Thanks for your comments and questions.
Allow me to give you more data.
John, James and William Duncan, three brothers, born in Strathblane, Stirling, Scotland, in the mid-1700s settled in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia prior to the American Revolution. A cousin of them, Charles Duncan, was already living in Petersburg, Virginia, and had a thriving business as an Scottish merchant, slave broker (gasp) and farmer; they appear more than a couple of times in the pre-revolution times in the Virginia Gazette of Williamsburg, Virginia,
http://www.pastportal.com/When the American Revolution started the three Duncan brothers left Virginia and settled in Dublin. They appear in Dublin in the late 1700s. Charles Duncan stayed in Virginia, died in London. Tobacco was good to him.
The three brothers that settled in Dublin continued their mercantilistic ways in Dublin; James was a West Indies merchant (an euphemism for sugar importer)and lived at 17 Eccles Street, his widow appears living there in 1842, (
http://www.failteromhat.com/dublindir1842.htm ), John and William must have been in business together since they have an address in common in the Pettigrew & Oulton's directory of Dublin of earlier dates.
I found last week that John and William were members of the Dublin Merchants Corps or the Dublin Linen Hall Corps in 1798. William Duncan also appears as one of the signers of a letter to the Lord Mayor of Dublin in Dec 10 1798. It reads:
Quote
TO THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD MAYOR. My LORD, YOU are requested to call a Meeting of the Bankers and Merchants of this City, as soon as convenient, to take into consideration a measure of the "utmost importance to this kingdom. Dublin, 10th December, 1798,
Peter LaTouche*,
William Digges LaTouche*,
..
Unquote
There are more signers, including John Claudius Beresford. The LaTouches were bankers and owned the LaTouche Bank that eventually became the Bank of Ireland ... Leland Crosthwait was one of the Governors of the Bank of Ireland later on.
John and William (my ancestor) married two sisters: Rebecca and Agnes Baird of Dumfries. I don't have the marriages' dates. Their sons emigrated; John, the son of John Duncan, left for the USA in 1815, settled in New York for a while, moved to Mobile, AL, in 1820 and became a southern planter in the neighborhood of Montgomery, AL, in 1826, after the Creek Indians were defeated at Horshoe Bend. One of his daughters, Catherine Rebecca Duncan was married in 1853 to the Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, a nephew of Robert Emmet... go figure.
James and William Duncan, sons of William Duncan and Agnes Baird, settled in the Caribbean Coast of Colombia in/around 1819. James Duncan had met Simon Bolivar in Jamaica in 1815 most probably when Bolivar took refuge there.
The Duncans in Dublin were apparently in the cloth trade ... somehow it has been very difficult to get more information out of the Irish web sites. Fortunately I've been able to download a couple of books from the Internet. One is
Real Pictures of Clerical Life in Ireland, by Rev John Duncan Craig, and the other is a book about the
Crawfords of Donegal; my Duncans are mentioned in both.
I have more to tell you but I feel this message is long enough for today.
Thanks again for your interest and your comments.
Best regards,
Alfonso Duncan