| 58 | Dougan | John Dougan | | | | id: 4246
(2 images) | 13641 | 161 | 4 | 1765-1826. One of the early anti-slavery campaigners.
Mary was the daughter of John Dougan and Clarissa Squire. She was born 21st July 1804 in the West Indies where her father was Naval Prize Agent on the island of Tortola. The following year, she and her mother Clarissa Dougan, pregnant with another child, returned to the family home in Devonshire, England. Mary’s new sister, Emily Gertrude Dougan was born 28th January 1806. On 19th March that same year, both Mary and Emily Gertrude were baptised at the Holy Trinity Church at Clapham by the Reverend John Venn, a friend of her father and a fellow member of the Clapham Sect. Mary Stephen Dougan’s godfather was James Stephen (1758-1832), a close friend of her father and fellow anti slavery activist.
Mary’s father, John Dougan was born in Demerera (now Georgetown) in British Guiana on 29th November 1765. John was the son of a planter, Thomas Dougan and he had at least 2 sisters, Sussanah & Joanna and at least 2 brothers, Thomas and Robert. ( A possible third brother may have been William.) His father, Thomas had a property/plantation in Demerera , reputed to be a sugar plantation. On his death he left the estate as a legacy to his surving children. An unmarried sister, believed to be Joanna Dougan, remained on the property until her death in 1816. The property/plantation was then sold and the profits shared among the surviving siblings, who by that time would perhaps have only been John and Sussana's daughter, Martha Clement, now married to Thomas Moody.
John grew up in Demerera, and resided in the West Indies until the early 1800s. From time to time his work took him to Plymouth England and it was there that he met Clarissa Squire, the daughter of merchant Joseph Squire and his second wife Elizabeth Spurrell. After their marriage in 1798, John and Clarissa spent their time resident between their property in West Teignmouth in Devonshire and their houses in London. The Dougan history is much more comprehensively written up by family member Mary Kinsman in her privately published account, John Dougan Remembered. |