The Baltic Merchants (1)

Within our family the "merchant of Danzig" (George Beaumont 1633-c1669) is a familiar character; less well-known is one of his nephews who was certainly at Gdansk (Jonathan Beaumont 1686-1716).

Even less was known to us about the career of another of our Beaumonts, until I decided to download the Will of "William Beaumont of Narva, Merchant" from the National Archives (PROB 11/523/128) a couple of weeks ago.

William was christened at Darton in 1666 and was respectively nephew and elder brother of the merchants George and Jonathan. At the age of about sixteen he was apprenticed for eight years to Andrew Perrott of York, following directly in the footsteps of his first cousin Josias Wordsworth (Eastland Co Apprenticeship Register).

That's all I knew until I got the Will.

Presumably it was Mr Perrott who sent William to Narva - on the very border of Peter the Great's Russia.

When he made his Will there in 1702 I don't think he can have been newly arrived there as he makes various references to the English community there and gives legacies to several godchildren.

Unfortunately for William Beaumont his time there was characterised by plague and war. Not much more than two years later Russian forces took control of the city - a much later painting shows Peter "pacifying" his forces there in 1704, with the old Town Hall (which is still standing) and Stock Exchange (which is not) buildings in the background.

I don't know if William got out of Narva or came to terms with the Russians. I don't know where he died. I don't know if he was a victim of the "sickness in Sweden," as Josias Wordsworth called it in 1710 when giving evidence in London (Journal of the Board of Trade & Plantations).

He must have been dead by 1711 when his business partner Joseph Fawthrop (another former apprentice of Andrew Perrott) registered the will in Luebeck and London.

By the Will, William left £50 to the poor of Darton "the place of my nativity" and other legacies for example to the English church at Narva and to its Minister, Charles Thirlby. Some of the legacies are in sterling and some in local currency. As a "stranger at Narva" he expected his estate to have to pay a substantial amount of tax to Sweden. His executors were his brother George of Chapelthorpe (he died in 1712), Josias Wordsworth in London, and Joseph Fawthrop. The residuary estate was to be divided equally between his brothers and sisters.