SB: I had a little wander around the internet this morning while entering all my notes on my database and there are TWO Samuel Peaches. One was b.1725, d.1790, "of Minchinhampton, Glos," a London merchant, Director of the East India Co. on several occasions, and politician. His COUSIN of the same name is our man - he was the Bristol merchant whose daughter married Henry Cruger, and in 1774, he bought the Tockington estate (including Tockington House/Manor which is now a boarding school) off Henry Cassamajor. Just to confuse things Sam's daughter Ellin had a son called Samuel Peach Cruger who later changed his name to Samuel Peach Peach, and it looks as if he might have lived for a while at Tockington House, too, though I didn't go into it all too deeply. Tockington is a small village just south of Olverton, roughly ten miles from Bristol. Sam Peach may have chosen the area precisely because there were Quaker and Methodist congregations at Olverton from pretty early on. (Google is a wonderful thing, isn't it?) The purchase of Tockington House, etc, might be one reason why Samuel P disappeared from the sugar refining scene, but then he also had ongoing interests in the Caribbean. Details for him tend to be a bit thin on the ground, but that may be because he was involved in the slave trade which isn't a very popular subject just now.
I didn't think to jot down a specific reference, to Thos. T. Taylor, I'm afraid: he happened to pop up in a B.I.A.S. article, online, about the Old Market Refinery. He was one of several men involved in setting up Bristol Sugar. I found him when I typed his name into Google out of curiosity, and he's also listed in the book Vance gave the link to, as he was a goldsmith. If you can't track him down, I'll retrace my steps and make a note of the link for you this time. I only skimmed through Sarah Henderson's will very quickly on Sunday, so would have to check the relationship details for you in case I've got it muddled.
CT: Thank you so much, you've gone to a lot of trouble for me! Yes, handy man to know, Mr Winpenny, and if he was Anthony's bro-in-law, did they get a discount on the booze? I'd have hated to be an outsider trying to set up a business in Bristol back then, because it really was all about WHO you knew. Thanks to Vance, I discovered Henry Browne trained up not just one but two of his brother-in-law's sons in the jewellery trade and the older of them went on to become his partner in 1822.
