John Heriot

Army officer, then journalist then government official (with an entry in the ODNB), whose executor Robert George Clarke (q.v.) was awarded in that capacity a share of the compensation for La Reconnaisance estate in Trinidad.

1. Born in 1760 in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland. Attended Edinburgh University but left in 1777 when his father's business failed. Army officer 1777; retired on half pay in 1783. Became a journalist, writing for The Times, The Oracle and The World. Established The Sun in 1792 and the True Britain in 1793. Became Deputy Paymaster-general for the army in the Windward and Leeward Islands in 1810 and Comptroller of Chelsea Hospital 1816-1833.

2. Heriot's obituary, which states that he was appointed Secretary to the Sierra Leone Company in 1791 as well as the founder of The Sun newspaper in 1792, shows him as having a daughter in Trinidad who also died in 1833.

3. Reportedly, Heriot's daughter Jane Louisa married Webster Gillman the younger of Trinidad (d. 1839). Other children included Amelia (unmarried by 1829), Charles William (1795-1824, a Lieutenant in the 4th Regiment Light Cavalry of the East India Company, John Hartwell (died in 1798 aged 8 at Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire) and Margaret Alicia (died in 1811 in White Park, Barbados).

4. "[Marriage, October 1816] At Exeter, Webster Gillman, jun. esq of Trinidad, to Jane, youngest daughter of John Heriot, esq." "[Death, October 1839] Lately, at Trinidad, Webster Gillman."

T71/894 Trinidad claim no. 1470A & B (La Reconnaisance).

1. Caroline Davis, ‘Heriot, John (1760–1833)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13079 [accessed 25/10/2012].

2. Annual Biography and Obituary Vol. 18 (1834) pp. 41-51.

3. Email from Jonathan Cutmore to LBS, 21/06/2013.

4. New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register Vol. 1, October 1816, p. 268. Gentleman's Magazine, Vols. 166-167, October 1839, p. 438.

We are grateful to Jonathan Cutmore for his assistance in compiling this entry.