Russell Sturgis

Russell Sturgis (July 7, 1805 – November 2, 1887) was a Boston merchant active in the China trade, and later head of Baring Brothers in London.

Early life Sturgis was born Nathaniel Russell Sturgis Jr., in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 7, 1805. He was a son of Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1779–1856) and his wife, Susannah Thomsen (née Parkman) Sturgis. His younger brother was fellow merchant Henry Parkman Sturgis (father of author Maria Trinidad Howard Sturgis Middlemore), who served as United States Consul to the Philippines.

His paternal grandparents were the merchant Russell Sturgis (1750-1826) and Elizabeth (née Perkins) Sturgis (a sister of merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins), both of Boston Brahmin families. Through his great-uncle Thomas Sturgis (the younger brother of his grandfather Russell), he was a second cousin of architect and art critic Russell Sturgis (1836-1909), who married Sarah Maria Barney, a daughter of Danford Newton Barney, a president of Wells Fargo & Company.

Sturgis entered Harvard College at the age of twelve and graduated in 1823 as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society. He studied law at Northampton, Massachusetts. That same year, after his second marriage, he made his first voyage abroad and then practiced law in Boston for a time. He sailed for Canton in 1833 on behalf of opium trader John Perkins Cushing,

In 1844, Sturgis retired to Boston to rejoin his children who had been sent there to school after their mother's 1837 death in Manila. He married for a third time, to Julia Overing Boit, and decided to return to China with his family in 1851. The steamer on which they crossed the Atlantic arrived too late to catch the onward ship from London. In their interval there, Sturgis was asked by the senior member of Barings Bank to become a partner. Their daughter, Victoria van de Weyer was married to Henry Brand, 2nd Viscount Hampden (a brother of Hon. Mary Cecilia Brand, who married Sturgis' son, Henry Parkman Sturgis, the MP for South Dorset).

In England, he lived at 17 Carlton House Terrace in London (today home to the Federation of British Artists and the Mall Galleries), and Givons Grove in Leatherhead. Although he never renounced his U.S. citizenship, Sturgis did not return to the United States and died in England in 1887.

Personal life

Sturgis married three times. He married his first wife, Lucy Lyman Paine (1805–1828), on April 3, 1828. Lucy died, aged 22, on August 20, 1828, just four months after their marriage. who married Susan Codman Welles (1832–1862), a daughter of Benjamin Welles and his wife Susan Codman. After his wife's death, this Sturgis married Margaret Cenos McCulloh (1835–1927), a daughter of Maryland Speaker James W. McCulloh, who was the center of the landmark Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), and his wife, Abigail Sears. Lucy Lyman Paine Sturgis (1833–1907), who married Col. Charles Russell Codman (1829–1918) an architect who married Frances Anne Codman (a half-sister to Lucy's husband Charles).

After the death of his wife Mary, Sturgis married, for a third time, to Julia Overing Boit (1823–1888) on June 4, 1846. She was the daughter of John Boit Jr., one of the first Americans involved in the maritime fur trade. and his wife Eleanor Auchmuty Jones. With Julia, Sturgis had four more children:

Henry Parkman Sturgis (1847–1929), who served as a Member of Parliament for South Dorset and High Sheriff of the County of London. He married the Hon. Mary Cecilia Brand, daughter of Speaker Henry Brand, 1st Viscount Hampden, in 1872. After her death in 1886, he married Marie "Mariette" Eveleen Meredith, a daughter of the novelist George Meredith, in 1896. Julian Russell Sturgis (1848–1904), a novelist, poet, librettist and lyricist who married Mary Maud de la Poer Beresford, a daughter of Colonel Marcus de La Poer Beresford, in 1883. Mary Greene Hubbard Sturgis (1851–1942), who married Lt.-Col. Leopold Richard Seymour (1841–1904), son of British diplomat Sir Hamilton Seymour and a grandson of Lord George Seymour and Henry Trevor, 21st Baron Dacre. After his death, she married Bertram Falle, 1st Baron Portsea in 1906. Howard Overing Sturgis (1855–1920), a novelist and close friend of Henry James and Edith Wharton. After the death of his mother in 1888 he moved with his lover, William Haynes-Smith, into a country house named Queen's Acre, near Windsor Great Park.

Descendants Through his daughter Lucy, he was a grandfather of Anne McMasters Codman (1864–1944) (who married Henry Bromfield Cabot), and lawyer Julian Codman (1870–1932), who was a vigorous opponent of Prohibition and was involved with the Anti-Imperialist League. Julian married Nora Chadwick, a daughter of Dr. James Read Chadwick.

Through his eldest son, Russell, Sturgis was a grandfather of architect Richard Clipston Sturgis (1860–1951) who was successor to his uncle's practice. He married Esther Mary Ogden and was the father of Richard Clipston Sturgis Jr., also an architect.