Scotch-Irish-L Archives

Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1999-04 > 0924129737


From: "Charles.Clark" <>
Subject: Re: Commission Agent
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:42:17 +1200


Your Name wrote:
>
> I am really quite excited about the answers I have received re. "Booking
> Agent." By far the most amazing is "bookie." It is, in fact, quite astonishing
> but could be credible even for a very proper sort of man.
>
> He certainly was an entrepreneurial type. He married my g-grandmother when he
> was 23-years old. Her father had owned property and had a large country house
> near Moira. (Isaac Logan, esq.) However, Isaac died eight years before she
> married William Henry Teggart and, I suspect, she was not well off. Her
> brother inherited the property. She may have lived with her uncle (he gave her
> away at the wedding in Hillsborough.)

One area that is well worth investigating is the relationship, if any,
between William Henry Teggart and the family his wife came from. You
seem to have ruled out a relationship beween him and his father-in-law
(imagine it: the squire in hock to a bookie, mortgaged to the hilt and
overcommitted. Gets the bookie to marry his daughter, and is then able
to save face by calling everything a dowry rather than payment of a
gambling debt. But I guess you've pretty much scotched that theory!)
But there is still the question of a business connection between WHT and
the uncle, the brother or another close relative, or perhaps WHT was
born on the Moira estate. If there is a large difference in class
between the two, then it becomes more likely that there is some other
connection for them to meet.
Just because the brother was a farmer doesn't stop him having wider
connections. For example Lloyds (the insurance house in London) is based
on syndicates of "names" who are wealthy individuals wanting to get
their money to work for them twice. And many of the names were landed
gentry much like Isaac Logan must have been. My g uncle Brian Clark was
a "name" at Lloyds, for example, and he was a member of a linen
manufacturing family at Upperlands, co Derry. Membership of Lloyds might
provide one sort of connection, connections to the colonies, or India,
might provide another.

Does the Logan estate appear in any of the editions of Burke's Landed
Gentry of Ireland? Presumably the 1912, as I have just checked the 1958
without success.

>
> William Henry Teggart was handsome and had money, apparently. They had a
> productive union with eleven children and emigrated to San Diego in 1889. As
> a commission agent of the buy and sell type of things, not the bookie type, I
> am wondering if he came to San Diego with the idea of exporting oranges. He
> soon opened an orange packing house here. He kept his wine and spirit business
> (Wm.H.Teggart Ltd.) in Belfast. Oh you people have given me lots to think
> about.

He sounds to be well grounded in international business, so I would
assume that the "commission agent" bit made him essentially an
importer/exporter, working for commission from one or more businesses in
another country, rather than a bookie. The use of the term "commission
agent" for bookie is a bit of a euphemism anyway. He sounds to be a cut
above the "flash harry" sort.
Another thought: oranges are from Spain and to a lesser extent Portugal,
as are some of the wines and spirits he would have been dealing in, eg
port from Oporto in Portugal. So an expertise in oranges would suggest
an Iberian connection
Charlie

This thread: