Adam Wallace Elmslie

Son and co-heir of John Elmslie senior (q.v.).

1. Baptised in 1781 in Nottingham.

2. Mary Eliza, daughter of Adam Wallace Elmslie and Sarah Anne his wife, born 25/07/1810 and baptised 27/07/1810 in Marylebone. Kenwood Wallace, son of Sarah Anne Lloyd and Adam Wallace Elmslie, born 11/01/1812 and baptised 10/02/1812 in Marylebone. Adam Wallace Elmslie had married Sarah Lloyd in Holborn in 1813. Their son Arthur Cruickshank was born 1813 and baptised 1814 in Marylebone. Adam Wallace Elmslie was a merchant of Crutched Friars when his son Edward was baptised in St Olave's, London, in 1815. Another son, Edgar, was baptised in Marylebone in 1824. Of Kennington Street, Vauxhall, for the baptism of Alice May (born 1835) and Alexis Gordon (born 1838) in Lambeth in 1842.

3. His partnership with John Wybergh Shaw was bankrupt c. 1824.

4. Adam Wallace Elmslie accompanied Thomas Peel to the Swan River colony in 1829 aboard the Gilmour in 'an official undertaking in his undertaking'. His 'family business had been in the West Indies but had failed', and he took his son Arthur and daughter Sarah, who returned on the Wanstead after only three months. His allotment was 4306 acres but he considered himself entitled to more and was jealous of naval officers and very disparaging of the entire enterprise.

5. Elmslie was Secretary of the Jamaica Steam Navigation Company at a salary of £350 per annum, 1836-8. His his failure to properly to maintain the company’s share register was attributed to the company’s inability to identify defaulters when additional cash calls were made on the shares, and the spokesman for a committee of shareholders appointed to prepare accounts for the doomed company in April 1838 stated that Elmslie “gave no assistance and threw every possible obstacle in their way”.

6. He was one of ten members of the Elmslie family to whom a full allotment of shares in the company was made on its formation (notwithstanding the share offer was heavily oversubscribed) and one of the nine who immediately sold those shares at a profit. The company’s auditor observed to its chairman, Edmund Francis Green (q.v.), “I know not whether any consideration connected with the estates in the parish of St.Thomas-in-the-East called Serge Island and Island Head may have influenced you in allotting shares to ten members of one family...”

7. Living at "Bacage", Lebain, St Brelades, Jersey, in the census of 1851, age 69, retired West India Proprietor, with with Sarah and children Edward, Alice and Alexr, two servants and two 'inmates'. At Mead Villa, Hermitage, Box, Chippenham, Wiltshire, in 1861.

8. He died Q1 1873 in Axbridge, Somerset, age 93. He was shown as of Montabelle, Ellenborough Park, Weston-super-Mare in his probate: he left effects under £2000, with his executors his sons Adam Wallace Elmslie [II] and William Elmslie of St Michael's Alley, Cornhill 'Average-stater'.

1. Findmypast.co.uk, Nottinghamshire Baptisms Index 1538-1917 [database online].

2. Ancestry.com, London, Church of England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database online]; Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 [database online]

3. Edinburgh Gazette 3191 02/01/1824 p.2.

4. CO201/229, p.522, cited in Alexandra Hasluck, Thomas Peel of Swan River (1965) pp.90-91; Hasluck, Thomas Peel, pp. 91-2.

5. Henry Pinckard, Observations on the Management and Extraordinary Losses of the Jamaica Steam Navigation Company, London (1838).

6. Ibid.

7. Censuses online.

8. FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online]; National Probate Calendar 1873.

We are grateful to Jane Lydon for her assistance with compiling this entry.