Intriguing website contacts
The Gibbs Family Tree website provides a great repository for our family genealogy, history and stories, but it also serves as a searchable resource attracting quite a bit of attention on the internet. I am often surprised by the people from around the world who have discovered a link, often quite small and hidden, and contacted me with information or requests. The power of google search to extract the remotest of details is quite astounding! As an example of these connections below are three recent enquiries that have led me to interesting searches and discoveries.
Anthony Aufrere – great-grandson of the Huguenot ‘first refugee’ to UK
I have been contacted recently by Alexander, a genealogy enthusiast in Germany whose retirement hobby has included considerable research on the Aufrere family, descended from a prominent Huguenot family, the Marquis de Colville. They fled France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes led to persecution and murder of protestants. Antoine Aufrere, my 8x great-grandfather, secretly disposed of his considerable property and got his fortune out of France before his escape to safety in Holland, moving later to London, where he built a fine house in Charles Street, St James’s. His son Israel became Minister of the French Chapel in London, which was frequented by all the principal refugees.
The history of the Aufrere family is very well documented in the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, an extract of which I have added to the website. There was also a book published in 1914 about Aufreres and related families which has the preface “On February 17, 1756, my great-great-grand- father, Anthony Aufrere, of Norfolk, in England, married Miss Anna Norris. One of her relatives was a certain Anthony Norris, of Barton, in Norfolk, who compiled what he called an ‘Extract from the Parentilia of Mr. Norris of Barton.’ Upon the death this Mr. Norris in 1785, the manuscript came into the possession of my great-grandfather, Anthony Aufrere …“
Israel’s son Anthony acquired Hoveton Hall, on the Broads outside Norwich, and it was his son, also Anthony, who wrote the Parentilia. He had the unfortunate experience of being seized while travelling in France before war broke out in 1803 and being imprisoned in Verdun fortress for 11 years until Napoleon’s abdication.
Antony’s son, George, spent time in Hamburg where he married Caroline Wehrtmann, to whom Alexander is related, hence the German family. He sent me George Aufrere’s Will noting that Charlotte Ward, née Baker (my great-great-grandmother), was his darling and legatee of £500, quite an amount in 1881.
A letter ‘that never arrived’ 200 years ago from Buenos Aires to Charlton Lodge
Alejandro, an Argentinian researcher, emailed me about a letter that he had found in the Buenos Aires National Archives … “I have images of a letter, dated 10th July, 1807, in Buenos Aires, addressed to ‘Thomas Kington Esq., Charlton Lodge near Bristol’. It is from his brother, who … had been wounded in battle when the British attempted to retake Buenos Aires, after their failed first invasion the year before …”.
Through the considerable power of google search he found on this website that William Gibbs “added to his property in 1865 the adjoining estate and house called Charlton (in Wraxall parish) buying it from the Kingston family…“
“Are you aware of any Kington descendants, or would you have any idea how to reach them? The letter was never delivered because the person it was given to, the American merchant William P. White, was imprisoned before he was able to send it and his property confiscated. I would love to see this letter reach his family, more than two centuries later.”
A good challenge to get me searching!
The letter was from Colonel Peter Kington, who died shortly after of his wounds. Alejandro has published a blog article of “Una carta de 1807 que no llegó a destino” (English translation)
I found a book online, published in 1900, about ‘Collections for a Parochial History of Wraxall’ that gave me a good lead, and eventually traced the family to the direct male descendant, who turned out to be a resplendent Scottish laird living in a castle at Ardbair, north of Perth.
I sent a translation of the article about the letter to the castle and have since had a correspondence with the laird, whose great-aunt had written a book about “The Oliphants of Gask” revealing how the Kington line migrated from Wraxall to Scotland.
There were also business links between our two families. Thomas Kington of Charlton was onetime Chairman of ‘The Great Western Steam Ship Company’ of which George Gibbs and Robert Bright were also Directors.
Introduction of rice in the Ebro Delta of Spain
The Director of ‘Laboratorio de Patrimonio y Turismo Cultural’ at Barcelona University wrote to me looking for information about the investments that Henry Hucks Gibbs made with his partner John W. Birch, and a relative of the Catalan Director, Josep Anton Tresserras.
They create a company, Compañia Inglesa de Desecación (English Dewatering Company), making investments between 1860 (when Tresserras obtained the contract to exploit 16,000 hectares) until the beginning of the 20th century. This contributed to the introduction of rice in the Ebro Delta, incorporating steam engines for water pumping and fertilisation to make them more productive, first with guano and then with nitrates from Peru and then from Chile.
The wife of Josep Anton Tresserras was Albina Thompson, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, daughter of Captain Martin Jacobo Thompson and López Escribano (Buenos Aires, April 23, 1777 – at sea October 23, 1819) and of Maria (Mariquita) Sánchez Velasco (Buenos November 1, 1786 – October 23, 18), patrician of Argentine independence.
His family also had a company based in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, that exported wool and other products to their base in Barcelona. They had business with Antony Gibbs and Sons in cocoa issues.
Both H.H. Gibbs and J.W. Birch were Governors of the Bank of England (HHG 1875-1877 and JWB 1879-1881) and Directors for much longer terms, and both had a country residence in Hertfordshire (Henry Hucks at Aldenham). Birch owned Rickmansworth Park House through marriage to the Ardens. Albina Tresserras Thompson married Domingo Dulce who was Captain General of Catalonia and appointed by Queen Isabel II of Spain as Marquis of Castellflorite. They had a good relationship with the Carvallo family, a French-Jewish family linked to Credit Mobiliere that had relations with the Rothschilds, with rice fields at the same place.
William Pitt m: Mary Gibbs , st Mary’s Bristol, daughter of Henry Gibbs merchant, 1578 c both took part in blockade of Cadiz for Elizabeth 1 , Thomas pit B: 1653 gov east India co , Pitt dimond , made regular visits to Holland to buy sails , Williams farther Thomas D: 1613 aldermen of Bristol, family Pitt the elder , Pitt the younger, others cannon, vicars and priest, I have not confirmed but someone has added the astronaut Christa Mc Auliffe who died in the Challenger disaster to the tree
Major Peter Kington, 6th Dragoon Guards. Very slightly wounded in the leg during the assault of Buenos Eyes on 5/6 July, and died of tetanus (lock-jaw) from that wound on 14 July 1807. He married, on 28 Oct. 1799, Urania Annie Paulet (c. 1767-1843), the only daughter of the English courtier George Paulet (1722-1800), the 12th Marquess of Winchester, and had issue. Urania was the widow of Henry de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricade, who had died in 1797. After Peter Kington’s death, she married for the third time, in 1813, Vice-Admiral Sir Joseph Sidney Yorke. While stationed in Ireland Major Kington had insisted on court-martialing a junior officer on such frivolous grounds (for calling his horse a “rip”) that the court was reduced to laughter. “And so ended this affair, adding one to the long list of courts-martial assembled for frivolous objects. It ought, however, to stand apart, so far as being the funniest court-martial in military records.” [Lt.-Col. Wilkie].