Russell Sturgis (1805–1887)

Sturgis was born 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.[1][2] 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.[3]

His paternal grandparents were Russell Sturgis, a noted merchant, and his wife Elizabeth (née Perkins) Sturgis (a sister of merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins), both of archetypical Boston Brahmin families.[4] Through his grand-uncle Thomas Sturgis (the younger brother of his grandfather Russell), he was a second cousin of architect and art critic Russell Sturgis (who married Sarah Maria Barney, a daughter of Danford Newton Barney, a president of Wells Fargo & Company).[5]

Sturgis went to Harvard College, at the age of twelve, graduating with the class of 1823 where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.[6] He studied law at Northampton, Massachusetts.[7]

Russell and Sturgis's former office along the Pasig River in Manila, 1900.

In 1828, after his second marriage, he made his first voyage abroad then practiced law in Boston for a time. He sailed for Canton in 1833 on behalf of opium trader John Perkins Cushing,[7] settling for some time in Macau where Lady Elizabeth Napier, wife of British emissary William John, 9th Lord Napier, found him "very intelligent".[8] While he was there, his portrait and those of three of his four children by second wife were painted by the English portraitist George Chinnery. In Asia, he entered a succession of trading firms (Russell & Sturgis of Manila; Russell, Sturgis & Co. of Canton; Russell & Co.), and in 1842 he became a full partner.[9]

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 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.[9] He accepted and ultimately became head of the firm, succeeding fellow American Joshua Bates (who married his father's cousin, Lucretia Sturgis).[7][lower-alpha 1]

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.[12]

Sturgis married three times. He married his first wife, Lucy Lyman Paine (1805–1828), on April 3, 1828.[7] Lucy was a daughter of Henry Paine and Olive (née Lyman) Paine. Her paternal grandfather was Robert Treat Paine, the lawyer and politician who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and served as the Massachusetts' first Attorney General.[13] Lucy died, aged 22, on August 20, 1828, just four months after their marriage.[7]

On September 28, 1829, Sturgis was married to his second wife, Mary Greene Hubbard (1806–1837), a daughter of John Hubbard and Jane (née Parkinson) Hubbard. Before her death in Manila on September 17, 1837, they were the parents of four children, the youngest of whom (a daughter named Mary) died in infancy:[6]

• Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1831–1899),[14] who married Susan Codman Welles (1832–1862), a daughter of Benjamin Welles.[15] After her death, he married Margaret Cenos McCulloh (1835–1927), a daughter of Speaker James W. McCulloh.[16]
• Lucy Lyman Paine Sturgis (1833–1907), who married Col. Charles Russell Codman (1829–1918), an uncle to Ogden Codman Jr.[17]
• John Hubbard Sturgis (1834–1888),[18] an architect who married Frances Anne Codman (a half-sister to Lucy's husband Charles).[17]

After the death of his second wife, he married, for a third time, to Julia Overing Boit (1823–1888) on June 4, 1846.[19] a daughter of Eleanor Auchmuty (née Jones) Boit and John Boit Jr.,[20] one of the first Americans involved in the maritime fur trade.[21] With Julia, he 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.[22] After her death in 1886, he married Marie "Mariette" Eveleen Meredith, a daughter of the novelist George Meredith, in 1896.[23]
• 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.[24]
• 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.[25]
• Howard Overing Sturgis (1855–1920), a novelist and close friend of Henry James and Edith Wharton.[26] 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.[26]

Sturgis died at his country seat in Leatherhead, Surrey on November 2, 1887. His widow also died there, less than a year later, on May 31, 1888.[7]

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