Tour Scotland short 4K travel video clip of the tomb of Sir Robert Preston on ancestry, genealogy, family history visit to the Abbey Church in Culross, West Fife, Britain, United Kingdom. Robert Preston was born in 1740 as the eighth of nine children of Sir George Preston, 4th Baronet of Valleyfield and his wife Anne. The Preston baronets had been in possession of the estate of Valleyfield since at least 1534. Because Preston had four older brothers, he did not expect to inherit the baronetcy and instead turned to trade. His career with the East India Company began in 1758 at age 18 as Fifth Mate on the ship Streatham. Preston worked his way up the ranks, serving on the Clive first as Third Mate in 1761, then as Second Mate in 1764. He was promoted to captain the trading ship Asia on three voyages to the East Indies between 1767 and 1776, having been made a Commander of the Company in 1768. Preston returned to London, England, for good in 1777, and entered a business partnership with his friend Charles Foulis, who had previously managed his voyages. Using funds accumulated in the services of the East India Company, Preston was now wealthy enough himself to take over the management of several ships for the company, among them the Busbridge, the General Eliott, and the Coutts. His ships made a combined 55 trips to the East Indies in the following years. Together with Charles Foulis, Preston established himself as an insurance broker with premises in Old Jewry in the City of London. Already in his 50s, Preston married Elizabeth Brown, daughter of a wealthy London merchant and 25 years his junior, on 27 April 1790. The match further increased his fortune due to Elizabeth's large dowry. Preston was well connected in the political and artistic circles of his time in Edinburgh and London. He was friends with politicians William Pitt and Henry Dundas, diarist James Boswell, painters Alexander Nasmyth and J. M. W. Turner, and poet Sir Walter Scott. The latter said of Preston that he was " as big as two men, and eats like three." In 1800, Preston unexpectedly inherited the baronetcy when his brother Charles, 5th Baronet, died childless, their three older brothers having predeceased their father. He sold his house in Downing Street to the government, which used it as one of the seats of the Colonial Office until 1875, and returned to Scotland to the family estate at Valleyfield House. When traces of coal were discovered on Preston Island, a cluster of rocks in the Firth of Forth's intertidal zone off the coast of Valleyfield, in 1805, Sir Robert established a colliery there. After reclaiming land around the island through the construction of a sea wall, Preston used the coal to fuel the production of salt in salt pans until 1811. Sir Robert Preston donated some of his fortune to charitable works, such as financial help for the poor in Culross and Torryburn, and a hospital for elderly women in Culross. Preston only retired from business when he was already 83 years old, and closed his last London office in Old South Sea House in 1823. Valleyfield is in the modern county of Fife, the lands around Culross formed an exclave of Perthshire until 1890. The major USA TV series Outlander was made partly in Culross. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day. Find things to see and do in Scotland where you are always welcome.
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