Reply #48: Francis Blackwell Forbes (Kerry's great-grandfather)

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Francis Blackwell Forbes (1839-1908) was a China merchant, opium trader and botanist. He and other members of the Forbes family were active in the Opium trade and China trade during the Opium Wars, amassing a large fortune. Due to his family's deep involvement with the opium trade and opium, Forbes developed a lifelong interest in the poppy and other plants, and in Chinese botany in general.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Francis%20Blackwell%20Forbes


The Forbes family of China and Boston, of which John Forbes Kerry and John Murray Forbes are members, amassed a huge fortune in the China trade, initially trading North American furs and manufactured goods for tea and other goods from China. Forbes also made a considerable fortune smuggling opium during the Opium Wars. The British wanted to keep a monopoly on supplying the Chinese with opium grown in India. However, during the Opium Wars the British ships were prevented from delivering their cargoes of opium and American ship owners such as Forbes, who could sail the final miles, made great amounts of money delivering the cargoes for the British. Forbes family members later engaged in other merchant banking and railroad investment projects around the world.

Born in France, John Murray Forbes entered the China trade at the behest of his Perkins uncles, and after his brother Tom Forbes died, and thereafter John Murray Forbes was mentored by the Chinese merchant Houqua who considered Forbes to be like a son. Following John Murray Forbes into China were several brothers and cousins, including Francis Blackwell Forbes, the great grandfather of John Forbes Kerry. The Forbes family lived and traded in China at first due to a family connection with the Perkins family. Later, some of the Forbes family sold their China trading interests to the Russell and Company, an shipping empire which was headed by Robert Bennett Forbes, and was later associated with Yale's development and endowment. Yale's Skull and Bones society was founded by William H. Russell, one of the members of the wealthy Russell family, in 1832.

The Dictionary of American Biography reports that the noted American ship captain Robert Bennet Forbes played "a prominent role in the outbreak of the Chinese Opium War."

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/F/Forbes-family.htm


(Kerry's grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was born in Shanghai in 1879.)