One of our trustees, John Carr-Ellison, whose family has deposited many important documents with the Archive Service, provides this fascinating glimpse of his family history.

This branch of the Carr family originated in the Tyne valley where they farmed and thrived by stealing other people’s cattle in the sixteenth century. Based in Dunston, they made their fortunes as Newcastle Merchant Adventurers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, doing well out of the coal trade and trading especially with London, the Baltic ports, and North America. They invested their profits in real estate and latterly became a family of sometimes indolent landowners and soldiers.

The Ellisons were also Newcastle Merchant Adventurers, and their early history was bound up with that of the city of Newcastle and the coal trade. They did particularly well out of the Civil War by following the old Border maxim of backing both sides but not a lot. They built up estates at Hebburn while a younger son established a trading enterprise in what is now New York State, and his family was a friend and backer of George Washington in the War of Independence. In the nineteenth century they too were primarily a family of landowners and soldiers.

John is now a farmer in north Northumberland, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, established farming businesses in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which have been the primary focus of his attention for the past 25 years.

An interesting example of the sort of material available from John’s family records are the journals and paintings of Harriet Carr, an 18c family member and inveterate traveller. The Trust is seeking funding to make these papers available to a wider audience so have a look at the Projects page of the website to learn more about her.