Hiya,
The chap with Molison and Cornell interests has sent me some cracking info. Still trying to get him to join. Here's some detail for the Molisons...
The Dunbar family of N-E Scotland was distinctive and well recorded as to the titled branches, and not well recorded at all for the rest. One of the 'rest' was
Duncan Dunbar who went to the West Indies made a fortune on a sugar plantation, and with his cousin (
Milligan) came back in the 1790s to London with the idea of building an enclosed dock area to prevent pilfering- voila, the
West India Dock Company.
Duncan Dunbar prospered as a wine and spirit merchant and wharf owner in Narrow St, Limehouse Reach. The West India Docks are still there, the Dunbar Wharf is, and I am familiar with both having visited there many times. Duncan Dunbar died a wealthy man.
His 2 sons
John and
Duncan II took over the business. DDII bought out his brother and turned Dunbars into the largest fleet of sail ever assembled. It was larger than the Royal Navy. When he died it was the 3rd largest Probate ever recorded in the UK.
It held that record until some time in the 1980s. DDII died in 1862. The Dunbars had followed that charming Scottish custom of marrying their first cousins to keep the wealth in the family, and employing relatives where they could.
Hence you find that
Osbert Forsyth, a cousin, married a Dunbar, was in business with Sir John Pirie Lord Mayor of London, and whose daughter married
James Molison, another cousin and brother of
Alexander Strachan Molison.
TB was a terrible scourge.
Alexander Strachan Molison lost most of his male family to it as did his brother James. They were both Dunbar captains and very good sailors.
Alexander in DDIIs will was allowed to buy a ship. He bought the Edwin Fox. He had captained it quite a bit on the NZ emigrant trade while his brother James had mostly done the Australian convict trade.
Alexander was quite a breeder.
He married twice. Firstly
Augusta Jane Marshall, who died 1868 and about whom we know absolutely nothing.
[This could be a helpful brickwall to collapse: Pam]His second wife was a Dunbar cousin
Sarah Anne Shores. He had 7 children by the first wife and 2 by the second.
His last child was born in 1878 the year Alexander died, and that child died in
1958.
So, Alexander's life and that of his children spanned
1802-1958, 156 years!
The Captain of the Edwin Fox was his son Alexander Joseph Molison. He bought the ship for him. AJM was married to a lady from Isle of Man by the name of Rothwell.
They had a child of whom we know absolutely nothing.
[Another brickwall]When ASM heard of the death of his son, he sailed out to India and sailed the Edwin Fox home- with the body of his son on board preserved in a barrel of rum.
A melancholy trip for him indeed. He sold it soon after.
Alex's 2 daughters
Augusta Jane Molison and
Mary Jean Marshall Molison married 2 brothers named
Robertson.
The Robertson father was a sailmaker for DDII. Both the sons died early.
He
Rev Thomas Vial Cornell married another daughter and was an Executor of his will. him we know nothing.
[Yet another brickwall]All the best,
Pam
