The Enduring Simond Legacy: Introduction

Louisa Mariane Simond married John Trevelyan in St James’s church, Piccadilly, in 1757. John Trevelyan was heir to a baronetcy and born to inherit Nettlecombe Court in Somerset. Louisa’s background was less conventional. Her parents Peter Simond and Susanne Groteste were Huguenots whose families had fled religious persecution in France. Peter Simond was born in 1691 while his family was living in a rudimentary loge in Drakenstein, South Africa. Despite these challenging beginnings Peter’s remarkable success in mercantile ventures had, by 1757, enabled him to provide his daughter with a very large dowry, reportedly £20,000.[1]

Arthur Devis (1712-1787) (style of) - The Trevelyan Conversation Piece, Sir John Trevelyan (1735–1828), 4th Bt, with His Wife Louisa Simon - 584347 - National Trust

Peter Simond wrote his last will and testament in 1784, leaving John Trevelyan a deeply troubling legacy: a one-third share of “all my sugar plantations houses buildings sugar works mills lands tenements negroes [and] slaves…” John Trevelyan gifted his Grenadian property to his younger sons Walter and George in 1819. His daughter-in-law Harriet and grandchildren Walter, John, John Thomas and George were awarded compensation for a share in the ownership of 1,004 enslaved people in 1834. John’s great-grandson Henry Willoughby Trevelyan still owned a 1/48^th share of Grand Bras estate in Grenada in the 1910s when the estate was sold off piecemeal in small plots to local farmers.[2]

The purpose of this research is to establish how Simond amassed such an extraordinary fortune in the first place; how and when human property came into the family.

Go to part 1: Early life and family background, 1691-1713

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[1] John Burke (ed.), Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage (11^th ed., 1847) 989; Randolph Vigne, "The Rev. Pierre Simond: 'Lost Leader' of the Huguenots at the Cape." South African Historical Journal 39, no. 1 (1998): 1–21.

[2] PROB11/1136/157 Will of Peter Simond of the City of London, merchant; PROB 11/1750/435 Will of Sir John Trevelyan of Bath, Somerset; Trevelyan entries in the Legacies of British Slavery database, www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs; electronic copies of Grenadian deed books held by the Church of Latter Day Saints, Utah, volumes 7 and 8.

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