Humphrey Ewing Crum-Ewing

Born Humphrey Crum, nephew and heir of James Ewing (q.v.). Crum-Ewing was Liberal MP for Paisley 1857-1874. He was a Director of the Colonial Co., and a large-scale owner of estates in post-Emancipation British Guiana. The Humphrey C. Ewing who, according to the Argosy report reproduced by Walter Rodney, took over La Bonne Mere estate in British Guiana from George Lillie and was 'late' by 1883, when trustees were in place, was Humphrey Ewing Crum Ewing jun., the youngest son of Humphrey Ewing Crum Ewing, who had died in Demerara c. 1878. The British Guiana 1882 Directory shows James Ewing & Co. as the owner of Better Hope and Vryheid's Lust, La Bonne Mere and Montrose, while H.E. Crum Ewing was 'part proprietor' of Canefield and Lochaber.

1. The co-partnership of James Ewing & Co. (between James Ewing of Strathleven, Humphrey Ewing Crum (now Humphrey Ewing Crum Ewing), James Ewing Mathieson and Alexander Crum (now Alexander Crum Ewing) was dissolved by the death of James Ewing 29/11/1853.

Walter Rodney (ed.), Guyanese Sugar Plantations in the late Nineteenth Century, a contemporary description from the 'Argosy' (1979), p. 69; John Guthrie Smith and John Oswald Mitchell, The old country houses of the old Glasgow gentry (1878), 'XXI Cathkin' reported the sudden death of Humphrey Ewing Crum Ewing jun. in Demerara 'while this work was about to go through the press.'

1. Edinburgh Gazette 6486 24/04/1855, p. 476.