Genealogy Two

News in July 2006: The history websites on this domain now have a companion website, and an updating website as well, on a new domain, at Merchant Networks Project, produced by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens (of London).

This new website (it is hoped) will become a major exercise in economic and maritime history, with much attention to London/British Empire and some attention to Sydney, Australia.

Look for this
Home Page
navigation button
as you travel.
This page updated 31 July 2007

www.danbyrnes.com.au

A preponderance of Scots names is apparent in the above outlines. (Some names of French origin seem mere distractions) After the American Revolution, in the later 1780s, Henry Dundas (first Viscount Melville, 1742-1811) as a government minister, and as a senior Scottish politician, worked at the level of policy on the management of the East India Company to promote the installation of more talented young Scotsmen in Company operations in the East, especially in India. ([1]) Orchestrating this policy coincided with other operations, including the establishment of a convict colony at New South Wales, (Sydney, Australia), from 1786-1788. With the movement of British whalers, then sealers, into the Pacific. With British conflict with the French over India interests. With moves by American merchants into East India and Chinese trade, followed by the entry of United States whalers in the Pacific. With British conflict with the Spanish at Nootka Sound on the West Canadian coast over seal fur destined to be sold at Canton.

One result of Dundas' policy was the projection of Scottish family linkages more deeply into Imperial affairs, whether military and expansive, or in commercial affairs where a search for greater cohesion was noticeable. This makes the study of Scottish family histories extremely valuable in tracing the family histories of non-Scottish families as well - which can be noted especially with Australian colonial history. As people - and their money - moved about the British Empire of the Nineteenth Century, to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, (and also the United States), extended families became "extended geographically". Today, we can complain that family histories (as we now find them), as influenced by this general trend; they tend to ramble considerably. ([2]) Records are far-flung, it is difficult to keep track of multiple trends in social and economic development in the more distant reaches of the British Empire, and so on.

However, members of Scottish families, more so those who did well out of working for British Imperial interests, and also due to the way they intermarried chiefly with British stock, can be easy to trace because of the Scots tendency to "clannishness", to stay close to what they viewed as their own. ([3]) With family histories, the use of this approach, if pursued methodically, will benefit also from information gained from economic history, maritime history, the history of the application of new technology.

The point can be illustrated within British Imperial history, generally, by reference to some notable families, some with a Scottish background. Such as that of the historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay, who spent time in India. Robert Campbell (1769-1846), from Greenock, Scotland, of Campbell's Wharf, Sydney, one of Sydney's most productive merchants, who had been preceded in India by his lesser-known merchant brother, John. ([4]) The noted New Zealand merchant, John Logan Campbell (1817-1912) (no relation to Robert Campbell of Sydney or Duncan Campbell the Thames hulks overseer and relative of William Bligh). The outcomes of the American Revolution had the effect of putting a centrifugal kind of spin on many family histories, as opportunities and income sources changed markedly. This certainly showed in the history of the extended family of the hulks overseer, Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), since some of them worked in India. ([5]) Given Campbell's commercial career, his interests on Jamaica, and the careers of his relatives, one suspects that his descendants would not have spent time in India, or dealing in Eastern trade, if Britain had won the American War of Independence.

George Fife Angas (1789-1859), financier, promoter of the colonisation of South Australia, and a settler there, was a Scot notable in Australasian history. If such family histories are elaborated, it is impossible to ignore trends in British Imperial development which may be taken as a vindication of Dundas' original 1780s policy of promoting Scots' initiative in the context of changing Imperial fortunes, opportunities and theatres of action. Two things can be noted about here about Dundas' policy...

(a) Historians of the politics of his day, or, of the East India Company, still confess to a sense of mystery as to how Dundas arrived at his policy, and seem not to know whom he conferred with about it. One might feel that Dundas simply had great confidence in the likely outcomes of the Scottish Enlightenment that had spread since the union of Scotland with England in 1708.

(b) This may all be the case, but to date, family historians, and indeed, historians using family history for purposes of illuminating other sorts of histories, have tended to be blinkered about the use of family history by the way they reference the high-points of history, generally. Emphasis on the connections of family members with the hero of some military encounter, a famous admiral or politician, a notable writer, a successful exercise in colonisation, can deflect both amateurs and professional historians from gathering more of the often-far-flung facts that successful family history requires. The particular value of at least beginning with Scottish-based family histories is that the information gathered becomes cohesive and indicates validly how many individual families intermarried. At times, inheritances can be traced usefully. Here, a question can be asked: what happens if connections are gathered into sets, and the sets bestride "history" in some unexpected ways? What happens to the high points of history? Are any new realisations possible?

An excellent example of the way notable and non-notable family histories can ramble in historical contexts arises with the case of the background of the English writer Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen. (1882-1941). ([6]) A talented writer, though suffering from bipolar disorder, and with a disturbed family background, it is said, due to sexual abuse in her youth, she finally suicided. ([7]) The Stephen family from which she came was originally, as noted, from Aberdeenshire, and male members later shone in the legal profession in both Britain and in New South Wales, Australia. Sir James Stephen (1789-1859) was at the Colonial Office, and Virginia's father Sir Leslie (1832-1904), edited the English Dictionary of National Biography. The Stephens were a family however which seemed to leave its Scots heritage behind, at least as far as folkways are concerned. ([8])

One of Virginia's forebears has become entertainingly notorious, James Pattle (1775-1845). ([9]) In noting what happened to Pattle after he died, Virginia Woolf-Stephen helped to firm a tradition of citation which has been less than helpful in widening the curiosities of researchers in family history. (broken link? - http://members.madasafish.com/~mqofs - on Pattle genealogy) One tale on Pattle is bizarre and deserves to be commented liberally. James Pattle, judge of a High Court Appeal in India, died 1845 at Calcutta, was born 31 December, 1775, at Beauleah, Bengal, the son of a director of the East India Company 1787-1795, Thomas Pattle, and his first wife, Sarah Hasleby. James married a Frenchwoman, Adeline De l'ETang. James Pattle was known as "a drunkard and a liar", renowned for extravagant wickedness, known as "King of Liars", or "Jim Blazes". By repute, he drank himself to death by 1845. ([10]) As Virginia Woolf wrote, James Pattle wished to be buried "for family reasons" beside his mother at Camberwell in London. The story goes, his body was sealed in a cask of rum for transport to London. ([11]) He wished to be buried besides his mother.

James Pattle's father applied for a Bengal cadet writership for him in 1791, after his education by Daniel Duff, writer (lawyer), MA of Battersea. Pattle became a senior member in India of the Board of Revenue and a judge of the Court of Appeal at Mursedabad. He began his service in 1792 in Bengal, where he'd been born, as a writer before moving to other legal posts.

With 53 years' service, Pattle became "one of the longest-serving East India Company men". At one time he lived in Garden Reach overlooking the Hooghly River. ([12]).

(A talk by Prof. Joan Stevens, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.) (Copyright restricted)

"In my last talk, I traced the connections between Edward Jerningham Wakefield, son of Gibbon Wakefield, and various families who had served with the old East India Company at the end of the eighteenth century. One of these was the family to which his mother belonged, Pattle. Jerningham Wakefield's grandfather was Thomas Charles Pattle. Now Thomas had a brother, James, who had seven beautiful daughters. James Pattle had married a French girl, daughter of the Chevalier de

l'Etang, one of Queen Marie Antoinette's pages. After the Queen's execution, he and his young wife were banished. They went to British India, where their one daughter married James Pattle. All the family became friends of the Thackerays, with whom there remained ties for the rest of their lives. As a young man in London in the 1830s and 1840s, the novelist William Thackeray was constantly in Pattle company, while he and his parents when in France kept up with old Madame de l'Etang in her widowhood, as well as with her daughter Mrs. James Pattle. As for the Pattle daughters, "they possessed", as a descendant, wrote "great beauty and vivid personality".

However, before I tell you tales of the seven beautiful daughters, I must say more about their father. James Pattle, nicknamed Jim Blazes.

Let me quote, first, the words of his great grandchild Virginia Woolf. "He was a gentleman of marked, but doubtful reputation who, after living a riotous life and earning the title of "the biggest liar in India", finally drank himself to death and was consigned to a cask of rum to await shipment to England." Here I interpolate, that the reason for the cask of rum was a bet. The cask story is best told in the breathless prose of young Kate Stanley, later to be the mother of Bertrand Russell, in a letter of 1860, where she repeats what she was just heard at Mrs. Carlyle's. As both accounts are needed to give you the picture, I shall thread them together. Here is young Kate, then. "Mr. Pattle once made a bet with a man that he would be buried in England - he lived in India - it was for £100, and this man said he would never live to go back to England. Mr. Pattle did die in India but, in his will, he said he only left his fortune to his wife on condition he was buried in England in the Churchyard he named -- so though it was very inconvenient -- Mrs. Pattle was obliged to go to the trouble and expense of doing it or else she could not have the fortune, so Mr. Pattle was put in a cask with spirits to preserve him and embalmed.

Here I must pause, to return to Virginia Woolf's narrative. She, at least, uses commas... "The cask was stood outside the widow's bedroom door", she writes, "In the middle of the night, Mrs. Pattle heard a violent explosion, rushed out; and found her husband, having burst the lid of his coffin, bolt upright, menacing her in death as he had menaced her in life." They put the cask on a ship for England but, when the sailors found out what was in it, says Kate Stanley, they "positively refused to go on with it and said they would throw it overboard or come back to Calcutta; so, as the Captain thought Mrs. Pattle would rather not have it thrown overboard, he had brought it back to her."

Mrs. Pattle then chartered a ship herself, but this too returned, baffled by a "great storm of thunder and lightning". Next, she put the cask inside a large wooden case and tried a third time. Ill with nervous strain, quite understandably, she then went to the seaside for a holiday. I quote young Kate Stanley again. "When she had been there two days, a frightful storm arose. Wind and rain and thunder, and the sea was in a great state; and a ship near the shore was in great distress. It struck and was quite wrecked, and every soul on board perished. What next morning, among the debris, should Mrs. Pattle find washed on shore to the foot of her house but a large case at once recognized as Mr. Pattle's tomb. So the cask was again taken out and put in a spare room in their house. Soon after, in the middle of the night, a great noise was heard as if the roof was coming down. Mrs. Pattle, running upstairs with the key of the room where Mr. Pattle was kept, opened it; and what should she see but the cask lid off and Mr. Pattle sitting up in the cask half out like a jack-in-the-box. She was so frightened, she fell ill and they gave up sending Mr. Pattle to England. The gas had generated and burst the cask."

Well, it's a wonderful story, you'll agree. Virginia Woolf summed it all up by reporting "That Pattle had been such a scamp, the devil wouldn't let him go out of India." If James Pattle brought a liar's imagination and unconquerable vitality to the marriage, his French wife brought great beauty, which all the daughters but one inherited. Let me now tell you more about them. Remember, they are the cousins of Eliza Pattle, the wife of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The eldest was Mia, who married Dr. John Jackson. Her daughter, Julia Jackson, married Herbert Duckworth, publisher. He died, however, and she married again, taking as her second husband the author, Leslie Stephen. For Stephen, too, it was a second marriage; his first being to Harriet, younger daughter of William Thackeray; their child, little Laura Stephen, died young -- or what would she have done with her inheritance?

Stephen's second marriage, however, to Mrs. Julia Duckworth, grandchild of James Pattle, produced its own brand of genius. For there were four children, all noted in their day. The most brilliant, Virginia, married Leonard Woolf, and is known to you all as Virginia Woolf. If you've been able to keep my family tree in your head, you'll have worked it out that Virginia Woolf's mother, Julia Jackson-Duckworth-Stephen, and Edward Jerningham Wakefield, son of Gibbon Wakefield by Eliza Pattle, were second cousins. The next of James Pattle's lovely daughters, Sarah, married Henry Prinsep, a wealthy Indian merchant who returned to London in 1843. Her house was always open to Thackeray, who was a constant visitor. His letters and diaries record many delightful meetings there with the Pattle girls, as he called them.

Then there was Julia Pattle, who married Charles Cameron, an important Indian official; she was the only plain sister, but she made up for it by her picturesque behaviour, especially in middle life, when she became one of the pioneers of portrait photography. Together with Mrs. Prinsep who, by the 1860s, had the painters, Watts and Burne Jones, and who knows others besides, living in her menage at Little Holland House in London. Julia netted for her camera most of the celebrities of the day. Julia Cameron's story, which is delightful, I cannot cover here; but you will find it in all its vitality in her volume, called Victorian Photographs, which has the introduction by her niece, Virginia Woolf, from which I have been quoting. If you still believe that the Victorians were conventional, have a look at this book.

Then there was the youngest Pattle girl, Virginia, Thackeray's favourite, who was so strikingly beautiful that she used to be mobbed in the London streets. All through the 1840s, Thackeray commented on her loveliness, whenever he met her at the Prinseps or elsewhere. His admiration culminated in an article in Punch, "On a good looking young lady", in 1850. Her wedding to Charles, Viscount Eastnor, later 3^rd Earl Somers, in October 1850, was one of the brilliant occasions of the time. "She looked beautiful" wrote Thackeray "and has taken possession of Eastnor Castle and her rank as Princess, and reigns to the delight of everybody."

The above tales, with their mentions of various people who remained in association for family reasons if no other, could well be cross-referenced, as follows. It was presumably the case from 1787, that Thomas, Judge James Pattle's father, as an East India Company director had views on the opening up of the Pacific Ocean to British shipping by virtue of the establishment of a convict colony at Sydney. From 1787, an increasingly influential Company investor was the banker Francis Baring, who as chairman of the Company in the early 1790s took a dim view of London-based whalers operating in the Pacific, perhaps engaging in trade illicit from the Company point of view. Too little is known of Baring's view here, or the views of his associates. ([13]) In 1789 the Directors of the East India Company were: ([14])

Chairman: Nathaniel Smith ([15]); Deputy-chair, John Michie. William Bensley, Thomas Cheap, Lionel Darrell ([16]), Thos. Fitzhugh, Stephen Lushington ([17]), James Moffatt, Thomas Pattle, John Roberts, Joseph Sparkes, Robert Thornton ([18]), John Travers, Jacob Bosanquet ([19]), William Devaynes ([20]), William Elphinstone, John Hunter, Charles Mills, Thomas Perry, Abraham Robarts ([21]), John Smith, George Tatem, John Townton, John Woodhouse. Secretary, Thomas Morton. Deputy-secretary, William Ramsay.([22]) Of these men, some are notable for their association with the terms of "the Botany Bay debate". And given "the Botany Bay debate", it is important to note how few of London's merchants took opportunities to explore commercial opportunities which might have arisen in the Pacific. This of course can serve to throw the merchants who did become involved, into clearer relief.

The Pattle family is rendered thus: One Pattle progenitor is Thomas Pattle, born c.1710 in England, son of Edward Pattle and Ruth Casson. He married Elizabeth Brooke as second wife (a member of the family which became the Brookes of Sarawak.) He was "of Poplar and Stepney", and at one time a part-owner and/or captain of an East Indiaman. In 1748 he was of Poplar in the Parish of St Dunstan's, Stepney. ([23])

Edward Pattle, who married Ruth Casson, had a relative Thomas Pattle (died 3 July 1702), who had a son Thomas (who had a daughter, Elizabeth). The father here may be the same as one Thomas Pattle an East India Company factor on the Malabar Coast in 1677-78. In any case, the Pattles had a long association with East India trade, based in India. One Capt. Thomas Charles Pattle, a merchant at Canton, was born in 1773 at Beauleah, Bengal; he died in 815 at Macao. He was the son of Thomas Pattle, East India Company director and his wife Sarah Hasleby; this Thomas Pattle, son of Thomas and Sarah married as first wife, Eliza Anne Frances Middleton. He had brothers James ("Jim Blazes" as above, with seven daughters), and William, of a Bengal Light Cavalry.. This Thomas was also, confusingly, a half-cousin of the father of Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. ([24]) Capt. Thomas Pattle was of the Canton Civil Service in 1788 and a second member of the Select Committee off and on between 1805-1815. He was appointed a supercargo in 1794 and later became a director of the East India Company. The provers of his will in 1815 were Sir William Fraser (not yet identified) and Charles Magniac (of the firm which became Jardine-Matheson). (The Pattle family also has vague cross-links with the descendants of noted goldsmith Paul Storr (1771-1844), via the Baronets Champneys, as given p. 118 in Christopher Lever, Goldsmiths and Silversmiths of England. London, Hutchinson, 1975.) ([25]) The residue of Thomas' estate was invested in 1865. He had an estate worth not £90,000, as he thought, but £163,769. ([26]) Via inheritances, some of that fortune went to fund the colonisation schemes of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862).

James ("Jim Blazes") Pattle "was highly successful, very wealthy, and had a beautiful, forgiving wife, Adeline Maria de l'Etang (1793-1845), and beautiful daughters who all made

successful marriages to wealthy men." ([27]) The daughters of "Jim Blazes" were thus:

7-- Virginia PRINSEP (Listed in the IGI) (Born 1848, christened Paddington, London)

sp-William Humble WARD, Earl3 Dudley, Viscount Ednam, governor-general of Australia (1867-1932) ([33])

Nathaniel Middleton is notable here only in that he had children, whom he recognised, by an unknown Indian woman. Their daughter was:

While the Australian colonies grew, disparate groups of British merchants worked in India, South East Asia and China. Little is known of many of them, such as the brother, John, of the better-known Sydney merchant, Robert Campbell (1769-1846). The figure who became "the family banker of the Macarthurs", the wool-producing family of Parramatta near Sydney, was Walter Stephenson Davidson (1785-1869), who spent many of his early years in the East, is still little-known. What, if anything, can unite mention of such names? Anything as simple as "Australian opportunity". None of the Pattles had forebears who had connections with moves to establish a convict colony at Sydney; or people associated with those moves, yet oddly enough, they, or, their extended-family connections, were linked with many figures who after 1800 did have connections with various sorts of Australian history - including the promoter of systematic colonisation, Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

And at this juncture, yet another "literary" set of connections can be traced...

Also part of the circles known to Virginia Woolf-Stephen were members of the family of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. It is little-known of this writer's family that they were distantly related to kin of the hulks overseer, Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), as follows, via the Shakespear family, which for present purposes can be regarded as originally of London. The Shakespears were yet another family which moved its members to India after the American Revolution.
See website by Steve Pearson in UK: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~shakespeare/

Below is a partial descendancy list for Shakespears of London ([41]) as a link to line of Thackeray the novelist and also to the Campbells of Jamaica, also the family of Duncan Campbell of London, (1726-1803), overseer of the Thames Prison Hulks.

And so we find that while there are no formally or direct historical connections between the families of Duncan Campbell the hulks overseer, and Thackeray the novelist, genealogical interconnections nevertheless abound. Historians generally ought to be aware of such connections, if for no other reason than that interconnections, sometimes unexpected, existed amongst families who had members "working for the Empire" in India. Presumably, other interconnections will in time come to light which may bear more forcefully on questions in Australasian history, proper. In this vein, the story of John Prinsep becomes more entertaining. ([45])

The difficulties of explaining the Prinsep Connection in the context of "convict contractors" are several - and are connected with the contextual complexities of referring to the diverting Pattle family history as outlined above.

By 1800, a new name, Prinsep, had entered the lists of merchants wanting to send a convict ship to Australia. This Prinsep name came to London via India, with new ideas in mind - John Prinsep. Between 1800-1804, John Prinsep and his partners Lambert and Saunders were expressing interest in shipping prisoners to Sydney. ([46]) ([47]) Prinsep's involvements are little reported, but there is an air of mercantile giftedness in what little is known of him. John Prinsep (1746-1831) had been 17 years in India where he pioneered indigo production. He returned to London with a fortune by 1788, became established as a merchant, and by 1804 he (unsuccessfully) planned a whale fishery in the South Seas, transporting convicts on the outward voyage, as per John St Barbe's proposal of the early 1790s, and shipping wool and freight back to London. ([48]) In July, 1804, regarded as a London merchant, John Prinsep was examined in Council Chamber at Whitehall, presumably about such possibilities. In 1804, as commercial men operating on an impressive scale, Prinsep and Saunders tendered a remarkable 16 ships to the East India Company; probably, mostly in the Bengal rice trade.

However, the later involvements of John Prinsep's sons in Western Australia are still not clear. What is clear, however, is that Prinsep plans, however much they failed in execution, had moved from New South Wales to Western Australia - involving a continental overview - the first such continental overview adumbrated by any merchants with London-India shipping and commercial connections. And perhaps prompted by NSW wool-production promoter, John Macarthur, perhaps not, Prinsep early on had at least considered wool freight from New South Wales. But the Prinsep picture failed to develop.

1-- John PRINSEP, East India Company Indigo producer, London (c.1790-1832) sp-Sophia NOTKNOWN ([49]); Charles Robert PRINSEP EICo Calcutta (c.1844) sp-Louisa Anne WHITE ( -1853); 3-- Henry Charles PRINSEP Settler Western Australia (c1844-1922) sp-Charlotte Josephine BUSSELL (1849-1929); 3-- Mary Emily PRINSEP widow, wife2 ( -1931) sp-Hallam TENNYSON, Baron2 Tennyson, Governor South Australia, governor-general Australia (1852-1928); 2-- Sophia PRINSEP sp- Mr. HALDIMAND, 2-- Henry Thoby PRINSEP EICo merchant (1793-1878) sp-Sara PATTLE (IGI) (c.1848); 3-- Henry Auriol PRINSEP, 3-- Virginia PRINSEP (IGI) (c.1848), 3-- Alice PRINSEP sp-Charles Henry GURNEY Banker (c.1833); 4-- Rachel Anne GURNEY wife1 ( -1920) sp-William Humble WARD Earl3 Dudley, Governor -General Australia (1867-1932) ([50]); 5-- William Humble Eric WARD Earl3 Dudley (c.1894) sp- Lady Rosemary Millicent LEVESON-GOWER; 6--Lt. William Humble David WARD (c.1920); 5--Capt. (army) Robert Arthur WARD; 5-- Cyril Augustus WARD RNVR, 5--Lt. Gerald Ernest Francis WARD; 4-- Laura GURNEY sp- Sir Thomas Herbert TROUBRIDGE Sir, Bart4 ( -1938), 4-- Henry Edward GURNEY ([51]); 2-- James PRINSEP, Orientalist, reformer of currency of India, ( -1840); 2-- William PRINSEP, Merchant with agency house William Palmer and Co (c.1796) sp-? ([52]) ([53])

The Prinsep genealogy becomes tantalising. We find amongst the information, a governor-general of Australia, a Pattle daughter, a banker name (Gurney), and William Prinsep an agent of the agency house, William Palmer and Co. Too little is known of Palmer and Co., and one remains ambivalent about whether or not this family name, Palmer, was connected at all with the extended family of Palmer, from 1788 the first commissary of the new colony at New South Wales.

Where questions of investment in New South Wales are concerned, some of the great er weight, before 1800, needs to be gathered around evidence on the trading activities of the New South Wales Corps. By about 1800, the weightiest commercial names which can be mentioned regarding investment possibilities are ranged around the acquaintanceships of John Macarthur. Here, the name of Macarthur's later "family banker" Walter Stephenson Davidson (1785-1869) looms the largest, from 1803-1804, and rather mysteriously. ([54])

Davidson, who was in New South Wales by 1803, but departed, may have had links in eastern trade with two sons of Francis Baring (Thomas in Bengal and Henry at Canton, both with business careers unwritten to date). ([55]) The business linkages they formed have never been adumbrated, and Barings' work generally with the east remains little-known. It is with following up Davidson's career in this respect that many complexities of relationships commercial and personal between the banking fraternity in the United Kingdom need to be tallied. Lambert, Prinsep and Saunders were of 148 Leadenhall Street. ([56])

To 1830, one Robert Saunders, probably of Mincing Lane, with partners, was a London-Calcutta indigo dealer; he was probably son of the otherwise-unknown partner, Saunders, of John Prinsep, from about 1800. To 1826, a J. Saunders appears as a wool trader and is listed by Le Coteur as a member of the Van Diemens Land Company; but there is no proof he was connected with the original partner Saunders with Prinsep. ([57])

One Henry Thoby Prinsep was active with the East India Company by 1827. In S. B. Singh's findings, he is acting-secretary about 1827 to Government Territorial Department in India, ([58]) at a time when some European and Indian agency houses were failing, the failures affecting investors in England badly. ([59])

Meanwhile, the acquaintanceships of John Macarthur become devilishly complicated to delineate. However, there is a drift about "eastern trade" in plans suggested by Macarthur's acquaintances which presumably surfaced in Macarthur's later vision about Pacific opportunities, termed his "quadrangular trade pattern" as illustrated and discussed by Hainsworth. ([60]) ([61])

At this point, consultation of the footnotes given here will have alerted the reader to the existence of an excess of tantalising interconnections. In brief, one might say that the families already noted contributed later (Nineteenth Century) names who were involved in history proper in the administration of British colonies. This may be a reflection of the educational attainments of such families, of their income levels (sometimes drawn from Eastern trade?), or their social class. What is extraordinary about the social classes in question is the way they intermarried with England's banker families. For these banker families were remarkable for the way they married into social spaces confined (perhaps outlined is a better word), by long-term financial interests. When the lists are consulted, of Englishmen (Britishers?) investing in Nineteenth Century Australasian colonies, in companies devoted to the exploitation of the resources of those colonies, what is found at the core of available genealogical information - are the intermarriages of banker families. ([62])

We could at this point turn to listings historians have made of investors in the most influential companies promoting the development of Australasian companies. Here, the appearance of the colony of Western Australia still poses problems, as it involves the convict contractor name Mangles, (while two notable investors in Western Australia were Thomas Peel and Solomon Levey...).

The problem arises however of considering the career of Joseph Lachlan, not just a convict contractor, but a bulk-taker of such contracts, who seems to have operated for persons not unknown, simply unnamed. Lachlan's activities give camouflage and cover to better information about convict contracting involvements from about 1814. During Lachlan's period of activity from 1817-1829, some other convict contractors included: George Lyall, Samuel Francis Somes ([63]), Charles Enderby, Aaron Chapman and Thomas Henry Buckle. But what we do not know is whether Lachlan operated on his own account (which seems unlikely), for those named here, or other parties unnamed.

In general, the convict contractors as listed in Bateson's The Convict Ships had few relatives in Australasia, or none, even years later. This helps to explain why information of them surfaces so seldom via extended genealogical researches; and not in all cases does research on the merely commercial connections in the colonies, of convict contractors, lead back to solid caches of information in the United Kingdom. An exception to this is with the story of the founding of Western Australia, involving the convict contracting firm, Mangles.

By 1800, some merchants concerned with East India Company business included Mangles, Wilkinson, Hamilton and Co. Mangles were contractors who operated in low-key fashion, sending convict service ships regularly from 1800. ([64]) More successful from 1800 than Prinsep, Mangles can be regarded as having been a force in trade to India, and they also had one family member a director of the East India Company. An examination of their family history can be discouraging, however.

Also part of the family were the brothers George W. Mangles, West Australian settler and Capt. John Mangles, RN, Botanist, parents unknown.

As with other genealogies noted above, the Mangles genealogy is unsatisfactory. Some entries in the IGI helpfully support Mangles' genealogy from other sources, others in the IGI do not. One family member, Captain John Mangles, unmarried, helped the Western Australian botanist, Georgiana Molloy, ([73]) but he is difficult to place in his family history; his brother George became a West Australian settler. ([74])

The convict shipping run helped Mangles' trade to India, and between 1816 and 1842 their ship Surrey made eleven voyages with convicts to NSW and Tasmania. ([75]) One element in the Mangles family story is of the "small world" variety, since two Mangles men married to sisters Newcombe - who were daughters of George Newcombe of the Audit Office. If working at the Audit Office by 1830, Newcombe may well have known of the auditing of the papers associated with the contract-making for transportation by Thomas Shelton, and of the bureaucratic arguments on that strange matter. ([76]) Emily Mangles married to Norman, of the Norman banking family of Bromley Common, London.

The Norman family connection meant some connection to the family Stone, of the bankers Stone-Martin, whose (financial ) history is linked to the origins of the bank begun by Francis Baring - although this financial history is not yet in useful detail. Further to the mysteries of the Stone banker family, Caroline Mangles married Rev. Arthur Onslow, who by his second wife, Marianna Campbell, had a son, Arthur Alexander Onslow, who married Elizabeth Macarthur, daughter of James II Macarthur and Emily Stone. Emily, who was from the same Stone family; Emily being daughter of banker, Henry Stone. ([77]) Here, in brief, one Harriet Herring married the later Sir Francis baring. Her sister Mary married banker Richard Stone. Richard had a son, Henry Stone, banker of Lombard Street. In Clay's book on the bankers Norman, Henry Stone seems to be a partner in the bank Stone and Martin, later Martin and Co. From 1764, Francis Baring banked with his brother-in-law Richard Stone. ([78]) Later, John Martin MP can be noticed in these family linkages, since the name Martin became linked with that of the Norman banker family of Bromley Common. ([79])

And, Arthur Pooley Onslow married Rosa, daughter of the New South Wales colonial secretary, Alexander Macleay. ([80]) As to banker families, and surely a reflection of a confident class consciousness, a later female descendant here married a son of Gerard Smith, governor of Western Australia, who was of the line of the Smith-Payne-Smith bankers, that is, a relative of John Abel Smith, the first governor of the Australian Agricultural Company.

So with the little-studied Mangles family, who worked the convict service from about 1804, taking contracts handled by Thomas Shelton, are found genealogical linkages with noted British (London) banker families, some of which families invested in colonial Australia. That is, it is still not clear whether unexplained matters of (otherwise unremarkable?) family history can - or should - be directly or indirectly related to matters of investment in Australasia. This is all cloudier since the Mangles family is known to have invested in Western Australia, but they do not seem to have invested directly in New South Wales - and the extent to which they invested indirectly in New South Wales is also not clear. What the Mangles family history does indicate, clearly, is that a convict contracting firm had members who married to the emerging Australian upper class. The implications of any such facts remain unclear, partly since the vice-regal sector of Australasian society, in general, has never been studied in concerted ways. If it was studied, as a social sector, the genealogical interconnections noticed here could not be avoided.

Prior to the establishment of the Australian Agricultural Company: Section Eight

Since 1823 was a distinct watershed year, earlier-compiled lists of men influential in proceedings, perhaps, need recompilation. ([85]) It is here convenient to note the members of the London General Shipowners Society. ([86])

Now, we need to consider the first lists relevant to the Australian Agricultural Company as well as other companies active 1823-1840, including Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the promoters of the South Australian colony, with notes on various men interpolated. The list is alphabetical only.

Preceding however, is a matter involving the London shipowner and colonial emigration agent, John Marshall. ([87]) Marshall became a prime mover for the fusion of two underwriting societies (the Red and the Green), that is, the establishment of a single register on a broader basis. These issues came to a head at an annual meeting of the Shipowners Society on 11 December, 1823, and were resolved. It is ironic, of course, that in the 1790s, one of the names at Lloyd's of London, John St. Barbe, who helped start the rebel Red Book at Lloyd's, was also the whaling investor who suggested to government that whaling ships be regularly allowed to ship convicts to New South Wales.

Since 1823 was a distinct watershed year, earlier compiled lists of men influential in proceedings, perhaps, need recompilation. ([88]) Now, we need to consider the first lists relevant to the Australian Agricultural Company as well as other companies active 1823-1840, including Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the promoters of the South Australian colony, with notes on various men interpolated. The list is alphabetical only.

By 1816, members of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, who had later Australian Agricultural Company connections, included Lord Bathurst, James Brogden, Walter Buchanan, Sir Robert Farquhar and Sir Thomas Farquhar, James Esdaile Hammett, ([89]) John Macarthur Jnr, Thomas Potter Macqueen, ([90]) Richard Twining, and George Miller. Pemberton notes that John Macarthur Jnr. Had a "first meeting" with wool trader Donald Maclean of Carrick and Maclean, Blackwell Hall factors. Here, George Brown was a partner with G&J Brown, merchants and Maclean's father-in-law was George Gerard de Hochpied Larpent, a partner in the East India house of Paxton, Cockerell and Trail, ([91]) and a chairman of an East India Trade committee promoting the settlement of Northern New Holland. ([92]) By 1823, John Macarthur Jnr. Had become chairman of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts committee on colonies and trade, and he promoted prospects for Australian wool, in effect, his father's scheme of 1803. A mere fortnight after the Australian Agricultural Company as formed, Macarthur in that capacity obtained the services of Wilmot Horton as vice-president of the society, i.e., about May 1824. ([93]) In London, John Macarthur Jnr kept in touch with other Australians in London, such as W. C. Wentworth, Alexander Riley, William Jones, Governor King's family (whose agents were the Enderbys), plus various army and navy men and merchant ship captains.

When the Australian Agricultural Company was formed, banker and MP John Abel Smith (1801-1879) took the chair. He came from a family of highly discreet merchant bankers, Smith, Payne and Smiths, and took more interest in "eastern trade" than anyone else in his extended family; for which he became distrusted. One view is that he wasted his patrimony on eastern trade - and in Australasia. ([94]) Australasian historians have known too little about his activities - including his business links with precursors of Jardine-Matheson, and opium dealing. ([95])

An even more mysterious character is Walter Stephenson Davidson, who has been regarded as "family banker" for the Macarthur family. Davidson had a mostly unexplained position with the bankers, Herries-Farquhar and Co., and it is presumably partly via his position - partner? - with this bank that Farquhars invested in the Australian Agricultural Company? Here, a conjecture can be explored. From the early 1770s, Herries-Farquhar had pioneered the English use of what is today termed, the traveller's cheque; and to 1783, while they pioneered this financial innovation to fashionable England, Sir Robert Herries (1730-1815) had also managed to remain the main buyer of North American tobacco for the French Farmers-General - during a war. How Herries did this without incurring the odium of the City, and was actually knighted, is intriguing. One imagines that since the war was unpopular, finance names who disapproved of the war may have even helped Herries; he was certainly aided by Scots tobacco shippers for the duration. Suffice to say, the Australian Agricultural Company obtained a fine group of investors. It is not impossible that by 1824, since Herries-Farquhar had been promoting traveller's cheques to fashionable England for 50 years, their mailing list of affluent clients was long. ([96]) Perhaps, Davidson at Herries-Farquhar simply did a mail-out concerning the prospectus of the Australian Agricultural Company? This possibility is just one reason to review the lists of company investors?

Significantly for Australian commercial development, the watershed year of 1823-1824 meant that a greater concentration of purely finance names, including W. S. Davidson, and not just shipping managers (such as Mangles), or shippers also involved in Eastern trade (such as Paxton, Cockerell and Traill), turned their attention to Australasia. Politicians also. This meant new forces arose in mercantile capitalism, and from this decade, shipping operators viewing Australasia tended to be less of an old school, more of the newer school of Duncan Dunbar and Joseph Somes. From 1823, lists of "ship men", including whalers, are overtaken by the names of financiers and politicians.

This paper has had the ambition of placing financial names in a different sort of context, genealogical, to which it should be relatively easy to attach other data on commercial activity. The need arises to review all relevant lists of investors and other figures interested in: the Australian Agricultural Company ([97]) or New South Wales in general, the Van Diemens Land Company, ([98]), in Western Australia, South Australia, and also the Canada Company. (Pemberton meantime finds an indirect set of interests in NSW arising within Russia and Baltic houses, [though not in the Russia Company itself]. These were dealers in flax, hemp, oil and timber, such as Stephen Thornton and Brothers, Astell, Thornton and Tooke, William Astell and Thomas Tooke; William Astell of S. Thornton and Co., Old Broad Street.) Here, Henry Sykes Thornton may figure. ([99])

By 1823, John Macarthur Jnr. had become chairman of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts committee on colonies and trade, and he promoted prospects for Australian wool, in effect, his father's scheme of 1803. A mere fortnight after the Australian Agricultural Company as formed, Macarthur in that capacity obtained the services of Wilmot Horton as vice-president of the society, i.e., about May 1824. ([100]) In London, John Macarthur Jnr kept in touch with other Australians in London, such as W. C. Wentworth, Alexander Riley, William Jones, Governor King's family (whose agents were the Enderbys), plus various army and navy men and merchant ship captains.

When the Australian Agricultural Company was formed, banker and MP John Abel Smith (1801-1879) took the chair. He came from a family of highly discreet merchant bankers, Smith, Payne and Smiths, and took more interest in "eastern trade" than anyone else in his extended family; for which he became distrusted. ([101]) One family view is that he wasted his patrimony on eastern trade - and in Australasia. ([102]) Australasian historians have known too little about his activities - including his business links with precursors of Jardine-Matheson, and with opium dealing. ([103])

An even more mysterious financial operator is Walter Stephenson Davidson, who has been regarded as "family banker" for the Macarthur family. ([104]) Davidson had a mostly unexplained position with the bankers, Herries-Farquhar and Co. It is presumably partly via his position - partner with this bank? - that Farquhars invested in the Australian Agricultural Company?

Here, a conjecture can be explored. From the early 1770s, the bank Herries-Farquhar had pioneered the English use of what is today termed, the traveller's cheque. To 1783, while they pioneered this financial innovation to fashionable England, Sir Robert Herries (1730-1815) also remained as the main buyer of North American tobacco for the French Farmers-General - during a war! How Herries did this without incurring the odium of the City, and was actually knighted, is more than intriguing. (Herries' career reminds one of the tone of distaste that many commentators use, including historians, concerning the "disloyalty" of the financier who is committed to internationalism - and might end in playing off two or more warring parties against each other. Or, end in being "forced" to play them off in order to survive.)

One imagines that since the American war was unpopular to 1783, finance names who disapproved of the war may have even helped Herries; he was certainly aided by Scots tobacco shippers for the duration. Suffice to say, the Australian Agricultural Company obtained a fine group of investors. It is not impossible that by 1824, since Herries-Farquhar had been promoting traveller's cheques to fashionable England for 50 years, their mailing list of affluent clients was as long as it was interesting. ([105]) Perhaps, Davidson at Herries-Farquhar simply did a mail-out concerning the prospectus of the Australian Agricultural Company? This possibility is just one reason to review the lists of company investors?

Significantly for Australian commercial development, the watershed year of 1823-1824 meant that a greater concentration of purely finance names, including W. S. Davidson, and not just shipping managers (such as Mangles), or shippers also involved in Eastern trade (such as Paxton, Cockerell and Traill), turned their attention to Australasia. Politicians also. Reformers and "radicals", also. This meant new forces arose in mercantile capitalism, and from this decade, British-based shipping operators viewing Australasia tended to be less of an old school, more of the newer school represented by Duncan Dunbar and Joseph Somes. From 1823, lists of "ship men" interested in Australian colonies, including whalers, including convict contractors, are overtaken by the names of financiers and politicians.

The following section of this article has the ambition of placing financial names in a revised context, genealogical, to which it should be relatively easy to attach other data on commercial activity. The need arises to review all relevant lists of investors and other figures interested in: the Australian Agricultural Company ([106]) or New South Wales in general, the Van Diemens Land Company, ([107]), in Western Australia, South Australia, and also the Canada Company. (Pemberton meantime finds an indirect set of interests in NSW arising within Russia and Baltic houses, [though not in the Russia Company itself]. These were dealers in flax, hemp, oil and timber, such as Stephen Thornton and Brothers, Astell, Thornton and Tooke, William Astell and Thomas Tooke; William Astell of S. Thornton and Co., Old Broad Street.) Here, Henry Sykes Thornton may figure also. ([108])

[1] On Dundas here... James G. Parker, 'Scottish Enterprise in India, 1750-1914', pp. 191-219 in R. A. Cage, (Ed.), The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise, 1750-1914. London, Croom Helm, 1985. Parker, p. 197 in Cage's book writes: "The origins of Dundas' interests in the (East India) Company's affairs are obscure, but he seems early to have developed a genuine concern for Indian matters over and above the obvious potential value of the Company's patronage to his political control of Scotland for Pitt." But Parker warns also against over-estimating the extent of Dundas' "personal Indian patronage".

[2] Jacob M. Price, 'One Family's Empire: The Russell-Lee-Clerk Connection in Maryland, Britain and India, 1707-1857', Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 72, 1977., pp. 165-225.

[3] For example, in the entries on his own family in Dictionary of National Biography, the editor, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) indicates that his family came from Aberdeenshire, Scotland..

[4] On Robert Campbell's career see Eric Richards, 'Australia and the Scottish Connection, 1788-1914', Chapter 5, in R. A. Cage, (Ed.), The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise, 1750-1914. London, Croom Helm, 1985., p. 117.

[5] A model of research on meandering genealogical movements due to changes in Imperial fortunes is: Jacob M. Price, 'One Family's Empire: The Russell-Lee-Clerk Connection in Maryland, Britain and India, 1707-1857', Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 72, 1977., pp. 165-225. Some of the personnel discussed had business-political linkages with Duncan Campbell (1726-1803). As discussed in an unpublished article, Dan Byrnes, A Bitter Pill: An assessment of the significance of the meeting between Thomas Jefferson and Duncan Campbell of the British Creditors in London, 23 April, 1786. Unpublished. Armidale, NSW, Australia, November 1994.

[6] On Virginia Woolf see: Quentin Bell, Bloomsbury. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Nigel Nicolson, (Ed.), The Question of Things Happening: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1912-1922. London, The Hogarth Press, 1976. Louise DeSalvo, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work. New York, Ballantine Books, 1989. L. M. Mowle, A Genealogical History of Pioneer Families of Australia. Fifth edition. Sydney, Rigby, 1978., genealogy for Stephen, p. 328. Alma Halbert Bond, Who Killed Virginia Woolf: a psychobiography. New York. Human Services Press. 1989. Lyndall Gordon, Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. OUP. 1984. Anne Olivier Be