Appendix E: Biographies

Wood

Charles Wood (Manchester, Lancashire 15 July 1804 – Street, Somerset 8 February 1859; see Image 271)1 was the son of Richard Wood (Manchester, Lancashire 21 December 1778 – Putney, Middlesex 19 March 1856), a cotton mill owner from Lower Beach and Westbrook, Macclesfield.2 His mother was Helen (Nicholson) Wood (Didcot, Berkshire 17 April 1780 – Macclesfield 2 March 1833).3 Charles attended Hipperholm School near Halifax.4 “He was a good classical scholar and could speak five modern languages.”5 On 3 September 1834, he married at Prestbury Lydia Procter (Cranage 26 November 1810 – Clevedon 22 April 1880; see Image 272).6 Lydia (Procter) Wood “was the granddaughter of the Rev. James Crabtree, Curate of an absentee Rector at Gawsworth from 1788–1818, so he lived in the Old Rectory, built in 1480, and Lydia’s mother, Alice, grew up there. Lydia’s father, John Procter, came from Lancaster and was the son of a West Indian Planter. He died as the result of a fall from his horse while hunting outside his home, Cranage Grange, Holmes Chapel.”7 It was said by a family member that “his widow, Alice, was devoted to her elder children but could not bear Lydia, who was born six months after her Father’s death. Consequently [Lydia] had an unhappy childhood.”8 Charles and Lydia (Procter) Wood had six children born in England, in Macclesfield: Helen (19 October 1835 – 27 February 1919), Catherine Elizabeth (20 January 1837 – 30 October 1920), William Nicholson (20 August 1838 – Beckenham 27 July 1919), John Edward (2 February 1840 – Macclesfield 17 April 1840), Frances Harriot (23 June 1841 – Clevedon 20 February 1930), and Margaret Jane (23 November 1842 – May 1914).9 John Edward died in infancy. Of the remaining five children, only Helen, Catherine, and William are referred to by name in Anna Whistler’s diaries, but there are several references to the three and the seven Wood children. Frances Harriot Wood says: “The whole family, excepting myself, migrated. I was a very delicate child, and was left in charge of an aunt and my grandfather, who took my father’s house off his hands. I remained with them for four years and then rejoined my family.”10 She would therefore have gone to St. Petersburg in 1847. Whether both Helen and Margaret Jane went to St. Petersburg with their parents, or only one of them did, is not clear. Five more children were born in St. Petersburg, of whom three survived into adulthood: Charles John (29 September / 11 October 1844 – 28 June 1905), Lydia (13/25 December 1845 – Clevedon 17 January 1922), Anna Caroline (31 August / 12 September 1847 – St. Petersburg 3 June 1850), Richard Gellibrand (7/19 April 1849 – Horsham, Sussex 31 January 1916), and Mary Gertrude (9/21 July 1850 – St. Petersburg 5/17 December 1852).11 Only the births of Charles John and Lydia are mentioned in the diaries. The Whistlers were in Preston preparing for Deborah’s wedding when Anna Caroline was born. The diaries break off in autumn of 1848.

Charles Wood was a Manchester cotton spinner.12 The failure of Ryle’s Bank in Macclesfield in June 1841 caused the Wood family to be ruined as well, because the loan to finance making Wood’s Pool, the source of power for the mill, was called in.13 A very wealthy friend of the family offered to save the firm if the uncle of Charles Wood considered responsible for the misfortune would retire from the firm, but the uncle refused.14 The works therefore had to be sold to settle their debts, and Charles Wood was penniless with a wife and three or four children. His wife’s marriage settlement was small.15 In 1842, when England began to permit for the first time the exportation of machinery used in textile manufacturing, Egerton Hubbard and William Clarke Gellibrand, who had successfully obtained improved machinery for General Alexander Wilson, the head of the Imperial Linen Factory near St. Petersburg, decided to import some of this machinery for themselves and enter the textile trade. Hubbard’s grandfather in England was reluctant to approve the undertaking; however, Hubbard’s uncle John had not long before met Charles Wood on the Continent and become good friends with him. Hubbard’s grandfather yielded to their persuasion and consented to have a trial made on the condition that Charles Wood join in and advise the undertaking.16 The same wealthy friend from Cheshire then offered to lend Charles Wood £2000 so that he could participate in this venture.17 In 1842, they bought land from the Russian merchant Chursinov and built the Petrovsky Spinning Mill of about 40,000 spindles in the Alexandrovsky suburbs of St. Petersburg on the bank of the Neva River, next to another mill being built by a Mr. Wright.18 Their enterprise prospered, and in 1851 weaving was added to the business and a shed for 12,000 looms built. Of the two Englishmen, Thornton and Maxwell, who were working for General Wilson, Maxwell was appointed the first manager of “Hubbard’s Mill.”19 The correspondence concerning the establishment of the Nevsky [sic: Petrovsky] Cotton Spinning Mill on 15 August 1842 near St. Petersburg on the road to Alexandrofsky (the sixth verst along the Schlusselberg Road), and the roles of Mr. Egerton Hubbard and Mr. David Maxwell, includes a Memorandum of Agreement which says: “The Foundations of the Mill to be laid forthwith and the Machinery to be selected in England during the ensuing winter by Mr. Maxwell in conjunction with and with the approval of Mr. Charles Wood as the representative of Mr. Egerton Hubbard.” Egerton Hubbard is named as a merchant of the First Guild of Vyborg and temporarily of St. Petersburg, Charles Wood as a British subject, and William Gellibrand (see Image 265) as a Vyborg first-class merchant.20

Charles Wood and his family went to St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1843.21 They are listed in 1845 as living at 30 Angliiskii Prospekt (English Prospect),22 which was in the Second Ward of the Fourth Admiralty District.23 Living with them was a governess named Miss McMaster, whose given names were probably Anne Caroline.24

The Woods remained in Russia “for ten years and [Charles Wood] made a tolerable fortune with which he retired.”25 The year of his retirement would have been 1853. After wandering for a year, he bought a property about a mile and a half from Glastonbury, then called Street House and later Abbey Grange. He wanted to be near his only brother, Rev. Richard Nicholson Wood (16 March 1816 – Weston-Super-Mare 21 February 1898), curate-in-charge of Street, Somerset.26 In 1858, Charles Wood was asked by his friend, Mr. Hubbard, to come out of retirement and “help the firm” by superintending the salvage of “some most valuable machinery” from a ship that had sunk in the Baltic Sea. He spent the autumn of 1858 in Russia and successfully accomplished the salvage, but it took its toll. He died suddenly on 8 February 1859.27 Lydia (Procter) Wood survived him by some twenty years; she died on 22 April 1880 at Clevedon.28

Charles John Wood married Henrietta Cattley (St. Petersburg 5 October 1848 – 15 May 1905). Their daughter, Ethel, married Arthur Reed Ropes, William Hooper Ropes’s son (see Ropes, Gellibrand, Hall, Prince in this Appendix).

Notes