The 1851 census shows the Legards at Lenton with their own two sons and three of Catherine's four children by her first husband Henry Ralph Beaumont. The Beaumont children were Emily (she was away), Henry Frederick, Mary Catherine, and Thomas Richard - whose names are recorded the wrong way round. Then four year old James Digby Legard and lastly Allayne Beaumont Legard, who was only three.
There was some land at Lenton Hall, and Captain Legard had ideas about agriculture. In due course he bought an estate at Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire, so the family moved there.
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| Kirby Misperton Hall, perhaps early c20 (from kirbymisperton.org.uk) |
When his parents split up Allayne Beaumont Legard ("ABL") was in his teens. He joined the army (60th Foot), and was serving in Canada when his father died. A couple of years on, (now) Lieutenant ABL chucked in his commission and embarked on a three-month trip to Colorado.
ABL kept a Journal. When he first arrived in New York in March 1872 he expected to meet a person he identifies only as HPB (Note 1) at a well-known hotel. But he found only letters -
He then pursued HPB to St. John, New Brunswick, a train journey which was delayed due to snowy conditions. HPB (who had agreed to go with ABL), now declined. HPB was supposed to be looking after a young man called [Arthur] Ommaney, but handed him over to ABL.
ABL and Ommaney then went to Colorado. ABL met many people and considered various options for investment in sheep and cattle enterprises. He was interested in share-farming.
(But when a thing seems too good to be true, as a rule, it is .......)
Before leaving Colorado, ABL bought a 320 acre property with a small house in the Wet Mountain Valley in Custer County, near the town of Rosita. He left this in young Ommaney's hands, bought a prairie dog, returned to New York, and sailed for Southampton in June, on the "Weser."
This 1872 trip was only the start of ABL's American adventures. He must have gone straight to London to leave his Journal to be printed - and to see his mother. He returned to New York in October on the same ship. His interest was still large-scale sheep farming, but his interests quickly moved from Colorado in the direction of Texas, which he thought was better (Note 2).
Sometime during, I think, 1876, ABL's elder half-brother Thomas Richard Beaumont ("TRB") turned up in Colorado. Impliedly more land was bought, presumably with family money. TRB may have been motivated as much by the "silver rush" as by the prospects for sheep-ranching, though he was engaged in both. Prior to this, TRB had been in a cotton-spinning-mill partnership in Lancashire.
Wet Mountain Valley.... A.B. Legard, of the firm of Legard Bros., who has been down in New Mexico for six weeks past, looking after his immense herd of sheep, has returned. Messrs E. and T.R. Beaumont own one of the largest ranches in the valley, and are among our most honored and esteemed citizens (Colorado Daily Chieftain, May 25, 1876).
(Note 3).
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| A Google street view in Wet Mountain Valley! |
When ABL was in London in 1872 he had obtained money from his mother (Note 5). Other writers have observed how prices would rocket when English "capitalists" arrived in town (Note 6). The Beaumont brothers' late father had inherited £50,000 (Note 7), some of which may well still have been washing around.
In 1881 ABL married, in Detroit, Michigan. Whether or not he had sold up, he certainly returned, for many years later when completing a census form in England, he noted that his elder daughter was born in Colorado City, Texas, and the younger in a place read as "Watnons" (which I suspect means Watrous, New Mexico).
Catherine Legard died in London in March 1887. Her will (Note 8) shows that her lawyers knew that money left to ABL (or to TRB) outright might end up in the hands of creditors. Indeed, in Colorado shortly after this there were hearings in the District Court in Silver Cliff (Note 9).
So apparently the eldest brother had participated in the American investments somehow (if only as his mother's executor). Since 1857 HFB had been the owner of the Whitley Hall estate near Huddersfield. He had been a Member of Parliament since 1865. In the autumn of 1887 he travelled out to Colorado; he and TRB went to see ABL in southern Texas.
Incidentally on his way back, HFB went via Washington and had a brief face to face meeting with President Grover Cleveland (Washington Critic, December 3, 1887).
Sometime about 1891, for whatever reason, ABL returned to England. After a few months he took up residence in a house at Lepton, on his half-brother's estate. Weekly meetings of a charitable "Old Folks" group were held there, but two years later ABL had moved on, and the house was offered for sale or letting.
That is the last thing I have noted about ABL except that he went next to live at Bexley in Kent. His death was registered in Suffolk as late as 1933.
Perhaps the demise of the Whitley Beaumont estate was hastened by involvement in American investments. It is far, far too early to draw conclusions, but does begin to look as though more money went to America than came back.
Main sources:
Legard, A.B., "Colorado" (London, 1872)
Colorado Historic Newspapers (online)
Colorado State Archives (catalogue online)
British Newspaper Archive (online)
(Note 1: "HPB" is Sir Harry Paul Burrard. About two years older than ABL, and probably richer (also then or later a member of the RYS), he too had been an officer in the 60th Foot. HPB had a romantic reason for being at St. John - he married there about a fortnight after ABL's visit. Despite not going to Colorado then, HPB must have had some financial involvement with ABL and the Beaumonts in Colorado, as shown by his being the plaintiff in the 1889 case.)
(Note 2: Google will find good articles on the Texas Historical Association website by H. Allen Anderson on the "Pastores" and the "New Zealand Sheep Company." These mention "A.B. Ledgard" and I strongly suppose this to be in fact ABL. Anderson says that "A.B. Ledgard" was one of three British partners who had tried sheep-ranching in New Zealand, who arrived at San Francisco in 1870, bought large numbers of sheep, and operated in New Mexico and the Panhandle of Texas. ABL did indeed make use of contacts with experience of New Zealand (starting in 1872 with a man called Bevan), and was involved in large-scale sheep operations in those states. But I doubt if he had been to New Zealand. He was only 25 in 1872, and had been in the army).
(Note 3: James D. Legard visited Colorado in 1873, so "Legard Bros" is explained; Mr E. Beaumont is not identified, and I wonder if the initial should be H. HFB and TRB however had an uncle called Edward Blackett Beaumont.... An article in 1896 called Wet Mountain Valley the "Valley of the Second Sons," and said that the inhabitants lived rough lives (they had to chop their own wood, milk their own cows, etc), had opportunities for speculation, and were generally happy (eg The Globe 25 February 1896)).
(Note 5. Catherine Legard's will, made in 1884, states that she had already made such an advance, and also that she had personally lent him £200).
(Note 6. Clark C. Spence, in British Investments and the American Mining Frontier, 1860-1901, says this about "titled persons from London," who stayed in the "best rooms of the best hotels." Spence was talking about mining interests, but it makes little difference. He expressly mentions ABL's formula (ultimately, from "Colorado" p. 67) for negotiating with Yankees, which was that they would settle for a sixth of the asking price. But they would have wised up and asked twenty times!)
(Note 7. Middleton v. Losh. This case shows that HFB's and TRB's grandparents had left an enormous total of £200,000 between four younger sons, one of whom was their father).
(Note 8. Proved in London 29 June 1887 by HFB and Rev. Richard Cholmondeley, the husband of the elder Beaumont sister, Emily).
(Note 9. Only from newspaper reports - Silver Cliff Rustler, 1887 and 1889) [I know of no connexion with Allen J Beaumont, who is prominent in the Colorado papers at this period])
(Note 10. It was suggested - Frank Barnes, Priory Demesne to University Campus..., (1993) p.202 - that Capt. Legard had an earlier wife, who had died. There is some muddle there, resolving which is outside the scope of this note).
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