The Stoddart Family

Ewell Court House, 2011.
Image courtesy of Carol Hill

Introduction
Our page on Ewell Court House  records that the Stoddarts succeeded the Bridges family at the property, but that they sold it to the Council in 1935 because they were unable to keep the house going. The article in question ended up with Clive Gilbert’s images of a fire at the premises in 2013 – happily, however, the damage was made good and the property is now back in business.

The Stoddarts
So, who were the Stoddarts? The short answer is that they were in shipping and the Ewell Court contingent was descended from Laurence Stoddart (died 1886), a Scotsman based in Liverpool. However, his wife was Charlotte Susan Bowring (died 1915 and cremated in Liverpool) from St John’s, Newfoundland and that gives us the key to the family. The Bowrings were very big in Newfoundland commerce and the firm of Bowring Brothers, originally founded by Englishman Benjamin Bowring, had interests in retail, shipping and much else. The whole thing is too complicated for this piece, but Stoddart and the Bowrings had been in business together for a long time and Benjamin was Charlotte Susan’s grandfather.

Bowring Brothers shop, Water Street, St John’s c.1892
Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Generally speaking, the Scottish Stoddarts were farming folk, but Laurence’s brother, Alexander, was in business with Laurence and, as Stoddart Brothers, they had owned steamships and acted as ship brokers.

Laurence’s eldest son, Laurence Bowring Stoddart, born Liverpool 1865, eventually became a director of the Bowring interests in the USA and England, along with one of the Bowrings, and was based in New York (the historical saga of the Bowring and Stoddart businesses over the years goes on forever – it would make your head hurt, as it did mine, and none of us would be much wiser in the end, so we shall move on). In 1898, in New York, ‘Young Laurence’ married May Bonner Boyd and they remained in the USA, latterly Massachusetts, until after their youngest child was born in 1919. In passing I should mention that ‘Young Laurence’ was an accomplished golfer and in 1894 he became US Amateur Champion (or one of them – there were two Championships running at two different clubs, so, for 1895, an official organisation was swiftly created to unify the whole thing under one body and set of rules and 1895 was the start of the US Amateur Championship proper). By 1921 Laurence, May and family were in residence at Ewell Court with a legion of servants, although there were some subsequent comings and goings across the Atlantic, probably for business and because their eldest daughter, Kathleen Bowring Stoddart, had settled in the US after her marriage.

The Stoddart children, all born in New York, except Shirley, were as follows:

Laurence Bowring Stoddart Junior 1899-1947 Oxford. Sold Ewell Court to the Council 1935
Frank Ogle Boyd Stoddart 1900-1998 Oxford farmer. (Ogle was an ancestral name from the Boyd family)
Kathleen Bowring Stoddart 1903-1999 married George Cabot Lee allegedly of Ewell Court
Alan Douglas Stoddart 1907-1994 farmer
Clive Bonner Stoddart 1913-1949 Lloyd’s underwriter
Shirley Carlile Stoddart 1919-2019 (born Stockbridge/Pittsfield Massachusetts)

Laurence with his Hunter
Image courtesy of Carol Hill

In the 1921 census Laurence Jnr and Frank were students at Oxford and the younger ones, except Shirley, were at school.

On 17 July 1928 at St Mary’s, Ewell Kathleen Bowring Stoddart married George Cabot Lee, allegedly of Ewell Court, but I’m assuming that he’d come over from the USA for the occasion. This must have been quite some wedding, since the officiating minister, Francis Lee Whittemore, had been drafted in from the States, his usual patch being St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Dedham, Massachusetts, where George was a Vestryman. We shall return to Kathleen and George anon, since there’s a story attached to the Lees, but for now let’s continue with the England contingent.

As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s a great shame that the 1931 census was destroyed by fire, since it could have been very useful when it finally saw the light of day. However, whatever the state of the Stoddart finances in 1935, when Laurence sold Ewell Court to the Council, it is a fact that he was getting on in age and most of the children had left home. The house would have been far too big for Laurence, May and presumably Shirley by 1935.

After Ewell, Laurence and May retained an abode in Chelsea, but their actual residence was Hoe Farm, Wheddon Cross, Minehead, Somerset. Wheddon Cross is the highest village on Exmoor and is part of the National Park. Hoe Farm wasn’t exactly a farm as we might think of it, but more of an estate, with live-in staff and also staff cottages on site.

Exmoor: Wheddon Cross View
Photo by Lewis Clarke

Laurence died at the farm on 15 May 1947, leaving £150,000 (roughly £5m in 2025 terms). The probate record described Laurence Jnr. as an insurance agent, Frank and Alan were farmers and Clive was a Lloyd’s underwriter. These descriptions were pretty bland and generic, but I don’t think Laurence Jnr. was a ‘man from the Pru’ and I don’t believe that Frank and Alan would have been getting up in the early hours to milk the cows.

May Stoddart died in 1969, aged 91, in Buckinghamshire and was buried with her husband at St Mary Magdalene Churchyard, Exford, West Somerset.

Laurence Jnr died in 1972, then resident at Cheddington Manor, Leighton Buzzard, leaving £450,815 (over £5m in 2025 terms); Alan, of Middle Halsway, Crowcombe Taunton, left £663,996 (roughly £1.4m in 2025 terms) on his death in 1994 and Frank seems to have survived until 1998, then living in Chichester district. Clive died young, in 1949. As for the youngest child, Shirley, she appears to have married and lived on until 2018.

Note: A few bits and pieces of the information about the Stoddarts have been ‘lifted’ from family trees on Ancestry, so I can’t entirely vouch for their accuracy, but most of the important details have been cross-checked with official records of some kind.

Kathleen Bowring Stoddart
We left Kathleen in 1928, having just married George Cabot Lee (more accurately George Cabot Lee III). The Massachusetts Lees would be another complicated, headache-inducing saga, if we bothered with it, but all we need to know is that they were an upper class Boston banking family, except that, rather excitingly, they were probably descended from a Captain Joseph Lee, who married a Cabot and was apparently a leading figure in ‘The Boston Tea Party’.

In the immediately direct line GCL III was the son of GCL II (known as GCL Jnr), whose sister, Alice Hathaway Lee , was the first wife of Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt. Alice died tragically young in 1884, aged just 22, leaving a new-born daughter. Had she survived, she would have been First Lady of the United States when Theodore became President in 1901.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1884
Image source: Library of Congress via Wikipedia

The Lees were co-founders of Lee, Higginson & Co, a Boston investment bank, which collapsed in 1932 owing to the Swedish Match scandal (the whole story of which can be found here). The firm did resurface in a different guise thereafter but, once again, it’s too complicated for repetition here.

GCL III and Kathleen had four children. Their first child was George Cabot Lee IV, who was born in London on 20 July 1929, after which the family settled in Westwood, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. GCL IV joined the US Marines and was killed in action in Korea in 1952. He was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Silver Star and has a memorial window at the aforementioned St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church. The full story of the window and 2nd Lt. George Cabot Lee IV, US Marines is online but you should be aware that the website is not secure – there is a much shorter memorial here. George IV is buried in North Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as are his parents and grandfather. George Cabot Lee Jr (II) died in 1950, George Cabot Lee III in 1970 and Kathleen in 1999, aged 95.

Linda Jackson © 2025