CHAPTER X1

 

THE AMERICAN BRANCH

 

SAMUEL, second son of John Inglis and Catherine M’Call, was born at Philadelphia on November 3, 1745, and was baptized on April 13, 1746.

He became a merchant in Norfolk, Virginia, where his firm, ‘Inglis and Willing,’ represented the well-known Phila­delphian house, Willing, Morris and Co. They were large tobacco buyers, and dealt in general trade, especially with the West Indies; and they also speculated in land. From 1773 onwards William Cadell of Banton shipped them consignments of nails, files, and other hardware from Carron works, and paper from Auchindinny mill; and several times wrote to Mr. George Inglis that the firm was in good repute.

While he was in Virginia Samuel Inglis lived in close friendship with George Washington.1

On June 30, 1774 he married Ann, daughter of William Aitchison of Norfolk, Virginia, a prominent Scottish merchant. His brother, Captain John Inglis, speaks of her as ‘the same young lady that he once before paid his addresses to.’ The failure of the earlier addresses may perhaps have been due to the fact that in 1772 she was ‘very near gone oil with the yellow fever.’ 2 Mr. William Aitchison, in writing to his friend Mr. Charles Steuart, Surveyor-General of the Customs, says: 3

1British Museum, Add. MSS., 34,415, fol. 290.

2Letter in possession of James Steuart, Esq., W.S.

3Americcrn Magazine of History, iii. 153.

 

67

68    SAMUEL INGLIS

 

15th July 1774. . . . Dispairing of ever seeing you here again I cond not in reason and conscience deferr Nancy’s Nuptialls any longer, however much I wished to have you present. I therefore gave her away the 30th of last month to Mr Sam’ Inglis. He is her own choice and is also very agreeable to us all. You know his Family and connections as well or better than I do, and there can be no objection to him on that score; and as to his Capacity and Application to Business he is exceeded by none here. From the few years’ acquaintance I have had of him I have all the reason in the world to believe be will do well and make Nancy very happy.

‘I had the Honour of Lord Dunmore’s Company at the wedding. He was very pleasant and agreeable all the evening, and told Mrs A. that so soon as the wedding was over and Nancy gone to her own House he would bring Lady Dunmore down to see her.’

 

Soon after the war broke out Samuel Inglis removed to Philadelphia, and was received into regular partnership with Thomas Willing and Robert Morris, the firm becoming Will­ing, Morris and Inglis.’

He was at first opposed to the revolutionary movement, but his views soon underwent a change. In this he was following his partners’ lead. Robert Morris and Thomas Willing were two of the seven delegates to Congress from Pennsylvania, and at first opposed the signing of the Declara­tion of Independence, which they considered premature. Ultimately they signed it, and Robert Morris, throwing him­self into the struggle with great energy, took control of the financial department, and contributed more than any civilian to the successful establishment of the United States.

In October 1777 Captain John Inglis wrote to Mr. William Cadell:

 

‘Its not long since I heard from Sammy. He was then at Philadelphia, taking care of what little property we have there, and, from what I understand, things have not turned out so ill for us, as I had great reason to think they woud—which I impute in a great measure to his being on the spot. Sam was then, I understand, confined to the

 

SAMUEL INGLIS         69

 

limits of the city, as he woud not take the oaths of alligeance to the Congress. I don’t look upon that as any hardship, but on the contrary I hope they may keep him there till the City is in possession of the King’s troops.’

 

The information received by the Government in London puts a different complexion on the matter. It was to the following effect: ¹

‘As soon as it was known that General Howe would proceed for Philadelphia, the chief supporters of the rebellion withdrew and called in their agents who had been employed in different provinces, who are to remain in Philadelphia, pretending to be excellent friends to Govern­rnent. . . . Willin and Morris of Philadelphia, who have been the chief agents for establishing correspondencies for arms, ammunition, &c., all over Europe and in the Dutch and French islands, have called to Philadelphia Samuel Inglis and Marshall from Virginia, who have been considerable buyers of tobacco for the Congress under Willin and Morris. These with several others are to remain in that city—the first a Philadelphian, the last a Scotchman. The pay given those people is high beyond conception.’

 

Samuel Inglis had been elected a member of the Phila­delphia Troop of Light Horse in March 1777 ² and though he took no personal part in the war, he gave material help to the cause in several ways. He subscribed £2000 to the National Bank, which was founded at Philadelphia in June 1780 by Robert Morris to supply the American army with provisions, and he became one of the first directors. From 1779 to 1781 he and his partner, George Orr, fitted out eight small privateers under letters of marque, and they also entered into bonds in respect of others which belonged to Willing and Morris.3

Samuel Inglis died very suddenly at Philadelphia on

 

1 fist. MSS. Corn., 1904, American MSS. in the Royal Institution, i. 163, December 12. 1777.

² Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. v. p. 339.

3 U.,S.A. Library of Congrcss—Naval Records of the Revolution, ed. C. H. Lincoln.

 

70                    GEORGE INGLIS OF JAMAICA

 

September 14, 1783, aged thirty-seven, and was buried in Christ Church ground. He and his wife had three children— a boy and two girls, who all died young. The boy died in 1778; Rebecca, the elder girl, survived her father; Katharine was born in 1781, and died in March 1783. In 1790 Mrs. Inglis married Dr. James Currie, a noted physician in Virginia, and she died a few years later.

 

 

GEORGE, the youngest son of John Inglis and Catherine M’Call, was born in the year 1750, and also became a mer­chant. He settled in Jamaica under the patronage of his brother-in-law, Julines Hering, and was at first in partnership with his cousin, one of the Blairs, and with a Mr. Morris; but the firm did not prosper, and after Mr. Blair’s death in 1774 he joined a Mr. Benjamin Blake.

The only letter of his which survives is one written from Bristol to Mr. William Cadell in November 1778 with reference to business transactions. It is not known whether he came to Scotland, or was ever again in England.

Messrs. Inglis and Blake were very unfortunate in suffering twice, with a short interval, from those convulsions of Nature to which Jamaica has always been subject. The first occurred on October 8, 1780, and is described in an appeal to Governor Dalling from twenty-nine leading men, including George Inglis and his partner: ¹

 

‘The weather had appeared very indifferent for some days before, but that morning the wind became more violent than usual, with a most terrible swell of the sea, which by afternoon encreased to such a degree that it has not left the wreck of six houses on both the Bay and Savannah, and not less than 300 people of all colours were drowned or buried in the ruins. The sea flowed up half a mile beyond its usual bounds, even to the heighth of ten feet. . . . What alarms us most at present is the dread of famine, which stares us in the face; and if we

 

¹ Edinburgh Advertiser, January 5, 1781.

 

MRS. BARKLY               71

 

have not some speedy relief of bread-kind, the few that have survived tint unfortunate day will most probably fall victims to the more miserable fate of perishing with hunger.’

 

No sooner had they recovered from this disaster than a violent hurricane on August 1 of the following year swept over the island. ‘Messrs. Blake and Inglis’s new houses and stores are thrown down; all the provisions and fine crops of corn are destroyed; the canes are all laid flat, and there is hardly an estate in Westmoreland but has suffered in buildings.’ ¹

George Inglis lived to be eighty-one years of age, but he was for many years totally blind. He never married, but stayed with a family at Abington, Montgomery Co., Pennsyl­vania, and his relatives contributed towards his support, his cousin, Joseph Swift, taking pains to see to his comfort.

He died, the last of his generation, on February 7, 1832.

 

 

ANN, eldest daughter of John Inglis and Catherine M’Call, was baptized at Philadelphia on September 14, 1737, aged five weeks, and was married on December 31, 1761 to Gilbert Barkly, a Scottish merchant who had settled in Philadelphia about six years before. After his marriage Mr. Barkly became a member of the St. Andrew’s Society, and in 1763 his name heads the list of subscribers to the Mount Regale Fishing Company, which included many of the leading men in the city.

About 1765 the Barklys moved to Quebec,2 but they re­turned in 1773, and remained at Philadelphia until the out­break of the war, when they went to Scotland with their only child, Katharine.

At that time they were in poor circumstances, and received help from Mr. George Inglis of Redhall, and afterwards from the Admiral, who was greatly attached to his sister. Latterly

 

1 Edinburgh  Advertiser, November 6, 1781.

²  British Museum, Add. MSS., 21,728, fol. 79.

 

72 MRS. HERING

 

their position improved, as Mrs. Barkly succeeded to con­siderable sums of money by the death of relatives.

Two of her letters remain. One is written to the Admiral from Bath in 1799, and mentions that she and her husband had been confined to the house by ill health for a couple of months. She adds: ‘I am much flattered by the good opinion you and our other friends entertain of my Daughter. To do her justice she is a good girl, and I hope will ever act so as to merit the good will of all her connections.’

Mr. Barkly died at Bath on August 25, 1799,¹ and his widow died in Edinburgh on September 25, 1801.

Kitty Barkly, who did not marry, continued to live in Bath for a time, but latterly she spent most of her time in Edinburgh, and died in a boarding-house at 36 Castle Street on April 16, 1825. She bequeathed miniatures of her father and mother to her cousin, Mr. Ǽneas Barkly, merchant, London.

 

MARY, second daughter of John Inglis and Catherine M’Call, was baptized at Philadelphia on April 30, 1742, at the age of ten weeks, and was married there on April 2, 1761 to Julines Hering, a wealthy Jamaica planter. He was a widower without children. His first wife was Susanna, daughter of Richard Quarrel, also a planter,2 and she died on her passage to England in 1754.

Julines Hering joined the 34th Foot (Cumberland Regi­ment) as Ensign on February 26, 1756. They were stationed at Minorca, and were one of the four regiments which defended Fort St. Philip for over two months against the French. The defence moved the admiration of the enemy, and when at length the fort was surrendered, the garrison were allowed to march out with all the honours of war. The 34th returned to England, and remained there till the summer of 1758, Jullines Hering becoming a Lieutenant on September 27, 1757.

1 Bulk Chronicle, September 5, 1799.

² Jamaica Wills, vol. 63, fol. 215.

 

MRS. HERING                73

 

In June 1758 and again in August the regiment was employed in raiding parties, which landed on the French coast near Cherbourg and did much damage, but a third raid in September on the coast of Brittany failed, and the British troops suffered severely. After this the 34th were encamped in the south of England, and on May 25, 1760 Juhines Hering resigned his commission on being appointed Captain in a volunteer regiment which was being raised in the Barbados.

Captain Hering stayed there a couple of years after his marriage; in 1763 he and his wife were in London, but soon afterwards they settled in Jamaica, in order that Captain Hering might manage his plantations, which lay at the west end of the island, namely Paul Island in the parish of West-moreland, and twelve hundred acres near Cabaritta River Head in the parish of Hanover. He had inherited most of them from his father, Oliver Hering, but some were acquired from his kinsman William Beckford of Fonthill, Lord Mayor of London,1 whose mother was Bathshua, daughter of his great-uncle, Colonel Julines Hering.

Captain Hering also owned an English property, Heybridge Hall, Maldon, Essex, which he held on a leasehold title from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s. It had belonged to his uncle, the Reverend Julines Hering (1694-1775), who left it to him by will,2 subject to the liferent of another uncle, Colonel Daniel Hering, who, however, only survived till November 1777.³ At that time Captain and Mrs. Hering were at Bristol, and then, or soon afterwards, Mrs. Hering, with the children, settled at Bath, while her husband travelled on trading voyages between Bristol and Jamaica. He died at Paul Island on March 14, 1797, aged sixty-five: his widow survived him for twenty-one years, and died at her house, 12 Russell Street, Bath, on May 31, 1818,4 in her seventy-seventh year.

 1 Dictionary of National Biography.

 2 Proved October 30, 1 775—Somerset house.

³Proved December 9, 1777—Somerset House, Collier 511.

4  Bath Chronicle, June 4, 1818.

5   

74 THE HERINGS

 

Dr. H. M. Fisher of Philadelphia possesses portraits of them, and the late Colonel John R. Gordon of Auchendolly had their miniatures.

        They had nine children, of whom two sons and four daughters lived to grow up.¹ Three boys died in infancy— Nathaniel Vaughan, born at Barbados in 1762, died the same year; Juhines, born 1764, died 1765; and Nathaniel, born and died 1770.

 

A second Julines, born in Jamaica in 1767, entered the  army in September 1782 as Ensign in Captain Riddell’s Inde­pendent Company of Foot. On February 12, 1783 he was commissioned Lieutenant in the 71st (Fraser’s) Regiment, but it was disbanded almost immediately, and for the next seven years he was on the half-pay of the 42nd Highlanders (Black Watch). On March 30, 1791 he obtained a commis­sion as Lieutenant in the 60th (Royal American) Regiment, became Captain on March 19, 1793, and retired in the autumn of 1799.

He was actually gazetted Major by purchase on October 25, 1797, but the purchase did not take place, and the promo­tion was cancelled six months later.2

He died unmarried in 1813.

 

Oliver Hering, the younger surviving son, was born in Jamaica in 1768, and succeeded under his father’s will to the plantations, which he carried on for a good many years;³ towards the end of his life he came back to England, and lived at 21 Castle Street, Southampton.4 He married in 1793 Mary Murray Ross, but had no family. He also succeeded under his father’s will to Heybridge Hall, which he ultimately sold to his brother-in-law, Sir John Peniston Milbanke.

 

¹Pedigree recorded at Heralds’ College.                          

2 London Gazette, 1798, p. 293.

³Lady Nugent’s ,Journal, F. Cundell, pp. 82, 185, 331.

4 Sontham pton I)irectory, 1847; Harnpshire Advertiser, December 25, 1847.

 

THE HERINGS                75

 

The daughters were famed for their good looks, and as they had red hair they were naturally known as ‘the beautiful red Herings.’ They all married husbands of good position— three of them Englishmen, and one an American.

 

Catherine, the eldest, was born at Poland Street, London, on August 28, 1763, and married on January 12, 1787 John Gordon of Stapleton Grove, Bristol, second son of Robert Gordon of Auchendolly. Robert Gordon was a West India merchant, and was Mayor of Bristol in 1773. Mr. John Gor­don died on December 28, 1839, and Mrs. Gordon on December 26, 1840. They had seven sons and three daughters.

 

Anna Maria, the second daughter, was born in Jamaica in 1766, and married on November 5, 1785 the Reverend the Honourable John Lumley, Rector of Winteringham in Lincolnshire and Thornhill in Yorkshire, afterwards Prebendary of York. He was the fourth son of the fourth Earl of Scar­brough, and was born on June 15, 1760. Forty-seven years after the marriage, on the failure of his three elder brothers without sons, he succeeded to the title and estates as seventh earl.

‘Black Jack,’ as he was nicknamed, was an unlovely and unpopular character.¹ He was mean, suspicious, and quarrel­some. He ill-treated his wife, ‘his amiable consort,’ as his mother calls her, and at one time refused her even the neces­saries of life. His best recorded act was his gift of the organ to York Minster. He died of a fall from his horse on February 24, 1835: his widow survived till March 17, 1850.

They had three sons and four daughters. The eldest and youngest sons predeceased their father, so the title went to John, the second son, who died unmarried.

 

Mary Helen Hering, the third daughter, was born in

 

1 Record. of the Lumleys, by Edith Milner, ed. Edith Bonham, p. 274.

 

76                                     THE HERINGS

 

Jamaica in 1772, and married in 1795 the Honourable Henry Middleton, of Middleton Place, Charleston, South Carolina,¹ eldest son of the Honourable Arthur Middleton, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. The Middle­tons were an old Suffolk family, and the original emigrant was Arthur’s grandfather.

Henry Middleton was a member of the legislature of South Carolina from 1801 till 1810, when he became Governor of the State. He then had a seat in Congress from 1815 till 1819, and from 1820 to 1830 he was United States minister to Russia. After his retirement Middleton Place became the centre of social life in South Carolina.2 He died on June 14, 1856, aged eighty-five.

He and his wife had five sons-—Arthur, Henry, John Izard, Edward, and William; and two daughters Maria (Mrs. Edward Pringle), and Elizabeth, who married Joshua Francis Fisher of Philadelphia.

 

Eleanor Hering, the youngest daughter, was born at Bristol in 1777, and was married at Queen’s Chapel, Bath, on September 29, 1799, to Captain John Peniston Milbanke (l776-l850).³ She died on July 30, 1819, leaving a son, Ralph, and five daughters. In 1825 Captain Peniston Mil­banke succeeded his uncle in the baronetcy, and was suc­ceeded in turn by his son, an ancestor of the present baronet.

 

 

KATHARINE, youngest daughter of John Inglis and Catherine M’Call, was baptized at Philadelphia on October 6, 1749, and was sent to Scotland in 1757 to be educated by her uncle George Inglis. She lived at Redhall for six years, and then returned to keep house for her father. Her brother Samuel wrote in 1774: ‘Kitt has grown a very sedate, sober, orderly

 

1 A ppleton’s Cyclopcedia of American Biography, iv. 317.

 

2 Charleston, the Place and People, Mrs. St. Julicn Ravcnel, pp. 459-63.

3  Bath Chronicle, October 3, 1799.

4   

MISS KATHARINE INGLIS                                                             77

 

housekeeper, much in the graces of the old gentleman and equally esteemed by the writer of this letter, who is reckoned the sober side of the family.’

She never married, but lived for more than forty years with her cousin, Miss Margaret M’Call, most of the time at No. 91 Pine Street, Philadelphia.

She died on July 10, 1821 at the age of seventy-one, and was buried at Christ Church. Three years later Margaret M’Call was buried in the same tomb, which bears the inscrip­tions :’ Sacred to Friendship,’ and United in Life, United in the Grave.’

By her will, made a month before her death, she provided an annuity of £50 to her blind brother George, and left legacies to her niece, Mrs. Lumley-Savile, her cousins Mary Swift and Joseph Swift, the latter of whom she appointed executor, and to St. Peter’s Church. Miss M’Call was given a liferent of the nest, and after her death $1000 was to go to the family of her cousin, George Plumstead, and the remainder to the four younger children of her brother, Admiral Inglis.