Calvert
Toulmin[*13215A] 1815 - 1886Calvert
Toulmin[*13215A] 1815 - 1886This is a photograph of a painting, the whereabouts of which are no longer known)
He was born on January 9th,
1815, and married Eliza Livingstone at the Parish Church, Tottenham on July 19th, 1838, and had four children.
A fifth baby, a boy, died before being named.
He was the first of our family to be given the Christian name Calvert,
which had wide use thereafter. Two possible origins of the name are (1) it could have been his maternal
grandmother’s maiden name, and (2) he could possibly have been named after
Charles Calvert, MP for Southwark from 1812.
He was involved in shipping throughout his adult life, and probably got
into it through his elder brother Henry Hayman. Lloyds Register of shipping lists Calvert Toulmin as a
subscriber to the register from 1834, when he was nineteen, and six years later,
in 1840, the London Directories show that Henry and Calvert Toulmin were
ship and insurance sworn brokers and general agents, at 8, George’s Yard,
Lombard Street. The 1841
census shows Calvert as a ship broker and Henry as a ship owner.
In 1844 the business address had become 31, Great St. Helens St., E.C.
Twenty years later the firm is named as Toulmin Livingston and Co., Ship
and Insurance Agents. In 1876/7
the firm Livingstone, Briggs and Co., was at the same address, and at
that time owned six vessels, Crownthorpe, Kent, Ocean Beauty, Queen of Ceylon,
Spirit of the South, and Theseus. The
ships actually owned by Calvert and Henry have not been identified as the Lloyds
Register did not list ships by owner until 1876, although the Calphurnia, a 645
ton 133-foot barque was listed in
the 1851 Lloyds Register as being owned by Toulmin & Co.
It is assumed that Calvert retired from the firm some time before 1876,
at which date he was sixtyone.
During 1861 - 1871 Calvert was resident at 69, Inverness Terrace but in Burke is listed at both 38, Inverness Terrace, W. London, and at Southey Lodge, Iver Heath, Bucks. (This latter address was listed as the residence of one O. Toulmin in the 1876 Buckinghamshire Directory. This initial could have been a misprint for the letter “C”). In 1843 the Admiralty commissioned Henry and Calvert Toulmin to organise a monthly mail service to Sydney, Australia. Their early voyages took four or five months and were criticised by the Australian colonists, especially in Melbourne and Hobart, who were aggrieved by the continued practice of mail going to Sydney first.