Barlow Trecothick

{{infobox officeholder

| name =

| office = Member of Parliament for the City of London

| term_start = 1768

| term_end = 1774

| predecessor = Hon. Thomas Harley

| successor = Richard Oliver

| office1 = Lord Mayor of London

| term_start1 = 1770

| term_end1 = 1770

| predecessor1 = Sir William Beckford

| successor1 = Brass Crosby

| birth_date = {{Circa|1719}}

| birth_place =

| death_date = {{death date and age|1775|05|28|1719|df=yes}}

| death_place =

| residence = Addington Park

| parents = Mark Trecothick
Hannah Greenleaf

| spouse = {{plainlist|

{{marriage|Grizzel Apthorp|2 March 1747|31 July 1769|reason=her death}}
{{marriage|Anne Meredith|9 June 1770}}

}}

| children =

| relations =

}}

Barlow Trecothick ({{Circa|1719}} – 28 May 1775) was a City of London merchant brought up in the colonial Province of Massachusetts Bay who became one of the Members of Parliament for the City of London and was Lord Mayor of London in 1770.

Early life

File:Addington Palace1.jpg

Trecothick was the son of a sea captain, Mark Trecothick, by his marriage to Hannah Greenleaf. His place of birth is uncertain, but it was probably either Stepney or else at sea.Lewis Namier, John Brooke, "Trecothick, Barlow" in The House of Commons 1754–1790 (Boydell & Brewer, 1985), [https://books.google.com/books?id=Taw7DVGrbRcC&pg=PA557 p. 557] One biographer reports that he was born on 27 January 1720 in Stepney.Bryce E. Withrow, "A Biographical Study of Barlow Trecothick 1720–1775" in The Emporia State Research Studies, Vol. 38, Issue 3 (Emporia Graduate School, 1992), p. 7 His brother Edward Trecothick was baptized there in 1721.

From about 1724, the Trecothicks lived in Boston, Massachusetts Bay, where in 1734 the young Trecothick was apprenticed to Charles Apthorp, an enormously rich English-born merchant and slave trader of Boston,{{cite news|first=Brian |last=MacQuarrie|title=At Faneuil Hall, a Move to Recognize Ties to Slavery |newspaper= The Boston Globe|url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/03/05/faneuil-hall-move-recognize-ties-slavery/8MlB1x56SAjQTUV2zuKzQN/story.html|access-date= 2019-03-06|date=6 March 2019}} serving him until 1740, and then becoming a merchant.David Hancock, [https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50005 "Trecothick, Barlow (1718?–1775)"] in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), online edition {{subscription required}}: "From c.1724 he lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he served as an apprentice to Charles Apthorp between 1734 and 1740."Foote, [https://books.google.com/books?id=yfMWAAAAYAAJ Annals of King's Chapel] (Boston: Little, Brown, 1896), pp. 143–144

Career

In his evidence to a parliamentary committee in England in 1766, Trecothick said he had lived at Boston between the ages of seven and twenty-two, was then in Jamaica for seven years, returned to New England for three years, and finally settled in London. His sister Hannah was born at Boston on 2 December 1724.

After marrying in 1747, Trecothick and his wife moved to London, where they settled around 1750, and he continued trading as a merchant, through a company called Trecothick, Apthorp, and Thomlinson, becoming a member of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers.Conrad Edick Wright, Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), [https://books.google.com/books?id=zltYMYvMvS0C&pg=PA70 pp. 70, 71]

Trecothick made a large fortune and became an alderman of the Corporation of London. In 1768 he bought the manor of Addington, in Surrey, for £38,500,{{Inflation|GBP|38500|1770|r=-4|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}, and began to build Addington Park, a new country house designed by Robert Mylne in the Palladian style, with single-storey wings.H. E. Malden, ed., A History of the County of Surrey, Vol. 4 (Victoria County History, 1912) [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43047 pp. 164–168 (Parishes: Addington)]

He soon had an estate of some five thousand acres, and went on to sit as a Member of Parliament for the City of London between 1768 and 1774, also serving as Lord Mayor in 1770.

Personal life

File:Robert Feke, Mrs Barlow Trecothick, ca. 1748.jpg, {{Circa|1748}}.]]

On 2 March 1747, Trecothick married Grizzel Apthorp, the eldest daughter of Charles Apthorp. His first wife died childless on 31 July 1769, and on 9 June 1770, Trecothick married secondly Anne, a daughter of Amos Meredith and a sister of Sir William Meredith, 3rd Baronet. There were also no children of this marriage.

Trecothick died on 28 May 1775, before his house at Addington was completed. He was interred at St Mary the Blessed Virgin Churchyard in Addington.{{cite book |last1=Lysons |first1=Daniel |title=The Environs of London: County of Surrey |date=1792 |publisher=T. Cadell |page=[https://archive.org/details/environsoflondon03lyso/page/9 9] |url=https://archive.org/details/environsoflondon03lyso |accessdate=28 October 2019 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Hughson |first1=David |title=London: Being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis and Its Neighbourhood, to Thirty Miles Extent, from an Actual Perambulation |date=1808 |publisher=J. Stratford |page=[https://archive.org/details/londonbeinganac02hughgoog/page/n360 308] |url=https://archive.org/details/londonbeinganac02hughgoog |accessdate=28 October 2019 |language=en}}

=Legacy=

His property and estate was inherited by his heir, a Harvard-educated nephew, James Ivers, the son of Trecothick's younger sister Hannah, who changed his name to Trecothick in the terms of his benefactor's will,.

Trecothick (formerly James Ivers) inherited ownership of over 500 enslaved people in Jamaica and Grenada from his uncle Barlow Trecothick.

Trecothic completed the house, but ran through his uncle's fortune and had to sell up in 1803. Charles Manners-Sutton purchased Addington Park, which became one of the palaces of the Archbishops of Canterbury and was renamed Addington Palace.