Abel Rous Dottin

MP for Gatton and then Southampton, and early investor and director of railway companies. Awarded the compensation for Coverley in Barbados as owner and, with Robert Chaloner, John Pollard Mayers and Henry Walker Yeoman (all of whom q.v.) as trustees of the marriage settlement of Robert Chaloner's sister Caroline Cumberbatch, for the Cleland and Farm estates in Barbados. (The marriage settlement under which Robert Chaloner was co-trustee was between Caroline Chaloner and Abraham Parry Cumberbatch and was dated 10/04/1819; it secured Caroline Cumberbatch née Chaloner for life an annual sum of £356).

1. 1st son of Abel Dottin of Granada [Grenade] Hall, Barbados. Family on both sides were planters. His grandfather (also Abel) acquired estates in Oxfordshire. His father was a sheriff of Oxfordshire. Abel Rous Dottin himself was MP for Gatton 1818-1820, Southampton 1826-31 and 1835-41.

2. Born about 1768, son of Abel Dottin [II] of Granada Hall, Barbados and Elizabeth Rous. Matriculated Queen's College Oxford 24/05/1786 aged 17.  Married 27/03/1798 to Dorothy Burnett-Jones at Chailey, Sussex. Died 07/06/1852; will of Abel Rous Dottin of Argyll Street Middlesex proved 13/07/1852.

3. Abel Rouse Dottin was listed in a Levy Book list for an unidentified parish [possibly St Andrew], Barbados, 1804, as owning 174 enslaved.

4. Will of Abel Rous Dottin of Argyll Street Middlesex [and Bugle Hall, county of Southampton) [made in 1840] proved 13/07/1852. In the will he left his property to his wife Dorothy except for his shares in the London and Greenwich Railway, which he left in trust for Dorothy Dottin for life and then equally to Dottin Walter son of his cousin George Walter of Cornhill and his cousin Cheeseman Moe of Peterborough in Upper Canada.

T71/898 Barbados claim no. 3210 (Coverley); T71/899 Barbados claim nos. 4612 (Cleland) and 4948 (Farm).

1. R. G. Thorne (ed.), The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (5 vols., London, Secker & Warburg for the History of Parliament Trust, 1986), vol. 3, p. 606; http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/dottin-abel-1768-1852 [accessed 11/10/2016].

2. John Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank, but uninvested with heritable honours (4 vols., London, Henry Colburn, 1835-1838), vol. 1 p. 3609; Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online]; PROB 11/2156. The Holburne Museum in Bath has a pair of portraits of Abel Rous Dottin and his brother, Samuel, by Thomas Lawrence. {These are no longer available at the Museum's website but can be seen through the Art Fund site; accessed 8 September 2015.]

3. Levy Book for unidentified parish [probably St Andrew], 1804. Barbados Department of Archives, RB9/3/7.

4. PROB 11/2156/167.