Jean Robb and Archibald Graham Lang

In the previous post, I described what became of the children of Penelope Thomson (1777 – 1847), who was married firstly to Glasgow merchant George Robb (d. 1811) and secondly to John Young (d. 1827), a former merchant and Receiver-General of Jamaica.

As noted in that post,  the first of Penelope’s children to marry was her daughter Jean (or Jane), from her first marriage to George Robb. In this post I’ll provide more information about her husband, her marriage and their children.

On 2nd April 1830 Jean, who was 20 years old at the time, married Archibald Graham Lang, a Glasgow merchant, who was ten years older than her, having been born in about 1800, the son of David Lang and Marion Graham. The 1830 Post Office Directory for Glasgow has Archibald working at Wighton, Gray & Co., of 221 Buchanan Street, Glasgow.

Their first child David Grahame Lang was born on 13th January 1831 at Bath Street, Blythswood, Glasgow. A second child, Penelope Mary Lang, was born on 8th July 1832; the witnesses at her baptism were Jean’s brother George Robb and her half-cousin John Thomson (the son of her mother Penelope’s half-brother Henry Thomson) . A third child, Archibald Graham, was born in about 1835 but I haven’t been able to find a record of his birth or baptism.

When their daughter Jean was born on 4th June 1838, Archibald and Jean Lang were living at Elmbank Crescent, a few streets away from Bath Street. She was given the middle name ‘Victoria’, presumably in honour of the new queen who had ascended the throne in the previous year.

The 1841 census finds the family at Kempock (Street) in the parish of Gourock, Renfrewshire. Archibald is 40, Jane (Jean) 30, David 10, Penelope Mary 8, Archibald junior 6, and Jane (Jean) 3. The Langs have two female servants. This must have been a temporary move, or perhaps a second home, since the family was back at Elmbank Crescent in November 1841 for the birth of daughter Helen Adelaide. Another daughter, Elizabeth Robb Lang, was born at the same address in 1845, and a son William in 1847.

The census records, which are my main source for the names and ages of the Lang children, only record those who survived. However, the baptismal records note that William was their eleventh child, which means that four of their children must have died in infancy.

The Langs were still in Elmbank Crescent at the time of the 1851 census. Archibald, now 50, is described as a ‘merchant foreign trade’, and Jean is 41. The family also employs a nursery maid, kitchen maid and house maid.

In 1861 we find Archibald and Jean living in Woodlands Road, in the parish of Milton, Glasgow. Archibald, now 61, is described as an insurance agent. Penelope, Jean Victoria, Helen, Elizabeth and William, together with two servants, are also living at the same address. Penelope and Jean Victoria are working as ‘lady governesses’ and William, though only 13, as a clerk.

By the time of the 1871 census, all of their children appear to have left home and Archibald and Jean Lang, now 70 and 61 respectively, are living with a young servant, at 4 Woodburn Place in Anderston, Glasgow. Archibald Graham Lang died in 1875 in Partick. I don’t have any information about the date and place of his wife Jean’s death.

18th century image of Caribbean slavery (via http://www.sciencesource.com)

It was Archibald’s name that first drew me to the list of Scottish slave-owners seeking compensation after the abolition of the slave trade, collated by the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, ‘Archibald Graham Laing’ (sic) and ‘Jane Laing nee Robb’ both appear in a general list for Scotland, in association with a claim relating to the parish of Manchester, Jamaica. In a separate list specifically for Glasgow, Archibald is cited as third claimant for two claims related to estates in Trinidad, in which the number of ‘enslaved’ was 31 and 4 respectively. Lang’s connection was probably indirect, since he is described as an absentee, and as a merchant rather than a rentier. Full details of the claim shows him to have been a partner in Lang and Calder commission merchants at 41 Miller Street, Glasgow.

The children of Penelope Young, formerly Robb, née Thomson

When retired merchant and colonial administrator John Young died in Glasgow in 1827, his widow Penelope was 50 years old. Of the children from her first marriage to Glasgow merchant George Robb, George junior was now 21 (and, as I noted in a footnote to the previous post, already working as a legal apprentice), Elizabeth 20, John 19, and Jean 17. As for the children from her second marriage to John Young, Penelope junior was about 12, Janet 11, and John 8.

The first of this next generation to marry was Jean Robb, Penelope’s youngest child by her first marriage to George Robb. The parish register for Glasgow Barony reports that ‘Archibald Graham Lang merchant residing in Glasgow and Jean lawful daughter of the late George Robb merchant residing in Blythswood Hill’ were married on 2nd April 1830 by Rev. Dr. Gavin Gibb, who was, among other things, a professor of Hebrew at Glasgow University and a former moderator of the Church of Scotland. I mentioned Archibald Graham Lang, and speculated about his possible family connection to the lawyer Archibald Grahame, in a footnote to the last post.

St Vincent Street on Blythswood Hill, Glasgow around 1830, by Joseph Swan (via en.wikipedia.org)

According to Wikipedia, ‘Blythswood Hill was developed as a result of the westward expansion of the city in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Likened to Edinburgh’s New Town, it housed the city’s wealthy merchants and shipping magnates in four (or more) floored Georgian townhouses. The centrepiece of the area is Blythswood Square’.  Assuming that Jean was still living at home with her mother when she married, this record provides a clue as to where Penelope Thomson moved to after the death of her second husband John Young, and the consequent sale of Meadow Park House.

A year later, on 26th June 1831, Jean’s older brother George Robb married his half-cousin Jane Sharp Thomson, daughter of his mother Penelope’s half-brother Henry. The parish register notes that George was employed as a (law) ‘writer’, that Jane was the daughter of the late Mr. Henry Thomson, and that both parties resided in Barony. The latter was a parish that included many of the rural districts to the north of Glasgow which have now been swallowed up by the city. Barony parish church survives as Strathclyde University’s Barony Hall.

Barony church, Glasgow, in 1827, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections (via theglasgowstory.com)

One year after this event, on 24th January 1832, there was another marriage between half-cousins when Jane Thomson’s brother John, 20, married Penelope Young, daughter of Penelope Thomson by her second marriage to John Young. Penelope junior would have been only 17 or 18 at the time. John was said to be resident in Blythswood Town, while Penelope is described as the daughter of ‘the late John Young Esq. Meadow Park’. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Archibald Wilson of Cardross, the clergyman (and relative) who married Penelope’s parents.

On 12th October 1835, Janet Young, daughter of Penelope Thomson and John Young, and Manchester-born merchant Jackson Walton, were married by Rev. Nathaniel Paterson in Glasgow.

On 16 August 1836, Elizabeth Robb, sister of George junior and Jean, married Glasgow merchant John Burns. She was 29 and he was 31. Jean, who was said to be residing in Barony, was described in the record as the ‘daughter of the deceased George Robb Esq. merchant Glasgow’. This ceremony was also conducted by Rev. Nathaniel Paterson, said to be the minister of St. Andrew’s parish.

That leaves John Robb, son of Penelope Thomson by her first marriage to George Robb senior. We know that John had died by 1836, when a claim for compensation following the abolition of slavery was made by ‘George Robb, Archibald Graham Laing & Jane (his wife, formerly Jane Robb, a spinster), and Elizabeth Robb, all of Scotland, by J.G. Vidal, as administrator of John Robb, late of Scotland, a gentleman.’ I’ll have more to say about this and other similar claims, and what they tell us about the Robb-Thomson-Young family’s involvement in the ownership of slaves, in another post. For now, this claim suggests that John Robb died in his early twenties, probably unmarried.

John Young, ‘Receiver-General in Jamaica’

In the last post, I summarised what I’ve been able to find out about my 4^th great uncle George Robb, a Glasgow merchant who died some time between 1810 and 1813. When George died, his widow Penelope Robb, née Thomson, would have been no more than thirty-six years old, with four small children: in 1813, George junior was seven years old, Elizabeth five, John four and Jean three. It’s understandable that Penelope might have been keen to marry again.

The Glasgow parish records note that, on 27th June 1813, ‘John Young Receiver General in Jamaica and Penelope Thomson l[awful] d[aughter] of John Thomson saddler in Glasgow, [were] married by Mr Archibald Wilson Minister of Cardross.’ As noted in an earlier post, Rev Wilson was almost certainly related to Penelope by marriage, since his wife Margaret McLachlan was probably a relative of Penelope’s late mother.

We know from later records that Penelope’s second husband John Young was born in about 1772, so he would have been about forty-one years old when they married. It seems likely that he was a widower, but I’ve yet to find any evidence of a previous marriage. What else do we know about him?  In his will of 1827, John Young would mention ‘my cousins John Mitchell Esquire of the City of London, William Mitchell Esquire of the City of London merchant [and] Rowland Mitchell Esquire of the said city merchant’. These three men are nominated, together with Samuel Mitchell, and with John’s widow Penelope, as the executors of the will.

Thanks to information from Malcolm Sandlands, another researcher exploring family connections between Scotland and colonial Jamaica, I’ve learned that Mitchell was the maiden name of John Young’s mother. Janet Mitchell married John Young senior in Glasgow on 19th May 1767. Born in Kilmadock, Perthshire, Janet was the daughter of John Mitchell of Doune (1712 – 1783) and his wife Margaret Ferguson (1723 – 1774). They had at least seven children besides Janet, including William (1742), David (1744), Marjory (1747), Christian (1749), James (1752), Margaret (1757) and John.

Sugar plantation, Jamaica, from a watercolour by John Henry Schroeter, c. 1800

A number of these children would have close associations with Jamaica. The eldest son, William, was perhaps the most prominent. According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership website:

William Mitchell …married Catherine Hamilton and they had one daughter. William ‘King’ Mitchell (as he was known on the island) resided in Jamaica for nearly forty years. He was both a plantation owner and an attorney who in his own estimate had ‘perhaps 16 or 18’ sugar plantations under his ‘care’ at various times. He informed a committee in 1807 that he had spent over £30,000 on the erection of a sugar works on one of his own estates which included Windsor Park in St. Catherine, Bushy Park in St. Dorothy, New Hall in St. Thomas in the Vale and Georges Valley in Trelawny. Among others Mitchell did business with and borrowed money from the powerful Jamaica planter Simon Taylor.

Mitchell was returned as an M.P. for Plympton on the Treby interest at the general election of 1796. He was an active member of the Society of West India Planters and Merchants and gave evidence before Parliament’s West India Committee in 1807. He returned to Jamaica in 1798, likely due to the death of his brother James. Although nominally held by Charles Germain, 2nd Viscount Sackville from 1776 to 1815, in real terms James had held the lease on the office of the Receiver-General, a post which brought in commission worth £6,000 per annum average. Mitchell took a place in the Jamaica Assembly in 1798 and managed to stave off a bill which would have replaced the commission system with a fixed salary. William then succeeded as the lessee of the office of Receiver-General and in 1808 he renewed the lease for a further 19 years from Sackville’s younger brother George Germain, although it appears he appointed a deputy to this position. Mitchell’s political influence in Jamaica was strong and he was instrumental in securing the position of Agent for Jamaica for his nephew Edmund Lyon.

During her residence in Jamaica Lady Nugent, the Governor’s wife, met William Mitchell. She described him in her journal noting that ‘Mr. M’s delight is to stuff his guests, and I should think it would be quite a triumph to him to hear of a fever or apoplexy, in consequence of his good cheer. He is immensely rich, and told me he paid £30,000 per annum for duties to Government… He seems particularly indulgent to his negroes, and is, I believe, although a very vulgar, yet a very humane man.’ This description gives an indication of the lifestyle of a wealthy Jamaica planter – the importance of sociability, generosity and a reputation for benevolence.

As a member of the House of Assembly Mitchell had to apply for leave before returning to England, which he did in 1805. Although it had been expected he would only remain a year he was still resident in London in 1808 when he gave evidence to a committee of inquiry on the distillation of sugar. He resided at Upper Harley Street in Marylebone and was well known for the extravagant social gatherings he arranged for the absentee Jamaicans in London. It is not clear if he ever returned to Jamaica.

Mitchell died at Brighton in 1823 having made a will in 1819 which bequeathed all his Jamaican estates and his property in Scotland to his nephew John Mitchell. He also left over £25,000 in annuities and legacies for his wife and other relatives.

Further information on William ‘King’ Mitchell can be found at the History of Parliament Online website. William’s younger brother James, who is mentioned in the above account, served as Receiver-General in Jamaica: there are references to him holding this office in 1796. He died in Spanish Town in 1806.

‘Carshalton House, Surrey’, by Thomas John R. Winn (1896 – 1990), Sutton Central Library, via artuk.org

Another brother, David Mitchell, married Anne Hewitt Smith. They lived initially in Jamaica, and later at Carshalton House in Surrey. Four of their sons – John, William, Rowland and Samuel – were left bequests in the will of their uncle William Mitchell on his death in 1823. Presumably these are the cousins referred to in the will of John Young.

William Mitchell’s will also maintains that, according to the terms of the will of his late brother James, he and his heirs and executors are entitled to ‘hold, exercise and enjoy the Office of Receiver General of His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica and to receive all the benefits emoluments and advantages which have arisen or may arise therefrom for the term of nineteen years from the seventeenth day of October one thousand eight hundred and eight’.

Of the four Mitchell cousins mentioned in John Young’s will, I’ve managed to find out most about Rowland. He married Anne Heath, probably in about 1810. They had three children that I know of: Mary Ann (1811), John (1813) and Ellen Kate (1815).  The two daughters married into the aristocracy. Mary Ann married Swiss Baron Charles Alexander de Steiger and they had three children: Anna Maria Charlotte (1833), Rowland (1836) and Albert Alexander (1837), before Baron de Steiger’s death, which occurred before 1841. Ellen Kate married the Hon Frederick Thomas Pelham, later a Rear Admiral in the Navy, and the son of Thomas Pelham, Earl of Chichester.

The Receiver-General was the public official responsible for receiving and disbursing Government money in colonial Jamaica. It’s unclear when John Young held the post – though if the parish records are to believed, he was in post at the time of his marriage to Penelope – and his name does not feature on the (admittedly incomplete) list of post holders available online. However, it would seem that, whenever he held it, his position was the direct result of his family connections.

Meadow Park House, Glasgow (Glasgow University Library, Special Collections, via theglasgowsstory.com)

Following their marriage, John and Penelope young lived at Meadow Park House, which one source describes as follows:

The lands of Meadow Park lie on the north side of Eastern Duke Street, at Drygate Toll Bar, and stretch also along the west side of the road to Cumbernauld and Stirling. Anciently they formed part of ‘Easter Craigs,’ but were subsequently included under the comparatively modern name of Whitehill. One of the fields was known as ‘Meadow Park,’ and when the house […] was erected, it received this appellation.

The property was purchased in 1804 from Mr. Grahame of Whitehill, by Mr. James Carrick, merchant in Glasgow, who shortly afterwards built Meadow Park House. About eight acres of land were included in the purchase, and the whole enclosed around the mansion. There was a large walled garden behind, with gateway and lodge at the highway.

According to the same source, James Carrick resided at the property until his death in 1814 – a year after John Young’s marriage to Penelope Thomson. The sources goes on:

In May following it was sold by his three sons, James, Alexander, and Robert Carrick, merchants in Glasgow, to James Young, a retired West India merchant. He died there in 1827.

Since we know that John Young was living at Meadow Park from 1816 at the latest, and that he died there in 1827, this must either be a mistake, or else the names ‘John’ and ‘James’ were interchangeable. Certainly the occupation of West India merchant would seem to be a fitting accompaniment for John’s colonial office as Receiver-General. John Young is listed in Pigot’s New Commercial Directory of Scotland for 1825-6, which gives his address as Meadow Park, and places him in the ‘list of nobility, gentry and clergy’.

Meadow Park can be seen at the extreme right of this section of Cleland and Smith’s 1832 ‘Map of the ten parishes within the Royalty…of Glasgow’ (via National Library of Scotland Map Images)

John Young and Penelope Thomson would have three children of their own. Penelope Young was born in about 1815. Janet Young was born on 14 December 1816 and baptised on 23 January 1817. The witnesses were the Rev. Archibald Wilson (see above) and John Thomson, though it’s unclear whether this was Penelope’s father, her brother, or her cousin, all of whom shared that name. A third child,  John Young junior, was born on 15 December 1819. The witnesses were Penelope’s half-brother Henry and a William Meiklejohn, who may or may not have some connection with the William Meikleham who turns up later in the family’s story.

John Young senior died on 16th January 1827, at the age of 55, at Meadow Park. The executors of his estate were ‘Mrs Penelope Thomson or Young his widow’ and his London-based Mitchell cousins. The total value of his assets was £175 2s. 11d.

Footnote

John Young signed and sealed his last will and testament at his home at Meadow Park, Glasgow, on 15th January 1827, the day before his death. The will closes with the following statement:

In witness whereof these presents written upon stamped paper by David Craig Clark to Archibald Grahame and Thomas Struthers Writers in Glasgow are subscribed by me at Meadow Park the fifteenth day of January 1827 years before these witnesses Hugh Smith Merchant in Glasgow the said Archibald Grahame Writer there and the said David Craig and George Robb Apprentice to the said Archibald Grahame (sigd) John Young Hugh Smith witness Archd. Grahame witness Dav. Craig witness George Robb witness.

I’m fairly certain that the George Robb who was one of the witnesses to John Young’s will was his stepson, the product of his wife Penelope’s first marriage to my ancestor, George Robb senior. George junior would have been twenty or twenty-one years old in 1827. We know from the record of the legal dispute concerning the will of his aunt Elizabeth Thomson, that George was working as a (law) writer in 1836.

When I first read John Young’s will, I wondered whether the reference to Archibald Grahame, the writer, or solicitor, to whom George Robb was apprenticed, was an error, and that the person meant was Archibald Graham Lang who, as we shall see in a future post, would become George Robb’s brother-in-law three years later in 1830, when he married his sister Jean. However, I soon concluded that Lang was probably too young – he was probably about twenty-five years old at this date – to have had an apprentice. Moreover, we know that Lang was a merchant, not as a lawyer.

However, the similarity in names prompted me to search further, and I discovered that Archibald Grahame was a prominent lawyer in Glasgow, working with Thomas Struthers, until their partnership was dissolved in May 1827, just a few months after John Young’s will was signed and sealed, ‘the term on the contract having expired’.  It seems that Grahame then relocated to England, where he secured an appointment as a parliamentary solicitor in Westminster. One source refers to him as ‘the talented Parliamentary solicitor in London.’ Graham’s name is attached to a number of cases decided by the House of Lords in the 1830s and 1840s.

This made me sit up and take notice, since I recalled that John Robb, one of the sons of my 3rd great grandfather Charles Robb (the brother of George Robb senior), was employed at one stage as a ‘parliamentary agent’ or clerk, indicating that he too worked for a law firm attached to Parliament. Could it be that John worked for Archibald Grahame, or that he acquired his post through the influence of Grahame, who had once been the employer of John’s cousin George Robb junior in Glasgow? If so, this might be further proof of the connection between my direct ancestors and the Glasgow Robbs, and also suggest that the two branches of the family remained in contact after Charles moved with his family to London.

So far, I haven’t managed to find any link between Archibald Grahame and Archibald Grahame Lang, but I believe the connection must exist. It would explain not only the latter’s name, but also perhaps how he came to meet his wife, Jean Robb, the sister of Archibald Graham’s apprentice George.

George Robb, ‘merchant in Glasgow’

What do we know about George Robb, the Glasgow merchant who married Penelope Thomson in 1805, and who I believe to have been my 4^th great uncle? The only definite record we have for George is that of his marriage to Penelope in 1805, which simply tells us that he was a ‘merchant in Glasgow’.

Auchterless kirk, Aberdeenshire (via wikipedia.org)

However, if we proceed on the assumption that George was, in fact, the brother of my 3^rd great grandfather Charles Robb, and of Rev. William Robb who officiated at his marriage to Penelope Thomson, then there is a good chance that he is the George Robb who was born in Auchterless, Aberdeenshire, in 1769, and baptised there on 4^th October in that year. The memorandum by my 2^nd great grandfather William Robb, which first alerted me to George’s existence, also mentions family property in the village of Fisherford, which formed part of the parish of Auchterless. In the parish records I’ve found records that match the information we have for George and his siblings.

It seems likely, then, that George was the son of another George Robb and his wife Jean Syme. I believe that the younger George had three older brothers – William, mentioned already, who became an Episcopalian clergyman, John and Alexander – and five younger siblings – James, Jean, Mary, Isabel and Charles, the last-named being my 3^rd great grandfather.

If George Robb was indeed born in 1769, then he would have been thirty-six years old by the time he married Penelope Thomson in 1805 (she was twenty-eight). His life and career between those dates remain a mystery. Clearly, at some point he would move (as would his brother Charles, who was ten years younger than him) to Glasgow.

As for the business in which George was occupied, if we search through the trade directories for the period, we find references to a George Robb in the Glasgow Directory, ‘containing a list of the Merchants, Manufacturers, Traders, &c. in the City and Suburbs’, for the years 1801, 1804, 1807 and 1809, which place him at ‘Culcreuch yarn warehouse, Trongate’.  One of the oldest streets in the city, Trongate runs westwards from Glasgow Cross – it’s the street pictured in the header image to this blog. I’ve struggled to find any information about this company: it may have been named after Culcreuch Castle, near Loch Lomond, which had been purchased in 1796 by Alexander Spiers of Glasgow, who owned a cotton mill at Fintry, to the north of the city.

Early nineteenth-century cotton mill (via newlanark.org)

Since this is the only mention of a George Robb in the directory, it seems likely that this is the right man. According to Wikipedia:

The tobacco trade collapsed during the American Revolution (1776–83), when its sources were cut off by the British blockade of American ports. However, trade with the West Indies began to make up for the loss of the tobacco business, reflecting the extensive growth of the cotton industry, the British demand for sugar and the demand in the West Indies for herring and linen goods. During 1750–1815, Glasgow merchants not only specialised in the importation of sugar, cotton, and rum from the West Indies, but diversified their interests by purchasing West Indian plantations, Scottish estates, or cotton mills.

Given his involvement in the cotton industry, I think it quite likely that George had some connection with, and perhaps even spent some time in, the Caribbean colonies, since (as we shall see) his children would all receive compensation when the slave trade was finally abolished.

George Robb and Penelope Thomson would have four children together, though we have to estimate the dates of their births from later census data, since records of their births or baptisms appear to be unavailable. Their eldest son George was probably born in 1806, daughter Elizabeth in 1807, younger son John in 1808, and younger daughter Jean in 1810.

George Robb must have died some time between his daughter Jean’s conception in 1809/10, and his widow Penelope’s second marriage to John Young in 1813. He would have been about 42 years old when he died. To date, I’ve been unable to find any record of George’s death, or of his will, which if it exists, would surely provide vital information about his family and business connections.

The children of John Thomson and their Caribbean connections

In the last post I wrote about Glasgow merchant John Thomson (1741 – 1818), the father of Penelope Thomson who in 1805 married my ancestor George Robb, who was also a merchant in Glasgow. In this post, I’ll summarise what I’ve managed to find out about Penelope’s brothers and sisters, and in particular about their connections with the colonies of the Caribbean.

I don’t have any definite information about James Thomson after his birth in August 1770, or about John Thomson junior after his birth in 1772, or any information at all about Margaret Thomson. And because her story is central to this history, I’ll discuss Penelope Thomson in a separate post. 

John Thomson’s eldest daughter Marion, who was born in 1765, was married on 14th August 1785, in an ‘irregular’ marriage like that of her parents, to merchant Simon Pellance, whose carpet warehouse was on Havannah Street, just off the High Street, in Glasgow. Simon and Marion Pellance had two children that I’m aware of: Elizabeth Pellance, born in 1786; and John Thomson Pellance, born in 1791, who seems to have inherited the family business.

Map of Jamaica, circa 1750 (via ctgpublishing.com)

According to a record dated 1800, when he would have been thirty-four years old, John Thomson’s son Thomas served as an attorney in Jamaica. He was associated with St Elizabeth parish, in the south of the island. According to one source, Thomas may have been married to a woman named Jane White. He had a mixed race son named George baptised in St Elizabeth parish in 1803: recently, I was contacted by George’s great granddaughter Charmaine White, who has offered to share the information that she has about him. In the same year that his son was born, a newspaper reported Thomas Thomson’s death ‘in the island of Bermuda where he had gone for his health’.

Born in 1768, Thomas’ brother Colin Thomson was a merchant in Glasgow, but he also seems also to have had business – and personal – relations in Jamaica. There is a record of him serving in the parish militia of St Elizabeth parish in 1788, when he would have been twenty years old. Colin may have moved at some point from Jamaica to the island of St Kitts, where there are references to someone with the same name active between 1798 and 1808. 

In later life Colin Thomson lived in London and in his final years was said to be insane. He was cared for in his last illness by a woman named Amelia Hall. Colin made his will in 1816, leaving money to Ann, his daughter by a ‘mulatta’ woman named Ritta Allinan or possibly Allison. He died in February 1819.

Colin’s daughter Ann Thomson married Glasgow merchant James McEachran at Cardross in March 1819, shortly after her father’s death. He was the son of Archibald McEachran and Janet McLeod.  Archibald may have been the man of that name who was a planter in Bladon County, North Carolina, serving the Loyalist cause in 1776 and then settling in Jamaica by 1783. James and Ann McEachran had three children: Janet, born in 1820; Margaret Thomson in 1822; and Archibald in 1826.

Henry Thomson, another of the sons of John Thomson, worked as a law writer in Glasgow. He married Jean or Jane Sharp in 1810 and they had two children: John, born in in 1811; and Jane Sharp, born in 1814. As later posts will relate, John and Jane would marry their first cousins, in both cases the children of their father Henry’s half-sister Penelope. Henry Thomson died in 1824.

African men being shackled on board a slave ship

John Thomson’s youngest son Archibald lived in Jamaica, on an estate named Hillhead after the area of Glasgow where he was born. The slave register of 1817 records that he owned a considerable number of slaves in the parish of St Elizabeth, while an almanac of 1820 names him as the proprietor of an estate, possessing 81 slaves and 18 head of livestock. He died at Hillhead, Jamaica, in 1821.

The youngest Thomson child, Elizabeth, did not marry and died in 1847 at the age of 62. It was my discovery of an 1851 court case, in which various members of Elizabeth’s family disputed the terms of her will, that provided me with my first insights into the tangled connections between the various branches of the Robb-Thomson family.

John Thomson (1741 -1818), saddler in the Saltmarket

 When Glasgow merchant George Robb – the man I believe to have been my 4^th  great uncle – married Penelope Thomson in 1805, he was marrying into a family with deep roots in the city’s merchant community, and extensive ties to its lucrative trade with the colonies of the New World. We know very little about George Robb himself, and what I’ve been able to discover I’ll share in a future post, but thanks to their wills and their involvement in a number of legal disputes (they seem to have been a particularly litigious family) we know a good deal more about the Thomsons.

Saltmarket, Glasgow

George Robb’s wife Penelope Thomson was born, if later census records are to be believed, in about 1777, probably in Glasgow. She was one of at least six children born to John Thomson and his first wife, Penelope McLachlan. John Thomson, described variously in the records as a saddler and as a merchant, was born in about 1741.  Jones’ Directory of Glasgow for 1787 mentions John Thomson, a saddler, selling saddlery and harness, on ‘East Side Saltmarket, a Little Below the Well’. The Saltmarket is a continuation of the High Street, running south from the Glasgow Cross towards the River Clyde.  Although John Thomson had his business premises here, close to the heart of the Merchant City, at some point he seems to have purchased a house in the western suburb of Hillhead.

Map of Glasgow in 1804 (via theglasgowstory.com)

John Thomson married Penelope McLachlan in Glasgow on 19^th  May 1765, in what the parish records describe as an ‘irregular marriage’. This may have had something to do with the impending arrival of their first child, Marion, who was born on 30th May, just eleven days after her parents’ wedding.

I haven’t been able to discover much about Penelope’s origins, though there were a number of Glasgow merchants with the surname McLachlan, including some trading with the American and Caribbean colonies. The name McLachlan would also feature in the 1819 will of John and Penelope’s son Colin Thomson, which names Colin McLachlan, described as a merchant in Glasgow, as its executor and principal beneficiary. Interestingly, another of the beneficiaries of the will was Rev. Archibald Wilson of Cardross, and we can deduce from the document that he was the husband of Colin McLachlan’s sister Margaret, and that they had two children, Colin and Jean. This is of interest because it was Rev. Wilson who would officiate at the wedding of Penelope Robb née Thomson to her second husband, John Young, in 1813.

In addition to Marion, John and Penelope Thomson had at least five other children together: Thomas, born in 1766; Colin in 1768; James in 1770; John in 1772; and Penelope in 1777. There was also a daughter named Margaret, but I’m unsure whether she was the product of John Thomson’s first or second marriage.

Penelope Thomson née McLachlan died in 1781, and on 23rd July 1783 John Thomson married Elizabeth Robb, daughter of bookseller John Robb and his wife Elizabeth Fairbairn. A list of Scottish booksellers mentions a James Robb, bookbinder, bookseller and stationer in Glasgow between 1748 and 1767, and specifically in ‘Salt Mercat’ (Saltmarket) from 1768 – 1773.  Two John Robbs are mentioned in the details below this heading, though I’m not sure of their relationship to James. Another listing has John Robb, ‘eldest son to deceased bookbinder John Robb’ in the ‘fourth shop below the Old Vennel East side of High Street’ in 1796 and in University Buildings from 1799 – 1800. Perhaps the latter was the same John Robb who launched the Glasgow Chronicle in 1775 (booksellers often doubled as publishers in the eighteenth century).

When I first discovered that John Thomson’s second wife was a Robb, it made me doubt – temporarily – my theory that the George Robb who married John’s daughter Penelope was the Aberdeenshire-born brother of my 3rd great grandfather Charles Robb. Given the Thomson’s family’s tendency to marry their cousins, wasn’t it just as likely that George was a relative of Elizabeth’s, and therefore a member of the Glasgow bookselling Robb family? However, I’ve yet to find any evidence of a connection between George and this branch of the Robb family,  and their shared surname may simply be a coincidence.

Ramshorn Cemetery, Glasgow (via wikipedia.org)

John and Elizabeth Thomson had at least three children together: Elizabeth, born in 1784; Henry in 1785; and Archibald in 1791.  John Thomson died on 11th April 1818 at Morton Bank near Glasgow, the cause of death being given as old age’. He was seventy-seven.  John died intestate but his effects were valued at £265 12s 2d. On 16th April he was buried, like other members of the Thomson family, in ‘John Thomson’s lair’ in the Ramshorn kirkyard on Ingram Street, in the heart of the Merchant City.

The inventory of his property published on John Thomson’s death makes no mention of any overseas property or investments, and I’ve yet to find any evidence to suggest he was involved in trade with the colonies of the Caribbean or the New World.  However, a number of his children certainly were, as will become apparent in the next post.

George Robb and Penelope Thomson

‘I had also an Uncle George who died many years ago leaving children but I don’t know how many. I had also an Aunt called Penelope…’

So wrote my great-great-grandfather William Robb in a memorandum of 1885, a few years before his death in Stepney, in the East End of London. William was the son of my 3^rd great grandparents Charles Edward Stuart Robb and his wife Margaret Ricketts Monteith, both of whom were originally from Scotland. Charles was born in Aberdeenshire, but he and Margaret were married in Glasgow.

View of Glasgow in 1828, via glasgowhistory.com

My research into my family’s history has led me to the belief that William’s ‘Uncle George’ was Glasgow merchant George Robb, and that his Aunt Penelope was George’s wife, Penelope Robb née Thomson. On 15^th January 1805, George Robb, described in the records as a ‘merchant in Glasgow’ married Penelope Thomson, daughter of ‘John Thomson of Hillhead, Parish of Eastwood’. A newspaper announcement confirms that the ceremony took place in Hillhead.

Via scotlandspeople.gov.uk

Via britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

As well as the fact that the couple’s names match those in my great-great-grandfather’s memorandum, an additional piece of evidence pointing to them being his uncle and aunt is the name of the officiating clergyman: ‘Mr William Robb, Episcopal Minister in St Andrews’.  I’ve established beyond reasonable doubt that Rev. William Robb of St Andrews, who was a published poet as well as a minister of religion, was the brother of my 3^rd great grandfather Charles Robb – and therefore also the brother of George Robb, which provides a plausible reason for William officiating at a wedding some seventy miles from his home parish. 

An additional clue is provided by George Robb’s connections, and those of the family into which he married, with the lucrative trade with the colonies of the Caribbean, and particularly Jamaica, which means that they were implicated, whether directly or indirectly, in the ownership of slaves. While my 3^rd great grandmother Margaret Ricketts Monteith’s origins remain shrouded in mystery, it seems likely that her middle name points to a connection with the famous (or notorious) Ricketts family who were among the leading plantation owners in colonial Jamaica. 

Slaves working on a plantation in Jamaica (via januka.co.uk)

Although my search for information about George Robb began as an attempt to establish his connection with my own family, I soon became intrigued by his story, and that of his extended family, for its own sake. I discovered that he and his wife and children were part of a nexus of families linked by marriage that included merchants, manufacturers, plantation owners, lawyers, artists and administrators – many of them implicated in the infamous ‘triangular trade’ that connected Glasgow with Africa and the New World.

It is the story of that extended family – of interest in its own right, but also providing a fascinating insight into life in Glasgow, and the city’s links with the New World, in the nineteenth century – that I want to tell in this blog.