William Ewart

???? - 1823


Biography

Liverpool merchant co-mortgagee with John Gladstone (q.v.) of the Belmont estate in Demerara, each man advancing £1500 in March 1803. He reportedly encouraged John Gladstone to explore the commercial opportunities offered by Demerara. His firm of Ewart Rutson, later Ewart Myers, was a consignee for slave-owners, including Bertie Entwisle (q.v.). Two of his sons - John Ewart (q.v.) and Joseph Christopher Ewart (q.v.) - became partners in Ewart Myers.

  1. The extent of William Ewart's involvement in financing slavery beyond the co-mortgage with John Gladstone is still being pieced together. William Ewart, William C. Rutson and Archibald Maxwell et al. - partners in Ewart Rutson - were parties to an 03/02/1807 Power of Attorney to William Barton of Liverpool 'to obtain possession of estates on [St Peter] Barbados'. These estates have not yet been identified. William Barton and William Ewart were parties to a deed of 1800 for Barbados with Ann Jones Clarke (q.v.), John Jones Gascoigne Clarke (q.v) and William Edmeston that might represent a different mortgage (the Jones' estate was in St Philip). On Nevis, in 1817 William Ewart, William Calton [sic] and other had a claim for £15,000 secured on Saddle Hill.

  2. His son, also William Ewart, has an entry in the ODNB as 'politician patron of higher education for women' that notes the younger man's anti-slavery and says of him: 'On 1 August 1833 he made the first of a series of annual motions for equalization of the duties on East and West Indian sugars, as an indirect attack on the use of slave labour in the West Indies.'


Sources

Checkland, The Gladstones pp. 44-45.

  1. British Caribbean Documents. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/2192358 Accessed April 28, 2020; Caribbeana Vol. II p. 31; ibid p. 327 gives St Peter as the parish for the 1807 deed; David Small 'Montpelier Estate, St John Figtree, Nevis: Contrasting Legacies on a Sugar Plantation' (May 2010) p. 32, https://seis.bristol.ac.uk/~emceee/montpelierhistory.pdf [accessed 28/04/2020], which sources the information to 'Morton's 1824 Chancery Case', i.e. Berkshire Record Office, Loveden Papers D/ELV/26, Office Copy of Nevis Chancery Court Bill of Complaint, Magnus Morton Herbert vs Richard Dennistoun et al 1824 (Loveden Papers D/ELV/26).

  2. Farrell, S. M. "Ewart, William (1798–1869), politician patron of higher education for women." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 22 Jan. 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-9011.


Further Information

Absentee?
British/Irish

Associated Estates (1)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

  • SD - Association Start Date
  • SY - Association Start Year
  • EA - Earliest Known Association
  • ED - Association End Date
  • EY - Association End Year
  • LA - Latest Known Association
1817 [EA] - 1817 [LA] → Mortgage Holder

In 1817 William Ewart, William Calton [sic] and other had a claim for £15,000 secured on Saddle Hill.


Legacies Summary

Commercial (2)

Senior partner
Ewart Myers
General overseas merchant?  
 
Partner
Peter Ewart & Co.
Cotton Mill  
 
notes →
Cotton...

Relationships (5)

Business associates
Notes →
In his will Bertie Entwisle specified Ewart Rutson as one of his two consignees in...
Business associates
Father → Son
Father → Son
Notes →
Also business partners...
Business partners