Attorney at Law.
Francis Robertson
1765 - 1852
This person is the subject of ongoing research. We have started by researching their relationship to the enslavement of people.
Biographical notes
Slavery connections
According to LBS, he was the son of Ebenezer Robertson "‘Of Beverley in Yorkshire formerly of the Island of Jamaica’. Ebenezer Robertson was born c. 1761, possibly in Scotland. He left £100,000. His will of 1824 (there was also a codicil of 1825) make provision for the poor in Tain, Ross-shire and also mentions kin there, as well as providing for Margaret Dunbar and their children. It mentions no estates or enslaved people: Ebenezer Robertson is known to have assigned the mortgage of the Craig Mill estate in St George to Thomas Jameson in 1801, but to date no ownership of estates has been traced, although an Ebenezer Robertson appeared in the Slave Register for Kingston in 1817". (UCL Department of History, ‘Ebenezer Robertson’, in UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership [online], London 2020, <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146638489> accessed 5 August 2021.)
He is mentioned in the will of Ebenezer Edie, owner of Hermitage estate in St Andrew, Jamaica: ‘My friends Ebenezer Robertson and George Munro of Great Britain and Francis Robertson to be executors and guardians of my children. Elizabeth Freeman Ripley to also be guardian’. (UCL Department of History, ‘Ebenezer Edie’, in UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership [online], London 2020, <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146654767> accessed 5 August 2021.)
Abolition connections
No known connections with abolition.
National Gallery painting connections
Donor: presented in 1837: NG136 (now at Tate, N00136).
Bibliography
History of Parliament Trust (ed.), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social & Local History, London 1964-, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/
Checked and not found
— Item on publisher's website
C. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1992-, https://www.oxforddnb.com/
Checked and not found
— Item on publisher's website
J. Turner et al. (eds), Grove Art Online, Oxford 1998-, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/
Checked and not found
— Item on publisher's website
UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership, London 2020, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Checked and not found
— Item on publisher's website