Charles Alexander Tomes

Charles Alexander Tomes (October 25, 1854 – July 28, 1933) and Francis Tomes Jr. (1813–1898), who was a prominent merchant who owned until 1877 a large Victorian mansion, on Putnam Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut, that had been designed by Calvert Vaux with a landscape design by Frederick Law Olmsted.

He attended St. John's School in Sing Sing, New York, and, subsequently, Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1871.

Career St. George Building, head office of the Shewan, Tomes & Co. with the flag of the firm hoisted around 1908. Tomes' father ran the family's importing business, Francis Tomes & Co., which his grandfather had started in 1815 and managed until the 1940s. Between 1887 and 1888, he made a trip around the world, Tomes and Robert Shewan, both former employees of Russell and Company, acquired the remains of the operation and changed its name to Shewan, Tomes & Co., of which Tomes became Tai-pan, in 1895.

In 1901, Shewan, Tomes & Co. contributed to the foundation of helped the China Light and Power Company,

Personal life On March 20, 1890, married Harriot Constance Budd Hancock, at St. John's Cathedral in Hong Kong. She was the daughter of Alfred Hancock of Scotland and Harriot Elizabeth Rider, née Budd. Gertrude Margaret Tomes (b. 1893), who married Major R. D. Crawford of the British Royal Artillery, in 1916. Francis H. Tomes, who married Lelia Baldwin, the eldest daughter of W. Barton Baldwin in 1931. Hetty E. Tomes. Joan Elspeth Tomes (1901–1980), who married Arthur Baldwin, 3rd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, the son of Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in 1936.

Tomes was a member of the Harvard Club and the University Club. After his death, several of his items were acquired by the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Tomes was a grandfather of Edward Baldwin, 4th Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (1938–2021), who was one of the ninety elected hereditary peers who remained after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999.