Thomas Barton (1695–1780) was an Irish-born merchant who established himself in the wine trade at Bordeaux and became a spokesman for the “British factory”, as the city’s anglophone négociants were known. He amassed a considerable fortune, much of which he invested in landed estate in Ireland, and founded the family that for several generations controlled the Barton & Guestier wine brand and continues to own two of the grand cru vineyards of the Médoc.
Birth and marriage Born on 21 December 1695,Anthony Barton and Claude Petit-Castelli, La Saga des Barton, Editions Manya, Levallois, 1991, p. 10. His age was recorded as 85 years in the Bordeaux registration of his death, 1780, (ibid, p. 84) but contemporary Irish newspaper reports stated he was then aged 88: Saunders’s News-Letter, Dublin, 14 November 1780, p. 2; Hibernian Journal, 15 November 1780, p. 3. he was a son of William and Elizabeth (née Dickson) Barton of Curraghmore in County Fermanagh, and a male line descendant of Protestants from Norwich who had settled in Ulster early in the same century.William Copeland Trimble, The History of Enniskillen, with reference to some manors in Co. Fermanagh and other subjects, Enniskillen, 1919, Vol. I, pp. 130, 182; J. B. Cunningham, Mysterious Boa Island, the Culture and History of the Largest Island inside Ireland, St Davog’s Press, Belleek, 1992, pp. 7-9. He was, by his own account, “bred up a merchant” by his mother’s brothers at Ballyshannon, County Donegal,Cyril Ray, Fide et Fortitudine, The Story of a Vineyard, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1971, p. 6. and in 1722 he reinforced his relationship with another mercantile family of that port by marrying his mother’s cousin Margaret Delap who, aged forty-one, was some fourteen years his senior.Barton and Petit-Castelli, pp. 11-12; Cunningham, Mysterious Boa Island, p. 9.
Settlement and early success in France Soon after his marriage he went to France and, after briefly working as a factor at Marseille and then at Montpellier, he settled at Bordeaux in 1725. There he was initially an exporter of brandy,C. J. Woods, entry for "Barton, Thomas" in online Dictionary of Irish Biography. in which his wife's uncle had traded, and probably an importer of salt-beef, cereals and butter. Ireland consumed the former and supplied the latter and was already a significant market for French wine - of which, by the 1740s, it was buying more than four times the quantity shipped to England.
Barton's arrival in Bordeaux followed a period of rapid expansion in the region's vineyards (and first establishment of the appellation boundaries), and he soon began to trade in local wines, notably those of the Médoc. These he bought en primeur, matured, and regularly blended with wines he sourced from Spain to create a product that in body and colour had particular appeal for the Irish and English markets.Charles C. Ludington, "Inventing Grand Cru Claret: Irish Wine Merchants in Eighteenth Century Bordeaux", submission for Global Food History (printed in Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2019.) He was a major customer for both medium and high end wines (including Lafite, of which he was the dominant buyer by the late 1740s, and Margaux) and within two decades had become the largest shipper of the region's finest claret.Théophile Malvezin, Vol. 3, p. 270; Ray, p. 8.
His local standing was recognised as early as 1732 when he was recommended to the Duke of Newcastle (then in charge of Britain's foreign affairs) for appointment as British Consul at Bordeaux.Nathaniel Gould to Lord Newcastle, 26 July 1732: TNA, SP36/27/75. In 1744 Sir James Caldwell, who lodged with him in the city's Quartier des Chartrons for three months, thought him worth £60,000.John B. Cunningham, "The Port of Ballyshannon", Donegal Annual, County Donegal Historical Society, No. 52 (2000), pp. 7–37.
It has been suggested that his early ventures included shipments whereby Irish wool (which could not lawfully be exported otherwise than to England) was covertly exchanged for French brandy and claret (which were dutiable in Ireland).Ray, pp. 6-7. While there is no evidence clearly implicating him in this activity, he may have been party to subterfuge when conventional trade patterns were disrupted during wartime.See, for example, Thomas M. Truxes, "The Irish Merchant Community in 1757 Wartime Bordeaux" in The Irish in Eighteenth-Century Bordeaux: Contexts, Relations and Commodities, Taylor & Francis, 2023, Section 1.4 at note 99.
In April 1746, during the War of the Austrian Succession, he bought the ship Elizabeth of Bordeaux from his brother-in-law James Boyd and on the same day resold her for the same price to one Brown, an Irishman based at Trondheim in Norway. In the following year the vessel, now plying under the name De Jumfro Sarah, was seized by a privateer in the Bay of Biscay when bound from Dublin with a cargo of wheat and butter purportedly for delivery to Lisbon. The consignor was the Dublin merchant William Delap, brother of Barton's wife, and subsequent Admiralty Court proceedings determined that the vessel was most probably destined for Bordeaux, for which she had no clearance, and her cargo was condemned as contraband.Frederic Thomas Pratt, Law of Contraband of War, William G. Benning & Co., London, 1856, pp. 100-104.
William Delap was an important contributor to the rapid growth of his brother-in-law's business, both by sourcing Irish produce for him and by energetic development of an extensive distribution network for his wines in Ireland. In 1743 Barton took William's son, Samuel Delap, into his business, and six years later he made Samuel a partner with a one-third interest in the concern.Barton and Petit-Castelli, pp. 15, 21, 23.
In the late 1740s Barton's application for permission to bring timber into Bordeaux from Philadelphia for making barrel staves probably indicates he already had business with New England,Théophile Malvezin, Histoire du Commerce de Bordeaux depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, A. Bellier et Cie., Bordeaux, 1892, Vol. 3, p. 148. and in the 1750s the French West Indies were a target for his trade.Truxes.
The droit d'aubaine (whereby ownership of a foreigner's estate in France automatically became the property of the French monarch on the foreigner's death) deterred Barton from buying real estate in France, but in 1747 he took a lease of the wine-producing Château le Boscq in the village of St Corbian and commune of St Estèphe - probably thereby becoming the first Bordeaux négociant to be both a grower and a shipper.Ray, p. 8.
Purchase of Irish estates In March 1751, electing to enlarge his Irish estate (he had inherited his father’s Curraghmore property and, in 1735, had bought the late Sir Henry Caldwell’s house at Ballyshannon),Lease and Release dated 10/11 August 1735, Dickson to Barton, Registry of Deeds, Dublin, number 79.422.56688. he purchased the extensive holdings of the insolvent Everard family in and around the town of Fethard, County Tipperary, for £30,500Rev. W. G. Skehan, “Extracts from the Minutes of the Corporation of Fethard, Co. Tipperary”, The Irish Genealogist, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1969), p. 85. and somewhat later he acquired several properties in County Fermanagh from Sir James Caldwell and spent £19,500 buying the Kilmore estate of 15,500 acres on the north-east side of Lough Erne.Cunningham, Mysterious Boa Island, p. 9; Lease and Release dated 25/26 May 1755, Barton to Dickson, Registry of Deeds, Dublin, number 172.559.118153.
During and after the Seven Years' War For some time after outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756, and probably from an earlier date, he confined himself to Ireland and entrusted day-to-day control of his affairs in France to Samuel Delap. Delap now held an equal half-share in their firm which traded under the style “Barton & Delap”.Barton and Petit-Castelli, p. 31.
An Irish Revenue memorandum of 1756 observed that the firm “have a house settled at Bordeaux & have lands & vineyards in France & are to all intents and purposes French”.Memorandum on seizure by the French authorities of property belonging to Irish merchants in France, 23 September 1756: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, T3019/2941. Barton, now commonly known in Irish circles as “French Tom”, was anxious to counter suspicion that he favoured enemy interests and in October 1756 executed a declaration explaining it was at the suggestion of London wine merchants that he had leased vineyards in France. The declaration was forwarded to Henry Fox by Sir Robert Wilmot under cover of an assurance that Barton was “strongly recommended” by the Duke of Devonshire (then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and about to become prime minister).Sir Robert Wilmot to Henry Fox: TNA, SP63/414/3073.
The war disrupted shipping routes and commercial relationships, and this, together with failure of the Bordeaux region’s 1756 vintage and the local parliament’s prohibition on blending local wine with imports, presented Barton & Delap with a succession of challenges. Their operations were temporarily exiled to Angoulême, but by late 1762 peace negotiations between Britain and France were sufficiently advanced for the firm to return to Bordeaux, the Duke of Bedford (Devonshire’s successor as Lord Lieutenant in Ireland) reportedly interceding on their behalf.Bath Chronicle, 25 November 1762, p. 3.
In 1764 Barton was the spokesman for the “British factory”, the group of anglophone (principally Irish) négociants at Bordeaux, protesting against increased penalties for blending. He argued that blending was crucial to the foreign market for Bordeaux wines which, if not “cut” with local knowledge and skill, would be blended elsewhere to standards undermining their reputation for excellence. He was then spoken of as the “most considerable” among the factory’s membersLudington; Malvezin, Vol. 3, p. 282. and equal in substance to Pierre-Paul Nairac, the shipowner and slave-trader reckoned Bordeaux’s richest resident.Barton and Petit-Castelli, p. 46.
In the same year he terminated his association with Samuel Delap.Barton and Petit-Castelli, p. 41.
Family affairs Cessation of the partnership with Delap was Barton’s response to his own son William’s constant complaint that the association diluted his prospective patrimony. Born nine months after his parents’ marriage and their only child, William had been made a partner in his father’s business when aged twenty. Subsequently judging the young man extravagant and foolish, Thomas terminated his involvement in the Bordeaux operation in 1749, sending him back to Dublin to work with William Delap in servicing the Irish market for wine. Having diluted his son’s share in the business when taking Samuel Delap into partnership, Barton eliminated that share altogether in 1756.Barton and Petit-Castelli, pp. 19-20, 28, 30-31.
Relations between father and son deteriorated when signature of the latter’s marriage settlement was withheld pending agreement on his future interest in the family firm, and dispute over this issue led to litigation between the pair that reached the Irish House of Lords in 1765.House of Lords Appeals, Vol. 4a: Barton (Thomas) of Bordeaux, appellant, versus William Barton the elder, Grace Barton, Thomas and William Barton re partnership and marriage settlement involving former estate of Sir Redmond Everard in Feathard (sic), Co. Tipperary, and use of power of attorney by William Delap. Irish Exchequer Appeal. Appellant’s case and respondents’ case, March 1765 (King’s Inns Library, Dublin).
In 1768 Thomas took a nephew, John Barton, into partnership. Another nephew, Walter Johnston, had previously served as Thomas’s apprenticeBarton and Petit-Castelli, pp. 44-45. and these two were living with him at his house in the Chartrons when, in 1771, he made a will under which they were named as two of his three executors.Will of Thomas Barton of Bordeaux: TNA, PROB11/1075/307.