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William Clarke Gellibrand

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William Clark(e) Gellibrand (1791–1884) was an English merchant in the Russian Empire.[1]

Early life

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He was the elder son of William Gellibrand (1765–1840), who emigrated from the United Kingdom to Van Diemen's Land at the end of 1823 with Joseph Tice Gellibrand.[2] Their mother was Sophia Louisa Hinde or Hynde (1759–1793), of Hampstead.[3][4][5] The Gellibrand family were at Brentford from 1792 to 1805, when William Gellibrand gave up his ministry which was at the Brentford Butts presbyterian chapel, built 1783, with Hugh Ronalds in the congregation;[6][7][8] his wife died in 1793.[9][10]

William Clarke Gellibrand was a schoolfellow in Brentford of Percy Bysshe Shelley at the academy run by the Rev. Alexander Greenlaw, Zion House or Sion House or Syon House; he told Augustine Birrell an anecdote of that time.[11][12][13]

Russia merchant

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Gellibrand became involved in the Russia trade as a partner in J. Hubbard & Co. with John Hubbard, father of John Gellibrand Hubbard. There was a family connection: Hubbard's wife Marian(ne) Morgan was the step-daughter of Thomas Gellibrand of Carshalton, who was partner in a calico mill.[14]

Initially Gellibrand was in partnership with Thomas Holliday; that partnership at Moscow was dissolved in 1828.[15][16] He went on to be a merchant at St Petersburg, with an interest with the cotton mills there, and was resident in Russia for 35 years.[14][17] He is also credited with a major role in the British part in the Baltic timber trade, was involved as a merchant in flax, and had a base on Lake Onega.[14]

William Ropes, Gellibrand's future father-in-law, came to St Petersburg in 1831.[18] He cooperated initially with the financier Baron Alexander von Stieglitz, for protection,[19] and set up a company, William Ropes & Co. When he left for London in 1837, Gellibrand, William Hooper Ropes and George Prince took over the running of the company.[20] Gellibrand also had a 20% stake in a Hubbard & Co. cotton mill, set up in 1842.[21]

Retirement in England

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In retirement, Gellibrand lived at Albyns, Stapleford Abbotts, given as his address from 1857.[17][22] He was on the committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society from that year to 1875.[23]

Family, associations and interests

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Gellibrand married, firstly, Elizabeth Parkinson, who died in 1833. He married, secondly, Mary Tyler Ropes (born 1812) in 1834: she was the daughter of the merchant William Ropes of Salem, Massachusetts. Both marriages were childless.[9][17][24][25] Richard Knill, minister in St Petersburg for the London Missionary Society, wrote an account of the personal impact in 1831 of the 1826–1837 cholera pandemic, and mentions that Elizabeth Gellibrand took in the young orphaned daughter of Mrs Chapman, who taught at a Lancasterian school and died of cholera.[26]

Stained glass window at St Mary's Church, Chigwell, showing Mary of Bethany, given in memory of Mary Gellibrand by the vicar the Rev. Thomas Marsden[27][28]

Mary Gellibrand distributed Dorcas society tracts in St Petersburg.[24] She died in 1894 at the Manor House Chigwell;[29] and left money to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.[30] Mary's brother William Hooper Ropes, who moved to Russia in 1833, and went into business with Gellibrand, married Ellen Harriet Hall, daughter of J. Drinkrow Hall of Scarborough.[31][32][33] His wife was a niece of Gellibrand's first wife.[34] The lyricist Adrian Ross (Arthur Reed Ropes) was their son.[35] The wife of George Prince, partner in Ropes & Co., was Marian Amelia Hall, daughter of John Drinkrow Hall and his wife Harriet Parkinson, and sister of Ellen Harriet.[36]

The Gellibrands had a dacha outside St Petersburg, on the road to Petergof.[37] Horatio Storer visited there in 1847.[38]

John Hubbard's younger son William Egerton Hubbard was also in St Petersburg, and his daughter Louisa Hubbard was born there in 1836.[39] William Egerton Hubbard's wife Louisa, Mary Gellibrand, and the wife of the British Embassy chaplain Edward Law worked together on philanthropic relief for needy British families associated with the British Factory.[40][41]

Both William Ropes Sr. and Gellibrand supported the work of the American Tract Society.[42] Gellibrand supported too the British and Foreign Bible Society in Russia.[43] Through the expatriate British business community and the Factory Chapel and its activities, Gellibrand knew also Anna McNeill Whistler. He was in correspondence in 1849 with the Foreign Evangelical Society (founded 1839, from that year the American and Foreign Christian Union) who were sending money for colportage in Russia.[44][45] He was involved in sending donations for the relief of famine in the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1857.[46]

Visitors at Albyns

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Anna McNeill Whistler's biographers write "She spent at least a week every summer or autumn" at Albyns.[47] Piers Claughton, the Anglican Bishop of Colombo, stayed in 1869.[48]

Notes

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  1. ^ "Gellibrand Family papers". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk.
  2. ^ Sadler, Peter S. (2000). The Paladin: A Life of Major General Sir John Gellibrand. Oxford University Press. pp. 3 and 259. ISBN 978-0-19-551304-2.
  3. ^ Sadler, Peter S. (2000). The Paladin: A Life of Major General Sir John Gellibrand. Oxford University Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-0-19-551304-2.
  4. ^ James, P. C. "Gellibrand, Joseph Tice (1792–1837)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
  5. ^ The Lady's Magazine Or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex: Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement. Baldwin, Cradock & Joy. 1788. p. 159.
  6. ^ The Baptist Magazine. 1817. p. 266.
  7. ^ "AIM25 collection description". aim25.com.
  8. ^ The Annual Biography and Obituary. 1835. p. 451.
  9. ^ a b Sadler, Peter S. (2000). The Paladin: A Life of Major General Sir John Gellibrand. Oxford University Press. pp. 254–255. ISBN 978-0-19-551304-2.
  10. ^ Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review. F. Jefferies. 1793. p. 106.
  11. ^ The Athenaeum. J. Lection. 1884. pp. 567–568.
  12. ^ Gelpi, Barbara Charlesworth (1992). Shelley's Goddess: Maternity, Language, Subjectivity. Oxford University Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-19-507384-3.
  13. ^ Ingpen, Roger (1917). Shelley in England; new facts and letters from the Shelley-Whitton papers. Vol. II. Boston Houghton Mifflin. p. 512.
  14. ^ a b c Brown, Philip L. (1952). Clyde Company Papers: 1836-40. Vol. II. Oxford University Press. p. 425. ISBN 978-0-19-550544-3.
  15. ^ Great Britain (1829). The London Gazette. T. Neuman. p. 205.
  16. ^ "Dissolutions of Partnership". Evans and Ruffy's Farmer's Journal. 9 February 1829. p. 7.
  17. ^ a b c "The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler : William Clark Gellibrand, 1791-??". www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk.
  18. ^ Ahonen, Kalevi (2005). "From Sugar Triangle to Cotton Triangle: Trade and Shipping Between America and Baltic Russia, 1783-1860" (PDF). University of Jyväskylä. p. 120.
  19. ^ Ahonen, Kalevi (2005). "From Sugar Triangle to Cotton Triangle: Trade and Shipping Between America and Baltic Russia, 1783-1860" (PDF). University of Jyväskylä. p. 128.
  20. ^ Ahonen, Kalevi (2005). "From Sugar Triangle to Cotton Triangle: Trade and Shipping Between America and Baltic Russia, 1783-1860" (PDF). University of Jyväskylä. p. 130.
  21. ^ Ahonen, Kalevi (2005). "From Sugar Triangle to Cotton Triangle: Trade and Shipping Between America and Baltic Russia, 1783-1860" (PDF). University of Jyväskylä. p. 129 note 66.
  22. ^ Society, British and Foreign Bible (1857). Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Philanthropic Society.
  23. ^ Canton, William (1910). A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Vol. 5. London: John Murray. p. 402.
  24. ^ a b United States Congress House Committee (1988). Tourism and Small Business: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Exports, Tourism, and Special Problems of the Committee on Small Business, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, First and Second Sessions, Vail, CO, October 10, 1987; Lexington, MO, March 11, Salem, MA, March 21, and Welches, OR, June 3, 1988. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 565.
  25. ^ "Ropes Family Papers". www.masshist.org.
  26. ^ Knill, Richard (1860). The Life of Rev. Richard Knill, of St. Petersburg: Being sel. from his reminiscences, journals, and correspondence. [Hrsg.] by Charles M[orton] Birrell. With a review of his character, by the late John Angell James. Carter. p. 232.
  27. ^ "Dedication Festival at Chigwell Church". Leytonstone Express and Independent. 8 February 1896. p. 8.
  28. ^ The Essex Review: An Illustrated Quarterly Record of Everything of Permanent Interest in the County. E. Durant and Company. 1896. p. 66.
  29. ^ "Police Intelligence: Guildhall". London Evening Standard. 19 March 1895. p. 2.
  30. ^ The Missionary Herald. Board. 1896. p. 81.
  31. ^ "The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler :: William Hooper Ropes, 1811-1891". whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk.
  32. ^ Saul, Norman E. (1991). Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867. University Press of Kansas. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-7006-0438-8.
  33. ^ "Ropes, Arthur Reed". Who's Who. A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  34. ^ Problems, United States Congress House Committee (1988). Tourism and Small Business: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Exports, Tourism, and Special Problems of the Committee on Small Business, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, First and Second Sessions, Vail, CO, October 10, 1987; Lexington, MO, March 11, Salem, MA, March 21, and Welches, OR, June 3, 1988. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 566.
  35. ^ "Mr. Adrian Ross". The Stage. 14 September 1933. p. 6.
  36. ^ Ellery, Harrison; Bowditch, Charles Pickering (1897). The Pickering Genealogy: Being an Account of the First Three Generations of the Pickering Family of Salem, Mass., and of the Descendants of John and Sarah (Burrill) Pickering, of the Third Generation. Vol. III. University Press, J. Wilson and Son. p. 823.
  37. ^ Parry, Albert (1939). Whistler's Father. Bobbs-Merrill Company. p. 253.
  38. ^ "Journals – Horatio Robinson Storer, M.D." horatiostorer.net.
  39. ^ Kelly, Serena. "Hubbard, Louisa Maria (1836–1906)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34030. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  40. ^ Mahnke-Devlin, Julia (2005). Britische Migration nach Russland im 19. Jahrhundert: Integration - Kultur - Alltagsleben (in German). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 236 note 848. ISBN 978-3-447-05222-1.
  41. ^ Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Law, Edward" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
  42. ^ American Tract Society (1837). Annual Report. pp. 65–66.
  43. ^ Society, British and Foreign Bible (1884). Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Philanthropic Society. p. 313.
  44. ^ The Christian World: The Magazine of the American and Foreign Christian Union. The Union. 1850. p. 131.
  45. ^ Anderson, Justice (2005). An Evangelical Saga. Xulon Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-59781-495-9.
  46. ^ Newby, Andrew G. (17 May 2023). Finland's Great Famine, 1856-68. Springer Nature. p. 34. ISBN 978-3-031-19474-0.
  47. ^ Sutherland, Daniel E.; Toutziari, Georgia (27 March 2018). Whistler's Mother: Portrait of an Extraordinary Life. Yale University Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-300-22968-4.
  48. ^ "Ongar". Chelmsford Chronicle. 12 November 1869. p. 5.
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