John Parish (merchant)

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John Parish

John Parish (born March 5, 1742 in Leith , Scotland , † February 4, 1829 in Bath , England ) was a Hamburg merchant. His trading deals with England and later with the USA made him one of the richest men of his time and his lavish lifestyle is still proverbial today. From 1793 to 1796 Parish held the office of the first Consul General of the United States in Hamburg .

Life

Origin and youth

Together with his mother and two siblings, John Parish moved from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Hamburg in 1756 . His father, George Parish, first went to sea as a ship's captain, but then founded a small trading company for ship materials in the port of Hamburg in 1755 . John, who had supported his father in the office since 1759, officially became his partner in 1760 after several failed attempts to find him as an apprentice in another Hamburg trading company. In the year 1761 the mother died first, shortly afterwards the father. In the years that followed, John Parish ran the company alone.

War economy, grain from the Baltic States

Due to the war economy, Hamburg's trade experienced an economic boom during the Seven Years' War , from which John Parish also benefited. While in 1759 he had given his father's business capital at around four thousand Courant marks , at the end of the war in 1763 his own capital was already around 22,000 marks Banco . In the 1860s and 1870s his business capital multiplied several times (according to Parish's own account, his capital was 38,000 marks in 1767, then in 1774, 84,000 marks, and finally in 1777, 134,000 marks). Parish profited from England's growing demand for grain, which it was able to satisfy by re-exporting grain from the Baltic States.

Parish & Thomson : pioneers in direct trade with the USA

As early as 1773 he had parted ways with his younger brother George, who until then had held a share of one fifth in the joint venture and from then on continued to operate the ship's material business. After a serious illness in 1779, Parish decided to involve his previous assistant George Thomson (also with a fifth) in the business, which the two continued under the name Parish & Thomson for the next ten years . The War of Independence of the British colonies in North America, which fell at this time, helped the company to achieve a considerable boom. As one of the first Hamburg merchants, Parish recognized and used the opportunities that lay in the new branch of direct trade in goods with North American ports. The import of tobacco and rice increased his working capital from 203,000 Mark Banco at the end of 1782 to 321,000 Mark Banco in 1789.

Parish & Co. , crisis of 1793

At the beginning of 1790, Parish separated from his previous business partner Thomson due to differences of opinion and won a new partner in Peter Möller , whom he shared with a tenth of the profit . The trading company, from then on operated under the name Parish & Co. , expanded North American trade and also purchased large quantities of coffee and sugar from the West Indies . His good reputation in the still young United States finally brought Parish the office of the first Consul General of the USA in Hamburg, which George Washington entrusted to him in 1793. When the UK trade went into a crisis that same year as a result of the collapse of some banks, Parish & Co. were also hit hard. Due to the bankruptcy of his London bank Burton, Forbes & Gregory , Parish was on the verge of ruin for a short time, but was able to save himself against all expectations through courageous sales of goods on the Hamburg stock exchange . The determination and professionalism with which Parish responded added to his already high standing in trade circles.

Parish intervenes in international politics (1795)

In 1795 Parish intervened in international politics. He provided the British troops pushed back to Osnabrück by the French Revolutionary Army with funds by organizing the sale of bills of exchange on the Hamburg stock exchange with the British consul in Hamburg, William Hanbury (1755–1798) . In addition, at the request of the British government, he took over the transport of the British cavalry to Ireland, for which he chartered 27 ships. The successful completion of the company led to a follow-up order: he was solely responsible for the transport of foreign aid troops in British service to the West Indies. Against the resistance of the Hamburg Senate, who feared for the city's neutrality, he organized a fleet of 70 ships of different flags and shipped the troops overseas from Stade and Nienstedten . With these two transport businesses alone, Parish earned more than 400,000 marks in 1795. Looking back, he later described in his memoirs, addressed to his daughter Henny, the motivation for his actions: “Was I guided by patriotism or self-interest, dear Henny? I suspect it was a mixture of both. "

'Parrish Life'

Henrietta Todd ( Henry Raeburn )

With his wife Henrietta (née Todd, 1745-1810), whom he married in 1768 and who had five sons between 1769 and 1781 ( John 1774-1858, Richard 1776-1860, David 1778-1826, George 1780-1839, Charles 1781–1856) and three daughters (first child Henrietta 1769–1811), Parish led an extremely laborious and costly life. In the years from 1797 to 1801 the expenses for the household, (re) building, traveling, horses and gardening reached an average amount of 70,000 Mark Courant. Although he wrote warning in his memoirs in 1797/98: "It was an experiment that was once successful, but people who can calculate will not dare to repeat it", but - like his sons - continued the lavish life. An octave book with Parish's notes lists the editions of 1804/05 in detail: In 1804 he entertained 1,132 people at 54 diners and a tea party (out of 101 people). The following year he had 1954 guests, with whom he drank a total of 2232 bottles of wine. The pageantry displayed in the Parish house on festive occasions became proverbial in Hamburg. In the phrase "parish life", the memory of Parish's lavish lifestyle continues today.

Retired from business and final years

At the end of 1796 Parish handed over the management of his company to his sons John and Richard and paid off his previous business partner Möller at his own request. With total sales of 352 million marks Banco in the years 1792 to 1796, the working capital of the house at Parish's departure was around 1.6 million marks Banco, excluding a reserve fund of around 1.2 million marks Banco. When John Parish finally withdrew from the business on December 31, 1797, he had private assets of around two million marks Banco. Looking back, he wrote in his memoirs:

I was only fourteen years old when I arrived in Hamburg, in a foreign country. I lost my parents at the age of twenty. […] What prospect did I have at that time that one day I would be able to take two million away with me on my back?

Parish lived for the next ten years in his country house near Nienstedten on the Elbe before moving to Bath in England after the French occupation of Hamburg in November 1806 , where he spent the rest of his life. After his death in 1828, the trading company he founded lasted until it was dissolved in 1842.

His eldest son John retired from the company in 1815 and acquired the Bohemian estates of Žamberk and Litice . He died childless and the inheritance fell to his only living brother Richard, who was married to Susette Godeffroy, daughter of Peter Godeffroy . When France was taken back by the French, he went to his father in England. Until 1948 the Žamberk Castle was owned by the Parish family, who got it back in restitution in 1990 and sold it in 2004.

literature

swell

  • Hamburg State Archives , holdings 622-1 Parish family - here mainly B 1 Memoirs ( Journal , 1756–1829); B 3 directory of the table company, z. T. with menu information ( Company at Table , 1804-1825). His memoirs, which he began to write at the end of 1797 and which he completed in May 1798, were written by Parish at the request of his daughter Henriette. The main purpose of the font was probably to pass on his experiences to the two sons who entered the business when they were young.
  • Admiralty Customs and Convoy money revenue books , Hamburg State Archives, 371-2 Admiralty College, F 6, Volumes 1–50 (The customs registers from 1733–1798 are the most important source of Hamburg's trade statistics from the 18th century. There in the registers too the names of the importers have been recorded, an approximate profile of the import trade of Parish can be obtained from them).

Representations

Remarks

  1. ↑ In contrast to the entry in the NDB , the older ADB article gives December 1829 as the date of death.
  2. ↑ Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 12f.
  3. ↑ Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 25, and the table on the development of business capital in the years from 1783 to 1789, ibid., P. 35.
  4. ↑ Quoted here from Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 70.
  5. ↑ Quoted here from Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 105.
  6. ↑ See Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 109.
  7. ↑ Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 81f.
  8. ↑ Quoted here from Ehrenberg, Das Haus Parish , p. 88.


personal data
SURNAME Parish, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hamburg entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1742
PLACE OF BIRTH Leith (Scotland)
DATE OF DEATH December 1829
Place of death Bath , England