Eliza Elmslie

Executrix and widow of John Elmslie jun., and awarded with her co-executors William Forbes Stewart and E.F. Green a share of the compensation for Serge Island and all the compensation for Island Head in St Thomas-in-the-East in Jamaica.

1. Will of John Elmslie of New Windsor Berkshire proved 14/8/1829. In 1841 Eliza Elmslie aged 50 was living at Upper Gloucester Place with Helen Elmslie aged 20. In 1851 Eliza Elmslie aged 64 born Aberdeen Scotland 'mother in law' was living with John Foster Elmslie, his wife Helen and their family at Dorset Place, Marylebone (Helen Elmslie, the daughter of John [and Eliza] Elmslie had married her cousin John Foster Elmslie, the son of James, at St Pancras 9/4/1842).

2. Will of Eliza Elmslie widow of Marylebone [made in 1850] proved 02/12/1852. She left the 'large sum' of the arrears of her annuity on the Grays Inn, Serge Island and Island Head estates in trust to her son Graham Elmslie, Lieutenant in the 31st Regiment of Foot, with one-third of the proceeds to him, one-third to her daughter Helen, the wife of John Foster Elmslie, and one-third to her two grandchildren William Francis and Charlotte Elmslie, the children of her late son William Logan Elmslie.

3.  'John Elmslie who is said to have come from Aberdeen, and who lived for years at 21 Berners Street, London and who owned land at Oldmeldrum, was at one time a merchant in the West Indies. He was left a valuable estate in Jamaica by his uncle John Gray, F.R.S., Lord Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen 1764-69. John Elmslie, who married his cousin, Jane Wallace, at Dumfries, September 16, 1776, had twenty-one children, and he died at 21 Berners Street in 1824 [sic]. One of his daughters, Jane, married in March 8 1806, George Gordon of the Croughly family. His grandson, William Elmslie of Lloyd's, had a daughter who married in 1873 the late Dr Barnardo, the well-known philanthropist...I am indebted for this information to Mr Augustus Elmslie, London J.M.B.'.

4. John Gray Elmslie son of John and Jane Elmslie was born Sept 12 1777 and baptised Sept. 24 1777 at St Bartholomew by the Exchange was possibly the same man as the John Elmslie junior whose executors collected under the Jamaican awards for Serge Island etc, but might have been an older sibling who died young before the birth of John Elmslie jun.

T71/867 St Thomas-in-the-East Nos. 468A-D and 469.

1. PROB 11/1759; PROB 11/2163; 1841 and 1851 censuses online; Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 [database online]. Boyle's Directory of 1835 shows Mrs Elmslie at 9 Upper Gloucester Place.

2. PROB 11/2163/15.

3. Scottish Notes & Queries 2nd series Vol. VII July 1905 to June 1906 ed. John Bulloch (Aberdeen: the Rosemount Press, 1906): p. 100. Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online] shows John Elmslie of Berners Street aged 83 buried at Lewisham St Mary August 31 1822; the will of John Elmslie of Berners Street was proved 2/11/1822, PROB 11/1663.

4. Ancestry.com, London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 record for John Gray Elmslie. No record for the marriage between Eliza and John or John Gray Elmslie has yet been found.