The Cozens/Byrnes Merchants Networks Project - Updated 15 November 2014

You can find an article in a timeframe near this in the file on Samuel Holden, Governor Bank of England.

More on English Convict Contractors

Convict contractors to North America from 1717

Note: A file nearby this timeframe is on directors of the South Sea Company, 1720 at: 1720 South Sea Co.

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Follows here a list of English ship managers operating 1717-1775, shipping convicts to America: With a list of merchants shipping convicts to Australia from 1786-1788, to 1867: The two lists will enable completion of any research on the English use of convict transportation in the period covered...

Please note: This collected list has never appeared in any printed book to date, and did not appear on the Internet before 16-6-2002 - Dan Byrnes.

1717: Francis March, London:

1718 Jonathan Forward, London;

1720 members of the Lux family, Darby, John, and Francis (probably London before becoming American colonials, (later linked to operations of Jonathan Forward above) and in 1750, William Lux;

1721-1722, Jonathan Forward Sydenham of London;

1722, ? Cheston (of Bristol?);

1731, various men named Reed, to 1771;

1737, Joseph Weld in Dublin;

1739, Andrew Reid, London, with James and Andrew Armour, London, and John Stewart of London;

1740++, Moses Israel Fonseca, London;

1740, Samuel Sedgley, Bristol;

1740, James Gildart, Liverpool;

1744, John Langley, Ireland;

1745, Reid and Armour, London;

1745, Sydenham and Hodgson, London;

1747, William Cookson of Hull;

1749, Jonathan Forward Sydenham, a nephew of Jonathan Forward above;

1749, Stewart and Armour, London;

1750, Andrew Reid, London;

1750, Samuel Sedgely and Co of Bristol; John Stewart (the same as above) and (Duncan) Campbell, London (JS&C);

1758, Sedgely and Co (Hillhouse and Randolph), Bristol;

1759, Stewart and Armour, London;

1760, Sedgely and Hillhouse of Bristol;

1763, Andrew Reid retired in 1763;

1764, John Stewart and Duncan Campbell, London;

1766, Patrick Colquhuon, Glasgow; 1766, Sedgely and Co. at Bristol replaced by William Randolph, William Stevenson and James Cheston, Bristol;

1767, Stevenson, Randolph and Cheston, Bristol? with a colonial agent Cheston;

1768, Jonathan Forward Sydenham, London or nearby counties;

1769, Dixon and Littledale, Whitehaven;

1769, Sedgely, Bristol; 1769, any ships captain providing necessary securities could transport felons;

1770, James Baird, Glasgow;

1772, John Stewart died, Duncan Campbell carried on alone in London until 1775.

At Bristol, Stevenson, Randolph and Cheston (SRC) were active till 1776; they made ill-advised and vain attempts to transport felons to North America at the end of the American Revolution. Wisely, Duncan Campbell (1726-1803) did not attempt to resume convict transportation to America.

(The above list does not include names transporting convicts from Ireland.)

See here, Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labour in America, 1607-1776. Gloucester, Massachusetts, University of Carolina Press, 1947. [Peter Smith, 1965]

As a matter of silence-in-history, US historian Bernard Bailyn once wrote - about American reception of English emigrants generally before 1775, (p. 4) there are... "extraordinary facts, key facts, somehow obscured by historians of the empire concentrating on institutions, power rivalries, mercantilism and trade"... "...

See Bernard Bailyn, 'The Peopling of the British Peripheries in the Eighteenth Century', Esso Lecture, 1988. Canberra, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Occasional Paper No. 5, 1988.

Oddly, Bailyn then wrote, (page 19), "I have never found a single reference to a convict in any genealogy or history of an American family, nor, in any other way, does a single one of the 50,000 convicts sent to America appear as such in American history."

In terms of American colonial society (Virginia and Maryland to 1775), the following list of names is interesting: The American correspondents of London-based Duncan Campbell were mostly users of slave labour.

Here is a list of them: Duncan Campbell's correspondents from the index to his business letterbook 1772-1776: including, Allison and Campbell, William Adam, Samuel Athawes, Colonel William Brockenbrough and Austin Brockenbrough, Dr John Brockenbrough, Adam Barnes and Johnson, James Bain, Rev. Mr Beauvoir, James and Robert Buchanan, George Buchanan, Robert Cockerell, Messrs Campbell and Dickson, Colin Currie, Stewart Carmichael, William Dickson, Charles Eyles, Fitzhugh, Fauntleroy, Richard Glascock/Glascook, Benj and Charles Grimes, Henderson and Glassford, Rhodam Kenner, Abraham Lopez and Son, James Millar Jamaica, Daniel Muse, Hudson Muse, Hugh McLean, Joshua Newall, George Noble, Francis Randall, Major Henry Ridgely, Adam Shipley, William Snydebottom, Richard Stringer, Alexr Spiers and Co., Spiers, Finch and Co., Dr. Sherwin, William and Edward Telfair, Tayloe and Thornton, Charles Worthington, Cooper and Telfair.

Any lists given above of convict-transporting ship managers given for North America, then Australia, are the first-found mainstay-names for England's long-use of convict transportation from 1718 to 1867.

References:

Works by Peter Wilson Coldham. A. E. Smith. Wilfrid Oldham.

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