed at Lucknow and during the Mutiny some of the regiment stayed loyal to the British thanks to the influence of Robert Aitken. After their defeat in the battle of Chinhut, the British retreated into the Residency at Lucknow. Here they remained for 148 days17. Aitken, in command of his loyal Hindu troops, was given responsibility for the crucial Baillie Guard Gate garrison and was very active in its defence, being wounded in the process. He was awarded the Victoria Cross and the citation for this gives an account of his exploits: 1. On three different occasions, Lieutenant Aitken went into the garden under the enemy’s loopholes in the Captain Bazar. On two of these occasions, he brought out a number of bullocks which had been left in the garden; subsequently, on the 3rd of July, the enemy having set fire to the Bhoosa Stock in the garden, and it being apprehended that the fire would reach the Powder Magazine which had been left there, Lieutenant Aitken, accompanied by other Officers, went into the garden, and cut down all the tents, which might have communicated the fire to the powder. This was done, close to the enemy’s loopholes, under a bright light from the flames. It was a most dangerous service. 2. On the night of the 20th of August, the Enemy having set fire to the Baillie Guard Gate, Lieutenant Aitken was the first man in the gateway, and, assisted by some sepoys and a water-carrier of his Regiment, he partially opened the gate under a heavy fire of musketry, and, having removed the burning wood and straw, saved the gate. 3. On the evening of the 25th of September, this Officer led twelve sepoys of his Regiment, for the purpose of attacking two guns opposite the gate referred to, in order to prevent their being turned on the late Major-General Havelock’s second column. Having captured them, he attacked and took the Teree Kotee with a small force. 4. On the morning of the 26th of September, with a small party of his Regiment, he assaulted and captured the barricaded gateway of the Fureed Buksh Palace, and the Palace itself. On this occasion, he sprang up against a small wicket gate on the right, and prevented the enemy from shutting it, until, with assistance, it was forced open, and the assaulting party were thus enabled to rush in. The complete success of the attack was solely owing to this Officer’s distinguished bravery. 5. In a subsequent sortie on the 29th of September, Lieutenant Aitken volunteered to take a gun which still continued firing, taking with him four soldiers through the houses and lanes to the gun. The enemy fired on this party from the houses, but they held their ground, until a stronger party coming up, the gun was upset from its carriage, and taken into the Residency. Another gun was subsequently taken. (FAR L) The Bailey Guard Gate at Lucknow. Pphoto taken just after the Mutiny and shows where Robert Aitken was positioned during the first siege (26.15) (L) The Victoria Cross was first awarded during the Crimean War just before the Indian Mutiny. Robert Aitken was therefore among the first recipients. Troops who took part in suppressing the Mutiny were awarded the India Mutiny Medal (26.16)
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Robert Aitken continued to serve with his regiment during the rest of the Mutiny. In December 1857 he fought in the Battle of Cawnpore, where he was paymaster of Sir Colin Campbell’s force. During the Oudh Campaign of 1858-59, he served in the Oudh Military Police. He was promoted to Captain in 1861, transferred to the Staff Corps, and served as Inspector-General of the Oudh Police Force from 1874 to 1876, when he retired as Lieutenant Colonel. When he finally received his Victoria Cross at the Residency in 1865, a fake medal had to be used as the original had been lost in the mail. In 1856 Aitken married Mary Elizabeth Anderson, born in 1837 at the Huttowrie indigo factory. She was present throughout the siege. She was described as ‘being particularly beautiful and on the retreat from the Residency, she managed to be ‘elegantly dressed’. This retreat at night turned out to be very dangerous. Most of the women were certainly not elegantly dressed. Elizabeth’s group from within the scattered complex had been initially told they could take no luggage and many wore several layers of clothing with pockets made to store precious mementos. However, others, presumably better-connected, ignored the order and requisitioned dozens of baggage animals and conveyances for their belongings. Robert and Mary retired to Fife, Scotland, where Robert died in 1887. There is a memorial to him at the Eastern Cemetery, St Andrews, and another was erected at the Residency in Lucknow. In 1901 Mary was living in London with their daughter Ida Margaret Aitken, born in 1865. Mary died in 1918.
The Residency at Lucknow before and after the Siege. The memorial at Lucknow to Robert Aitken.
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BOX 26.3
THE INDIAN MUTINY By 1857 in order to police its rapidly expanding territories, the East India Company, had built up an army of approximately 260,000 men, twice the size of the British Army. The majority were in Native Infantry or Cavalry regiments with European officers. In that year 131,000 of these Indian troops in the Bengal Army rose in a widespread rebellion, joined by many of the local civilian population. Not until the end of 1859 did the British succeed in quelling the revolt. Details of the mutiny are freely available with accounts of sieges and battles and of massacres by both sides6,7,8. The Mutiny, or First War of Indian Independence as some call it, occupies an important place in this book about the Gibbons because it affected so many of the individuals mentioned. Here we will briefly explore some of the events leading up to the Mutiny and how the British brought it about. (FAR L) Map showing the principal places involved in the Indian Mutiny. (L) Map showing the main troop movements by the British during the Mutiny (26.16)
(FAR L) A group of senior Indian soldiers photographed at Ambala in the 1850s before the Mutiny. (L) A British officer in the Indian Army photographed just before the Mutiny.
During the early history of the East India Company much of its success was achieved by force and an often irrational predisposition to violence, when more patient negotiation and collaboration would have been more in their interest23. However, much was achieved by other means, ranging from bribery to friendship treaties. The early senior Company officers tended to be relaxed in their dealings with Indians, and relationships were often close, with many taking Indian wives or mistresses. Many British became noted scholars of Indian beliefs and customs. Missionaries had been banned in India in the 18th Century as the pragmatic administrators had no interest in challenging most traditional culture. Early in the 19th Century, however, this gradually changed as the British lost touch with Indian opinion. Company officers became more casual in their relationships with and attitudes towards Indians. Racism, discourtesy, and prejudice against caste and colour became more overt, the word ‘nigger’, for example, becoming widespread. In 1813 a new India Act, manipulated by the ever-more vocal evangelical movement in Britain, allowed missionaries into India and the evangelical Christian movement spread throughout India. Many evangelicals were Army officers whose thoughtless and fanatical imposition of their own beliefs converted few and antagonised many. These active Christians were seen to be supported by the Government. Although the presence of more white women in India is frequently given as a contributory cause, they were not yet present in large enough numbers to have had much influence in increasing the racial divisions - this came later. With the rapid rotation of European officers in native regiments, the old
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relationships largely disappeared, and resentment among the ranks increased, though largely unseen. Within the Army, British officers always outranked Indians; the highest rank to which an Indian soldier could aspire, no matter how long his service, was a senior subaltern equivalent. Decisions and statements by various senior Company officials, including Lord Dalhousie, the recently departed Governor General, as well as the Delhi Resident, demonstrated their increasing arrogance, ignorance and imperial self-confidence and their lack of desire for accurate information or any real knowledge of the state of the country. Eventually the Indians of much of Bengal, both civilians and sepoys, felt that all these factors were, as Mount8 said, ‘a threat to their social being’. Understandably they could endure no more. A large part of the ‘Bengal’ Army was recruited from the territory of Oudh (or Awadh), which had been annexed by the British in 1856. As with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the British tried to justify their action by the publication of a Blue Book full of false information. While the ruler of Oudh had not been particularly popular, there was a strong feeling against the casual use of power by the British to control yet more territory and to change the familiar land ownership and taxation system. As a result the majority of the civil population of Oudh supported the rebellion. Without question this was the main trigger for the mutiny. Out of a total of 139,000 sepoys, all but 7,796 turned against the British. As Dalrymple7 points out, although the great majority of sepoys were Hindus, the flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosques and many of the insurgents described themselves as mujahedeen and jihadis. By the time the mutiny was quelled these Muslims, many of whom had come long distances from the North West, constituted a quarter of the rebel fighting force. By then it was apparent that the mutineers lacked a single goal; that the uprising was anything but a national revolt; and that the Mughal Empire could not be easily restored. A thoughtful account of the causes of the Mutiny is given by Llewellyn-Jones19, who points out that while different kinds of historians (political, Marxist, military or social) all emphasise different principal reasons, there was something in the Company’s policy to annoy and alarm nearly everyone. She points out that not all these reasons applied to all the acts of mutiny and civil revolt that took place in 1857 and 1858. India was too big for any citizen to have much knowledge of other places and their particular local grievances. She uses the case of the Rani of Jhansi who eventually rebelled when her pleas over the future of her kingdom were ignored as an example of British mismanagement.
(ABOVE L & R) Frescoes of the Mutiny from the Lakshimi Temple at Orcha, near Jhansi. While this book shows examples of the thousands of British images inspired by the Mutiny, the only ones in India showing the situation from the Indian point of view are these two frescoes, painted just after the siege. On the left, the British attack with cannon, and the forces of the Rani of Jhansi are behind the fortress walls. On the right, we see the British drinking wine at camp during the siege of Jhansi in the spring of 1858. (L) An imaginative painting by an unknown artist showing the Light Company storming the Walls of Jhansi in 1858.
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BOX 26.3... The mutiny was most solid in Oudh, where it was supported by most of the wider population. The mutiny was quelled by Indian troops from other parts of the country and by a smaller number of European troops. While atrocities were common on both sides, the British crushed the uprising with a ruthless cruelty, killing innocent and guilty alike. At one point in Delhi the order to ‘shoot every soul ‘ was given and women and children were butchered there and in countless villages. Many British, including many officers, completely lost their bearings and committed what would now be called war crimes, often justifying their casual murders in Old Testament language or in terms of social Darwinism and ideas of racial superiority. On both sides violence was believed to be the only language their enemies understood. When civil order broke down, large areas of Oudh were plundered and large numbers of Indians slaughtered by opportunistic groups of other Indians, either traditional robbers or neighbouring villagers or citizens. William Dalrymple estimates that more than 300,000 Indians were killed. While the use of crushing force to end the Mutiny is understandable, less justified is the continuing for so long thereafter of the wild slaughter of innocent Indians. This, too. is of ‘Gibbon’ interest with Keith Young, born in 1806, the Judge Advocate General during this period and theoretically responsible for illegal acts committed by the Army (see Box 19.1). In April, at the beginning of the Mutiny, he would spend hours producing the legal papers for the execution of just one mutineer. (Form filling and paperwork were notorious features of British India, often intended to give an illusion of power and order6). By May the mood had changed and Young’s wife wrote from Simla ‘this is no time for Judge-Advocates but for summary vengeance’. Accordingly, Young left Delhi for Simla even before Delhi had been finally taken. Once Delhi was captured, the troops, whether Asian or European, went on a wild rampage of looting and killing. Many Europeans went on killing sprees of any Indians who happened to cross their path, but most settled down to the serious business of enriching themselves. This also happened in Lucknow and after the capture of other major centres of population32. James Gibbon, a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, but no relation being descended from McGibbons from Perthshire, wrote to his mother in England from Delhi31: There has been a great deal of plundering, or as it is called here ‘looting’. We hope to get some prize money but nothing has been ordered on that subject yet. Alas for naïve James, little or no prize money was eventually given out by the Government who needed money desperately to pay for the war. Army Prize Agents quartered Delhi forcing the well-off, whether friend or foe, to reveal their hidden wealth at the point of a gun. The same thing happened at Lucknow when it was eventually captured and James was left guarding bridges again while, in the city, fellow officers and men found fortunes that transformed their lives. Things settled down and late in 1859 we see a Judge-General present at the trials of prominent mutineers, lending once more a veneer of legal respectability. Young’s wife published a number of his letters and correspondence from the siege of Delhi. While they make no reference to the slaughter of innocents, they do give an interesting account from the front line and an insight into the thinking of the Army command at the time9. The book includes the following: In 1849 Sir Charles Napier wrote that it was apparent to him and to all the officers on the spot, who were conversant with Native and Sepoy habits and feelings, that a widely spread and formidable scheme of mutiny was in progress, and great danger impending; for though the Sepoys at Wazeerbad, awed by the presence of a large European force, remained passive, they were heard to say that they only awaited the arrival of the relieving regiments, and would then act together. Sir Charles had been the Commander of the Indian Army but had resigned in protest at the insensitive way London and Calcutta were dealing with the Army. Needless to say, he was ignored, as were other officers close to their men who dared to echo these views over the next few years.
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When the Mutiny began, many of the people included in this book found themselves in danger and had to flee for their lives. Many of the indigo growers’ wives and children reached Calcutta on the boats used for shipping indigo. Delia Peppe nee Claxton also reached Calcutta by boat, but independently with her children. Army families such as the Clarks and Aitkens fled to Lucknow and were caught in the siege. We have only a little knowledge of how other Gibbon connections survived. In 1857 over 40 indigo growers and local officials formed the Mounted Volunteer Corps in Bihar and helped suppress insurrection there. Luckily for them they escaped the worst of the violence which occurred further north. The Volunteer Corps later became the Bihar Mounted Rifles and a list of members in 1862 includes George Boule, James Cosserat, Thomas Minto Gibbon and William Forbes Gibbon. We can only guess about the James Gibbon who apparently died of wounds during the mutiny. We have better knowledge of those who were in the armed forces as they are mentioned in the numerous accounts of the time, but details are usually sketchy. After the mutiny the British Government increased the number of British troops and reduced the number of sepoy regiments, although all the Madras native infantry regiments, none of whom had mutinied, were retained. India came under the direct control of the British Government and investment was made in infrastructure such as railways, roads and irrigation. This continued the process of turning the Indian economy into a more typical colonial one with large exports of industrial crops, and imports of British processed goods. One result of that was the collapse of the flourishing Indian textile industry. One interesting response to the Mutiny was the decision made by the London Missionary Society in 1858 to send twenty more Christian missionaries to India. Prize Agents Extracting Treasure at Lucknow. A British officer threatens a terrified merchant with a pistol (26.17)
As the Indian Mutiny progressed and the British gained the upper hand, revenge became the dominant theme. This painting by Edward Armitage in 1858 is an allegory of revenge called Retribution which suited the public mood. The symbolism is of Britannia impaling a Bengal tiger, i.e. India, with her sword and saving the helpless British women and children (26.21)
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BOX 26.4
THE OPIUM TRADE One of the continuing problems facing the burgeoning British interests abroad in the 18th and 19th centuries was how to maintain inward and outward trading cash flows in reasonable balance. For the East India Company, trade with China presented a particular problem. While there was high demand in Britain for products such as tea, silk and porcelain, there was little or no demand by the Chinese for anything in return, apart from hard currency in the form of silver. Despite the opposition of the Chinese Government, in the early 18th Century the East India Company started to supply opium to China as a means of reducing their currency imbalance. In 1773 the Company declared themselves the sole suppliers of Indian opium, making Bengal the capital of opium production. They imposed control of the Indian poppy fields and established the system by which the trade flourished for the next century. They regularised production, payment to producers, processing of the raw opium, storage in godowns (warehouses) and arrangements for shipment to China by private traders. Throughout the 19th Century the British continually expanded the opium fields in Bengal to a peak of 5,000,000 acres of prime land, employing over a million farmers, who grew and sent opium to the British-controlled processing factories at Patna and Benares.
The godowns or factories (storage sheds) operated by various European powers at Canton, China around 1805. This was officially still the only place where foreigners could trade and was the centre for the importation of opium from India. Print by William Daniell (26.14)
By the 1780s demand for the drug was growing dramatically. Various subterfuges were used to overcome the Chinese government’s continued opposition to the trade which was destructive to their country. By the 1820s China was importing annually 900 tons of Bengali opium. Two Scots, William Jardine and James Matheson, eventually doubled the trade in opium by investing in faster ships and shipping to numerous Chinese ports instead of the single one officially sanctioned. They started the P&O shipping line, the major opium carrier for most of the 19th Century. The money from the opium was used to buy tea, silk and porcelain, which were sent to Britain, thus completing the trade triangle5. A new career path now opened for the British in India including our Gibbons. James Gibbon, born in about 1775, had two daughters who married two brothers who were official Opium Agents, Peloquin and James Cosserat. James Gibbon Anderson, born in 1830, the son of Eleanora Sophia Gibbon, also joined the Opium Department.
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In 1834 the Company’s trade monopoly was abolished with the result that the smuggling of opium into China by European private traders intensified. Deeply disturbed, the Chinese state continued trying to stop the trade. This led to Britain defending the principle of ‘free trade’ in the two Opium Wars. In fact, however, the conflict had nothing directly to do with free trade. China was simply trying to stop the inflow of a drug which was doing nothing for the country’s good18 (see Chapter 25). In their view the European merchants were nothing but aggressive freebooters backed up by the vast infrastructure behind the trade in India. These opium wars also coincided with an increasingly aggressive British attitude, led by Lord Palmerston towards the expansion of their world influence. Within Britain there was opposition to armed conflict, but events were determined by only a few strong individuals in Britain and in the field. In the first Opium War of 1839-42, the launching of which was aided and abetted by Jardine and Mathieson, several thousand Chinese were killed, with negligible casualties for the well-equipped British and Indian forces. Gunboat diplomacy prevailed. Britain occupied Hong Kong, and China then entered a long period of humiliation by the Western powers. Despite outward appearances the Quing dynasty who were in power had only loose control over its distant citizens. With little real understanding of modern western military power, they were taken by surprise at the chaos which ensued. The British opium trade with China continued until 1917, although it declined after the 1880s because of competition from Chinese-produced opium.
(ABOVE L) A woodcut from The Graphic in 1882 of the stacking room of the British opium factory in Patna, Bengal, showing the opium balls being stored before shipment to China. The opium export industry became a major source of wealth for the East India Company and later the Indian Government, and was sustained by a large network of field agents such as James Cosserat. (ABOVE R & L) Opium poppies – saviour of British finances in India (26.15) (BELOW) An early photograph of a typical opium factory where the initial processing would have been carried out.
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A Scots Concert. Taken from a 1796 etching by Richard Newton. This is an English response to the invasion, as they saw it, of Scots looking for employment in England. Notice the long Family Pedigree on the wall which many Scots were notorious for boasting of – and clearly still are. (© Trustees of the British Museum)
EPILOGUE What can we say in summary about these Gibbon descendants with their habit of featuring in so many events in history? Tempting though it would be to extract some impressive patterns from the different lines and create a new Unified Theory of Descent, alas, this seems an improbable result. However, the gallimaufry here does provide a rich diet to chew upon, while at the same time hopefully exciting our target reader, the 12-year-old 100 years hence. It was amusing to realise that one of the authors had started behaving like our imaginary 12-year-old by becoming deeply intrigued by each new situation as it came along and excitedly exploring it in depth. Both the early Stonehaven and Aberdeen Gibbons emerge as confident commercial families, happy to follow their family traditions and holding down positions which gave them status within their communities. With North East Scotland remaining relatively undeveloped until the 18th Century, both groups would have had to work hard to make a living. Aberdeen shared little in the cross Atlantic trade and the limitations of Aberdeen harbour curbed the expansion of maritime activity. However, the Gibbons were deeply involved in what trade there was whether as ship captains, ship builders or maritime merchants. The Aberdeen Gibbons were part of a sophisticated interconnected trading network involving bills of exchange, insurance and connections to agents in different parts of Britain and abroad. While some of them became wealthy, especially during the French wars when profitable government contracts were available to ship owners, many others appear to have been quite poor and lived very ordinary lives, possibly because they were merely ship captains rather than ship owners. One shining example of a Gibbon who became extremely wealthy was Arthur Gibbon, born 1780, who also married into wealth. By the end of the 18th Century and especially after the French Wars and an economic depression began, we see Gibbon merchants leaving Scotland to pursue their fortunes elsewhere, or shifting from pure commerce to professions such as surgeons and lawyers. In Stonehaven, while some descendants continued in the milling tradition, this was clearly losing its attraction as a career and we see a variety of other occupations emerging from the beginning of the 18th Century. Three key marriages dramatically influenced the fortunes of three Stonehaven descent lines: those of Agnes Gibbon to Alexander Young in 1717, Janet Gibbon to Alexander Young about 1720, and Charles Gibbon to Ann Duff in 1813. Each of these marriages into professional or land-owning families resulted in a stream of high-achievers. The consequent rise in status allowed access to a wider range of employment helped by the emergence of opportunities overseas. We see this to a lesser extent elsewhere in the family. In Chapter 6, for example, a family that have been farmers for generations suddenly produces the high-flying Burnes family of India fame. The key here seems to be one member becoming a merchant and moving to a town, where the family develop new and influential contacts and patrons. The early Stonehaven Gibbons too, who lived as millers close to, or in, the town of Stonehaven, developed differently to the branches who remained millers but in rural areas. Wives often brought in different values, together with their own network of influence or contacts. There are many examples of one family member branching out into something different while the others carry on as before. Early emigration generally required a family member or someone trusted to go ahead and prepare the way for the others to follow. James Gibbon, the pioneer indigo planter in Chapter 26, fulfilled this role for the other Gibbons who followed the commercial route to India. and it would be interesting to know who his initial contact was. Other pioneers were William Duff Gibbon and Robert Boyd Tytler in Ceylon. In the 19th Century many organisations promoted emigration and provided information and encouragement, often facilitating land sales in a certain location. Possibly the Gibbons who went to Wisconsin or to North Murchison, Victoria, were responding to such advertisements by travelling out as a family group. It is notable, however, how few went to North America or the West Indies, despite the attractions. Not until the 20th Century do we see many positions, mostly professional, being taken up in North and South America or in other parts of Asia. Some branches of the Gibbons had little direct contact abroad, making their careers at home. Before the beginning of the 18th Century we have little evidence of Gibbons serving as mercenaries or as merchants abroad. although large numbers of Scots did. Throughout the early 18th Century, however, we start to see a trickle of professional Scots (including one or two Gibbons) heading abroad, mostly to India. This would become a flood in the second half of the 18th Century. As the East India
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 403
Company expanded, Scots became soldiers, surgeons and civil servants in the vast imperial bureaucracy that eventually enveloped the sub-continent. Most Scots, including the Gibbons, kept in close contact with the homeland, to which they intended to return with the money they made. However, until the late 19th Century, the high mortality rate in India meant that only a minority of emigrants ever returned to Scotland. Very few of the Anglo-Indians in this book came to Britain to a large extent a reflection of the endemic racism that was present in Britain and its Empire. An interesting feature of the British abroad was how they exported their strong class or caste system with all its prejudices. In India, for example, the official publication the Warrant of Precedence listed a pecking order of at least sixty-six categories for government employees alone2. This was closely followed at official (and unofficial) dinners and at official occasions. The business-minded Gibbons in Chapter 24 would have been categorised and graded as either ‘commercial’ or ‘trade’, with sub-categories within this. Commercial people were looked down on by the military, who in turn were looked down on by the Civil Service. People classed as Commercial even had to enter the Viceroy’s Residency in Calcutta by the back door – the trade entrance! Not until Thomas Mitchell Gibbon (Chapter 24) was appointed to the Viceroy’s Council could he enter by the front door. Many of the Gibbons would probably not realise that they were related to each other and could well have been snubbing their third cousins. Yet strangely, in remote towns such as Patna. where women were in short supply, the military men and civil servants were more than happy to marry the daughters of commercial Gibbons. One spirited Gibbon (called Septimus) who is unfortunately not connected, became a victim of the rigid social system when in 1856, he was court martialled and dismissed from his post as a Captain in the 42nd Madras Native Infantry, for going to an official ball and ‘falsely declaring that a certain strange woman was his sister-in-law’3. An interesting feature was how, from early in the 19th Century, the British spread their hierarchical system throughout the Empire, incorporating princes and chiefs (invented them where necessary) and frequently appearing to rule through them. In other words, the British exported their class system cemented by numerous new medals and orders of chivalry. To some extent hierarchy became even more important than skin colour as can be seen from numerous Victorian photographs of the Royal Family with important dark-skinned members of the Empire5. With limited opportunities at home, Scots had to find employment outside the country. The education system helped. By the 17th Century every parish was required by law to have a school, whence clever pupils could go straight on to university at the age of fifteen, their fees often being paid by local benefactors. Universities were not expensive and having wide access became fundamental to the Scottish university tradition from an early stage. In the late 18th Century one quarter of the undergraduates at Glasgow came from backgrounds we would now describe as ‘working class’. Many Gibbons worked for the East India Company, some as doctors, Scotland, and especially Edinburgh, being long pre-eminent in medical training. Young men emerged from the ‘universities’ or colleges of the time with a basic sound education possibly followed by more specialised professional training, such as in engineering or medicine. For the Gibbons Marischal College and to a lesser extent Kings College, both in Aberdeen, played a crucial role in this, with contemporary students forming an informal network of contacts. As opportunities at home or abroad depended on patronage, each successful person in this account until the end of the 19th Century needed to be part of a network of influence in order to establish a future. The early Turings who went to India in the second half of the 18th Century benefited from the presence of Scots in powerful positions in London, who encouraged a flood of Scots into the East India Company, partly in an attempt to integrate Jacobite-inclined families into the new united Britain. By the time many Gibbons came along this flood had diminished to a stream, but most of the doctors appointed to India, such as James Leith appointed in 1790, were Scots benefiting from the greater availability of medical training at Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh compared to England. This made it easier to find an official position, but the recommendation of a powerful or influential relative or acquaintance was still needed. Virtually all such powerful people in the North East were Episcopalians, and worshipping in the same church was no disadvantage. Having secret Jacobite sympathies would not have been a barrier either. Being connected to titled people also seemed to carry weight, as indicated by the great number of references to the Earl of Fife or to the Turing Family. The names Duff and Turing descend as first or middle names in the family even to the present day.
404 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
The fact that many Gibbons were Masons (as revealed in the recently published masonic records) would have been another advantage in developing contacts. Schooling also played its part. From Victorian times many in England were sent to private boarding schools as a matter of course. Young men from these schools were expected to join the military or govern the empire. The schools became a major industry, catering eventually for relatively poor middle-class families as well as for the children of the increasing number of people working abroad. This account shows many examples of very young children being sent by their parents back to Britain to be educated. For many, the best of these schools clearly gave a head start, allowing them into Oxford or Cambridge or the armed forces, although this clearly gave no guarantee of later professional competence. Girls tended to be left behind in all this: where money was limited it would be spent on educating the sons. In Scotland, the rich families also used private schools, often in England, but a distinct feature of Scottish education was how many instances there were of clever boys or ‘lads o’ pairts’ emerging from the local schools full of ability and confidence. The Burnes family of Montrose in Chapter 6 is an example. Very few of the early Stonehaven or Aberdeen Gibbons pursued careers abroad, most being content to remain as businessmen at home. Many made voyages to foreign parts but they almost always kept their base in Scotland. However, it is possible that William Gibbon and Marie Cranmer (Chapter 9) would have remained in North America but for the War of Independence. It is not until the end of the 18th Century that more opportunities arose, with the rapid expansion of the Indian Army, for example, making entry easier. One of the most interesting Gibbons is James, born about 1775 (Chapter 26), who took off to India to become an indigo planter in 1795. There are no obvious family influences – maybe he simply couldn’t get on with his new step-mother. However, he may have been the Indian contact who persuaded William Forbes Gibbon and his brothers to go to India in 1826 (Chapter 24). The end of the French Wars at Waterloo in 1815 brought a prolonged economic depression in Britain and the shipping industry in Aberdeen and Stonehaven suffered. We see some Gibbons making an effort to diversify into profitable areas such as steam ships or moving to London, or to places in North East England such as Sunderland to ship coal to meet the new demands from steam engines. Interestingly, few 19th Century entrepreneurs were entirely self-made, most relying on some early assistance from family. There are frequent examples of a new family tradition being created. The Farquhars in Chapter 7 produced a remarkable number of Admirals for the Royal Navy, while other families developed different traditions such as the armed forces, publishing, medicine or law. Once a pioneer was established, he could guide other members of the family. As a career, the armed forces predominate, and the expansion of the British Empire produced more and more opportunities during the 19th Century. Then comes the 20th Century with compulsory conscription in both the First and Second World Wars leading to a wider social sample of Gibbons being involved. Most of the fuller accounts here concern officers as they were the ones who left better records. However many of the Gibbon families included here had members who served in the ranks and who have proved more difficult to trace. The Church, in one form or another, plays an important role in this story. We find whole branches with a family tradition of sons and daughters marrying other sons and daughters of ministers. Among the Turings and Duffs, where employment in the church was clearly a desirable occupation, this almost amounted to a closed shop. Ministers were appointed to a living by a Patron, usually one of the local lairds. With the right family background many married into titled and landed families. A rich aristocrat might own several of these livings. In a letter to the Earl of Fife in 1769 his factor writes about the possibility of buying four or more livings because owning more livings would increase his influence1. He also writes that presentation to kirks was a ’pretty thing in a family’, implying that this was a recognised way of providing for illegitimate sons. One such was the Reverend William Duff, born about 1700 (Chapter 2). Later, in England, we find numerous younger sons of aristocratic families becoming clergymen. An interesting variant is the Free Church minister Robert Murdoch who in 1884 left his charge in Pitsligo to become a minister in Melbourne, Australia (Chapter 20). Several other Scottish ministers also went abroad, some as missionaries. An intriguing question that arises throughout this study is how people meet their future wives or husbands. The early Duffs and Turings married within their social circle, initially largely limited to the North East although later including Southern England. Marriages would generally be ‘arranged’ or at least require the consent of the parents. The high incidence of marriages between cousins for both the Duffs and Turings
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 405
was normal for the period as a means of consolidating wealth and status as did the social benefits offered by so many becoming ministers of the church and their families then marrying within this group. Later, many women found husbands who were home on leave from abroad, especially from India and Ceylon, often actively looking for wives. Others met their husbands while visiting fathers or brothers working overseas having probably been deliberately sent in the hope of finding a husband. Throughout this account we find many women who are intrepid travellers, either accompanying their husbands to remote locations, or travelling on their own. Jessie Gibbon (Chapter 10), who encounters her future husband, an English barrister, at Lake Como, is one example of the many wealthy people who studied, travelled and lived freely all over Europe. The Fagans in Chapter 10 and some of the Gibbons in Chapter 22 are other examples. In London we can see the importance of the Swedenborgian Church for one Gibbon line (Chapter 12) as a social meeting place. Indeed throughout this account the various Churches were the main source of partners – witness the many Episcopalian ministers who married someone from the congregation – often from a landed or titled family. Some marriages are less easy to explain. For example, what took Maria Cranmer from a small village in Devon to New York? (Chapter 9). Sudden economic changes could bring profound changes in prosperity and family opportunities. Chapter 4 shows the effect of the steady downturn in handloom weaving with increasing distress accompanied by apparent inability to find another direction. The end of the French wars drove many shipping Gibbons to leave in search of new ventures, although often cushioned with capital and contacts. Periodical financial crashes, including major ones in 1825, 1847 and 1866, probably took their toll. Certainly Charles William Gibbon in Chapter 12 was affected by one such crash. By contrast economic booms such as the rise of the indigo, coffee and tea industries propelled many to wealth. The response of William Duff Gibbon to the coffee failure in Ceylon is a good example of how some Gibbons rose to challenges. The rapid growth of London as the mercantile centre of the world also created opportunities, for example in insurance, with marine insurance becoming one Gibbon tradition continuing to this day (Chapter 12). The expansion in commerce also allowed some Gibbons to enter new professions, starting as apprentices. This growth in economic power coincided with the expansion of British controlled territories creating opportunities in the armed forces, especially in India, in the first half of the 19th Century. It also created opportunities in banking and engineering in both South and North America. Throughout this account we have come across many people living abroad who were actively involved in pursuing British interests, whether commercially or otherwise. The benefit of this in providing an overseas career is obvious. Less so are the benefits to those who remained behind in Britain, which became apparent towards the end of the 18th Century, when Britain became wealthy as an industrial exporter and individuals returned with money to invest. In almost all areas of employment, from modest to distinguished, the home Gibbons benefited as Britain grew wealthier. Economic cycles with their highs and lows were still present and industries came and went but opportunities for career advancement steadily increased for most. We cannot, of course, discount the effect of chance or luck on the fortunes of an individual or a family. No matter where you start, things can go wrong or right more or less at random. A blow on the head can set you back, a brilliant teacher can send you flying forwards. A common obsession among amateur genealogists is to find a link to royalty. The early Gibbon genealogists showed a keen interest in this and in coats of arms, as shown in their correspondence with each other. It has been recently claimed that there is a 95% chance of anyone in Britain being descended from King Richard III, given the wide distribution of genes over time. However the calculation is nonsense as it ignores the lack of social mobility. Most marriages were made within one’s social class and within very limited local areas – at least until the industrial revolution and the invention of the bicycle. If this is not enough for the reader, then we are unhappy to say that there are clear links for the Stonehaven Gibbons back to the Scottish Kings, Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Charlemagne and beyond.
406 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
The earlier Gibbon genealogists were also keen to find a connection to Edward Gibbon the historian. There is no obvious connection. This is possibly just as well judging by the entry of John Duff from Culbin who made both a Grand Tour and an entertaining diary. He describes being in Lausanne in 17904. In a short time I was gratified with the sight of Mr Gibbon whom I had never seen before. He is one of the ugliest figures I ever saw. He is of an overbearing disagreeable character and far from being liked here. For any keen Gibbon researchers there is ample scope for expanding this account and numerous archives could well yield surprises. For example the various Aberdeen city archives, including the shipping and port records, could reveal much detail as could a systematic look at the various Stonehaven records held in Edinburgh. Future research might usefully explore genetic testing. The results from one of the authors, Sally Wyllie, explored her maternal (Gibbon) line and revealed a long list of remote relatives, the relationship to whom has not been identified. It also showed that she was of 42% Scandinavian and 58% West and Central European origin. Tests from Gibbon males ought to be more revealing as the Y chromosome is inherited almost unchanged from father to son. A few years ago it would have seemed impossible to draw any conclusions about how genetics might have affected the success or failure of individuals, families or lines. However, recent discoveries in epigenetics show that changes in gene expression can occur without a change in DNA and can be affected by the surroundings and environment to which a family was exposed. These changes can even occur before birth, and can be transferred and expressed in following generations. Epigenetic changes are constantly occurring within every person even before birth. We leave the reader to explore this and speculate on how it shows itself in the Gibbon trees.
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 407
IMAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors have tried extremely hard to ensure that all of the images used have the required permission or acknowledgement. We apologise for any inadvertent omissions.
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 3
1.1
© National Galleries of Scotland
3.1-3.4 National Library of Scotland
1.2
Biblioteque Nationale de France
1.3
Taken from a painting. Source unknown
3.5
Shaw, J. 1984. Water Power in Scotland 1550-1870. Edinburgh. John Donald Publishers Ltd
1.4
© National Portrait Gallery, London
1.5
Photo by Samuel Bourne. Source unknown
3.6
M. L. Parry in: Fenton, A. 1976. Scottish Country Life. East Linton. Tuckwell Press
1.6
Hand-coloured lithograph after Captain Alexander Allan. Published in: Cannon, R. 1851. Historical Record of the 73rd Regiment. London. Parker, Furnivall and Parker. National Museum Scotland
3.7
Fenton, A. 1976. Scottish Country Life. East Linton. Tuckwell Press
3.8
From Finden’s Ports and Harbours 1842 after a picture by W. H. Bartlett
1.7
© Scottish National Gallery
CHAPTER 4
1.8
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
4.1-4.4 National Library of Scotland
1.9
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
4.5
Bleachfield in a village c1650 by Jan Breughel the Younger
1.10
Fort St George, Madras, 1754. Sketch by Jan Van Ryne. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
4.6
Women weavers at their looms at the Dens Works, Dundee. c1908. Univ. of Dundee Archives
1.11
London Gazette 1811
4.7
© Dawn Black
1.12
© National Army Museum
1.13
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection. Brown University
CHAPTER 5
1.14
Eastern Side of Pulo Penang, or Prince of Wales' Island, with Fort Cornwallis. 1810. Penang State Museum and Art Gallery
1.15 Find A Grave Memorial no. 22540893, Protestant Cemetery, Penang, Malaysia; Maintained by Chris Nelson (contributor 46617359)
5.1
National Library of Scotland
5.2
Fenton, A. 1976. Scottish Country Life. East Linton. Tuckwell Press
5.3
Grose, F. 1791. The Antiquities of Scotland. London. S. Hooper
5.4
© Scottish National Portrait Gallery © Scottish National Portrait Gallery
1.16
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. George Eastman Collection of the University of Rochester
5.5 5.6
Source unknown
1.17
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
5.7
M. K. Southern, Thurrock Local History Society
CHAPTER 2
5.8
National Library of Scotland
2.1
Government Art Collection, Australia
5.9
National Library of Scotland
2.2
Book of the Duffs
5.10
National Library of Scotland
2.3
© Christchurch Gallery, New Zealand
5.11
© University of Adelaide
2.4
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
5.12
© University of Adelaide
2.5
© Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford
5.13
Australian National Library
2.6
Battles of the Nineteenth Century. London. Cassell and Company Ltd. Undated
5.14
© The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
2.7
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
5.15
Based on information in McIntosh (2016)
2.8
A print called 'An Interesting Scene on Board an East Indiaman showing the Effects of a Heavy Lurch after Dinner'. By George Cruickshank c1818
2.9
Battles of the Nineteenth Century. London. Cassell and Company Ltd. Undated
2.10
Sketches in Afghanistan. Henry Grave & Co. and W. H. Allen & Co., London 1842. © Victoria and Albert Museum
2.11
© Tate Gallery, London
2.12
© National Portrait Gallery, London
2.13
Photogravure by Walker and Boutell (1812) after Charles Hayter’s portrait of 1792
408 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 9
6.1
9.1
Boston, its environs and harbour with the rebels works raised against that town in 1775. Sir T H Hyde. Library of Congress.
9.2
© Museums of the City of New York. US Library of Congress. After a painting by M. A. Wageman
Painted by Rear Admiral Richard Beechey. Public domain
6.2-6.3
National Library of Scotland
6.4
©Angus Council
6.5
© Tate Gallery, London
6.6
©Angus Council
9.3
6.7
Source unknown
9.4-9.5 National Library of Scotland
6.8
From: Robert Burns, Farmer. Gavin Sprott. National Museum of Scotland
9.6
6.9
Source unknown
CHAPTER 10
6.10
National Portrait Gallery, London
10.1
New York Historical Society
Robin Gibbon, Suffolk
6.11-6.13 © British Library, London
10.2-10.3 © Aberdeen University Library
6.14
Illustrated London News 5 Feb 1859
10.4
6.15
Alexander Nasmyth. National Gallery of Scotland
CHAPTER 11
© National Library of Scotland
6.16-6.17 From: Robert Burns, Farmer. Gavin Sprott. National Museum of Scotland
11.1
Collins Street 1839 by F. A. Sleat engraver. National Portrait Gallery, Australia
CHAPTER 7
11.2
© National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
National Museum of Singapore
11.3
7.2-7.4, 7.5-7.6 National Library of Scotland
11.4
7.1 7.7
© Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
7.8-7.9 Sources unknown
Como House, Melbourne. National Trust of Australia © National Archives, London. Slave Registers of Former British Colonial Dependencies T 71 614. 1828
11.5-11.7 State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
7.10
© J.J. Heath-Caldwell
11.8
Self-portrait aged 20 1824. La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library, Melbourne
7.11
From: Sneddon, J. M. The Devil’s Carnival. Reveille Press
11.9
Illustrated London News 6 Oct. 1860
7.12
© National Portrait Gallery, London
11.10 Vanity Fair 6 Nov 1875
7.13
Source unknown
11.11
7.14
Impression of the portrait of Marion Peck by Kent artist Maggie Lane
11.12 National Portrait Gallery, London
7.15-7.18 7.19
Sources unknown
Tyne and Wear Archives
Imperial War Museum, London
11.13 Pittwater Online News 11.14 National Portrait Gallery, London
7.20 Vancouver City Archives
11.15 Robert Knudson. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston
7.21-7.22 North East War Memorials Project
11.16 © National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
7.23 © Imperial War Museum, London
11.17 © John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
7.24 Queens Gallery, London 7.25 Published by Jan Janszoom in 1613 7.26 National Galleries of Scotland 7.27 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Gift of the Executors of Mr and Mrs F H Boxer
CHAPTER 12 12.1
Source unknown
CHAPTER 13
7.28 National Galleries of Scotland
13.1
7.29-7.30 © National Museum of Singapore
13.2-13.3 National Library of Scotland
7.31
13.4
Taken by J. D. Holmes
13.5
Imperial War Museum. War Memorial Register
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London Gift of the Executors of Mr and Mrs F H Boxer
7.32 © National Portrait Gallery, London
CHAPTER 8 8.1
Studio photographs possibly taken around the time of their wedding
13.6-13.8 With thanks to Murchison and District Historical Association
J Hinchcliffe. Guildhall, City of London
8.2-8.3
Original in Brown University Archives
8.4
Iziko Museums, South Africa
8.5
City of Vancouver Archives
8.6
British Columbia Historical Association
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 409
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 19
14.1
A publicity publication by the Company in 1957 in an attempt to avert political attacks
19.1 as
Brogden, W. A. 2012. A City's Architecture: Aberdeen 'Designed City'. Farnham. Ashgate Publishing Ltd
14.2
Based on a self-published screen print by Rupert Garcia. © Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
19.2
© National Portrait Gallery, London
14.3
National Army Museum
19.3
Norman, H. W. and Young, Mrs K. 1902. Delhi 1857. London. W. and R. Chambers Ltd
14.4
Aberdeen City Council, Silver City Vault
19.4-19.7 National Army Museum
14.5
© National Portrait Gallery, London.
14.6
Published by the company to celebrate its 50th anniversary. F. V. Duran. Valparaiso 1943
19.8
14.7
Las Estancias Magallanicas. 1999. J. Benavides et al. University of Chile
19.11 © Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh
14.8
Taken by Donny Gluckstein
19.13 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Norman, H. W. and Young, Mrs K. 1902. Delhi 1857. London. W. and R. Chambers Ltd
19.9-19.10 National Army Museum 19.12 © Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh
CHAPTER 15
19.14 © Wichyanan Limparungpatthanakij
15.1
© National Portrait Gallery, London
15.2
Victoria and Albert Museum
CHAPTER 20
15.3
© Norfolk Museums Service
15.4
Find a Grave
15.5
© Norfolk Museums Service
15.6
© National Portrait Gallery, London
15.7
Find a Grave Memorial 56705754
15.8
The Times 26 May 2016
20.6 La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria, Australia
15.9
The Times 18 Feb 1955
20.7 © Scottish National Galleries Edinburgh
20.1
© Scottish National Galleries Edinburgh
20.2 Scottish National Library 20.3 © Scottish National Galleries Edinburgh 20.4 National Library of Australia 20.5 Scotch College, Melbourne
15.10-15.11 Tea – A Journey in Time. 2008. J Weatherstone
20.8 Curle Smith, H. N. Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy
15.12 National Portrait Gallery, London
CHAPTER 21
15.13 © BBC Houlton Library
21.1
© National Maritime Museum
CHAPTER 16
21.2
© National Army Museum, London
Many images come from the archive of Colin Imray or from his memoir 'Remember and be Glad'.
21.3
Rhodesian African Rifles Roll of Honour
21.4
Glasgow City Archives
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 22
17.1
Lloyds of London Archives
17.2
Eric Coates Society
17.3
© Imperial War Museum, London
17.4
Nesbit, D., Pulford, C. and Noel, T. 2012. Coming Second Doesn’t Count: Memories from The Lodge, Highgate School. Ituri Publications
17.5
The Times 26 January 1987
CHAPTER 18 18.1
National Archives
18.2-18.3 © British Library 18.4
© National Army Museum, London
18.5
© British Library
18.6
National library of Scotland
18.7
State Library of New South Wales, Australia
18.8
National Portrait Gallery, Australia
410 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
22.1
© National Library of Scotland
22.2 © National Library of Scotland 22.3 © Aberdeen Maritime Museum 22.4 © V & A Museum, London 22.5-22.7 © National Library of Scotland
CHAPTER 23 23.1
© Imperial War Museum (HU 120 115)
23.2 National Library of Scotland
CHAPTER 24
CHART 26
24.1
26.1
© Neil Peppe
24.2 National Library of Scotland 24.3 Harvard University Library 24.4 © Manchester City Galleries 24.5 © Neil Peppe 24.6 © Neil Peppe 24.7 © Manchester City Galleries 24.8 © Neil Peppe 24.9 © Neil Peppe 24.10 © Neil Peppe 24.11 © Manchester City Galleries 24.12 © Manchester City Galleries
Battles of the Nineteenth Century. London. Cassell and Company Ltd. Undated
26.2 © British Library 26.3 © British Library 26.4 © Manchester City Art Gallery 26.5 © British Library 26.6 © British Library 26.7 Battles of the Nineteenth Century. London. Cassell and Company Ltd. Undated 26.8 © National Army Museum 26.9 © National Portrait Gallery 26.10 © National Army Museum
24.13 Presidency University, Calcutta. UKIERI Project
26.11 Thanks to Jocelyn Johinke. Her grandfather’s house in Australia was full of Nisbet portraits
24.14-24.24
© Neil Peppe
26.12 Woolwich Arsenal, London
24.25-24.26
© Manchester City Galleries
26.13 © National Portrait Gallery
24.28-24.30
© British Library
26.14 Photo by Tim Cooper on Unsplash. Drawing from Biodiversity Heritage Library
24.31 © British Museum
CHAPTER 25 25.1
© Kenosha History Society
25.2 National Library of Scotland 25.3 © British Library 25.4-25.7 © Marianne Davis, Rochester, Minnesota 25.8 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich 25.9 © National Portrait Gallery, London
26.15 © British Library 26.16 NCERT 26.17 © National Army Museum 26.18 © Wellcome Collection. London. 26.19 World Military Medals 26.20 J. Paul Getty Museum, California 26.21 Leeds Museums and Galleries
25.10 © Kenosha History Society
EPILOGUE
25.11 © Kenosha History Society
E1 © Trustees of the British Museum
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 411
NOTES GENERAL SOURCES For different countries: Official Birth, Marriage, Death and Burial Records for different religions: Census Records: Electoral Rolls: Memorial Inscription lists: Newspapers, Journals etc: Local History Societies: Passenger Lists: Immigration Records: Official Archives both National and Local; etc etc.
CHAPTER 1 1. Gibbon, G. 1976. Gibbon of Lonmay. Privately Printed. 2. Dingwall-Fordyce, A. 1885. Family Record of the Name of Dingwall-Fordyce in Aberdeenshire. Toronto. Canada. 3. Turing Family Papers. West Sussex Archives. 4. Murland, H. F, 2005. Baillie-Ki-Paltan: Being a History of the 2nd Battalion, Madras Pioneers 1759–1930. Uckfield. The Naval and Military Press Ltd. 5. Love, H. D. 1913. Vestiges of Old Madras. London. John Murray. 6.
Chakrabartio, P. 2006. "Neither of meate nor drinke, but what the Doctor alloweth": Medicine amidst War and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century. Madras. Bull. Hist. Med. 2006; 80(1): 1-38.
7. Parlby, S. 1822. The British Indian Military Depository. Vol 1. Calcutta. 8. Baillie, G. 1805 .George Baillie's Narrative of the Mercantile Transactions of the Concerns of George Baillie and Co.'s Houses for the Year 1793 to 1805 Inclusive. London. 9. Tan, K. Y. L. and Sian, L. C. No date. Raffles Letters: Intrigues Behind the Founding of Singapore. National Museum of Singapore. 10. MacKenzie, H. c1850. The Lay of the Turings. Privately Printed. 11. Temple, W. 1894. The Thanage of Formartine. Aberdeen. D. Wyllie & Son. 12. India Office Records: Cadet Papers. IOR/L/MIL/9/255/22, 28v (1). 13. Dodwell, E. and Miles, J. S. 1837. Alphabetical List of the Madras Army. London. Longman, Orme, Brown & Co. 14. India Office Records. L/AG/23/10/1-2. 15. India Office Records. Cadet Papers. IOR/L/MIL/9/255/93. 16. Stanley, P. 1998. White Mutiny. London, Hurst & Co. [Deals with a later white mutiny but nicely describes life as a 19th Century Company Officer] 17. Cardew, A. 1929. The White Mutiny: A Forgotten Episode in the History of the Indian Army. London. 18. Mount, F. 2015. The Tears of the Rajas. London. Simon and Schuster.
24. Hodges, A. 2004. Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 25. Cramond, W. 1891. The Annals of Banff. Aberdeen. New Spalding Club. 26. Turing, S. et al. 2012. Alan M. Turing. Cambridge. C.U.P. 26. Naravane, M. S. 2014. Battles of the Honourable East India Company: Making of the Raj. New Delhi. APH Publishing Corporation. 27. Bowen, H.V., McAleer, J. and Blyth, J.B.2011. Monsoon Traders. London, Scala Publishers and the National Maritime Museum. 28. Mason, P. 1985. The Men Who Ruled India. London. Jonathan Cape. 29. McLaren, M. 2001. British India and British Scotland 1780-1830. Akron, Univ. of Akron Press. 30. McGilvery. 2008. East India Patronage and the British State. London. Tauris Academic Studies. 31. Smith, S. D. 2006. Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles 1648-1834. Cambridge. C.U.P. 32. Cotton, J. J. 1946. List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments Madras Vol 2 Chingleput District St Thomas' Mount Cantonment Cemetery. Madras. Revised Edition. 33. Melville, N. 1998. The Incised Effigial Stone at Foveran, Aberdeenshire. London. 15th Park Lane Arms Fair. Apollo Magazine Ltd. 34. The Scots Magazine 1 Aug. 1769. 35. Fisher, D. R. Ed. 2009. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1820-1832, ed. D.R. Fisher. 2009. Cambridge. C.U.P. 36. Allan, M. and M. 2017. The Man and the Island. Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar, Bt: First British Governor of Mauritius 1810. Privately Printed. 37. Graham, M. 1812. Journal of a Residence in India. Edinburgh. Constable and Co. 38. Wilson, J. 2015. India Conquered. London. Simon and Schuster. 39. Tharoor, S. 2017. Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India. London. Penguin. 40. Scott, H. 1928 Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae. New Edition. Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd. 41. Glover, G. and C. Yorke (Eds). 2018. With Wellington’s Hussars in the Peninsula and Waterloo: The Journal of Lieutenant George Woodberry, 18th Hussars. Barnsley. Frontline Books. 42. Dictionary of National Biography. 2009. Oxford, OUP.
19. Taylor, S. 2007. Storm and Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean 1809. London. Faber and Faber.
43. Beames, J. 1961. Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian. London. Eland Publishing Ltd.
20. India Office Records: H/695 – 700 1809 - 1815.
44. Gilmour, D. 2018. The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience. London. Penguin Books.
21. Calcutta Gazettes 1784 -1823; Madras Almanac 1810 – 1820: and numerous newspaper reports. 22. India Office Records: L/MIL/9/107 f.561; L/AG/23/10/1-2 FKA. 23. London Gazette. Petitions of Insolvent Debtors, to be heard at the Court, in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inns Fields, Middlesex, on Tuesday the 30th day of May 1826.
412 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
45. Forrest, G. 1918. The Life of Lord Clive. London. Cassell. 46. Baillie, A. C. 2017. Call of Empire: From the Highlands to Hindostan. McGill - Queens Univ. Press. 47. Dalrymple, W. 2019. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise o the East India Company. London. Bloomsbury.
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
1. Tayler, A. and H. 1914. The Book of the Duffs. Edinburgh. W. Brown.
1.
Dr MacNaughton was an avid collector of old documents, signatures, and information about Kincardineshire. His collections are in the archives of both the University of Dundee and the University of Aberdeen.
4. McGilvary, G. K. 2008. East India Patronage and the British State. London. Tauris Academic Studies.
2.
The Rev. Christie was a keen antiquarian who left a rich source of notes and papers. He collaborated closely with Dr MacNaughton. His material is in the Episcopal archives held by Dundee University.
5. India Office Records. IOR/L/MIL/9/258/35v-36, 37v-38. IOR/L/MIL/9/113/174.
3. Seton, B. G. and Arnott, J. G. Eds. 1929. The Prisoners of the '45. Scottish History Society. Vol. 2.
6. India Office Records. Cadet Papers. L/MIL/9/368 f51.
4. Barron, D.G. Ed. 1892. The Court Book of the Barony of Urie in Kincardineshire 1604 - 1747.
2. Baird, W. 1869. Genealogical Memoirs of the Duffs. Aberdeen. D. Wyllie & Son. 3. Gibbon, G. 1976 Gibbon of Lonmay. Privately printed.
7. Crawford, D. G. 1914. Roll of the Indian Medical Service. London. W Thacker and Company.
5. Episcopal Archives, Dundee University. Br MS3 Series.
8. The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany 1839. Vol 28: 1841. Vol. 35.
6. Walker, J. 1791 – 99. Parish of Dunnottar. First Statistical Account of Scotland.
9. Buck, C.H. 1914. The Annals of Karnal. Lahore.
7. Cullen, K. J. 2010. Famine in Scotland: The 'Ill Years' of the 1690s. Scottish Historical Review Monograph.
10. Dalrymple, W. 2013. Return of a King: The Battle for Afganistan. Bloomsbury, London. 11. Stewart, J. 2008. Crimson Snow. Stroud. The History Press.
8. Barclay, R. 1842. Agricultural Tour in the United States and Canada. Edinburgh. Blackwood and Sons.
12. Sale, Lady F. 1843. A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan. London. John Murray.
9. Shaw, J. 1984. Water Power in Scotland 1550 - 1870. Edinburgh, John Donald.
13. Eyre, V. 1843. The Military Operations at Cabul. London. John Murray.
10. Gauldie, E. 1981. The Scottish Country Miller 1700 - 1900. Edinburgh, John Donald.
14. Brydon, W. 1842. In: Lawrence, G. 1874. Reminiscences of Forty Three Years in India. London. John Murray.
11. Donnachie, I. 1979. A History of the Brewing Industry in Scotland. Edinburgh. John Donald.
15. Atkinson, J. 1842. The Expedition into Affghanistan. London, W. H. Allen.
12. Uglow, J. 2014. In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars. 1793-1815. London. Faber & Faber.
16. India Office Records: IOR/L/MIL/9/258/35v-36, 37v-38.
13. Aitchison, P. and Cassell, A. 2011. The Lowland Clearances. Edinburgh. Birlinn Ltd.
17. East India Register and Directory 1805, 1806, 1810. 18. Taylor, S. 2007. Storm and Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean 1809. London. Faber and Faber. 19. The European Journal and London Review. 1809. p 474. 20. Brenton, E. P. 1783 - 1836. The Naval History of Great Britain. London, C. Rice. 21. Johnston, T. 1909. Our Scots Noble Families. Glasgow. Forward Publishing Co. Ltd. 22. Brand, E. 2020.The Fall of the House of Byron. London. John Murray. 23. Mount, F. 2015. The Tears of the Rajas. London. Simon and Schuster.
14. Stonehaven Masonic Lodge No 65 Records courtesy of John Lawson, Archivist. 15. W. A. McNaughton archive. 16. Devine, T. M. 2018. The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed. London. Allen Lane.
CHAPTER 4 1. Fetteresso Kirk Session Records. CH2/153/3. National Archives of Scotland. 2. Barron, D.G. Ed. 1892. The Court Book of the Barony of Urie in Kincardineshire 1604 – 1747.
24. Turing Papers MSS 19028. West Sussex Record Office. 25. Galbraith, R. 2018. Without Quarter: A Biography of Tom Johnston. Edinburgh. Birlinn Ltd.
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 413
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
1. Episcopal Archives. Dundee University Archives.
1. Barron, D. G. Ed. 1892. The Court Book of the Barony of Urie in Kincardineshire. 1604 - 1747.
2. National Archives Scotland. NAS E647 Forfeited Estate Papers. 3. Seton, B. G. and Arnott, J. G. Eds. 1929. The Prisoners of the '45. Scottish History Society. Vol. 2. 4. Dundee Episcopal Archives Br MS 3 DO/81.
2. MacNaughton, W. A. 1918. Notes Concerning the Burns Family in Kincardineshire. Aberdeen University Review. V: 1917 - 1918.
5. University of Aberdeen Archives MS S 2192.
3. Rogers, C. 1877. Genealogical Memoirs of the Family of Robert Burns. Edinburgh. W. Paterson.
6. The Scottish Jurist 1837. IX: 509-513.
4. Burnes, J. 1851. Notes on his Name and Family. Edinburgh.
7. Dundee University Episcopal Archives Br MS 3 DC/75.
5. Rogers, C. 1877. Genealogical Memoirs of the family of Robert Burns and of the Scottish House of Burnes. Edinburgh. W. Paterson.
8. Anderson, J. 1879. The Black Book of Kincardineshire. Aberdeen. Smith and Son. 9. Slade, H. G. 1978-80. Arbuthnott House, Kincardineshire. Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 110: 432-474. 10. CS271/50144 . Court of Session Processes. Janet Gibbon or Young and Others v Dr William Young and Factor. 1750. National Archives of Scotland. 11. Cardew, A. 1929. The White Mutiny: a Forgotten Episode in the History of the Indian Army. London.
6. Dictionary of National Biography. 1885 - 1900. Vol. 7. 7. Laurie, W. F. B. 1997. Sketches of Some Distinguished Anglo-Indians. London. W. H. Allen. 8. Burnes, A. 1834. Travels into Bokhara. London. John Murray. 9. Dalrymple, W. 2013. Return of a King. The Battle for Afghanistan. London. Bloomsbury.
12. University of Aberdeen Archives MS 2606/5/2.
10. Stewart, J. 2008. Crimson Snow: Britain’s First Disaster in Afghanistan. Stroud. The History Press.
13. Torry, P. 1856. The Life and Times of Patrick Torry D.D., Bishop of Saint Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblabe: with an Appendix on the Scottish Liturgy. London. Joseph Masters.
11. Stephen, L. 1886. Robert Burns. Dictionary of National Biography.
14. Dundee University Episcopal Archives Br MS 3 DC/84.
12. McIntyre, I. 1995. Dirt & Deity: A Life of Robert Burns. London. Harper Collins.
15. Morris, D. 1976. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 6. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
13. Grimble, I. 1986. Robert Burns. London. Hamlyn Publishing.
16. Obituary. Aberdeen Journal 28th December 1914.
14. Rosie, G. 2004. Curious Scotland: Tales from a Hidden History. London. Granta Books.
17. Fremont-Barnes, G. 2011. The Jacobite Rebellion 1745-46. Oxford. Osprey Publishing.
15. Murray, C. 2016. Sikunder Burnes: Master of the Great Game. Edinburgh. Birlinn Ltd.
18. Aberdeen University Archives MS 2970/1/3.
CHAPTER 7
19. Temple, W. 1894. The Thanage of Formartine. Aberdeen. D Wyllie & Son. 20. Aberdeen University Archives MS 2192/6. 21. Macfarlane, W. 1906. Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland. Edinburgh. Scottish History Society.
1. Henderson, J. A. 1912. History of the Society of Advocates Aberdeen. Aberdeen. New Spalding Club. 2. Leeds Mercury 20 January 1896.
3. Steinhart, E. I. 2005. Black Poachers, White Hunters. A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya. Oxford. 22. Royle, T. 2016. Culloden: Scotland’s Last Battle and the Forging James Currey. of the British Empire. London. Little, Brown Book Group. 4. The Times 8 May 1958. 23. Stonehaven Masonic Lodge No 65 Records courtesy of 5. Heath, G. 1920. Records of the Heath Family. Vol. 2. John Lawson, Archivist. Private Circulation. 24. McIntosh, I. D. 2016. Freemasonry in the North East of 6. The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler. Scotland during the Jacobite Uprising 1745-46. University of Glasgow Archives. Quator Coronati Correspondence Circle 29. 1-36. 7. Anthony, B. 2012. Chaplin's Music Hall: The Chaplins and 25. Papers from the Collection of Sir William Fraser. 1924. their Circle in the Limelight. London. I. B. Tauris and Co. Scottish History Society Third Series. Vol. 5. 10. Laughton, J. K. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. Vol. 18. 11. Farquhar, W. 2010. Natural History Drawings; the Complete William Farquhar Collection. Malay Peninsula 1803-1818. National Museum of Singapore. 12. The Times. 31 January 1908. 13. Chicago Tribune 2 November 1896. 14. Jervis, A. 1879. Epitaphs and Inscriptions from Burial Grounds and Old Buildings in the North East of Scotland. Edinburgh. David Douglas. 15. Sutherland, D. E. 2014. Whistler: A Life for Art's Sake. London. Yale University Press.
414 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
16. Sneddon, J. M. (Ed.). 2012. The Devil’s Carnival. Brighton. Reveille Press. 17. Pennell, E. R. and Pennell, J. 1911. The Life and Times of James McNeill Whistler. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott Co. 18. Van der Zee, J. 1922. The British in Iowa. Iowa City. State Historical Society of Iowa.
CHAPTER 10 1. Gibbon, G. 1976. Gibbon of Lonmay. Privately Printed. 2. Cramond, W. 1891. The Annals of Banff. Aberdeen. New Spalding Club. 3. Aberdeen University Archives MS1160/20/25.
19. Harnack, C. 1985. Gentlemen on the Prairie. Ames. Iowa State Univ. Press.
4. Philippart, J. 1923. The East India Military Calendar. Vol. 1. London.
20. Selous, F.C. 1896. Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia: A Narrative of Events in Matabeleland. London. Rowland Ward & Co. Ltd.
5. Thorald, P. 2008. The British in France. Bloomsbury, London. 6. Grant, E. 1898. A Highland Lady in France 1843 - 1845. London. John Murray.
21. Pagamenta, P. 2012. Prairie Fever: How British Aristocrats Staked a Claim tp the American West. London. Duckworth.
7. Gibbon, Lewis Grassic. 1932-34. A Scots Quair. London.
22. Wright, N. 2017. William Farquhar and Singapore: Stepping Out from Raffle’s Shadow. Penang. Entrepot Publishing. 23. Devine, T. (Ed.) 2013. Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh. EUP. 24 Glendinning, V. 2012. Raffles and the Golden Opportunity. London. Profile Books.
8. Scottish National Library Manuscript MS3442, 3443.
CHAPTER 11 1. Craton, M. and Saunders, G. 1999. Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People. Athens. University of Georgia Press.
CHAPTER 8
2. Register of Claims. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1837-8 (215) Vol. 48. T71/894 Trinidad No. 1908 and 1910.
1. CS271/50144 National Archives of Scotland. Janet Gibbon or Young (Younge) & others v Dr William Young & Factor. 1750.
3. Miller, R. 1976. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 10. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
2. Episcopal Church Archives. Dundee University Archives.
4. The Times (London). 5 May 1880.
3. The Spectator (London) 10 June 1848.
5. The Argus (Melbourne). 6 May 1880.
4. O'Kiely, E. 1983. Commander Henry Pybus R.N.R. British Columbia Historical News. Vol 17. No 1: 9 - 12.
6. De Serville, P. 1991. Pounds and Pedigrees: The Upper Class in Victoria 1850-80. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
5. Lubbock, B. 1914.The Opium Clippers. London. Brown, Scott and Ferguson Ltd.
7. De Serville, P. 1980. Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne before the Gold Rushes. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
CHAPTER 9 1. Notes made by Marie Cranmer. Quoted by Geoffrey Gibbon.
8. Hone, J. A. 1972. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 4. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
2. CS271/58915 National Archives Scotland. Charles Walker etc vs William Gibbon 1806.
9. Haywood, A. and Clarke, F.A.S. 1964. The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force. Aldershot. Gale and Polden.
3. Clark, A. 1911. A Short History of the Shipmaster Society or the Seamen's Box of Aberdeen. Aberdeen. William Smith & Sons.
10. Johnston, S. 1990. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 10.
4. Davies, H. 1975. George Stevenson. London. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
12. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press. 11. Pastoral Review. 16 July 1921.
12. Henderson, A. 1936. Early Pioneer Families of Victoria and Riverina: A Genealogical and Biographical Record. 5. Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies. DE/X253 Papers Melbourne. McCarron, Bird and Co. of Alexander Gibbon of Staunton, Glos, relating to estate 13. Pearson, M. and Lennon, J. 2010, Pastoral Australia: and family concerns of the Bowes-Lyon family of St Pauls Fortunes, Failures and Hard Yakka. A Historical Overview Walden, 1829-1855. 1788 - 1967. Collingwood. CSIRO Publishing. 6. Davis, M. L. Ed. 1838. The Private Journal of Aaron Burr, 14. Itter, I. 2009. Wolseley - The Walgett Collection. Victoria. during his Residence of four years in Europe. New York. Walgett Historical Society. Harper and Brothers. 8. The Monthly Law Magazine and Political Review. Vol. 3. Oct 1838-Jan 1839. London.
15. Itter, I. 2012. Langloh Parker: Yanga and Bangate Stations. Victoria. Swan Hill.
9. Scottish National Library Manuscripts MS 4088, 4093.
16. Muir, M. 1990. Australian Dictionary of Biography.Volume 12. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
10. Jasanoff, M. 2011. Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire. London. Harper Collins. 11. Lewis, J. E. 2017. The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis. Princeton. Princeton U.P. 12. Lee, S. 1897. Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 52. 13. Anderson, V.E.R. 2011. The Eurasian Problem in Nineteenth Century India. PhD Thesis. SOAS. London.
17. Ingham, S. M. 1974. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 5. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press. 18. Heuman, G. and Walvin, J. Eds. 2003. The Slavery Reader. London. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. 19. Hobe, S. Ed. 2013.Pioneers of Space Law. Leiden. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 20. Liardet's Water-colours of Early Melbourne. Eds. Adams, S and Bate, W. 1972. Melbourne. Melbourne UP.
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 415
21. Gilmour, J. 2009. Chance Encounter. Canberra. National Portrait Gallery.
CHAPTER 15
22. McCrae, H. (Ed.).1978. Georgina’s Journal: Melbourne 1841-1865. 3rd Edn. Waterloo. W. Brooks & Co.
1. Childs, A., Nunn, C., and Sampson, A. 2005. The Remarkable Story of Photographers Olive Edis and Cyril Nunn. Tiverton. Halsgrove.
23. Abe, N. 2019. ‘Cherry’ Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan’s Blossoms. London. Chatto & Windus.
2. Obituary in The Times 18 February 1955.
CHAPTER 12 1. Gibbon, G. 1976. Gibbon of Lonmay. Privately Printed. 2. Errington, F. H. L. 1922. The Inns of Court Officers Training Corps During the Great War. London. 3. Bognor Regis Observer 26 July 1939.
CHAPTER 13 1. The Murchison & District Historical Society Archives. 2. The Murchison Advertiser 8 March 1915. 3. Arnold, C. 2018. Pandemic 1918. London. Michael O’Mara Books Ltd.
CHAPTER 14 1. Mitchell, B. T. 1996. Tea, Tytlers and Tribes. Sydney. Seaview Press. 2. Tropical Agriculturalist. 1893. 13: 217 - 222. [A monograph about Robert Boyd Tytler]. 3. Ceylon Literary Register 1916 - 1917. Vol II: 217 - 8. 4. Harper, M. A. 1988. Emigration from North-East Scotland. Vol. 1. Willing Exiles. Vol. 2 Beyond the Broad Atlantic. Aberdeen. Aberdeen University Press. 5.
Weatherstone, J. 1986. The Pioneers 1825 - 1900. The Early British Tea and Coffee Planters and Their Way of Life. London. Quiller Press. [This includes a superb account, by the author, of the day to day existence and work of an upcountry planter from 1950 onwards]
6.
Peebles, P. A. 2001. The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon. Leicester. University of Leicester Press.
7. Mills, L.A. 1933. Ceylon under British Rule 1795 - 1932. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 8. Gott, R. 2011. Britain's Empire. London. Verso. 9. Ondaatje, C. 2005. Woolf in Ceylon. Long Riders Guild Press. 10. Edmundson, W. 2011. A History of the British Presence in Chile. London. Palgrave Macmillan. 11. Jones, T. P. 1961. Patagonian Panorama. Bournemouth. The Outspoken Press. 12. Dooley, E. Streams in the Wasteland: A Portrait of the British in Patagonia. 1993. Punta Arenas. 13. Miller, C. 1974. Battle for the Bundu. New York. Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc. 14. Murray, A.H.M. 1905. The High Road of Empire: Water-colour and Pen-and-Ink Sketches in India. London. John Murray. 15. Riegel, C. W. 2015. The Last Safari: East Africa in World War 1. London. Rowan and Littlefield. 16. Darwin, J. 2012, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain. London. Bloomsbury Press. 17. Farwell, B. 1972. Queen Victoria’s Little Wars. London. W. W. Norton & Co. 18. Emsley, C. (Ed) 2011. Theories and Origins of the Modern Police. Farnham. Ashgate Publishing.
416 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
3. McDonnell, F. 1996. Alumni and Graduates in Arts of the Aberdeen Colleges 1850 - 1860. St Andrews. 4. Wright, A. 1907. Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon: its People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources. London. Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Co. 5. The Canadian Encyclopaedia. Pub: A. Wilson-Smith. 6. New, W. H. Ed. 2002. Encyclopaedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto. University of Toronto Press. 7. Henderson, S. 2005. While There is Still Time. Journal of Canadian Studies. 39. 139 - 174. 8.
Neilson, L. C. 2011. John Murray Gibbon (1875 - 1952): The Branding of a Northern Nation. Proc..of the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing. Vol. 15: 127 - 144.
9. The Times 28 December 1951. 10. 'Liason'. 1919. Antranik. Blackwood's Magazine. 206. No 1248. 441 - 447. 11. Murray, J. and Boileau, J.T. 1859. Picturesque Views in the North-Western Provinces of India. London. 12. Taylor, R., and Schaaf, L. J. Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives 1840 - 1860. New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 13. The Times (London). 26 May 2016. 14. Stacke, H. FitzM. 1928. The Worcestershire Regiment in the Great War. Kidderminster. G. T. Cheshire & Sons Ltd. 15. Barron, T. J. 2017. Scots and the Coffee Industry in Nineteenth Century Ceylon. In: Devine, T. M. and McCarthy, A. [Eds] The Scottish Experience in Asia. Basingstoke. Palgrave Macmillan.
CHAPTER 16 1. Episcopal Church Archives. University of Dundee. 2. Gibbon, G. 1976. Gibbon of Lonmay. Privately Printed. 3. Family Archive of Colin Imray 4. Imray, C. H. 2009. Remember and be Glad: A Memoir. Privately Published. 5. Who's Who 2014. London. Bloomsbury Publishing. 6.
Rohatgi, P. and Parlett, G. 2008. Indian Life and Landscape by Western Artists: Paintings and Drawings from the Victoria and Albert Museum, 17th to the Early 20th Century. Mumbai, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in association with Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
CHAPTER 17 1. Gibbon, G. 1976. Gibbon of Lonmay. Privately Printed. 2. Smith, J. 1833. A Treatise on the Artificial Growth of Cucumbers and Melons. Ipswich. Edward Shalders. 3. Nesbit, D., Pulford, C. and Noel, T. 2012. Memories from The Lodge, Highgate School. Ituri Publications. 4. Gibbon, G. 1973. Paget of Rhodesia: A Memoir of Edward, 5th Bishop of Mashonaland. Bulawayo. Books of Rhodesia. 5. The Times 27 January 1996.
6. Carpenter, H. 1996. The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3. London. Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 7. Barrett, D. V. 1996. Sects, ‘Cults’ and Alternative Religions. London. Cassell. 8. Ponsonby, F. 1920. The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914-19. London. Macmillan. 9. Schuchard, M. K. 2011. Emanuel Swedenborg. Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven: Jacobites, Jews, and Freemasons in Early Modern Sweden. Leiden. Brill. 10. Elkins, C. 2005. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York. Harold Holt. 11. Cobain, I. 2012. Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture. London. Portobello Books.
11.
Norman, H. W. and Young, Mrs K. 1902. Delhi 1857: The Siege, Assault, and Capture as given in the Diary and Correspondence of the late Col. Keith Young, C.B. Judge Advocate General, Bengal. London. W. and R. Chambers Ltd.
12. Highland Light Infantry Chronicle. July - October 1915. Vol. XV. 2 - 3. 13. Hill, G. 1952. A History of Cyprus. Vol. 4. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 14. Yong, C.F. and McKenna, R.B. 1984. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 57 No 2. pp 1 – 30. 15. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser. 31 October 1938. 16. Stanley, P. 1998. White Mutiny. London, Hurst & Co.
12. Grob-Fitzgibbon, B. 2011. Imperial End Game: Britain's Dirty Wars. Basingstoke. Palgrave Macmillan.
17. Scott, A. F. (Ed.). 1912. Scinde in the 40s: Being the Journal and Letters of Colonel Keith Young C.B. London.
13. Bennett, H. 2013. Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency. Cambridge. C.U.P.
18. Wilson, J. 2016. India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire. London. Simon and Schuster.
14. Porter, B. 2005. How did they get away with it? London Review of Books. Vol 27. No 5 and following. 15. Reid, W. 2016. Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India. Edinburgh. Birlinn. 16. Imray, C. H. 2009. Remember and be Glad: A Memoir. Privately Published. 17. Rosberg, C. G. and Nottingham, J. 1966. The Myth of the “Mau Mau”: Nationalism in Kenya. Stanford. Praeger. 18. Dictionary of National Biography 1971 – 1980. A. H. Cook. OUP 1986. 19. Waight, S. A. 2020. Wild Wild Guru: An Insider’s Account of his Life With Bhagwan, the World’s Most Controversial Guru. London. Coronet Books.
CHAPTER 18
19. Lee, S. Ed. 1892. Dictionary of National Biography. 31. London. Smith, Elder & Co. 20. Aberdeen University Archives MS2192/6. 21. Scull, A. et al. 1966. Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad Doctoring Trade. Princeton. Princeton University Press. 22. Tromans, N. 2011. Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum. London. Tate Publishing. 23. Morison. A. Personal diaries. Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. 24. Niall, B. 1994. Georgina: A Biography of Georgina McCrae Painter, Diarist, Pioneer. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press. 25. Taylor, J. 1988. Circular Hospital Wards: Professor John Marshall’s Concept and its Exploration by the Architectural Profession in the 1880s. Medical History 32: 426 – 448.
1. Lee, T.A. 2006. Seekers of Truth: the Scottish Founders of Modern Public Accountancy. Oxford. Elsevier.
CHAPTER 20
2. Bardgett, F. 2006. North Coast Diaries: Strathy at the Time of the Great War. Edinburgh. Birlinn Books.
1. Gunson, N. 1986. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 10. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
CHAPTER 19 1. Dundee University Archives Br MS 3 DC/80.
2. Cannon, M.M. 1972. The Land Boomers: The Complete Illustrated History. 2nd Edition. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press.
2. Brogden, W. A. 2012. A City's Architecture: Aberdeen as 'Designed City'. Farnham. Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
3. Provan, J.A. 1986. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 10. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
3. The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal. 1852. Vol. 15: 226-27.
4. Curle-Smith, H. N. 1907. Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy. Kalgoorlie. Bird and Annear.
4. Baker, T. F. T. Ed. 1995. A History of the County of Middlesex. Vol 10.
5. Hay, J. 2000. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 15. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press.
5. Pont, M. H. 2001. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
6. The Age (Melbourne) 11 November 2007.
6. Brodie, A. et al. Eds. 2001. Directory of British Architects, 1834 -1914: Vol 2. London. Continuum. 7. S F Murphy, S. F. Ed. 1883. Our Homes; and How to Make Them Healthy. London. Cassel & Co. 8. Blatchford, T. 2001. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 9. The Nursing Record and Hospital World 7 April 1900. 10. Punch 1844 Vol. 6. No 149. p 209.
7. Serle, G. 1986. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 10. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press. 8. Alexander, F. 1986. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 10. Melbourne. Melbourne University Press. 9. Mack, S. Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, OUP. 10. Memorial of the Scotch College, Melbourne 11. Painting by Sir John Watson Gordon 1830. National Galleries of Scotland. 12. Wikipedia.
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CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 24
1. Bartrum, K. M. 1858. A Widow's Reminiscences of the Siege of Lucknow. London. James Nisbet.
1. Wilson, M. 1908. History of the Behar Indigo Factories etc. Calcutta. [Gives an excellent account of growing indigo and of the lives of the factory managers].
2. Gibson, P. 2010. Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 3. French, P. 1994. Younghusband. The Last Imperial Adventurer. London. Harper Collins. 4. Belloc, Hillaire. 1898. The Modern Traveller. 5. Keen, C. 2015. An Imperial Crisis in British India: The Manipur Rising of 1901. London. I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.
2. Mishra, G. 1978. Agrarian Problems of Permanent Settlement: A Case Study of Champaran. New Delhi. People's Publishing House. 3. Kling, B.B. 1966. The Blue Mutiny: The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal 1859 - 1862. Philadelphia. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
6. Rees, L.E.R. 1858. A Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow. London. Longman & Co.
4. Oddie, G. A. 1999. Missionaries, Rebellion and Proto- nationalism: James Long of Bengal 1914 - 87. Richmond. Curzon Press.
CHAPTER 22
5. Ray, I. 2011. Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution (1757 - 1857). Abingdon, Routledge.
1. Johnson, A. 1860. A Short Memoir of James Young and Rachel Cruickshank and their Descendants. Aberdeen. 2. Clark, A. 1911. A Short History of the Shipmaster Society: or the Seamen’s Box of Aberdeen. Aberdeen. William Smith & Sons. 3. Dobson, D. 1998. American Data from the Aberdeen Journal, 1748-1783. Baltimore. Clearfield Company Inc. 7. Donnelly, T. 1981. Shipbuilding in Aberdeen 1750 - 1914. Northern Scotland. 4: 27- 28. 8. Tyson, R. E. 1988. In: Smith, J.S. and Stevenson, D. (Eds) Aberdeen in the Nineteenth Century: The Making of the Modern City, Aberdeen. 9. Campey, L.H. 2002. Fast Sailing and Copper-Bottomed: Aberdeen Sailing Ships and the Emigrant Scots they Carried to Canada, 1774-1855. Toronto. Natural Heritage Books. 10. Clark, Victoria E. 1921. The Port of Aberdeen: A History of its Trade and Shipping from the 12th Century to the Present Day. Aberdeen. D. Wyllie and Son. 11. Dobson, D. Aberdeen Shipping: 1742 -1753. Ships, Shipmasters and Voyages. 2007. St Andrews. D. Dobson.
6. Kumar, P. 2012. Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 7. Grant, C. 1865. Rural life in Bengal. Thacker, London. 8. Neil Peppe Family Archive [Neil was born at Birdpur and left aged ten] 9. Blunt, E. A.H. 1911. List of inscriptions on Christian Tombs and Tablets of Historical Interest in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Allahabad. Govt. Press. 10. Machell, Thomas. The Journals of Thomas Machell. British Museum India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur B369. 11. Balfour-Paul, J. 2015. Deeper Than Indigo. Surbiton. Medina Publishing Ltd. 12. Anon. 1847. The Calcutta Review. Vol. 7. 13. Chaudhary, R. B. 1960. The British Agrarian Policy in Eastern India: Bengal and Bihar (1859-1880). Patna. Janaki Prakashan. 14. Rajendraprasad. 1928. Satyagraha in Champaran. Ahmedabad. Navajivan Publishing House.
12. Knight, R. 2014. Britain Against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory 1793-1815. London. Penguin Books.
16. Reid, W. M. 1887. The Culture and Manufacture of Indigo: with a Description of a Planter's Life and Resources. Calcutta. Thacker, Spink and Company.
13. The Sunderland Museum, run by a public authority, was the only institution to refuse to allow the authors the use of an image without the payment of a large sum of money. All others were most supportive.
17. Mishra, G. 1978. Agrarian Problems of Permanent Settlement: A Case Study of Champaran. New Delhi. People's Publishing House.
14. Record Book of the Scinde Irregular Horse. Vol. 1. 1853. London. Nissen and Parker. 15. A Mrs Humphrys from Dublin is a descendant of Arthur and she inherited some striking portraits of Arthur and Elizabeth and his parents as well as some interesting memorabilia. These images are currently online.
CHAPTER 23 1. Johnston, A. 1861. A Short Memoir of James Young. Aberdeen. J. Craighead and Son. 2. Army and Navy Gazette. 28 Feb 1914. 3. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol XV (1921 – 1930) University of Toronto Press. 4. Obituary in the Aberdeen Herald 9 July 1870.
418 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
18. Sinha-Kerkhoff, K. 2014. Colonising Plants in Bihar (1760-1950) India. Partridge. 19. Bhattacharya, S. 1977. The Indigo Revolt of Bengal. Social Scientist. Vol. 5, No.12. pp. 13-23. 20. Inglis, J. 1892. Tent Life in Tigerland. London. Sampson, Low, Marston & Company. London. Chatto and Windus. 21. Beames, J. 1961. Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian. London. Eland Publishing Ltd. 22. Sengoopta, C. 2003. Imprint of the Raj. London. Macmillan.
CHAPTER 25 1. Archives of the Historic Millburn Community Association. 2. Kenosha County Cemetery Records. 3. Kenosha County Genealogy Society. 4. Lyman, F. H, 1916. The City of Kenosha and Kenosha County Wisconsin: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement. Vol. 1. Chicago. S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. 5. Anon. 1879. The History of Racine and Kenosha Counties. Chicago. The Western Historical Company. 6. Gould, T. and Uttley, D. 1996. A History of the Atkinson Morley Hospital 1869 - 1995. London. The Athlone Press. 7. DNW. Auction Catalogue Notes 24 Nov. 2015. 8. See obituaries in The Times on 20, 21 and 23rd October 1937. 9. Clark, A. 1911. A Short History of the Shipmaster Society: or the Seamen’s Box of Aberdeen. Aberdeen. William Smith & Sons.
15. Anon. List of European Tombs in the Cemeteries Attached to the Various Churches in the Nilgiri District. Madras. Govt Press. 16. National Library of Scotland Manuscript MS 6360. 17. Edwardes, M. 1973. A Season in Hell: The Defence of the Lucknow Residency. London. Hamish Hamilton. 18. Lovell, J. 2011. The Opium War. London. Picador. 19. Llewellyn-Jones, R. 2007. The Great Uprising in India, 1857-58. Woodbridge, The Boydell Press. 20. Trimen, R. 1870. An Historical Memoir of the 35th Royal Essex Regiment of Foot. Southampton. Southampton Press. 21. Caledonian Mercury 15 December 1834. 22. Keay, J. 2000. The Great Arc. London. Harper Collins. 23. Wilson, J. 2016. India Conquered. London. Simon and Schuster. 24. Homeland Mail from India 15 May 1863. 25. Folkstone, Hythe, Sangate and Cheriton Herald. 5 Nov 1898.
10. Devine, T. M. [Ed.] 2015. Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past. Edinburgh. EUP.
26. Lee-Warner, W. 1908. Memoirs of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wylie Norman. London, Smith, Elder & Co.
11. Duncan, W. R.H. 1978. Aberdeen and the Early Development of the Whaling Industry 1750 - 1800. Northern Scotland 3: 51-52.
27. Wilson, P.D. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.11, Melbourne University Press.
12. Michie, R.C. North - East Scotland and the Northern Whale Fishing 1752 - 1893. Northern Scotland. 3: 62-64.
28. Quoted by: Gilmour, D. 2018. The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience. London. Penguin Books.
13. Scoresby, W. 1820. An Account of the Artic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery. Edinburgh. Constable & Co.
29. Cockburn, P. 2018. At the North Gate: Patrick Cockburn visits the British Military Cemeteries of Iraq. London Review of Books. Vol 40. No. 19.
CHAPTER 26
30. Ball, C. 1858. The History of the Indian Mutiny. Vol 1. London. London Printing and Publishing Company.
1. Wilson, M. 1908. History of the Behar Indigo Factories etc. Calcutta. 2. Gibbon, J. 1836. Remarks on the State of Agriculture in Behar. Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India. Vol 2. Calcutta. 3. Sieveking, I. G. 1910. A Turning Point in the Indian Mutiny. London. David Nutt. 4. Kaye, J. W, and Malleson, G. B. 1888-89. A History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58. London. W. H. Allen & Co. 5. Lubock, B. 1914. The China Clippers. London. Brown Son and Ferguson Ltd. 6. Hibbert, C. 1978. The Great Mutiny: India 1857. London. Allen Lane.
31. James Gibbon’s Letters, Centre for Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. 32. Llewellyn-Jones, R. 2007. The Great Uprising in India 1857-58: Untold Stories, Indian and British. Woodbridge. The Boydell Press. 33. Dalrymple, W. 2002. White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India. London. Harper Collins. 34. Churcher, D. G. 1900. An Episode in the Indian Mutiny. Blackwood’s Magazine. Vol. 167. 615 – 645. 35. As recorded by Geoffrey Gibbon before the stone disintegrated. This is true for several other stones and later interpretations are often wrong.
7. Dalrymple, W. 2006. The Last Mughal. London. Bloomsbury.
EPILOGUE
8. Mount, F. 2015. The Tears of the Rajas. London. Simon and Schuster.
1. Tayler, A. and H. Eds. 1925. Lord Fife and his Factor. Being the Correspondence of James Second Lord Fife 1729 - 1809. London. Heineman.
9. Norman, H.W. and Mrs K. Young, Eds. 1902. Delhi 1857. London. W. R. Chambers. 10. Machell, Thomas. The Journals of Thomas Machell. British Museum India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur B369. 11. Balfour-Paul, J. 2015. Deeper Than Indigo. Surbiton. Medina Publishing Ltd. 12. The Times (London) 2 June 2006. 13. Berwickshire News and General Advertiser. 21 November 1882.
2. De Courcy, A. 2012. The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj. London. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 3. The Indian News and Chronicle of Eastern Affairs 3 March 1856. 4. Tayler, A. and H. 1914. The Book of Duffs. Edinburgh. W. Brown. 5. Cannadine, D. 2001. Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire. London. Allen Lane.
14. Weppner, M. 1875. The North Star and Southern Cross. London. Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle.
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 419
GENERAL INDEX Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Abeona transport ship 2 Aberdeen & Hull Shipping Co. 22 Aberdeen Whalefishing Company 25 Aberdeen 4,6,8,9,10,14,15,17,18, 19,20,22,23,24,25, Aboriginal culture, Australia 11 Aboyne 7 Abyssinia 24 Achern, Aboyne 7 Ackland, Boyd & Co 14 Acre, bombardment of 7 Act of Indemnity 5 Admirals 7 Afghanistan 2,6 Agra, India 14 Agriculture around Stonehaven 3 Ahmednagar, India 15 Alberta, Canada 13,16 Aleister Crowley, occultist 25 Alexander and James Gibbon & Co. 25 Alexander Duthie shipbuilder 8 Alexandria, South Africa 22 Algoa Bay, South Africa 8 Alloway, Ayrshire 6 Ambala, India 5,26 American War of Independence 9 Annals of Banff 10 Antranik, Armenian general 15 Antwerp, Holland 7 Aqulurie, Stonehaven 7 Arbikie, Forfar 5 Arc de Triomph, Wembley 11 Argentina 6,13,14,17,21 Arkansas, USA 20 Armenia 15 Army of Occupation 17 Arrah, siege of 26 Ascreavie, Angus 18 Ash dentistry company 19 Assam, India 7,16,26 Asserghur, India 9 Auchenblae, Fordoun 6 Australia Broadcasting Commission 20 Australia 5,7,11,13,14,19,20 Australian Flying Corps 11 Australian Imperial Force 20 Austro-Hungarian Empire 11 Back & Manson, merchant bankers 25 Baghdad 21 Bahamas 11 Bain Wagon Company 25 Ballylee Castle, Ireland 9 Balvenie Castle, Moray 2 Bampton, Devon 9 Banchory Devenick parish 13 Banff Castle 1 Banff Church 1 Barbados 5 Baron Court of Urie 3 Barrow in Furness 5 Batavia 23
Bathgate, West Lothian 4 Battle of the Bundu 14 BBC Third Programme 17 BBC 14 Bedlington, Northumberland 22 Begrum’s Farm, Mountnessing 8 Beira, Mozambique 8,14 Belgaum, India 5 Belgrade 2 Bellary, India 5 Bengal Civil Service 26 Bengal, India 7 Benholm Parish 3 Berthmaster 9,22 Bertram Mills Circus 18 Bervie/Inverbervie 6 Bhooj, India 6 Billingsgate Market 14 Birdpur 24 Birkenhead, Liverpool 26 Black and White magazine 15 Bleachfields 4 Bletchley Park 1 Bletsoe, Bedfordshire 7 Board of Trade 13 Boer War 7,11,19,26 Boharm Parish, Banffshire 25 Bolshevik campaign 25 Bolsheviks 7 Bombay Marine 25 Bombay, India 6 Bonnie Prince Charlie 5 Book of the Duffs 2 Boreham Woo, Elstree 4 Borneo pirates 7 Boston, North America 9 Boston, Lincolnshire 11 Brechin, Angus 4 Brigham Young, Mormon 18 British Bank of South America 13 British Columbia, Canada 8,16 British Guinea 8 Broadway, New York 19 Broadway, Somerset 7 Broken Hill, New South Wales 11 Broxbourne, Herts 8 Brussels, Belgium 24 Braintree, Essex 16 Buenos Aires, Argentina 13 Burma Expedition 23 Burma 15,23 Buss, Frances education pioneer 17 Buthlaw, Aberdeenshire 5,10 Cairness, Lonmay 10 Cairo, Egypt 13 Calcutta, India 5,6,7,24,26 Calgary, Alberta 19 California, USA 7 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire 19 Camden School of Art 17 Cameroon 21
Campbell College, Belfast 15 Campvere, Holland 1,7,22 Canada 7,14,26 Canadian Pacific Railways 8,11,15 Canisby, Caithness 18 Cape Colony 8 Cape of Good Hope 7 Carlogie, Kincardine O’Neil 7 Carmarthen, Wales 23 Carnatic Wars 1 Carter Seeds 17 Castle Line 8 Catterline, Kincardineshire 3 Cawnpore, India 26 Central Argentine Railway 21 Cerne Abbas, Dorset 9 Ceylon 2,11,12,13,14,15 Ceylon, Invasion of 1 Champaran, India 24 Channel Tunnel attempt 11 Charles Babbage 1 Charlie Chaplin 7 Chartered Bank of India 12 Chartered Bank of Singapore 15 Chatrapur, India 1 Chestnut-bellied Kingfisher 7 Chestnut-crowned Warbler 19 Chicago, USA 7 China 19 Chitral Relief Force 7,26 Chittledroog, India 1 Chobham, Surrey 7 Church of Latter Day Saints 18 City Missionaries, London 26 Civil War in England 3 Clan Line 12 Clochnahill, Dunnottar 6 Cobden, John, social reformer 9 Cochar and Gibbon shipbuilders 22 Coffee disease, Ceylon 13,14 Colombo, Ceylon 14 Colonsay Island 7 Commissary General of Australia 11 Como House, Melbourne 11 Como, Italy 11 Company of Bakers, London 19 Corfu 7 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 7 Cound Hall, Shropshire 7 Couper Angus 5 Court Book of Urie 3 Coventry Festival 17 Cowie, Stonehaven 4,23 Crimean War 6,26 Crimond Parish, Aberdeenshire 14 Culloden, battle of 3,5 Cutch, India 6 Dawlish, Devon 9 Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh 5 Delhi, India 19,26 Delhi, siege of 6
420 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Demorara 8 Denside of Dunnotar, Stonehaven 6 Detroit, Michigan 14 Dingigul, India 1 Diplomatic Wireless Service 16 Doolah 24 Doost Mohamad 6 Dordt, Holland 7 Downiehills, Peterhead 5 Dresden, Germany 17 Drumblade Parish, Aberdeenshire 1 Drumnagesk, Aboyne 7 Dublin, Ireland 19 Dubufe, Claude-Marie French painter 11 Duisberg, Germany 22 Duke of Cumberland 2, 5 Duchess of Gordon 1 Duke of Gordon 2 Duke of Montrose 1, 2 Dulwich School 15 Dunbar, East Lothian 26 Dundonald, Angus 18 Dunedin, New Zealand 6 Dunnotar 3,5,8 Dunnottar Castle 5 Dutch East India Company 14,26 E. W. Payne and Co. 17 Earl Marischal 6 East Africa 14 East India Company 6,9,14,19,22,24,26 Echt Parish, Aberdeenshire 10 Edinburgh 7,8 Egypt 10,13 Egyptian Gazette 25 Egyptian Police 13 Ellisland, Dumfries 6 Elsick, Kincardineshire 5 Emmanuel College, Cambridge 18 Episcopal Chapel, Stonehaven 5 Episcopalianism 5,19 Eritrea 15 Ethical Society 17 Ethiopia, invasion of 6 Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg 20 Fabian Society 17 Falconer and Meer Shipping Line 8 Falkland Islands 14 Falside, Kinneff 5,6 Fawcett Park, Yorkshire 7 Feltrim, Ireland 10 Feroze yacht 6 Fetteresso, Stonehaven 5,19 Financial crash of 1847 26 Finland Winter War 21 Flanders 7 Flax and wool weaving 4 Flodden, Battle of 1 Florence, Italy 23 Footdee, Aberdeen 22,25 Fordoun, Kincardineshire 4,5 Forglen Parish, Banffshire 1
Fort St George, Madras 1, 18 Foveran, Aberdeenshire 1 Fowler, Legg & Co. 25 Francis Meinell 7 Frankfurt, Germany 10 Fraserburgh 13,20 French Army Flying Corps 11 French Wars 24 Gallipoli 11,13,15,20,21 Galloway, Lawson & Co., Demerara 25 Gallowton, Stonehaven 6 Galsworthy, John author 15 Gangam, India 1 Garratt and Gibbon, Portsmouth 24 General Macdonald 1 Geneva, Switzerland 17 George Baillie & Company 1 German East Africa 14 Ghandi 24 Ghazipur, India 22 Gibbs, Bright & Co. 20 Gibbs, Gibbon & Co., Birmingham 12 Gigha Island 7 Gilfillan, Wood & Co. 21 Glamorgan, Wales 9 Glasgow 5 Glassel, Deeside 7 Glenbucket Parish, Aberdeenshire 2 Gluckstadt, Germany 7 Gold Mining 7,11,20 Gondah, India 21 Gordon, Duff & Co. 9 Gordon’s woollen mills, Aberdeen 25 Gottingen University, Germany 15 Grain mills in Scotland 3 Graz, Austria 22 Great Seal Patent Office, London 5 Gretna Green 22 Guzeat, India 6 Hadley Woods, New Barnet 16 Hague, Holland 1 Halbeath Colliery, Fife 9 Halifax, Canada 22 Hall & Co. shipbuilders 22 Hall, Russell & Co. 17 Hampstead, London 14 Hand in Hand Fire Insurance 12 Harnage Hall, Shropshire 7 Haslar Hospital, Gosport 7 Haugh Farm, Kincardine O’Neil 4 Heidleberg, Germany 5 Herstmonceaux, Sussex 18,21 Highgate School 17 Holland 25 Hong Kong 8 House of Commons 7 Howden Pan Dock, Jarrow 9 Howera, New Zealand 6 Huguenot 1 Hyder Ali 1 Hyderabad, India 6
Hyndwells, Stonehaven 7 Illustrated London News 11,15 Imperial Fire Office 19 India 14,16,23 Indian Civil Service 5 Indian Mutiny 6,15,21,24 Indian Telegraphs 26 Indigo growers’ revolt 24 Indigo growing 24,26 Indo China Steam Navigation Co. 8 Inner Temple Bar, London 11 Inneshewan, Aberdeenshire 7 Internment in Germany 15 Invergordon riots 12 Inverness 5 Iowa 7, 25 Ireland 18 Istanbul 17 Ivory poaching 7 Jacobites 5,6,20 Jamaica 1,14,18 James Boxer, painter 7 James Forbes & Co. 25 James Gibbon & Co. 25 Jane Duchess of Gordon, Indiaman 2 Japan 12,16 Jardine Mathieson & Co. 8 Java 1,7,14 Jews Harps 6 Jhansi, India 15 John Bell-Irving, Hong Kong 8 John Duffus & Co., iron founders 25 John Lee, iron broker 12 John R. Down & Co. 8 Judge Advocate General 5.19 Judge Advocate, British Army 23 Jute Mills 4 Kabul, Afghanistan 2,6 Kalgoorlie, Western Australia 20 Kandy, Ceylon 14,15 Kangani labour system 14 Kansas City 5 Kate (Kitty) Fairdale 7 Keig Parish 2 Kenosha, Winsconsin 25 Kenya 7,17,18 Khree, India 21 Kincardine O’Neill 7 King David II 1 King Edward Parish, Aberdenshire 1, 2 King Malcolm III 3 Kings College, Aberdeen 2 Kininmonth, Lonmay 10 Kinneff Parish, Kincadineshire 5 Kitallah, Ireland 10 Knight Templars 6 Kurnal, India 2 Kyneton, Victoria 24 Lady Jane Dundas ship 1 Lahore, India 6,7,11,14 Land Boomers in Australia 20
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 421
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Lang, Turing & Company 1 Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire 8 Legion of Frontiersmen 14 Leith, Edinburgh 13 Leithfield, Kincardineshire 5 Lennoxlove, East Lothian 6 Lethbridge, Alberta 13 Libya 15 Lipton tea company 14 Liverpool 13 Lochlea, Tarbolton 6 Londonderry, Ireland 6 Longside, Aberdeenshire 16 Lonmay Parish, Aberdeenshire 10,14 Lord Hawke 1 Lord Northcliffe 20 Los Angeles, USA 1 Lucknow massacre 6 Lucknow siege, Indian Mutiny 21,26 Lustreware, Sunderland 22 Mackintosh, Fulton & Co. 26 MacNaughton, William 3,6 Madras General Hospital 1 Madras Railways 1 Madras, India 1 Madras, siege of 1 Madura, India 18 Malacca 7 Malaga 21 Malaya 19 Malaysia 21 Malta 7 Malwa, India 10 Manipur, India 18 Maratha Wars, India 26 Marischal College, Aberdeen 7 Marquess of Huntly 2 Masilipatum, India 1 Masonic lodges, India 6 Masonic orders 6 Mau Mau Uprising, Kenya 17,26 Mauchline, Ayrshire 6 Mauritius 10 May Fourth Movement 19 Meerut, India 19,24 Melbourne Club 11 Melbourne University 20 Melbourne, Australia 6,11,20 Mergie, Stonehaven 5 Mesopotamia Campaign 15,21,26 Mexico 17 Mhow, Bombay, India 9 Michigan Central Railway Company 14 Militias 8,9 Mill of Cowie, Stonehaven 1,3,4,5,8 Mill of Elsick, Kincardineshire 3 Mill of Forest, Stonehaven 3,7 Mill of Linkiehead, Prenmay 2 Mill of Stonehaven 5 Mill of Tewel, Stonehaven 4 Mill of Torry 3
Millburn, Illinois 25 Millinery at John Smith Company 17 Mogila, Poland 7 Mombasa, Kenya 14 Monash University, Melbourne 20 Monmouthshire 12 Monserratt 5 Montreal, Canada 5,14,15 Montrose, Angus 6 Morham Mains, East Lothian 6 Mortlach Church, Moray 2 Mossgiel, Ayrshire 6 Mount Everest 16 Mount Oliphant, Ayrshire 6 Mowtie Farm, Riccarton 4 Mozambique 14 Muldavit, Banffshire 2 Murdoch Press 20 Murdoch University, Perth 20 Murree, India 26 Musoorie, India 24 Mysore, India 1,14 Naples, Italy 7,10 National Museum of Singapore 7 National Youth Orchestra 17 Natural History Museum, London 7 Nepal 24 Nether Kirkland, Stonehaven 5 New Guinea 20 New Mill of Acquihirie, Stonehaven 4 New Oriental Banking Corporation 13 New South Wales, Australia 11,14 New Statistical Account 10 New York 7,9,14,20 New Zealand 16,26 Newtyle, Aberdeenshire 5 Nicosia, Cyprus 19 Nigeria 11 Nigg, Aberdeen 9 Normandy landings 16 North Murchison, Victoria 13 North West Frontier, India 7 Old Bailey Court 19 Oliver Cromwell 6 Ontario, Canada 14,20 Ootacamund, India 9,26 Opium Department, Bengal 26 Opium growing in India 23,26 Ordinance Board 7 Ordiquhill, Banffshire 9 Ossington, Northamptonshire 11 Oswestry, Shropshire 9 Otago, New Zealand 20 Oude or Oudh, India 24,26 Oyne Parish, Aberdeenshire 1, 2 Pacific Imperial Pigeon 7 Palestine 11 Pamban, India 14 Panama 26 Paralympics 16 Paris, France 10,11
Patagonia, Chile 14 Patent Agents Institute 16 Patna, India 26 Pau, France 10,11 Peebles, Peeblesshire 7 Penang 1, 2 Peninsular Wars 9 Pennagaram, India 1 Peplow Hall, Shropshire 7 Pershore, Worcestershire 24 Persia 6,17 Perth, Perthshire 7 Perth, Western Australia 11,20 Philorth, Fraserburgh 13,14 Photography 15 Pitchnish, Grampian 9 Pitfodel, Aberdeenshire 5 Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire 5,20 Planters’ Association, Ceylon 14 Plymouth 7 Polbair, Stonehaven 5 Polish Army 7 Pondicherry, India 7 Poonah, India 6,23 Poor House Aberdeen 4 Poor Law Board, Scotland 7 Port au Prince, Haiti 7 Port Elizabeth 8 Port Philip, Melbourne 11 Porthill Sunday School 14 Portsmouth, Hampshire 24,25 Portugal 17 Powys, Wales 25 Privateers 22 Punjab Police 7 Punjab, India 7 Punto Arenas, Chile 14 Queensland, Australia 18 R. W. Gibbon and Son 17 Raj of Bettiah 24 Rajah Brooke 7 Rajkot, India 9 Rayne Parish, Aberdeenshire 1 Reisengen, Germany 10 Rhodesia 16,17,19,21 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 25 Robert Clive 1 Robert Gibbon & Co. 24 Robert Gibbon & Sons. London 22,24 Rope and sail making 25 Rosehearty, Aberdeenshire 18 Roseneath, Dumbartonshire 5 Rothiemay, Aberdeenshire 2 Rothnick, Maryculter 6 Rotterdam, Holland 7,22 Roughriders Imperial Yeomanry 19 Royal Northern Hospital 16 Royal regalia 6 Rugby training books 15 Salisbury, Rhodesia 17 Salonika 21
422 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Salt Springs Island, Vancouver 7 Saltpetre production 26 San Francisco, USA 14 Santa Domingo, West Indies 25 Scinde, India 19 Scots Cemetery, Calcutta 24 Scottish Australian Investment Co. 7 Sea Fencibles 25 Sealkote, India 14 Segary Villas, New Barnet 16 Selkirkshire 20 Seringapatam, India 1,7 Shah Shoojah 6 Shaw, George Bernard 17 Shawnigan Lake School, Vancouver 7 Sheep shearing machines 11 Sheringham, Norfolk 15 Sherriff, George plant collector 18 Ship Bank, Glasgow 25 Shipbuilding in Aberdeen 25 Shipmasters’ Society 9,22 Sierra Leone 16 Simla, India 7,19 Sindh invasion 22 Sindian War 6 Singapore 7,11,15,19 Sinhalese people 14 Sisters of the Oxford Mission 16 Skene, Aberdeenshire 18 Slave Compensation Act 7 Slavery 7,8,11,17 Sligo, Ireland 25 Smallpox Hospital, Holloway 6 Snob Farm. Fetteresso 4 Snodland, Kent 6 Sociedad Explotadora 14 Society of Advocates, Aberdeen 7 Somers, Winsconsin 25 South Africa 7,8,16,19,21,23 South African Navy 15 South African War 7,15 Spanish Flu 13 Spion Kop. Boer War battle 7 Squatting in Australia 11 St Andrews, Fife 17 St Combs, Lonmay 10 St Fittock’s Church, Nigg 9,26 St George’s Hospital, London 25 St Lawrence River 22 St Nicholas’ Graveyard, Aberdeen 25 St Thomas’ Mount Cemetery 1 St Vincent, West Indies 19 Stamford Hill, London 8 Raffles, Stamford 1,7 Stank, Stonehaven 5 Staunton, Gloucestershire 9,10 Steam vessel introduction 25 Stepney, London 8 Stevenson, George. Engineer 9 Stobcross Quay, Glasgow 4 Stock Exchange, London 8
Stoke Mandeville Hospital 16 Stonehaven 3,5,6,7,8,9,14,16,18,19,22,25 Straits Settlements 19 Strathy, Sutherland 18 Stubbington, Hampshire 24 Sudan 15 Suddar Adawlut 6 Suez Canal 23 Sunderland, Durham 22,24 Superintending Surgeon 2 Supreme Court of Victoria 11 Surinam 5 Swansea, Wales 4,8 Swedenborg, Emanuel 17 Swedenborgian Church 12,17 Switzerland 11 Syria 7 Tahiti 19 Tamils 14 Tangynika 16 Tanna, India 6 Tasmania, Australia 11,18,24 Tea Planting, Ceylon 12,14 Tea planting, Kenya 12 Teeth 19 Terai region, India 24 Tezin Pass, Afghanistan 2 Thermo Electric Cooking 20 Machell, Thomas 24 Tibet Expedition 21 Tierra del Fuego, Chile 14 Tiger Duff 9 Tilbury Fort and Docks 3,5 Tipu Nadu, Sultan 1,7 Tirah Expedition 26 Tirhoot, Bengal, India 26 Torry, Aberdeen 7,22 Tourin, Angus 1 Trans-Caucasus 15 Transportation of prisoners 11 Transvaal Compaigns 5 Treaty of Union 22 Trinidad 11 Trinity College, Dublin 7 Tripolitania 15 Turing Teapot 1 Turing’s Tower 1 Turriff, Aberdeenshire 4 Tushielaw, Selkirk 5 Twickenham, Middlesex 9 Tynemouth, Northumberland 1 Umballa, India 24 Union Castle Line 8 Union Line 8 Union Steamship Company 8 United Cable Service 20 United Discount Company 12 University of Western Australia 20 Upper Criggie, Dunnottar 6 Upper Kinimouth, Glenbervie 6 Ury, Stonehaven 3,5
Usk, Wales 12 Valparaiso, Chile 21 Vancouver, Canada 7,8,18,19 Veere or Vere, Holland 7 Victoria Cross 21 Victoria, Australia 5,11 Vimy Ridge battle 7 Vintners in Scotland 3 Vitoria, battle of 1 Vizagapatam, India 1 Volunteer Cavalry, Indian Mutin 26 Wagur, India 6 Wajiristan Agencies 7 Walcheren Expedition 25 Wallgrave prison ship 5 Waltair, Vizagapatam, India 1 Wanganui, New Zealand 7 Wanstead 8 Wapping, London 8 Watson & Co., Calcutta 24 West African Frontier Force 11 West Indies 23,25 Western Australia 20 Whale fishing 22,25 Whiggery 20 White Mutiny, the second 19 Whiteriggs, Kincardineshire 5 William Gibbon & Co. 24 William Pirie & Co. 25 Whistler, William painter 7 Willis Faber & Co., marine insurance 12 Winnie the Pooh 15 Winona, Manitoba 7 Wisconsin, USA 25 Witchita, USA 5 Worcester, Battle of 1 Yangtse King river 8 York Building Company 6 Young and Hall architects 19 Young, Hall and Root, architects 19 Yukon Gold Rush 8 Zulu Wars 5
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 423
PEOPLE INDEX Adam, Christian Gibbon 1866 - 1937 Adam, George 1831 - 1895 Adam, Margaret Ann Eliza 1875 - 1937 Aiskell, Francis c1761 - 1821 Aiskell, Francis Kirkpatrick 1778 - ? Aitken, Ida Margaret 1865 - 1900 Aitken, Robert Hope M. 1828 - 1887 Alebonda, Patricia Allan, Colin ? - 1850 Allen, Robert Franklin 1860 - 1916 Anderson, Alexander 1856 - 1921 Anderson, Andrew 1792 - 1861 Anderson, Ann 1797 - 1837 Anderson, Charles Frank 1845 - 1883 Anderson, Eleanora Sophia 1842 - 1920 Anderson, Elizabeth 1822 - ? Anderson, Harriet c1810 - 1873 Anderson, James Gibbon 1830 - 1907 Anderson, Jane 1825 - ? Anderson, John Walker 1839 – 1870 Anderson, Lucy Maria 1834 - 1863 Anderson, Margaret Anderson, Mary Eliza 1832 - ? Anderson, Mary Elizabeth 1837 - 1918 Anderson, Thomas 1828 - ? Anderson, William Sturrock 1848 - 1918 Angus, Elspet Armour, Adam 1771 - 1823 Armour, Jean 1765 - 1834 Arnolda, Rienzi Joseph 1902 - ? Arnott, Arthur Philip 1838 - 1911 Arnott, Bertram 1850 - 1906 Arnott, Charles 1794 - 1841 Arnott, Charlotte 1854 - 1945 Arnott, David Leith 1797 - 1840 Arnott, Dorothea 1840 - 1905 Arnott, Elizabeth 1796 - 1847 Arnott, Helen 1800 - 1807 Arnott, Helen 1842 - 1899 Arnott, James 1754 - 1799 Arnott, James 1791 - 1866 Arnott, Margaret 1790 - 1866 Arnott, Margaret Louisa 1844 - 1907 Arrowsmith, Thomas Charles c1896 – 1970 Arsrivartham, Yesudial R. 1872 - 1930 Ash, Claudius 1792 - 1854 Ash, Emily Cornelia 1848 - 1926 Atkinson, James Gerald 1906 - 1998 Atkinson, Margaret C. 1918 - 1998 Austen, John Bachone, Janet Back, Constance 1889 - 1971 Back, Ebie 1886 - 1954 Back, Frances Formby 1852 - 1913 Back, Francis Leonard 1885 - 1924 Back, Howard Chaplin 1882 - 1946 Back, Ivor Gordon 1879 - 1951 Badman, Charles 1864 - 1935 Badman, Frances Olive 1900 - 1992 Baker, Charles c1788 - ? Bannerman, David 1712 - 1810 Bannerman, James Patrick 1756 - 1807 Bannerman, John Alexander 1759 - 1819
Chart 4 Chart 4 Chart 4 Chart 1 Chart 1 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 16 Chart 22 Chart 21 Chart 9 Chart 26 Chart 5 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 6 Chart 23,26 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 4 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 4 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 14 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 5 Chart 9 Chart 14 Chart 19 Chart 19 Chart 14 Chart 11 Chart 17 Chart 3 Chart 25 Chart 25 Chart 25 Chart 25 Chart 25 Chart 25 Chart 16 Chart 16 Chart 1 Chart 1, 2 Chart 1 Chart 1,2
424 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Barber, Anthony Paul 1947 - Barber, Cheryl Ruth H. 1946 - Barber, Florence 1984 - Barber, Harriet Barber, Henry William c1860 - 1928 Barber, Lisa Dawn 1962 - Barber, Stanley Harrison 1915 - 2000 Barclay, Une Cameron 1778 - 1809 Barlow, Robert John 1924 - Barnet, Annie Grace Park T. 1886 - 1969 Barnet, Isabella Mary 1894 - 1983 Barnet, James 1851 - 1928 Barnet, James Knox 1892 - 1918 Barnet, Jane Norah Stewart 1889 - 1901 Barry, Ida Violet Wolfe 1880 - 1959 Barton, Annette Flora 1896 - 1986 Bayly, William Goodenough 1838 - 1909 Beaumont, Alfred. G. A. C. 1880 - 1962 Beaumont, Alice Marion c1873 - 1900 Beaumont, Francis W. R. 1876 - ? Beaumont, Francis William 1814 - 1895 Beaumont, Maria Catherine 1818 - 1877 Beaumont, Robert 1781 - 1869 Begg, Gladys Elizabeth c1892 - ? Begg, John Hay 1868 - 1920 Belbin, Eliza Jane 1833 - 1917 Bell-Irving, Alan 1894 - 1965 Bell-Irving, Henry Pybus 1913 - 2002 Bell-Irving, John 1813 - 1907 Benn, Elizabeth Helen 1857 - 1957 Big, Elspet Black, Phyllis Marguerite 1894 - 1982 Blackley, Travers Robert 1899 - 1982 Blackwell, Lilias c1817 - 1907 Blaikie, Annie Louisa C. 1850 - 1882 Blatchford, John Conway 1873 - 1950 Blomfield, Edward George 1853 – 1886 Boileau, Blanche Rose 1864 - 1951 Bolling, John Boule, Angelina 1844 - 1921 Boule, George 1842 - 1882 Boule, John Charles Bowker, Mary Lincoln 1862 - 1954 Boyd, Catherine 1788 - 1875 Boyd, Fanny Montague 1841 - 1902 Boyd, George Hay Boyd, Mossom 1781 – 1865 Boyd, William Boyer, Joseph Marie 1809 - ? Boyson, Elizabeth 1810 - 1887 Bradfield, Marianne S 1859 – 1929 Bramall, Edwin Noel Westby 1923 - 2019 Brand, James 1773 - 1849 Brand, Peter 1776 - ? Brand, William c1725 - ? Brandenburgh, Mary Susan 1865 – 1949 Brebner, Alexander 1769 - ? Brebner, James 1771 - ? Brebner, Janet 1766 - ? Brebner, Thomas 1773 - ? Breckenridge, Jean Brodie, Elspet 1792 - 1864 Bromley, Ethel Maud 1879 - 1976
Chart 16 Chart 16 Chart 16 Chart 16 Chart 14 Chart 16 Chart 16 Chart 23 Chart 12 Chart 13 Chart 13 Chart 13 Chart 13 Chart 13 Chart 7 Chart 11 Chart 26 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 12 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 8 Chart 8 Chart 8 Chart 12 Chart 3 Chart 17 Chart 15 Chart 18 Chart 20 Chart 19 Chart 26 Chart 26 Chart 14 Chart 24 Chart 26 Chart 24 Chart 25 Chart 14 Chart 1 Chart 14 Chart 1 Chart 14 Chart 8 Chart 24 Chart 25 Chart 26 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 25 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 6 Chart 22 Chart 21
Brooks, Eric Wilmot 1909 - 1984 Brougham, Keith George E. 1883 - 1967 Broughton, Lewis Pryce D. 1836 - 1902 Brown, Agnes 1732 - 1820 Brown, Anna ? - 1807 Brown, Annie 1856 - 1945 Brown, Edith Morrison 1872 - 1966 Brown, Isma Frances L. c1862 - 1948 Brown, Margaret 1863 - 1939 Bruce, Archibald c1740 - 1799 Bruce, Janet Turing 1828 - 1888 Bullard, Edward crisp 1907 - 1980 Burnes, Adam 1802 - 1872 Burnes, Alexander 1805 - 1841 Burnes, Alexander Holmes 1843 - 1880 Burnes, Alexander Horatio 1834 - 1906 Burnes, Anne 1808 - 1845 Burnes, Anne Eliza Glegg 1842 - 1924 Burnes, Cecilia 1815 - 1840 Burnes, Charles 1810 - 1841 Burnes, Dalhousie Holmes 1839 - 1873 Burnes, David 1749 - ? Burnes, David 1806 - 1849 Burnes, Elizabeth 1809 - 1889 Burnes, Elizabeth c1746 - ? Burnes, Elspet 1725 - ? Burnes, Fitz-James Holmes 1831 - 1895 Burnes, Frances 1771 - 1823 Burnes, George James H. 1829 - 1857 Burnes, Gilbert 1760 - 1827 Burnes, Hamilton F. H. 1836 - 1878 Burnes, Holland Ward H. 1833 - 1867 Burnes, Isobel 1730 - 1803 Burnes, James 1717 - 1761 Burnes, James 1750 - 1837 Burnes, James 1780 - 1852 Burnes, James 1801 - 1862 Burnes, James c1750 - ? Burnes, Jane Glegg 1810 - 1894 Burnes, Margaret c1723 - ? Burnes, Robert Burnes, Sidney Holmes 1841 - 1871 Burnes, William 1721 - 1784 Burnett, Jane 1826 - 1885 Burnham, Edith 1873 - 1938 Burns, Katherine May 1846 - 1920 Burns, Robert 1759 - 1796 Byron, (Lord) George Gordon 1788 - 1824 Byron, John 1756 - 1791 Byron, Lord 1788 - 1824 Caird, Anna 1762 - ? Caird, John c1720 - ? Caird, Robert 1764 - 1818 Caldwell, Keith Farquhar T. 1887 - 1958 Caldwell, Robert T. D. 1843 - 1914 Cameron, A. Cameron, Barbara Marshall 1901 - 2000 Cameron, Harriet c1835 - 1913 Campbell, Anne ? - 1809 Campbell, Elizabeth 1784 - 1848 Campbell-Orde, Peter S. 1906 - 1942 Cappell, Albert James L. 1836 - 1924 Capron, Frederick William c1860 – 1942
Chart 20 Chart 11 Chart 26 Chart 6 Chart 1, 2 Chart 20 Chart 11 Chart 18 Chart 20 Chart 1 Chart 11 Chart 17 Chart 6 Chart 2,6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 10,13 Chart 14 Chart 5 Chart 6 Chart 2 Chart 2 Chart 1 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 6 Chart 7 Chart 7 Chart 14 Chart 20 Chart 26 Chart 1 Chart 23 Chart 11 Chart 26 Chart 26
Carlyon, Alexander Keith 1847 - 1936 Carlyon, Clement 1838 - 1857 Carlyon, Harold Baird 1850 - 1937 Carlyon, Jessie Morison 1854 - 1942 Carlyon, Julia Ann Augusta c1848 - 1931 Carlyon, Julia Winstanley 1861 - 1958 Carlyon, Katherine Ogilvy c1852 - 1935 Carlyon, Philip 1811 - 1913 Carlyon, Philip 1846 - 1917 Carlyon, Tristrem 1877 - 1957 Carroll, Harriet Elizabeth c1883 - ? Carter, Mary Jane c1831 - 1899 Carylon, Julia Winstanley 1861 - 1958 Casson, Elizabeth Andriah 1848 - 1940 Cawley, Peter Greaves 1859 – 1939 Cayley, Douglas Edward 1870 - 1951 Cayley, Henry 1834 - 1904 Cayley, Jennifer Jane 1934 - Cayley, Richard 1833 - 1908 Cayley, Richard Douglas 1907 - 1943 Cerqueira, Maria Graciete A. 1949 - Chafy, Gwendolen Mary 1874 - 1955 Chalmers, Agnes Chalmers, Alexander Chalmers, Isobel Chapman, Joseph c1850 - ? Chown, Nancy R. 1956 - Christie, George Clabon, Frederick George 1871 - 1939 Clark, Edgar Gibson 1830 - 1883 Clark, Edgar Matthew 1855 - 1857 Clark, Elizabeth 1857 - 1857 Clark, Emma Mabel Edgar 1873 - 1874 Clark, Hilda Catherine E. 1870 - 1947 Clark, Irene Marion Edgar 1875 - 1929 Clark, Lily Olivia 2002 - Clark, Melina Clark, Mildred Henrietta E. 1872 – 1952 Clark, Olive Mary Edgar 1881 - 1968 Claxton, Delia Patience B. c1815 - ? Claxton, William 1782 - 1834 Clement, Nonya Coates, Eric Francis Harrison 1886 - 1957 Cochran, Alexander 1775 - 1837 Cochran, Alexander c1840 - 1891 Cochran, Elizabeth 1841 - 1925 Cochran, Francis 1843 – 1914 Cochran, Francis James c1809 - 1970 Cochran, Hugh 1770 - ? Cochran, Hugh c1741 - 1826 Cochran, James. Cochran, Jean 1768 - ? Cochran, Margaret Gordon 1844- 1896 Cochran, Martha 1772 - ? Cochran, Mary Cochran, Sophia 1778 - ? Cockell, William James 1830 - 1866 Cockerill, Alice Cockerill, Charles 1819 - 1896 Cockerill, Charles 1856 - 1923 Cockerill, Charlotte 1858 -1937 Cockerill, Eliza Mary S.
Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 18 Chart 25 Chart 17 Chart 19 Chart 19 Chart 21 Chart 15 Chart 15 Chart 15 Chart 15 Chart 15 Chart17 Chart 24 Chart 2 Chart 4 Chart 4 Chart 18 Chart 17 Chart 4 Chart 24 Chart 21 Chart 21 Chart 21 Chart 21 Chart 21 Chart 21 Chart 17 Chart 17 Chart 21 Chart 21 Chart 24 Chart 24 Chart 7 Chart 17 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 26 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23,26 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 23 Chart 24 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9 Chart 9
THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 425
Cockerill, Fortescue P. 1798 - 1864 Cockerill, Jane c1853 - 1884 Cockerill, Mercer 1800 - 1835 Cockerill, Rachel c1851 -1935 Cockerill, Robert 1775 - 1846 Cockerill, William Fuller M. 1796 - 1835 Cocks, Joseph 1854 - 1925 Coene, Charles Jean Lievin Colyer, Ben 1994 - Colyer, Karl 1963 - Colyer, Milly 1996 - Compton, Amy Isabel Gray 1854 - 1940 Cooke, Claudine 1842 - 1921 Cooke, Harriet Anne A. 1846 – 1927 Cooke, Mary Elizabeth 1839 – 1896 Cooke, William 1809 – 1873 Cooke, William Ernest 1844 – 1848 Cormack, John Cosserat, Alexander 1841 - 1855 Cosserat, Andrew William 1836 – 1912 Cosserat, Arthur Peloquin 1844 – 1891 Cosserat, Caroline Sophia 1847 – 1922 Cosserat, Henry Lewis 1838 – 1854 Cosserat, James 1809 - 1874 Cosserat, James 1835 - 1874 Cosserat, John Nathaniel 1849 – 1872 Cosserat, Lucy 1834 - 1912 Cosserat, Lucy Susan T. 1855 - 1941 Cosserat, Mary Elizabeth 1845 - 1909 Cosserat, Mary Josephine 1863 - 1948 Cosserat, Peloquin 1824 - 1884 Cosserat, Rachel Susan 1843 - ? Cosserat, Thomas Gibbon 1839 – 1875 Coutts, Ann 1782 - 1847 Coutts, John Coutts, Nancy Violet 1911 - 2006 Crafer, Margaret Georgina 1835 - 1916 Craig, Agnes c1730 - 1786 Craig, Christina 1883 - 1964 Cran, James Howard 1925 – 1983 Cranmer, Marie 1746 - 1825 Crichton, Anna C. E. M. M. 1876 - 1954 Croager, Walter John 1837 - 1915 Crouch, Grace Gertrude 1863 - 1956 Cruickshank, Elizabeth Mc. 1832 - 1912 Cumming, Jean 1759 - 1832 Curme, Marion Elizabeth 1852 - 1884 Currie, Jane Spiers 1837 - ? Currie, William Pirie 1869 - 1940 Cushnie, Mary Anne 1782 – 1846 Dalgarno, Janet Daly, Francis Daly, Teresa Alicia 1804 - 1831 Darley, John ? - 1808 Darling, Moir Tod S. 1844 - 1912 Davidson, Andrew 1865 - 1934 Davidson, David Davidson, May c1846 - ? Davies, Elizabeth c1840 - ? Davies, Iris 1904 - 2001 Davies, Rese Jacqlyn 1927 - ? Davis, John Benjamin 1883 - 1948 De Colnet, Martha c1714 - ?
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426 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
De Fawkes, Nirvana A. 1914 - 1984 De Larpent, Lionel H P.de H 1834 - 1907 De Morgan, Augustus 1806 - 1871 De Morgan, John 1684 - 1747 De Morgan, Mary 1736 - 1800 De Roeder, Adolphe De Vere, Aileen Aubrey c1886 - 1923 Deane, Alexander 1867 - 1929 Deane, Denis c1896 - 1914 Deane, Elizabeth 1912 - 1993 Denison, William M. E, 1904 - 1972 Desson, Alexander ? - 1924 Desson, James 1900 - ? Doggett, Alfred Christopher 1931 - ? Domville, Barry Francis 1844 – 1894 Douglas, Alexander Forbes 1824 - 1890 Douglas, George Douglas, James ? - 1823 Douglas, James Sholto 1823 - 1858 Douglas, Robert 1785 - 1831 Down, John Richard 1852 - 1932 Downes, Mary Anna Louisa 1818 - 1889 Downey, David Drake-Brockman, Ann A. 1840 - 1903 Drake-Brockman, Henry J. 1834 - 1869 Drake-Palmer, Charles P. R. 1877 - 1943 Drake-Palmer, Eleanor Edith 1878 - 1965 Drake-Palmer, Jane M. S. 1873 - 1954 Drake-Palmer, Rodney 1818 - 1894 Drake-Palmer, Rose C. M. 1879 - 1964 Dresti, Sabrina 1975 - Drew, Mary Jane Drummond, Harold F. 1849 - 1925 Duff, Adam 1590 - 1676 Duff, Alexander 1623 - 1696 Duff, Alexander 1652 - 1705 Duff, Ann 1787 - 1867 Duff, Anne Elizabeth 1747 - 1822 Duff, George 1764 - 1808 Duff, Grace 1791 - 1867 Duff, Helen Duff, Helen 1794 - 1796 Duff, James 1786 - 1809 Duff, Janet 1796 - 1854 Duff, John Duff, John 1745 - 1779 Duff, Margaret 1710 - 1793 Duff, Margaret 1720 - 1801 Duff, Mary Duff, Norwich 1792 - 1862 Duff, Patrick Duff, Patrick 1655 - 1731 Duff, Peter Duff, Robert 1721 - 1787 Duff, Robert 1739 - 1825 Duff, Robert 1739 - 1825 Duff, Robert 1791 - 1819 Duff, Robert 1835 - 1895 Duff, William 1653 - 1722 Duff, William 1632 - 1715 Duff, William 1685 - 1718 Duff, William 1697 - 1763 Duff, William 1700 - 1786
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Duff, William 1741 - 1773 Duff, William 1793 - 1842 Duff, William c1700 1783 Duff-Tytler, Amelia Duff-Tytler, Beryl 1934 - ? Duff-Tytler, Charles 1900 - 1979 Duff-Tytler, Dorothy Duff-Tytler, Edward ? - 1917 Duff-Tytler, Grace Duff-Tytler, Ida 1896 - ? Duff-Tytler, John Duff-Tytler, John 1904 - 1970 Duff-Tytler, Josephine 1899 - 1984 Duff-Tytler, Kenneth Duff-Tytler, Mabel 1898 - 1996 Duff-Tytler, Marie c1904 - 1942 Duff-Tytler, Robert Stephen 1849 - 1905 Duff-Tytler, Robert Stephen 1905 - 1976 Dunbar, Jean 1678 - ? Duncan, Ann 1740 - ? Duncan, Christian Duncan, Elizabeth 1738 - ? Duncan, George Duncan, Isobel 1752 - 1820 Duncan, James c1844 - 1899 Duncan, Margaret 1748 - ? Duncan, Rebecca ? - 1826 Durham, Caroline Christian 1851 - 1876 Duthie, Catherine c1780 - ? Duthie, James 1807 -? Duthie, William 1806 - ? Dyer, Winona Eleanor 1920 - 2011 Eberbach. Eugene Frederick 1884 - 1973 Edis, Mary Olive 1876 - 1955 Edmondson, Aila Catriona 1996 - Edmondson, Felicity Clare 1998 - Edmondson, John Mark 1961 - Edwards, Charles Joseph Elliott, Catherine Mary 1876 - 1959 Elsey, Edith Edna May 1887 – 1950 Elsie ? Esler, Annie 1866 - 1938 Evans, Margaret Fagan, Christopher 1776 - 1843 Fagan, Mary Elizabeth 1774 - 1805 Fagan, Robert 1737 - 1788 Faichnie, Isabella Mary Anne 1860 - 1930 Fairdale, Kate 1870 - ? Falconer, Ada 1853 - 1895 Falconer, Amelia Keith 1857 - 1951 Falconer, Ann Elizabeth S. 1844 - 1912 Falconer, Arthur 1767 - ? Falconer, Arthur Sisson 1860 - 1905 Falconer, Edith Constance 1864 - 1906 Falconer, Elizabeth 1710 - ? Falconer, Elizabeth 1779 - ? Falconer, Elizabeth 1819 - ? Falconer, Elizabeth c1758 - ? Falconer, Elizabeth Matilda 1848 - 1935 Falconer, Florence Mary 1862 - 1950 Falconer, Francis 1783 - ? Falconer, George Falconer, George 1686 - ?
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Falconer, George 1705 - ? Falconer, George 1762 - ? Falconer, George Alexander 1816 - 1860 Falconer, George Macdonald 1842 - 1865 Falconer, Henry Alexander 1845 - 1845 Falconer, Isabella Merton 1846 - 1929 Falconer, James 1755 - ? Falconer, James 1781 - ? Falconer, James 1782 - 1857 Falconer, Janet c1754 - ? Falconer, Janet Isabella 1846 - 1934 Falconer, Jean 1707 - ? Falconer, Jean 1760 - ? Falconer, John 1715 - ? Falconer, John Henry 1858 - 1930 Falconer, Margaret 1723 - ? Falconer, Marie Sisson 1852 - 1918 Falconer, Matilda Fenton 1848 - 1882 Falconer, Robert 1705 - ? Falconer, Sarah Janet 1824 - 1899 Falconer, Sidney 1857 - 1936 Falconer, William 1750 - ? Falconer, William 1812 - 1877 Falconer, William c1713 - 1783 Farnon, Mary 1868 - ? Farquhar, Adeline Mary 1890 - 1982 Farquhar, Adeline St John 1858 - 1937 Farquhar, Alastair C. Neil c1888 - 1916 Farquhar, Albert 1864 - 1935 Farquhar, Alice 1864 - 1947 Farquhar, Arthur 1815 - 1908 Farquhar, Arthur c1772 - 1843 Farquhar, Arthur McNeill 1894 - 1964 Farquhar, Arthur Murray 1855 - 1937 Farquhar, Charles G, D, 1867 - 1946 Farquhar, Charles Robert S. 1906 - 1968 Farquhar, Ellen P, M. 1852 - 1886 Farquhar, Hobart 1811 - 1816 Farquhar, Hobart Brooks 1874 -1916 Farquhar, James 1764 - 1833 Farquhar, James Brooke 1868 - 1961 Farquhar, Jane 1813 - 1842 Farquhar, Jane Gertrude 1854 - 1935 Farquhar, Jean 1908 - 1988 Farquhar, Kenneth Royston 1900 - 2004 Farquhar, Moubray Gore 1862 - 1948 Farquhar, Rachel Susan 1768 - 1812 Farquhar, Richard Bowles 1859 - 1948 Farquhar, Robert Townsend 1776 - 1830 Farquhar, Stuart St John 1865 - 1941 Farquhar, Walter 1738 – 1819 Farquhar, William 1774 - 1839 Farquhar, William 1774 - 1839 Farquhar, William Rickman 1860 - 1952 Fawkes Nirvana A. De F. 1914 - 1918 Ferguson, Matilda 1826 - 1897 Fernandez, Jerome c1907 - ? Ferrier, Antoinette Field, Catherine Eliza S. 1856 - 1940 Fletcher, Emily Sophia 1814 - 1874 Flyter, Emma Helen 1837 - 1866 Fogolari, Flora Elizabeth F. 1832 - ? Forbes, Elizabeth 1724 - 1804
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THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 427
Forbes, Margaret 1776 - 1852 Forester, Jean Forrest, Alexander c1838 - 1863 Forrest, Alexander B.D. 1897 - 1918 Forrest, Alexander Tavendale 1862 - 1950 Forrest, Ann Knight c1829 - 1857 Forrest, Burnett c1842 - 1900 Forrest, Christina 1869 - 1938 Forrest, Christina 1873 - 1964 Forrest, Ebenezer 1839 - 1902 Forrest, Elizabeth c1875 - ? Forrest, James c1783 - 1860 Forrest, James Gibbon 1879 - 1939 Forrest, Margaret 1832 - 1918 Forrest, Margaret Ann 1871 - ? Forrest, Mary Jane F. 1871 - 1892 Fowler, George Jefford 1858 - 1937 Fowler, Margaret 1846 - 1872 Fox, Anne 1879 - 1956 Francis William Rice Cowley 1869 – 1920 Fraser, James Fraser, Jean Stewart 1804 - 1870 Freame, Ann 1816 - 1838 Frederick Herman Aitken 1900 – 1981 Fyfe, Jane 1869 - 1957 Galloway, Jessie Ann c1797 - 1826 Galsworthy, Edwin Henry 1861 - 1947 Gard, Alice Harriet 1879 - 1940 Garden, Francis 1791 - 1843 Garden, Helen 1826 - 1905 Garden, William 1823 - 1904 Gardiner, Margaret Alice 1882 - 1981 Gartley, Elizabeth Gibbon, Agnes Gibbon, Agnes Gibbon, Agnes Gibbon, Alexander Gibbon, Alexander Gibbon, Alexander Gibbon, Alexander Gibbon, Alexander ? - c1793 Gibbon, Alexander 1672 - ? Gibbon, Alexander 1700 - ? Gibbon, Alexander 1752 - 1810 Gibbon, Alexander 1773 - 1833 Gibbon, Alexander 1779 - 1811 Gibbon, Alexander 1780 - 1870 Gibbon, Alexander 1793 - 1877 Gibbon, Alexander 1810 - 1890 Gibbon, Alexander 1810 - 1890 Gibbon, Alexander 1852 - 1810 Gibbon, Alexander 1863 - 1945 Gibbon, Alexander (Younger) Gibbon, Alexander Galloway1820 - 1880 Gibbon, Alexander Myron 1896 – 1985 Gibbon, Alexander R. T. 1885 - 1975 Gibbon, Alexander Robert T. 1885 - 1975 Gibbon, Alexander Robin D. 1941 - Gibbon, Alice Barbara 1907 - 1985 Gibbon, Amelia Ann Turing 1822 - 1836 Gibbon, Amelia Grace 1860 - 1918 Gibbon, Andrew Gibbon, Andrew 1808 - 1882
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428 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Gibbon, Andrew Murray 1872 - 1950 Gibbon, Ann Gibbon, Ann 1778 - 1856 Gibbon, Ann 1784 - ? Gibbon, Ann 1813 - 1855 Gibbon, Ann 1817 - ? Gibbon, Ann Faith 1907 - 1997 Gibbon, Anna 1733 - ? Gibbon, Anna 1757 - ? Gibbon, Anne 1777 - 1832 Gibbon, Anne Grace 1830 - 1904 Gibbon, Annie Grace Turing 1857 - 1940 Gibbon, Arthur Gibbon, Arthur Gibbon, Arthur 1674 - 1747 Gibbon, Arthur 1731 - ? Gibbon, Arthur 1748 - ? Gibbon, Arthur 1780 - 1861 Gibbon, Arthur 1790 - ? Gibbon, Arthur 1801 - ? Gibbon, Arthur 1809 - 1833 Gibbon, Arthur c1674 - 1747 Gibbon, Arthur c1730 - 1800 Gibbon, Arthur Augustus 1829 - 1907 Gibbon, Arthur Henry 1913 - 1994 Gibbon, Barbara 1789 - 1879 Gibbon, Barbara 1806 - 1869 Gibbon, Barbara E. M. 1918 - ? Gibbon, Barbara Weekes 1841 - 1912 Gibbon, Barbara Yeats 1808 - 1891 Gibbon, Benjamin Duff 1902 - 1918 Gibbon, Benjamin Westwood 1914 - 1989 Gibbon, Brebner 1813 - 1899 Gibbon, Bruce Scott 1888 - 1964 Gibbon, Catherine Ann Jane 1810 - 1829 Gibbon, Catherine Jessie 1865 - 1866 Gibbon, Charles 1747 - 1800 Gibbon, Charles 1782 - 1860 Gibbon, Charles 1789 - 1871 Gibbon, Charles 1810 - 1842 Gibbon, Charles 1856 - 1930 Gibbon, Charles David 1928 - 2013 Gibbon, Charles James 1859 - 1915 Gibbon, Charles William 1820 - 1899 Gibbon, Charles William 1820 - 1899 Gibbon, Charles William 1877 - 1879 Gibbon, Charles William 1891 - 1957 Gibbon, Charles William Duff 1868 - 1870 Gibbon, Christian Gibbon, Christian 1756 - ? Gibbon, Christian 1756 - 1832 Gibbon, Christian 1798 - 1871 Gibbon, Cyril Robert M. 1911 - 1977 Gibbon, David 1827 - ? Gibbon, David Scott 1825 - 1826 Gibbon, David Scott 1858 - 1900 Gibbon, David William 1943 - ? Gibbon, Donald William 1910 - 1941 Gibbon, Dora Ethel 1908 - 1981 Gibbon, Dorothy C. M. 1904 - 1991 Gibbon, Dorothy Grace 1906 - 1906 Gibbon, Dorothy Stewart 1892 - 1976 Gibbon, Edith Norah 1908 - 1995
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Gibbon, Edna Forbes 1902 - 1974 Gibbon, Edward Tytler 1866 - 1933 Gibbon, Edwin 1842 – 1849 Gibbon, Eleanora Sophia 1809 - 1890 Gibbon, Eliza 1806 – 1867 Gibbon, Elizabeth Gibbon, Elizabeth Gibbon, Elizabeth ? - 1731 Gibbon, Elizabeth 1718 - ? Gibbon, Elizabeth 1734 - 1829 Gibbon, Elizabeth 1758 - ? Gibbon, Elizabeth 1775 - 1852 Gibbon, Elizabeth 1785 - 1859 Gibbon, Elizabeth 1789 - ? Gibbon, Elizabeth 1798 - 1888 Gibbon, Elizabeth c1811 - ? Gibbon, Elizabeth A. 1842 - 1922 Gibbon, Elizabeth Jean 1907 - 2003 Gibbon, Elizabeth Maria 1850 - 1923 Gibbon, Elizabeth Mary c1831 - ? Gibbon, Elizabeth S. 1943 - ? Gibbon, Elsie Florence 1898 – 1968 Gibbon, Elspet 1695 - ? Gibbon, Emily Elizabeth 1815 - 1870 Gibbon, Fanny Forbes 1835 - 1839 Gibbon, Florence May T. 1896 - 1982 Gibbon, Florence Rosalie 1903 - 1962 Gibbon, Francis 1708 - ? Gibbon, Francis 1754 - ? Gibbon, Francis 1761 - 1803 Gibbon, Francis 1795 - 1812 Gibbon, Francis 1811 - ? Gibbon, Francis James 1846 – 1855 Gibbon, George Gibbon, George 1721 - ? Gibbon, George 1803 - 1879 Gibbon, George 1811 - 1847 Gibbon, Georgina 1841 - 1936 Gibbon, Georgina Forbes 1866 - 1961 Gibbon, Georgina M. 1823 - 1850 Gibbon, Gerald A 1946 - ? Gibbon, Gerald Cedric 1897 - 1914 Gibbon, Grace 1888 – 1893 Gibbon, Henry 1859 - 1947 Gibbon, Henry Denys 1909 - 1990 Gibbon, Hubert John 1899 - 1970 Gibbon, Hugh 1812 - 1844 Gibbon, Hugh c1778 - 1796 Gibbon, Huw David 1980 - ? Gibbon, Isabel Gibbon, Isabel 1798 - 1816 Gibbon, Isabel Christian 1788 - 1862 Gibbon, Isabella 1781 - 1859 Gibbon, Isabella 1822 - 1911 Gibbon, Jacqueline Anne 1940 - 2019 Gibbon, James Gibbon, James Gibbon, James Gibbon, James 1703 - ? Gibbon, James 1741 - 1806 Gibbon, James 1763 - ? Gibbon, James 1766 - ? Gibbon, James 1774 - 1848
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Gibbon, James 1783 - 1846 Gibbon, James 1786 - 1811 Gibbon, James 1793 - ? Gibbon, James 1796 - ? Gibbon, James 1812 - c1857 Gibbon, James 1816 - 1816 Gibbon, James 1817 - 1875 Gibbon, James 1818 - 1835 Gibbon, James 1819 - ? Gibbon, James c1775 - 1851 Gibbon, James c1852 - 1937 Gibbon, James Burnett 1867 - 1951 Gibbon, James Christopher 1986 - Gibbon, James Frederick 1842 – 1842 Gibbon, James Mitchell C. 1875 - 1939 Gibbon, Jane 1778 - 1855 Gibbon, Jane 1792 - ? Gibbon, Jane 1817 - 1833 Gibbon, Jane 1848 - ? Gibbon, Jane c1732 - ? Gibbon, Janet Gibbon, Janet 1698 - ? Gibbon, Jean 1727 - ? Gibbon, Jean 1806 - 1878 Gibbon, Jemima 1827 - 1919 Gibbon, Jennifer Laura 1983 - Gibbon, Jessie Gibbon, Jessie 1814 - 1841 Gibbon, Jessie 1814 - 1903 Gibbon, Jessie Ann 1824 - 1854 Gibbon, Jessie Eyre Duff 1877 - 1955 Gibbon, John 1913 - ? Gibbon, John Gibbon, John 1699 - ? Gibbon, John 1720 - ? Gibbon, John 1729 - ? Gibbon, John 1760 - ? Gibbon, John 1784 - 1846 Gibbon, John c1640 - ? Gibbon, John c1847 - 1854 Gibbon, John Murray 1875 - 1952 Gibbon, John Pirie 1815 - 1848 Gibbon, John Pirie 1847 - 1857 Gibbon, John Turing 1873 - 1954 Gibbon, Kate Coleburn 1843 - 1910 Gibbon, Katherine 1751 - ? Gibbon, Katherine Ellen M. 1870 - 1930 Gibbon, Kenneth Turing 1903 - 1999 Gibbon, Leonarda Zeigler 1829 - 1904 Gibbon, Lina Forbes 1875 - 1953 Gibbon, Margaret Gibbon, Margaret 1670 - ? Gibbon, Margaret 1701 - ? Gibbon, Margaret 1716 - ? Gibbon, Margaret 1744 - 1832 Gibbon, Margaret 1761 - ? Gibbon, Margaret 1775 - 1872 Gibbon, Margaret 1818 - 1911 Gibbon, Margaret 1839 - ? Gibbon, Margaret Emily 1896 – 1957 Gibbon, Margaret Euphemia 1833 - 1899 Gibbon, Margaret Mary 1904 - 1983 Gibbon, Maria 1836 - ?
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THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 429
Gibbon, Maria Sophie 1815 - 1847 Gibbon, Marjorie Doreen 1923 - 1979 Gibbon, Martha 1737 - 1826 Gibbon, Mary Gibbon, Mary 1705 - 1744 Gibbon, Mary 1779 - 1783 Gibbon, Mary c1732 - ? Gibbon, Mary Ann 1857 - 1926 Gibbon, Mary Duff 1864 - 1865 Gibbon, Mary Jane 1825 - 1862 Gibbon, Mary Louise 1859 - 1931 Gibbon, Mary Wright 1844 - 1913 Gibbon, Matilda Ferguson 1847 - 1858 Gibbon, Maude M. 1875 - 1924 Gibbon, Michael 1912 - 1987 Gibbon, Michelle 1965 - Gibbon, Mitchell c1839 - 1871 Gibbon, Murray Fox 1904 - 1977 Gibbon, Nicola Katherine M.M. c1911 - 1983 Gibbon, Patrick Crichton 1913 - 1977 Gibbon, Peter 1721 - ? Gibbon, Peter Alfred c1830 - ? Gibbon, Philip 1919 - 1998 Gibbon, Phyllis Mary 1905 - 1994 Gibbon, Rachel Susan 1809 - 1874 Gibbon, Rebecca 1707 - 1791 Gibbon, Ricardo William D. 1976 - Gibbon, Robert Gibbon, Robert 1709 - 1738 Gibbon, Robert 1724 - ? Gibbon, Robert 1735 - ? Gibbon, Robert 1738 - 1821 Gibbon, Robert 1755 - ? Gibbon, Robert 1778 - ? Gibbon, Robert 1781 - 1848 Gibbon, Robert 1799 - 1800 Gibbon, Robert 1802 - 1881 Gibbon, Robert c1720 - ? Gibbon, Robert Geoffrey 1901 - 1987 Gibbon, Robert Maurice 1926 - 2004 Gibbon, Robert Turing 1827 - 1895 Gibbon, Robert William 1863 - 1932 Gibbon, Robert William 1977 - Gibbon, Robina Cumming 1824 - 1826 Gibbon, Ronald Turing 1895 - 1970 Gibbon, Sarah Isobel 1786 - 1831 Gibbon, Sophia 1745 - 1801 Gibbon, Sophia 1822 - 1870 Gibbon, Sophia Charlotte 1786 - 1804 Gibbon, Sophia Maria 1774 - 1856 Gibbon, Susan Elizabeth 1946 - 1993 Gibbon, Thomas 1807 - 1860 Gibbon, Thomas Gordon 1818 - 1818 Gibbon, Thomas Mitchell 1838 - 1921 Gibbon, Thomas Turing 1915 - 1930 Gibbon, Une Cameron c1792 - 1799 Gibbon, Valerie 1924 - ? Gibbon, William Gibbon, William 1613 - ? Gibbon, William 1643 - ? Gibbon, William 1663 - ? Gibbon, William 1666 - ? Gibbon, William 1693 - ?
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430 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Gibbon, William 1695 - 1776 Gibbon, William 1722 - ? Gibbon, William 1734 - 1818 Gibbon, William 1747 - 1821 Gibbon, William 1761 - ? Gibbon, William 1772 - 1823 Gibbon, William 1783 - 1792 Gibbon, William 1811 – 1837 Gibbon, William 1815 - 1848 Gibbon, William c1643 - ? Gibbon, William c1666 - ? Gibbon, William c1700 - c1774 Gibbon, William Charles A. 1871 - 1947 Gibbon, William Duff 1837 - 1919 Gibbon, William Duff 1867 - 1949 Gibbon, William Duff 1872 - 1964 Gibbon, William Duff 1880 - 1955 Gibbon, William Duff 1911 - 2007 Gibbon, William Forbes 1800 - 1853 Gibbon, William Forbes 1838 - 1908 Gibbon, William Forbes 1840 - 1906 Gibbon, William Henry 1832 - 1894 Gibbon, William John 1937 - ? Gibbon, William Minto 1831 - 1863 Gibbon, William Sherman 1865 - 1899 Gild, Herbert Samuel 1910 - 1973 Glegg, Elizabeth Gobat, Samuel Benoni c1837 - 1873 Goddard, Sarah 1821 - 1885 Godfrey, Alfred Edwin B. 1885 - 1962 Goedhuis, Daniel 1905 - 1995 Gordon, Alexander 1716 - 1760 Gordon, Anna ? - c1795 Gordon, Beatrix Gordon, Catherine ? - 1811 Gordon, George Gordon, Horatia ? - 1834 Gordon, Margaret Gordon, Marguerite H. E. 1896 - 1980 Grant, Ann c1800 - 1860 Grant, Helen Grant, James Gray, Andrew Green, John Evelyn ? - 1881 Greene, Elisabeth Joy 1909 - 2012 Greene, Molesworth Richard 1827 - 1916 Greene, William Pomeroy 1866 - 1934 Gregory, Ann c1852 - 1935 Greig, Anne 1749 - 1796 Grice, Charles Fellow ? - 1850 Grub, Margaret Guthrie, Alexander Guthrie, Ann Guthrie, Charles Clement 1890 - 1966 Guthrie, Rachel 1772 - 1814 Gwilt, Robert Hamilton, Bernice Margaret 1909 – 1999 Hamilton, Joanna Mary A. 1945 - 2013 Harington, Charles Henry P. 1910 - 2007 Harington, Hastings N. V. 1855 - 1930 Harington, Herbert Baring 1831 - 1906 Harington, Herbert Hastings 1868 - 1916 Harington, Mary Marjorie 1881 - 1934
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Harris, Mary Elizabeth 1858 - 1906 Harrison, Hannah Joanna 1788 - 1846 Hartley, Jane Hatfeild, Herbert Seymour 1888 - 1950 Haworth, Graham 1960 - Haworth-Lowe, Alida Rae L 1996 – Haworth-Lowe, Daniel A. L. 1994 - Haworth-Lowe, T. Eliot L. 1991 - Hayden, William Gallimore 1842 - 1909 Haynes, Ann Hays, Clarence H. Hayter, Carol 1950 - Heard, Richard c1870 - 1950 Heath, Genesta Mary 1899 - 1990 Hemsleigh, Mary Henderson, Frances Mary 1829 - 1914 Henderson, Helen c1818 - 1854 Henderson, Henry Barkley 1893 - 1962 Henderson, Isobel 1763 - 1803 Herdman, Mary 1740 – 1824 Higginson, Frederick W. 1841 - 1917 Hill, Caroline Ella c1860 - 1932 Hill, Sophie Rosalie 1863 - 1887 Hind, Alison Hind, Edgar. Richard 1889 - 1971 Hind, John Richard Imray 1927 - 2015 Hind, Mollie Hind, Peter Hogarth, Helen Beatrice 1904 - 1976 Hogg, James 1770 - 1835 Hogg, Mary Gray 1831 - 1911 Holbeck, Alberta E. A. 1862 - 1940 Holbeck, Duncan G. G. 1864 - 1866 Holbeck, John Albert 1819 - 1873 Holland, Cecilia Agnes 1846 - 1933 Holland, Charles W. D. H.. 1845 - 1922 Holland, Edward Burnes 1836 - 1874 Holland, James c1805 - 1889 Holland, Trevenen James 1834 - 1910 Holmer, Britta Christine 1976 - Holmes, George c1760 - 1816 Holmes, Sophia Holroyd, William R. M. 1836 – 1916 Horace Aubrey Back 1889 – 1916 Hore, Charles Clavell 1851 - 1925 Horne, Edith Ellen 1851 - 1885 Horne, George c1811 - 1891 Houlson Matthew Nicholas 1973 - Houlson, Andew Derek 1971 - Houlson, Derek A. A. 1941 - Houlson, Larissa Cherry 1968 - 2010 Hudson, Anne 1783 - 1807 Hudson, Elizabeth c1789 - ? Hudson, George 1772 - ? Hudson, John 1769 - ? Hudson, Margaret c1787 - ? Hudson, Sarah Ann c1791 - ? Hudson, William 1774 - ? Hughes, Alexander Gibbon 1888 - 1959 Hughes, Harold De Motte 1882 - 1969 Hughes, Hugh David 1853 - 1940 Hughes, Kenneth Reese 1884 - 1956
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Hughes, Mabel Lloyd 1886 - 1959 Hughes, Ruby Beatrice 1889 - 1966 Hughes, Smith Yule 1880 - 1958 Hughston, Violet Cameron 1872 - 1952 Humphrys, Theodora 1878 - 1937 Hunt, Roger Baldwyn 1928 - Hutchison, Nicola Anne L. 1872 - 1932 Imray, Alison 1965 - Imray, Andina Beryl 1922 - 1998 Imray, Christopher Henry E. 1959 - Imray, Colin Henry 1933 - Imray, Doris Miriam 1891 - 1935 Imray, Douglas 1887 - 1962 Imray, Elizabeth Mary 1962 - Imray, Frances Margaret R. 1960 - Imray, Gladys Elizabeth 1889 - 1971 Imray, Harold 1856 - 1902 Imray, Henry Gibbon 1897 - 1936 Imray, Irene Jean 1894 - 1971 Imray, Jean 1933 - Imray, Jessie Margaret 1892 - 1986 Imray, John 1885 - 1905 Imray, John 1932 - Imray, Millicent Young 1884 - 1978 Imray, Mollie Olivia Grace 1923 - 2001 Imray, Peter Douglas John 1954 - Imray, Robert Harold 1947 - Imray, Thomas Adrian 1923 - 2016 Ingledew, Joan G. 1920 - Inglis, James Argyll S. 1848 - 1883 Inglis, James Arthur C. c1883 - 1915 Ingram, Harriet 1846 - 1939 Ingram, Hebert 1811 - 1860 Inkson, Alice Gordon 1866 - 1937 Inkson, Edgar Thomas 1872 - 1947 Inkson, James 1835 - 1898 Inkson, Jane Charlotte 1875 - 1944 Inkson, Katherine Maud 1868 - 1944 Inkson, Mary 1870 - ? Inkson, Patrick Morrison C. 1879 - 1932 Inkster, Myrtle Janet 1892 – 1970 Innes, Catherine Innes, Elizabeth 1732 - ? Innes, John James c1855 - 1881 Innes, Margaret Innes, Margaret Allardice 1809 - 1882 Innes, Thomas Irvine, Douglas Ludwig S. 1954 - Irvine, John Heaps 1925 - 1999 Jackson, Beverley Rand 1910 - 1961 Jackson, Jessie 1856 - 1905 James Leith c1714 - 1788 James Mowat 1696 - ? James, ? Jeffrey, Patricia S Jenkins, Ann 1818 - 1841 Johnson, Eliot Philipse 1866 - 1925 Johnston, John Johnston, William 1843 - 1914 Jones, Bertram Owen c1876 - 1911 Jones, Elizabeth c1822 - 1878 Jones, Percy 1869 - 1917 Jones, William John 1842 - 1911
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THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 431
Kebbell, George 1848 - 1911 Keeler, Seymour Clinton 1821 - 1899 Keith, Alexander Keith, Archibald 1837 - 1894 Keith, Catherine Keith, Isabella Keith, Jean Kelland, Alexandrina Kennedy, Evelyn Anne 1851 - 1936 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald 1917 - 1963 Kennedy, Patricia Helen 1924 - 2006 Kerr, Ida Evelyn c1883 - 1949 Kerr, Marie 1640 – 1700 Kerr, Mary Isabell Elizabeth 1838 - 1900 King, Alexander 1904 - 1970 King, Emily 1988 - King, Henry 1993 - King, Robert Gilbert 1868 - 1935 King, Timothy 1952 - Knott, Sylvia Mary 1907 - 2001 Knox, Hugh 1784 - ? Knox, Jane Gibbon Knox, Peter John Laker, Ethel Emily 1876 - 1957 Laker, George 1844 - 1924 Lambe, Florence Muriel 1878 - 1956 Landale, Basil Ronald 1812 - 1878 Landale, Basil Ronald 1845 - 1919 Langford, John Crawford 1829 - 1908 Larpent, Albert John de H. 1816 - 1861 Larpent, John 1741 - 1824 Larpent, Lionel H P de H 1835 - 1907 Lason, Margaret Lawford, Jessie Bruce 1849 - 1933 Lawford, Peter Sydney E. A. 1923 - 1984 Lawford, Sydney Turing B. 1865 - 1953 Lawford, Thomas Acland 1816 - 1884 Lawrence, James Lawrence, James ? - 1686 Lawrence, Margaret Lawtie, Eliza c1790 - 1824 Lego, Lulu Mackintosh 1800 - 1939 Leith, Alexander c1751 -1805 Leith, Elizabeth c1760 - 1841 Leith, James c1764 - 1829 Leith, Janet c1753 - 1827 Leith, John c1756 - 1805 Leith, Margaret c1758 - 1835 Leltitia Mary Walters 1839 - 1920 Liston, Agnes 1837 - 1919 Little, Ann 1812 - 1896 Livingston, William c1760 - 1822 Loban, Margaret Loftie, Billington Logie, Elizabeth 1753 - ? Logie, George Logie, George c1717 - 1752 Logie, Mary ? - 1838 Lovelace, Ada 1815 - 1852 Lowe, Jane Gibbon 1943 - Lowe, John Stanley 1906 - 1996 Lowe, Julian Duff Sebastian 1935 - 1945 Lowe, Juliette 1962 -
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432 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Lowe, Katherine Alida 1961 - Lowe, Mark Gibbon 1934 - Lowe, Sally Barbarina 1941 - Maby, Alan Grant 1906 - 1965 MacCarthy, Florence Mary 1870 - 1958 MacCarthy, Florence May T. 1896 - 1982 MacCarthy, John Agar 1832 - 1890 Macdonald, Aeneas John Macdonald, Isabella S. L. 1823 - 1896 MacDuff, Sangam 1978 - MacDuff, Sophie Mathilda 2011 Machell, Thomas Mackay, Lucy Douglas c1886 - ? Mackenzie, James c1772 - 1859 MacKenzie, John 1782 - 1796 Mackenzie, William c1848 - ? Mackie, Ann 1776 - 1837 Mackie, Margaret Mackinnon, Flora Mackintosh, Eneas 1741 - 1787 Mackintosh, Mary 1777 - ? Macleod, Robert A E 1958 - Macpherson, James Major, John Philip c1815 - 1840 Mallett, Catherine c1869 - 1864 Mallett, Jonathan 1729 - 1826 Marks, Ada c1865 - ? Marr, Amelia Kerr 1872 - ? Marr, Mary Jane 1846 - 1912 Martin, Arthur 1904 – 1969 Martin, Elizabeth Mary c1780 - 1858 Mary Ellen Eliza Gibbon 1847 - ? Mathews, Rex 1918 - ? Mathys, Jonathan 1949 - Matthews, Douglas 1916 - 1985 Matthews, George 1920 - 1946 Matthews, Norman Matthews, Patrick Caulfred 1870 - ? Matthews, Shirley Margaret 1934 - Maude, Robert John 1853 - 1906 Maugham, James Arnott 1832 - 1841 Maugham, Janet 1828 - 1926 Maugham, Philip 1784 - 1863 Maugham, Philip 1830 - 1897 Maugham, William Charles 1836 - 1914 Maughan, Cuthbert 1772 - 1812 Maver, Elizabeth Falconer 1875 - 1944 McBain, Isabella 1803 - 1878 McBean, Jean McKechnie, Jane c1852 - 1910 McKee, Howard Harper 1890 - 1973 McKeller, R. McKenzie, Charles 1773 - ? McKenzie, Elizabeth McKenzie, Hugh 1778 - 1796 McKenzie, Isabel 1771 - ? McKenzie, James 1778 - 1809 McKenzie, Janet 1770 - 1847 McKenzie, John c1732 - 1812 McKenzie, Margaret 1768 McKenzie, Mary c1767 - ? McLeod, Robert A. E. 1958 - ? McNeill, Helen E. F. 1867 - 1960
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McRae, James Gilbert 1833 – 1886 Mearns, John Mearns, William 1745 - ? Megarry, Peter Lindsay 1915 - 1952 Megarry, Robert Edgar 1910 - 2006 Megarry, Robert Lindsay 1879 - 1952 Meldrum, Andrew Gibbon Meldrum, Arthur Meldrum, Jean ? - c1786 Meldrum, Robert Meldrum, William Mellis, Adam 1783 - 1816 Mellis, William Strachan 1809 - ? Melvin, Margaret 1774 - 1842 Memess, Catherine 1779 - 1875 Memmess, Robert 1728 - 1818 Menekie ? Michael ? Middleton, Rachel Ann 1804 - ? Milbanke-Noel, Anne I. 1792 - 1860 Miles, Charles Robert 1919 - 1941 Miles, Lilian Mary 1914 - 1995 Miles, Pamela 1916 - ? Miles, Robert Henry William 1843 - 1915 Miles, William Henry 1898 - 1975 Miller, James Mitchell, Douglas Mitchell, James ? - 1734 Mitchell, Jane Young 1842 - 1881 Mitchell, John 1818 - 1896 Mitchell, Martha Reid 1876 - 1943 Montague-Jones, Ronald 1909 - 1996 Montgomery, Elizabeth 1796 - 1870 Montgomery, Elizabeth A. 1861 – 1937 More, Jane ? - 1838 Morice, Alexander 1774 - 1814 Morice, David 1812 - 1812 Morice, David 1813 - 1897 Morice, Jane Ann 1858 - ? Morice, Sophia Alexander 1815 - 1876 Morison, Alexander 1810 - 1879 Morison, Andrew 1738 – 1809 Morrison, Alexander 1779 – 1866 Morrison, Jessie 1878 - 1969 Mowat, Alexander 1699 - ? Mowat, Margaret Mowat, Robert 1701 - ? Mowat, William Munro, Hilda Annie 1892 - 1969 Murdoch, Alan May 1894 - 1971 Murdoch, Alec Brown S. 1888 - 1920 Murdoch, Alexander B. S. 1922 -1980 Murdoch, Amelia Morison 1870 - 1880 Murdoch, Andrew Chrystal 1859 - 1905 Murdoch, Annabel Munro 1928 – 1972 Murdoch, Catherine Helen 1904 - 2000 Murdoch, Christina Elizabeth 1890 - 1941 Murdoch, Eliza Jane 1855 - 1937 Murdoch, Ella Jean Dorothy 1899 – 1974 Murdoch, Erik James 1878 - 1878 Murdoch, Francis Andrew 1892 - 1893 Murdoch, Francis Garden 1852 - 1934 Murdoch, Francis Garden 1887 - 1933
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Murdoch, George 1882 - 1891 Murdoch, Grace Young 1867 - 1958 Murdoch, Harry Keith 1894 – 1949 Murdoch, Helen Nora 1861 - 1924 Murdoch, Hugh 1865 - ? Murdoch, Isabella Agnes 1864 - ? Murdoch, Ivon George 1892 - 1958 Murdoch, Ivon Lewis 1858 - 1880 Murdoch, James 1818 - 1905 Murdoch, James 1854 - ? Murdoch, Katherine Alice 1879 - 1957 Murdoch, Keith Arthur 1862 - ? Murdoch, Keith Arthur 1885 - 1952 Murdoch, Marjorie Isobel 1903 - 1971 Murdoch, Patrick John 1850 - 1940 Murdoch, Rupert 1931 - Murdoch, Walter Logie F. 1874 - 1970 Murdoch, William David 1888 - 1942 Murdoch, William Garden 1856 - 1868 Murdoch, William Garden 1901 - 1950 Murdoch, William Garden B. 1880 - 1934 Murray, Alexander Murray, Andrew 1808 - 1889 Murray, Elspet c1818 - 1886 Murray, James Murray, James Murray, James c1793 - 1866 Murray, Jane c1788 - 1816 Murray, John 1809 - 1908 Murray, Katherine 1842 - 1916 Murray, Katherine 1842 - 1916 Murray, Mary c1802 - 1880 Murray, William Nash, Bertha Winifred 1881 - 1970 Nicholl, Charles Carlyon 1879 - 1952 Nicholl, David 1854 - 1882 Nicol, Alice Jane 1858 - 1900 Nicol, Margaret Nicol, Margaret 1748 - 1779 Nimmo, Walter Alfred 1858 - 1923 Nimmo, William 1777 - 1839 Nimmo, William James 1818 - 1884 Nisbet, Eliza Ellen 1835 – 1870 Nisbet, William 1811 - 1835 Norman, Francis Booth 1830 – 1901 Norton, David 1851 - 1929 Oakes, Edward 1823 – 1874 Ogilvie, Ann ? - 1746 Ogilvie, Margaret Adam 1809 - 1879 Ogilvy, James ? - 1787 Ogilvy, James Catherine 1787 - 1871 O'Loghlen, Bryan 1828 - 1905 O'Loghlen, Ella Maude 1874 - 1960 Ovans, Edward Hornby 1883 - 1915 Parker, Edward Eyre 1874 - 1885 Parker, Elizabeth 1832 - 1857 Parker, Frederick Langloh 1838 - 1892 Parker, Frederick William 1867 - 1954 Parker, Hubert Charles 1870 - 1939 Parker, Jessie Eleanor 1877 - 1952 Parker, Katherine Langloh 1885 - 1977 Parker, Langloh 1839 - 1903 Paterson, George c1846 - 1916
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THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 433
Paterson, Isobel Payne, Joan Betty Mowatt 1916 - 1999 Peake, Ada Florence 1893 - 1922 Peake, Dorothy Edith 1877 - 1980 Peake, Edward Copson 1908 - 1982 Peake, John Thelwal 1895 - 1915 Peake, Mary Ethel c1889 - 1946 Peake, Robert Thelwal 1856 - 1931 Peake, Robert Wilford 1890 - 1953 Pearsall, Benjamin 1818 - 1907 Pearson, Charles F. G. 1872 - 1947 Pearson, Charles Frank 1892 - ? Pearson, David Alexander 1829 - 1905 Pearson, Ellen Lillian 1895 - ? Pearson, Florence Edith 1898 – 1992 Pearson, Gertrude Elizabeth 1897 - 1932 Pearson, Mary Louisa 1900 - 1900 Peck, Harold Stoughton 1845 - 1884 Peck, Marion c1872 - 1950 Pelham, James A. H. T. 1869 - 1947 Peppe, Annie Jane 1850 - 1930 Peppe, George T. Gibbon 1856 - 1924 Peppe, Sarah 1854 - 1856 Peppe, Vivienne Peppe, William 1822 - 1889 Peppe, William Claxton 1852 - 1937 Philip, John 1873 - 1951 Phillips, Aidan 1998 - Phillips, David 1958 - Phillips, Jonathan 1994 - Phillips, Rosemary 1992 - Pilgrim, David Jeremy 1942 - 2015 Pirie, J Pirrie, George 1835 - 1902 Pirrie, Helen Lumsden 1838 - 1918 Pirrie, James Miller Gordon c1852 - 1891 Pittar, Elizabeth Margaret 1849 - ? Pittar, Robert Holmes 1819 - 1866 Pratt, Jane Simpson c1822 - 1908 Pryce, Esther Pybus, Henry 1850 - 1838 Raffles, Leonora Ranyell, Irene Reade, Mary 1800 - 1948 Redfern, Alan Faulkner 1880 - 1968 Redfern, Alan Gardiner 1907 - 1943 Redfern, Arthur William 1876 - 1954 Redfern, Edith 1878 - 1966 Redfern, Leonard Piers 1913 - 1989 Redfern, Robert Ainsworth 1897 - 1966 Redfern, Thomas Robert 1848 - 1926 Reid, Ann Reith, Annie Grace Gibbon 1878 - 1926 Reith, Archibald 1877 - 1933 Reith, Charles Edward W. 1886 - 1957 Reith, Charles Martin 1927 - 1992 Reith, Cranston Graham 1892 - 1958 Reith, George 1811 - 1889 Reith, Jessie Eyre Williams 1881 - 1881 Reith, John 1889 - 1971 Rennie, William Lawson 1900 - 1978 Reynolds, Bladwen M. 1907 - 1988 Richardson, Richard 1843 - 1893
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434 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Rickman, Ellen 1826 - 1898 Riviere, Marguerite A. G. 1883 - 1950 Roberts, Edward 1845 - ? Robertson, Eleanora Sophia 1781 - 1807 Robinson, Alice Graham 1847 - 1936 Robson, Clara Elizabeth 1871 - 1961 Rodrigo, Arthur B. Roger, Elizabeth 1789 - 1809 Rolfe, Grace c1884 - ? Rollo, R. G. Rose, Janet 1933 - 1996 Ross, Alexander Carnegie 1859 - 1910 Ross, John Ross, Kenneth Carnegie c1888 - 1963 Ross, Natalie Carnegie 1890 - 1967 Ross, Robert Hill c1832 - ? Rowan, Frederick John 1842 - 1899 Russell, David Smith Samson, William 1854 - 1906 Samuel, Elizabeth 1783 - 1855 Sandford, Rachel 1840 - 1887 Sartori, Maria 1935 - 2015 Scholes, Gladys 1893 - ? Schueler, Carola L c1958 - Scorey, Ann c1823 - 1891 Scott, Ann c1861 - ? Scott, Anthony 1802 - 1882 Scott, David 1774 - 1852 Scott, David 1817 - 1839 Scott, George David 1855 - ? Scott, George Gordon 1819 - 1908 Scott, Gordon c1873 - ? Scott, Isabella 1818 - 1909 Scott, James Gibbon 1830 - 1872 Scott, Margaret Sophie 1857 - 1939 Scott, Sophia 1815 - 1831 Seaton, Janet Seelie, William Robert 1845 - 1918 Seymour, Grace Margaret 1924 - 1960 Shamhart, Lola Grace Eliz. 1886 - ? Shearer, David 1927 - 2003 Shearer, Fiona 1961 - Shepard, Ernest Howard 1879 - 1976 Shepard, Graham Howard 1907 - 1943 Shepard, Harriet Jessie M. 1937 - ? Shippard, Alexander 1771 - 1841 Shippard, Elizabeth Mary 1803 - 1863 Simon, Antonia Dorothea 1893 – 1953 Sims, Amelia Isabella 1825 - 1839 Sims, Andrew 1792 - 1862 Sims, Mary Ellinor Christian 1838 - 1920 Sims, Patrick 1824 - ? Sims, Patrick Torry 1826 - 1867 Sims, Thomas Abernethie 1822 - 1899 Sims, Vernon William 1836 - 1870 Skinner, Charlotte Elizabeth 1853 - 1931 Smith, Agnes c1805 - 1857 Smith, Anna Beatrice 1858 - 1957 Smith, Annie 1854 - 1934 Smith, Charles Frederick c1822 - 1877 Smith, Charles Grant Smith, David Curle 1859 - 1922 Smith, Edward Palmer 1840 - 1938
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Smith, Fanny J. 1866 - 1927 Smith, Frances Edith 1871 - 1913 Smith, Frederick Bernard 1874 - 1948 Smith, George Augustus 1861 - 1944 Smith, James c1800 - ? Smith, John Smith, John c1819 - 1833 Smith, Lucy Manners c1858 - ? Smith, Lydia Jane 1856 - 1906 Smith, Sidney Desmond Leo 1880 - 1957 Smith, William Trinder 1844 - 1912 Smyth, Amelia Ann 1838 - 1875 Smyth, Charles Thuillier 1848 - 1900 Smyth, Jemima Mary 1839 - 1868 Smyth, Katharine Sophia 1851 - 1943 Smyth, Ralph St George 1812 - 1886 Spence, Elspeth 1835 - 1916 St John, Beauchamp Tudor 1880 - 1965 St John, Edmund Farquhar 1879 - 1945 St John, Edmund Tudor 1848 - 1884 St John, Eleanor Louisa 1839 – 1923 St John, Richard 1883 - 1967 St John, St Andrew Oliver 1882 - 1967 Stamp, Eva Chloe Foster 1886 - 1969 Stamp, Richard Bulmer 1852 - 1918 Stanier, Francis Philip B. 1838 - 1900 Stanier, Leila Dorothy 1876 - 1961 Stephen, John 1761 - 1799 Stephen, John 1798 - 1825 Stephen, Mary 1795 - 1796 Stephenson, Ann Stephenson, Sophia 1759 - 1798 Steven, Elspet Stockinger, Josephine Mary 1882 - 1971 Stone, Charles 1874 - 1954 Stoney, Ethel Sara 1881 - 1976 Storey, Robert Storey 1835 - 1907 Strachan, Andrew Strachan, James ? - c1746 Stuart, Janet Lang 1844 – 1934 Sutter, Elizabeth Sweeney, Rosemary 1896 - 1963 Syms, Rosemary P. Takon, Huru Tavendale, Jane c1842 - 1917 Taylor, Ada Emma 1855 - 1939 Taylor, Agnes Grace 1851 - 1925 Taylor, Basil Wilford c1883 - 1949 Taylor, Catharine Alice 1845 - 1933 Taylor, Charles Joseph 1859 - 1902 Taylor, Edith Elizabeth 1846 - 1930 Taylor, Ellen Norah 1847 - 1902 Taylor, Ethel Maud Keith 1857 - 1940 Taylor, Eva Judith 1857 – 1870 Taylor, Florence Marion 1853 - 1935 Taylor, George Robert G. 1853 - 1895 Taylor, Helen Taylor, Henry Alexander S. 1864 - ? Taylor, John c1818 - ? Taylor, John Henry 1791 - 1867 Taylor, John S. c1818 - ? Taylor, John Wilford 1849 - 1930 Taylor, John William Wray 1855 - ?
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Taylor, Keith Wilford 1888 - 1961 Taylor, Thomas Taylor, Thomas James B. 1851 - ? Tennant, Margaret Teviotdale, William Thomson, Christian Thomson, Christian 1685 - 1749 Thomson, George Carogan 1835 – 1896 Thomson, John Thomson, John Timothy King 1952 - ? Todd, Jane 1839 - 1909 Todd, Mary c1850 - 1933 Todd, Thomas c1820 - 1869 Todd, Willam c1842 - 1849 Todd, William Hogarth 1878 - ? Torry, Adam Ogilvie 1850 - 1891 Torry, Christian 1799 - 1869 Torry, Henry Adam c1842 – 1923 Torry, Isabella 1802 - 1836 Torry, James Ramsay 1848 - 1886 Torry, John 1800 - 1879 Torry, Mary Ann 1797 - ? Torry, Mary Ann Murray c1840 - 1916 Torry, Patrick 1763 - 1852 Torry, Patrick 1838 - 1861 Torry, Thomas Gordon 1805 -1856 Torry, William Young 1844 - 1866 Tothill, John Douglas 1888 - 1969 Trelawny, Mary ? - 1849 Tribe, Nancy Mary 1908 - 1981 Truby, Kathleen Minnie 1895 - 1979 Tulloch, John 1830 – 1906 Turing, Alan Mathieson 1912 - 1954 Turing, Alexander 1702 - 1782 Turing, Ann Catherine c1778 – 1851 Turing, Anne 1708 - ? Turing, Arthur James 1756 - 1793 Turing, Forbes Ann 1747 - 1797 Turing, Harvey Doria 1877 - 1950 Turing, Helen 1716 - 1776 Turing, Henry Turing, Henry 1708 - 1777 Turing, Inglis 1743 - 1791 Turing, James 1709 – 1733 Turing, James 1714 - 1788 Turing, James Henry 1791 - 1860 Turing, Janet 1750 - 1826 Turing, John 1680 - 1733 Turing, John ? - 1809 Turing, John 1650 - ? Turing, John 1680 – 1733 Turing, John 1742 - 1756 Turing, John 1744 - 1808 Turing, John 1751 - 1798 Turing, John 1779 – 1845 Turing, John Ferrier 1908 - 1983 Turing, John Robert 1793 - 1828 Turing, John Robert 1826 - 1883 Turing, Julius Mathieson 1873 - 1947 Turing, Katherine 1711 - ? Turing, Mary 1757 - ? Turing, Mary 1757 - 1839
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THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 435
Turing, Mary 1775 - 1838 Turing, Mary 1780 - 1837 Turing, Robert 1711 - 1764 Turing, Robert 1745 - 1831 Turing, Robert Fraser Turing, Walter 1671 - 1743 Turing, William ? - 1813 Turner, Alfred Grenville B. 1866 – 1948 Turner, Annie Mactier 1855 - 1946 Turner, Elinor Hay 1851 – 1884 Turner, Fanny Gibbon 1849 - 1907 Turner, Frank 1813 - 1890 Turner, Frank Mackinnon 1857 - 1907 Turner, James Gibbon 1859 - 1950 Turner, Mary Elizabeth R. 1845 - 1890 Turner, Maud Valerie c1894 - 1943 Turner, Susan Alexandrina 1861 - 1944 Turriff, Christina c1852 - 1915 Turriff, Elspet c1854 - 1937 Turriff, James 1856 - 1880 Turriff, William c1809 - 1895 Tyrell, Emily Louisa 1844 - 1901 Tytler, Alice Terese c1895 - 1961 Tytler, Annie Grace 1851 - 1926 Tytler, Catherine Amelia 1861 - 1894 Tytler, Charles William 1853 - 1898 Tytler, Edward 1894 - ? Tytler, Hazel Tytler, Helen Grace Annie 1907 - 1981 Tytler, Henry 1855 - 1856 Tytler, Jessie Duff 1863 - 1945 Tytler, Josie Tytler, Lucy 1910 - 1997 Tytler, Mary Tytler, Mary Penelope 1866 - 1933 Tytler, Patrick Boyd 1867 - 1941 Tytler, Robert Boyd 1818 - 1882 Tytler, William 1780 - 1843 Tytler, William Alexander 1854 - 1924 Urquhart, Mary ? - 1764 Vernon, Dorothy Avril W. 1925 - 2015 Vernon, Henry Albemarle 1879 - 1943 Vincent, Margaret Ann Jane 1847 - 1930 Virtue, Jean Hamilton 1901 - ? Vollar, Henry James c1850 - 1918 Vollar, Jessie Vollar, Katie Von Niekerk, Sarah E. 1849 - 1930 Von Stenksch-Prittag, C. ? - c1865 Wadd, Emily Frances 1868 - ? Waldock, Sheila Mackail 1928 - Walker, Ann Walker, Archibald Walker, Isabella Walker, Simon Calum 1976 - Wallace, Henry Charles 1863 - 1924 Wallace, John c1825 - 1882 Wallace, Stephanie M. F, 1909 - 1982 Walter, John McNeill 1820 – 1898 Ward, William c1803 - 1845 Warland, Craig Lucas 1980 - Warren, Carl Osborne 1907 -1959 Warren, Frederick Hugh G. 1872 - 1920
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436 THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN
Warren, George Francis 1844 - 1917 Warren, Hugh Gibbon N. c1881 - 1902 Watkin, Edward William 1819 - 1901 Watson, Henry c1760 - ? Watt, Elsie 1831 - 1914 Watt, James Oswald 1905 - 1967 Watt, Sophia Watt, Walter Oswald 1878 - 1921 Wayne, Herman 1838 – 1909 Webb, Joyce Purnell 1901 - 1975 Webster, Williamena Ellen c1844 - 1926 Welsh, Jean Welsh, Robert West, Ann 1768 - 1833 West, James 1732 - c1802 Wheeler, Mary Ann 1836 - 1908 Whish, Albert William 1843 - 1913 Whish, Arthur Richard Lewis 1847 - 1926 Whish, Cecil Holland 1850 - 1896 Whish, Elizabeth Jane 1836 - 1925 Whish, Ernest Burnes 1848 - 1929 Whish, Flora Thornbrough 1839 - ? Whish, Frederick Alexander 1833 - 1872 Whish, Matilda Emily 1835 - 1931 Whish, Richard c1785 - 1854 Whish, William Samson 1787 - 1853 Whiteford, Bessie Wilcox, Henry George 1839 - 1907 William Forbes Gibbon 1854 – 1927 William Mowat William Young 1717 - 1790 William Young 1871 – 1922 Williams, Annie Grace 1845 - 1936 Williams, Burton ? - 1852 Williams, Edgar Eyre 1881 - 1882 Williams, Edith Ethel 1873 - 1945 Williams, Edward 1842 - 1916 Williams, Edward Ernest 1875 - 1915 Williams, Edward Eyre 1813 - 1880 Williams, Edward Eyre Max 1917 - 1979 Williams, George Augustus 1829 – 1897 Williams, George Herbert 1875 - 1957 Williams, Hartley 1843 - 1929 Williams, Hartley Eyre 1871 - 1933 Williams, Jessie 1848 - 1872 Williams, Jessie Lillian 1890 - 1972 Williams, John Williams, John c1866 - ? Williams, Muriel Maud 1880 - 1936 Williams, Richard Burton Williams, Roy Bruce 1888 - 1972 Williams-Freeman, Victoire 1918 – 2000 Williamson, Mary 1837 - 1919 Wing, Carrie Ann 1983 - Wise, Elizabeth c1728 - 1791 Wood, Barbara c1757 - ? Wood, Margaret c1804 – 1866 Woodford, Ruth 1894 - ? Woodward, Louisa Susan S. 1873 – 1906 Wright, Mary Elizabeth c1802 - 1871 Wybourne, Sarah Emily C. c1884 - 1960 Wyllie, Corran A. D. 2014 - Wyllie, David 1944 -
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Wyllie, Helen Clare 1975 - Wyllie, Imogen Alison 1977 - Wyllie, Margaret Wyllie, Sula Janet 2012 Yarwood-Brown, Sylvia 1960 - Yeats, Barbara 1749 - 1791 Young, Alexander Young, Alexander Young, Arthur Douglas 1891 - 1966 Young, Arthur Henderson 1854 - 1938 Young, Charles 1774 - ? Young, Christian 1740 - ? Young, Clara c1858 - ? Young, Clare Young, Edgar Noel 1884 - 1961 Young, Elizabeth Ann 1792 - ? Young, Elizabeth Catherine 1838 - 1911 Young, Elizabeth Forbes 1810 - ? Young, Ellis 1862 - 1900 Young, Emma Keith 1847 - ? Young, Esther Harriet 1861 - 1944 Young, Ethel Hay 1861 - 1946 Young, Fanny Georgina 1851 - 1930 Young, Francis Harold Mc. 1887 - 1961 Young, George Adam 1801 - 1877 Young, Grace 1810 - 1899 Young, Grace Julia 1820 - 1905 Young, Helen 1767 - ? Young, Helen 1802 - 1832 Young, Helen Constance 1859 - 1943 Young, Henry McLeod 1857 - 1889 Young, Henry Winstanley K. 1886 - 1957 Young, Isabella 1829 - 1876 Young, Isobel 1747 - 1822 Young, James Young, James 1769 - 1852 Young, James 1797 - ? Young, James 1807 - 1891 Young, James Catherine 1812 - 1898 Young, James Keith W. 1813 - 1851 Young, James Murray 1843 - 1894 Young, Jane 1760 - ? Young, Jane 1800 - 1834 Young, Janet Young, Jean 1772 - 1815 Young, Jean 1807 - ? Young, John Young, John Young, Joseph Gwilt c1793 - 1828 Young, Keith 1764 - 1827 Young, Keith 1806 - 1862 Young, Keith Downes 1848 - 1929 Young, Keith Henry St G. 1853 - 1893 Young, Keith Ogilvy Baird 1858 - 1959 Young, Lewis 1837 - 1906 Young, Louisa Elizabeth 1845 - 1923 Young, Margaret Young, Margaret 1743 - ? Young, Margaret c1724 - 1783 Young, Margaret Keith 1861 - 1930 Young, Marshall Keith 1793 – 1818 Young, Mary Young, Mary 1749 - ?
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Young, Mary Young, Mary Young, Mary Anna Young, Mary Catherine Young, Mary Murray Young, Matilda Mary Young, Morgan Henry Young, Philip Russell Young, Roland Keith Young, Rose Young, Thomas Young, William Young, William Young, William Young, William Young, William Young, William Young, William Young, William Baird Young, Winifred Younghusband, Charles Younghusband, James T. Younghusband, John Younghusband, John Youngson, Alexander Youngson, Emilie Russell Yule, Alexander Gibbon Yule, George Ralph Yule, James Yule, James William Yule, Jessie Ann Zonczyk-Bohusz, Jozef
1779 - c1792 1799 - ? 1850 - 1931 1811 - 1893 1841 - 1867 1832 - 1913 1853 - 1927 1834 - 1853 1887 - 1953 c1856 - ? 1771 - ? 1717 - 1790 1723 - c1780 1762 - 1815 1776 - 1850 1804 - ? 1806 - 1874 1830 - 1917 1809 - 1893 1880 - ? 1807 - 1840 1809 - 1829 1771 - 1836 1812 - 1833 1841 - 1933 1873 - 1955 1849 – 1925 1877 - 1888 1818 - 1892 1848 - 1881 1852 - 1903 1897 - 1998
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THE GIBBON FAMILIES OF STONEHAVEN AND ABERDEEN 437
The Gibbons of Stonehaven and Aberdeen offers a roller coaster ride through numerous events of the past three centuries, following the fortunes of two interwoven families from the North East of Scotland. In the 17th Century their horizons were limited: one branch became millers and the other shipbuilders and sailors of merchant vessels. Their descendants, however, have vastly increased their field of activity. A key factor has been the growth of the British Empire, providing great opportunities at home and overseas especially in the armed forces. No matter which battle was being fought or which country was being invaded, you can be sure that a Gibbon descendant would be in the thick of it. Other Gibbons led equally dramatic lives in different parts of the world: some cultivating crops such as tea, coffee, indigo and opium while others chose banking or administration. Within Britain we find Gibbons in a wide range of employment and the book explores how the different descendant branches show such diversity in the degree of success they had. A key aim of the authors is to encourage younger readers to explore the historical background of the events described here and to consider how social values change with time.