Crowd Sourcing and the Dares

Crowd sourcing in our time is not unlike barn raising in the days of horse and buggy. Total strangers reach out and accomplish things that no one person could ever do alone. Both rely on a foundation of trust and reciprocity, trusting that it isn’t a one way street. For me, it is a wonderful sight when the ribs of the barn are nailed into place, even when it isn’t my barn.

In this post I am assembling what I know about the back story of the Dare family sisters and brothers-in-law of Sir Thomas Jackson – aka TJ - and I am hoping by doing this to learn more. So, let me make this clear right up front. This post is part of my own barn raising. Even so, I am also hoping that by sharing what I know that it may help others in the process.

The reason for exploring these stories is that success in banking – as in any business -  is  about connections, which is what TJ got in spades when he married the young Amelia Dare, daughter of Capt George Julius Dare and Sarah Shrieve Park of Singapore. Her father had first sailed from Calcutta to China in 1823, and then between Singapore and China 1840-45, and had been settled in Singapore since 1848. He knew the territory from inside out and back again.

Amelia’s father may have died when she was four years old, but his business connections lived on through his sons. Their ancestors, the Dare, Parke and Julius families, had been merchants, hotel keepers, army men, as well as ships captains and chandlers and generations of them had lived throughout the British Empire since the mid 1700s. As a result, they had a fluency in the language of commerce in every region, and their finger was continued to monitor the pulse of business gossip.

The women in these stories also deserve our attention. They always had their ways of contributing to their husbands’ business enterprises and connections. In one family story, Amelia’s grandmother, Louisa Caroline Julius, was proposed to by none other than Horatio Nelson when he visited St. Kitts. She turned him down. After all, he had yet to make his fortune, and she had her eye on the long game. In the end, it would be her money that bankrolled the first ship of her son George Julius Dare, Amelia’s father. After George Julius Dare died both prematurely and unexpectedly, the family had to regroup. By the time that Amelia married TJ in Yokohama in 1871, they were once again back on a firm footing.

The text that follows will only be a quick flypast describing Amelia’s brothers and brother-in-laws, with a focus on their inter-connected business involvements. I have bolded names of individuals and businesses to make them easier to spot amongst the dreck of text. Other links at the bottom of this post will link to my web site or to other articles on my blog site where more can be found about these people.

George Mildmay Dare: (b. 1840-1907) First born child of George Julius Dare and Sarah Shrieve Parke, he was initially employed by the firm of Syme and Co. in Singapore. After working there for five years, he worked for two more years at Bangkok – doing what, I don’t know. After this, he moved to Hong Kong, joined Rusden Phipps and Co at Foochow, and then spent the next eighteen years in Japan. First, he joined the Glover Trading Co. (Guraba-Shokai) in Nagasaki, and then became a partner in MacDonald and Dare. They were brokers in Yokohama that were deeply involved in the silk trade. When TJ was manager at Yokohama, he met and proposed to Amelia. She was living there with George, her mother and various siblings. The silk trade represented a significant part of HSBCs business dealings in Yokohama. After 1868, silk reeling grew into being Japan’s main export industry and the silk industry needed up front capital to operate. There is a fair bit about GM Dare in a blog piece that I did as well as in his 1907 obit.

John Julius Dare (1841-1879). Except for the story when he and his mother and older brother were on a ship captured by pirates and he was near death when they finally came ashore, I know little about him. He never married, and the only other mention that I have found so far in any public records was that he was active in amateur theatricals in Singapore where he and his brother George were both known for playing the parts of women to great acclaim. In the family, he was referred to as Julius – not John - and was remembered as a great athlete and a brilliant horseman. Behind his death certificate is a sad story. He died of cholera at the family home in Yokohama, as did his mother five days later. She had been nursing him throughout his illness. He was 38 years old. She was 62. Since he lived for eight years after Amelia’s marriage in Yokohama, TJ would have known him well, and there may also have been business ties.

Blanche Emily Dare (1843-1920). She married William Ramsay Scott, born in 1838 in Java, the sixth son of Robert Scott. His father was an East India merchant, who later became Secretary General of Java. William was also a dab hand at theatrical entertainment, often assuming a leading role in the local productions. In 1858, by age twenty, he was a clerk in the firm of William Macdonald & Co. in Battery Road, Singapore, and became partner in 1867. They did business with Jardine Matheson. Macdonald & Co. wound up sometime in the 1870s, and Scott then started up his own firm: Scott, Witham and Co., and then later in 1877, he founded the firm W.R. Scott & Co.. In the late 1880s, that firm was bought up by Barlow & Co., whose owners often served on the board of HSBC. In 1889 he was mentioned in news as being the Singapore Agent agent for "Canton Insurance Office Ltd.". [The Straits Times 11 July 1889 p.1]..He then returned to England, where he was described in the census as an East India Merchant, like his father. It was Scott who was the first to let TJ’s mother know of the birth of TJ’s son, George Julius Jackson. His other claim to fame is one that TJ’s mother would have cherished. His uncle – I believe this would be Capt. William G. Scott - was supposedly a cousin of the famed Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott. Why it was his uncle who was supposed to be related, but not his father, suggests that Capt. William Scott married another Scott. This Capt. Scott was a harbour master and lived near the site of the present Hurricane House, the Singapore residence of HM the King of Siam.

Louisa Caroline Dare (1845-aft 1915) married in 1864 Captain Charles James Bolton, born in 1839 in Singapore. If he had not already met her before, they would have met on the 16th of March 1863 when John Julius Dare brought the rest of the family up from the Cape to Singapore in the clipper-steamer Clan Alpine (her sisters Blanche and Florence had left the Cape the year before). The Clan Alpine belonged to Jardine, Matheson's and was captained by Bolton. Bolton was well known in the region as the captain of Jardine Matheson & Co.'s crack opium schooner, and when steam came, he became captain of the Glenartney. I have a hunch that he was the son of the Capt Bolton who transported convicts from Cork in 1839 – but I can’t yet prove it. Louisa’s son, Charles George Bolton was born in Singapore on 14 November 1866, so I would assume that they were based there, although she may have just been visiting.   At the time of the 1881 Census of England, Charles jr. was a naval cadet aboard HMS Dapper in Dartmouth, Devon, England.  Louisa died, at sea in 1870. Her husband remarried and died in England in 1917.

Sarah Elizabeth Dare (1847-?) married John Catto Abell in 1879 in Kobe. He had lived in Shanghai for several years before setting up as a gold and bullion dealer at Kobe in 1868. In 1873, his partnership in Abell & Herhausen finished when Otto Herhausen moved to Osaka. Subsequently, Abell set up as an independent merchant in Kobe, and was described as a bill and bullion broker. In 1886, he added the insurance business to his scope of operations becoming the agent for E.B. Watson – who in turn was the agent for the Chinese Insurance Co. – and then from 1888, Abell became the sole agent for the Union Assurance Society: Fire and Life. The business grew such that it made sense to take on a partner, and he formed Abell and Ralston with James Ralston. Sometime in 1900, after the death of Ralston, Abell took over the business until ill health confined him to bed and he died in 1903. Sarah and John’s son, John Dare “Jock” Abell joined the Kobe staff of HSBC in 1901. Before then, he had worked at the Lucas & Co. Trade and Assurance Agency in Kobe. He did not stay long at HSBC, moving on to Strachan & Co Insurance Agents in Kobe in 1904. Then in 1907, he returned to banking, serving as a banking clerk with the International Banking Corp. in Kobe, a position that lead to him becoming an accountant. Abell sr. was also very active in the Hyogo and Osaka Chamber of Commerce, functioning as secretary 1871-1888. He also served as a trustee (1897-1899) of the Kobe Regatta & Athletic Club, and was one of its longest serving members. In 1904, a year after his death in 1903, his wife Sarah is still recorded as living in Kobe, perhaps with her son.

Anna Maria Dare (1849-1931) married Whitworth Allen in 1870 in Singapore. He was a clerk with William MacDonald & Co. In Singapore - 1859 -1864, at the same time as another of the Dare brothers-in-law, William Ramsay Scott, also worked there.  After 1864, Whitworth went to Penang, in what capacity I do not yet know. Judging from the birth places of their seven children, the family was based in Panang for at least a decade, but also spent time in England. Their son, Alfred Whitworth Allen, was another of the many TJ nephews to serve at HSBC. He joined the London office in 1894, then in 1898 was posted to Hiogo where he stayed until 1904 when he went on leave, and then returned for a stint in Manila. From there he served at Foochow, and then again at Manila. Later postings included Sourabaya, Iloilo, Shanghai, Tsingtao, Ipoh, Malacca, and Kuala Lumpur. When he resigned due to ill health in 1928 he had reached the level of 9^th in staff seniority.  With respect to other familial links in the region, Whitworth Allen’s sister Amy Allen married Edmund Ironside Marsh the brother of Hong Kong Governor, Sir William Henry Marsh. Another son of Whitworth & Anna Maria was George Edward Allen. He married Mary Alice Hartigan, the daughter of Anna Marie Dare’s sister, Florence Gertrude Dare and Dr. William Hartigan, the HSBC doctor who was long active in Hong Kong and who signed TJ’s death certificate in London in 1915.

Amelia Lydia Dare (1851-1944) married Sir Thomas Jackson – the key focus of my research, so I will not natter on about him here. There is plenty elsewhere.

Alfred Henry Dare (1853-1924) was a junior with HSBC at Yokohama. Frank H.H. King writes: The last junior to be recruited in the East was A.H. Dare, a relative of Thomas Jackson's wife, and his entire career (with the exception of a year in Amoy in 1883) was spent in Japan, although he received leave to England and was on the Eastern, not the "Local British Staff". He resigned in 1893; the Court subsequently learned that the reason had been health and consequently voted him a gratuity of 1,000 pounds. Although he died in England, he was buried in Japan, next to his wife, Lena Mary Fielden, a statement of the depth of connection that he and his family felt to the place. They had four children.

Florence Gertrude Dare (1835-1938) married Dr. William Hartigan in 1881, probably in Japan. He was a native of Limerick in Ireland, and was educated at the Catholic University School and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He went to Hong Kong where he was a physician to the Alice Memorial Hospital and an examiner at the Medical College for Chinese. Dr. Sun Yat Sen mentions him as one of his significant teachers He had three papers published in the Journal of Tropical Medicine.  He was also the doctor for HSBC in Hong Kong, but not on staff as an actual staff member. It was his recommendation that European staff be provided summer accommodation on the Peak, which was where TJ and Amelia built their summer home, Creggan.  

OTHER LINKS:

Julius family Tree: on my web site.

Dares included in a MURRAY-TOLLEMACHE-PARKE family tree on my web site.

Tales of the Elusive Julius – a wee history of the fmily on my blog.

Tip of the iceberg – some musing on the DARE family tree.

MARSH family connections that connect the DARE family to Ngaio Marsh – a blog piece that I did.