Sir George Bolton

???? - 1807


Biography

Tutor to George III's daughters and owner of the Diamond estate on St Vincent. His entry in the ODNB as 'tutor and inventor of gunlocks' carries no details of his family and says his 'intended business' in an announced departure to the West Indies in 1799 'was not disclosed', but it is clear from his will that it concerned his wife's family slave-property, the Diamond estate in St Vincent, which had according to Bolton been extensively damaged in the 1795 insurrection.

  1. Will of Sir George Bolton now residing on the Diamond estate in St Vincent [made in 1801] was proved 20/01/1807. The will begins with a recital of his debts to individuals and to the Commissioners of the St Vincent and Grenada Relief loans, from whom he had received a loan of £5700 of which £2000 had been repaid: his merchants Boddington & Sons (to whom he owed £20-22,000) had agreed to repay the balance in instalments. He went on to detail the terms of his father-in-law's Mr Lawley's will, much of which concerned 'the Estate' and the 'negroes' upon it. Under his father-in-law's will Sir George Bolton was entitled to leave to whomever he pleased the value of improvements on the estate including additional 'negroes', and he made the bequest of those improvements subject to the repayment of the debt to Boddington & Sons: the estate itself passed under his father-in-law's will to his wife's children, who included 'Miss Porter now Mrs Pocock' as well as either children or step-children with Sir George Bolton.

  2. Sir George Bolton as the 'owner' of Dido, 'a female negro belonging to Sir George Bolton' who was buried at Tidenham Gloucestershire 24/11/1805, is the subject of a brief research note, In search of Dido, which reveals nothing about Dido but contains details of Sir George Bolton's ownership of the Upper Diamond estate. The note gives Bolton's wife as Catherine Porter and the marriage in 1794: this appears reasonable in light of her daughter's identification as 'Miss Porter'. However, the only marriage traced for George Bolton in 1794 was to Catherine Bannatyne widow at St Marylebone. If this is the same couple, then George Bolton's wife had been married at least twice before.


Sources

Anita McConnell, ‘Bolton, Sir George (fl. 1790–1799)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004) available at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2802 [accessed 10/07/2012].

  1. PROB 11/1454/152.

  2. http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=48451&p=0 [accessed 06/06/2015]


Further Information

Absentee?
Transatlantic
Spouse
Catherine nee Lawley
Oxford DNB Entry

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
- 1807 [EY] → Joint owner

Legacies Summary

Physical (1)

Country house
Tutshill House [Purchased] 
description →
Grade II house, known by 1969 as St John's-on-the-Hill, and operating as a...
notes →

Relationships (4)

Father → Daughter
Father-in-law → Son-in-law
Notes →
Bolton died before his daughter Sophia Mary married Richard Worthington...
Deceased Husband → Widow
Son-in-law → Father-in-law

Addresses (1)

Tutshill House, Tidenham, Gloucestershire, South-west England, England
Notes →

Sir George Bolton is known to have been at Tidenham by 1805, and reportedly contracted to complete Tutshill House in 1806.