|
Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet
Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet (born William Johnstone; October 1729 – 30 May 1805) was a Scottish lawyer, Whig politician and landowner who sat in the British House of Commons between 1768 and 1805. One of the wealthiest Britons during his lifetime, he invested in the construction of several prominent buildings in Britain, including the Pulteney Bridge and other properties in Bath, Somerset, several beachfront residences in Weymouth, Dorset and roads in Scotland. Pulteney was also a patron of architect Robert Adam and civil engineer Thomas Telford. He also owned slave plantations in British America. Early life William Johnstone, as he was born, was the second son of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet of Wester Hall, Dumfries, and his wife Barbara Murray, the oldest sister of the literary patron Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank. His older brother was the soldier and politician Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet. His older sister was Margaret, later Lady Ogilvy, a J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulteney Bridge
Pulteney Bridge is a bridge over the River Avon (Bristol), River Avon in Bath, Somerset, Bath, England. It was completed by 1774, and connected the city with the land of the Pulteney family which the family wished to develop. Designed by Robert Adam in a Palladian architecture, Palladian style, it is highly unusual in that it has shops built across its full span on both sides. It has been designated as a Grade I listed building. Within 20 years of its construction, alterations were made that expanded the shops and changed the façades. By the end of the 18th century, it had been damaged by floods, but was rebuilt to a similar design. Over the next century alterations to the shops included cantilevered extensions on the bridge's north face. In the 20th century, several schemes were carried out to preserve the bridge and partially return it to its original appearance, enhancing its appeal as a tourist attraction. The bridge is now long and wide. Although there have been plans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Johnstone (East India Company)
John Johnstone (28 April 1734 – 10 December 1795) was a Scottish nabob, a corrupt official of the British East India Company who returned home with great wealth. Described as "a shrewd and unscrupulous business man", he survived several scandals and became a major landowner when he returned to Scotland in 1765. Johnstone sat in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1774 to 1780, having bribed his way to a victory in the Dysart Burghs. Early life and family Johnstone was born in Edinburgh, the fifth son of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet (1697–1772) and his wife, Barbara (died 1773), daughter of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank. The Jacobite plotter Alexander Murray of Elibank was his uncle. His brothers included the British Army officer and politician Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet (1726–1794), the wealthy lawyer and politician William (later Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet (1729–1805), and the politician and Royal Navy officer George Johnston ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South Asia and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies," the company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and later, opium. The company also initiated the beginnings of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Johnstone (Royal Navy Officer)
Commodore George Johnstone (1730 – 24 May 1787) was a Royal Navy officer, politician and colonial administrator who served in the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence. In a multifaceted career he was also a member of parliament, a director of the East India Company, a member of the Carlisle Peace Commission and the first governor of West Florida from 1763 until 1767. Johnstone was born into a Scottish gentry family in 1730, and embarked on a naval career. Early in his service there occurred several incidents which revealed both positive and negative aspects of his character. He was involved in encounters with the enemy where he was praised for his bravery, and incidents where he was censured for disobedience. He rose through the ranks to his own commands and had some success with small cruisers against enemy merchants and privateers. After the end of the Seven Years' War he had made friends with several powerful figure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Ogilvy, Lady Ogilvy
Margaret Ogilvy, Lady Ogilvy (''née'' Johnstone; 1725 – 1757) was a Scottish Jacobite noblewoman. She accompanied the Jacobite army to several battles in 1746. She was captured and imprisoned after the Battle of Culloden, but escaped from Edinburgh Castle into a brief exile in France before returning to Scotland with her family. Early life and family She was born Margaret Johnstone, daughter of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet of Westerhall, and his wife, The Hon. Barbara Murray, whose brothers were involved in the Jacobite movement. Her many siblings included Barbara, James (later a lieutenant-colonel in the English army), William, George, and John. By 1745 she had eloped with David Ogilvy, Lord Ogilvy, later the ''de jure'' 6th Earl of Airlie and Chief of Clan Ogilvy who led his clan during the '45. Jacobite rising of 1745 In 1745, Margaret accompanied her husband at the front of his regiment during the Jacobite uprising. She was accused of inciting violence in Coupar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet
Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet (23 January 1726 – 3 September 1794)) was a Scottish officer in the British Army and then a politician. He sat in the House of Commons of Great Britain for all but one of the years 1784 to 1794. Family Sir James was the son of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet and his wife Barbara, daughter of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank. In about 1759 he married Louisa Maria Elizabeth Colclough, the widow of Rev. John Meyrick, vicar of Edwinstowe, East Retford, Nottinghamshire. They had no children. Military career He joined the marines in 1748 as a Second Lieutenant, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1772. Political career Johnstone first tried to enter Parliament at the 1774 general election, when he began canvassing Dumfries Burghs, where the interest of the 3rd Duke of Queensberry was dominant. However, he made little progress and withdrew in favour of Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, who was also unsuccessful. Queensbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank
Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank (1703 – 3 August 1778) was a British Army officer, lawyer and economist. Life He was the son of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank (1677–1736), and his wife Elizabeth (née Stirling; died 1756), daughter of George Stirling of Keir, and an eminent surgeon in Edinburgh. General James Murray (1721–1794) was his younger brother; as was Alexander Murray, who gained some notoriety as a Jacobite, not least during the 1750 by-election in Westminster. He was the uncle of Major Patrick Ferguson, killed at the Battle of King's Mountain in 1780. Although admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1722, he soon turned from legal to military pursuits, becoming an ensign in the army, and subsequently major in Ponsonby's foot and lieutenant-colonel in John Wynyard's Regiment of Marines. With the latter regiment he served at the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1740. After the failure of that expedition, Murray quit the ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dumfries
Dumfries ( ; ; from ) is a market town and former royal burgh in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, near the mouth of the River Nith on the Solway Firth, from the Anglo-Scottish border. Dumfries is the county town of the Counties of Scotland, historic county of Dumfriesshire. Before becoming King of Scots, Robert the Bruce killed his rival John Comyn III of Badenoch at Greyfriars Kirk in the town in 1306. The Young Pretender had his headquarters here towards the end of 1745. In World War II, the Norwegian armed forces in exile in Britain largely consisted of a brigade in Dumfries. Dumfries is nicknamed ''Queen of the South''. This is also the name of the town's Queen of the South F.C., football club. People from Dumfries are known colloquially in Scots language as ''Doonhamers''. Toponymy There are a number of theories on the etymology of the name, with an ultimately Common Celtic, Celtic derivation (either from Common Brittonic, Brythonic, Old Irish, Gaelic or a mixture of b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British America
British America collectively refers to various British colonization of the Americas, colonies of Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and its predecessors states in the Americas prior to the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1783. The British monarchy of the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland—later named the Kingdom of Great Britain, of the British Isles and Western Europe—governed many colonies in the Americas beginning in 1585. From 1607, numerous permanent English settlements were made, ultimately reaching from Hudson Bay, to the Mississippi River and the Caribbean Sea. Much of these territories were occupied by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous peoples, whose populations declined due to Epidemic, epidemics, wars, and massacres. In the Atlantic slave trade, England and other European empires shipped Africans to the Americas for labor in their colonies. Slavery became essential to colonial production, as on Barbados, Jamaica, and oth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slave Plantation
A slave plantation is an agricultural farm that uses enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century. Slavery Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive. Some indentured servants were also leaving to start their farms as land was widely available. Colonists in the Americas tried using Native Americans for labor, but they were susceptible to European diseases and died in large numbers. The plantation owners then turned to enslaved Africans for labor. In 1665, there were fewer than 500 Africans in Virginia but by 1750, 85 percent of the 235,000 slaves in the Thirteen Colonies lived in the southern colonies, Virginia included. Africans made up 40 percent of the South's population. According to the 1840 United States census, one out of every four families in Virginia owned slaves. There were over 100 plantation-owners who owned over 100 slaves. The number of slaves in the 15 States was jus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Telford
Thomas Telford (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and related bridges, he was dubbed the 'Colossus of Roads' (a pun on the Colossus of Rhodes), and, reflecting his command of all types of civil engineering in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he held for 14 years until his death. The town of Telford in Shropshire was named after him. Early career Telford was born on 9 August 1757, at Glendinning, a hill farm east of Eskdalemuir Kirk, in the rural List of Church of Scotland parishes, parish of Westerkirk, in Eskdale, Dumfries and Galloway, Eskdale, Dumfriesshire. His father John Telford, a shepherd, died soon after Thomas was born. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
