John Roebuck

London merchant, partner with John Farrer or Farrar, signatory of the 1782 Petition to the King for protection of the West India Islands.

1. Will of John Roebuck of St Mary at Hill proved 25/06/1798. In the will he said that most of his property was in [unnamed] estates in the West Indies and in mortgages and debts secured on other estates there. He left an annuity of £200 p.a. to his wife and £4000 each to his five daughters Jane, Maria, Ann, Elizabeth and Dorothy (in the case of his daughter Elizabeth, he had settled £3000 on her on her marriage to the Rev. John Whalley of Layton Stone [sic] in Essex, as well as advancing other sums to him, so that he instructed his executors to top up the amount already given to make £4000 in total, and similarly in the case of Dorothy the wife of William Davis, to whom he had already provided £2000), on the proviso that the legacies be paid only when his West India property [including 'negroes'] had been sufficiently realised. He left his capital in his business carried on with his partner John Farrer to his sons John and George, who were also residuary heirs.

2. One of the estates of which John Roebuck was mortgagee was the Hopewell estate; in 1777 William White the elder transferred the mortgage he had entered into on Hopewell in 1774 and the £10,000 secured by it to Messrs Roebuck & Co. John Roebuck and John Farrer [also given as Farrar] moved to foreclose on the mortgage in 1786, and had possession of the estate in 1814, when John Farrar [sic] was described as the only surviving partner of Roebuck & Co.

1. PROB 11/1308/109.

2. Jerome Wm. Knapp, Reports of Cases argued before the Committees of HM's most honourable Privy Council 1829 to 1831 (1831) 'White v Parnther' (1829).