Catalogue description Letters received by Robert Nicholson (1727-1799)

Robert was the fourth surviving son of Matthew Nicholson (1677-1735/36). From 1732 to 1740 he attended Stand Grammar School as his elder brothers had done and from 1740 to 1740 he studied at Dr. Caleb Rotherham's academy in Kendal. After an unsuccessful trial apprenticeship in Manchester, he was apprenticed in February 1742/43 to Edward Cropper of Liverpool, linen draper. In 1748 he joined his brother James so that the firm became James & Robert Nicholson, merchants. This partnership continued until James' death in 1773 and in December of that year Robert took into partnership his nephew Matthew Nicholson (1746-1819). This partnership in turn continued until Robert's death.

Although the firm traded principally in linen yarn it also did extensive business in general merchandise - wool, molasses, glue, tobacco, cotton, copperas, alum, indigo etc. (see the correspondence 920 NIC/5/5, with James Nicholson). Robert Nicholson travelled frequently on business and was much concerned with the copperas works at Hurlett and Wigan. From 1755 he had the freedom of the African Company of Merchants [see the Committee Book of the African Company of Merchants trading from Liverpool, 1750-1820, 352 MD 1, p. 8]. A "family tradition" that Robert Nicholson "gave up his interest in the African trade and sacrificed a lucrative business "through his objections to the slave trade is refuted by the fact that he was still an active member of the African Company at his death. (This "tradition" is repeated by Orchard op.cit., p. 521, whose wording suggests that it relates rather to Robert's son Matthew (1759-1849), see 920 NIC/10/9).

In 1752 Robert Nicholson married Arabella Cropper, daughter of Edward Cropper to whom he had been apprenticed.

He was a subscriber to the Liverpool (Lyceum) Library, a governor of the Warrington Academy and was interested in the establishment of the Octagon Chapel, though he worshipped not there but at the Key (Kaye) Street Presbyterian Chapel. He had been married at St. George's Church, Liverpool, but at his death in August 1779 he was buried in the Toxteth Park Chapel.

See pp. 49-60.