Joseph Julian Labalmondiere

Joseph Antoine Labalmondiere belonged to a noble French family who escaped the revolution and settled in Grenada early in 1751. In 1758 he married Marie Reine Ricard, who bore him seven children before dying in 1768. When the widower father Joseph Antoine died in 1772, Marie’s brother Jean Baptiste Ricard claimed the guardianship of the seven orphans, and took charge of the various family properties in Grenada, Demerera ( Guyana ) and St Lucia. Ricard’s initiative to take charge became the subject of an extended dispute.

The oldest of the seven children, named Joseph Julian, came to England after a career as a planter.

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He married Elizabeth Douglas in Edinburgh in 1801. By 1803 he was settled in Bath, at 18 Poultney Street, where he and Elizabeth had six daughters and two sons in the next fourteen years.

Joseph died in Bath in 1823, and was buried in Bath Abbey, where his tablet can be seen half hidden by a later pew. His widow lived on, and died of bronchitis in 1866 at 21 Green Street, Mayfair.

Joseph wrote a long and detailed will, leaving an annuity of £1500 per annum to his widow, and another annuity of £20 per annum to Mrs Jesse Stewart Robertson, the widow of the late James Robertson. Executors and trustees were Joseph Douglas, barrister of the Inner Temple in London, and William Munro of Now Court in county of Gloucester.