MESTERTON, JAMES [SSNE 6696]
- Surname
- MESTERTON, MESTERTOUN, MAISTERTOUN, MAISTERTON, MESTERTHUN, MASTERTON
- First name
- JAMES, JACOB
- Title/rank
- MERCHANT
- Nationality
- SCOT
- Region
- EDINBURGH?
Text source
James Mesterton (1625-1689), was the son of Archibald Mesterton, former governor of Edinburgh castle.
In the mid 1600s James Mesterton travelled to Sweden and became a merchant burgess of Stockholm.
James Mesterton appears in the records of St Nicholas Church in 1658, the same year he married Kerstin/Christina Jakobsdotter. Through her he came to live in and eventually inherited Nygränd 2 in Gamla Stan, Stockholm. Christina Jakobsdotter's first husband, Hans Hansson, either commissioned the building in 1651 or greatly renovated it that year. James Mesterton came to own it after Christina's death in 1668. By 1660 James Mesterton had a farm in Arboga and later owned property in other parts of Sweden.
It is presumably this James Mesterton who was involved in a case with James Porteous [SSNE 791] regarding a sum of money Porteous owed him.
James Mesterton had other Scottish connections. On 24 June 1687 he shipped a quantity of iron (worth £6958:32) to the Scottish merchant in Rotterdam, Andrew Russell [SSNE 143], which was consigned by the merchant Patrick Thomson [SSNE 6475] in Stockholm on the ship 'The Mary' owned by John Gib of Bo'ness. Another Scot shipping on the same ship was Alexander Pattillo [SSNE 7241].
Another shipment was made via from Stockholm, but via James Thomson in Norrkoping worth £1697:41 in September the same year.
James Mesterton married twice. Firstly to 'Kerstin Scrymgeour' [some sources say Kerstin Jacobsdotter, which is more similar to Christina Jakobsdotter noted above]. That Kerstin/Christina's maiden name may have been Scrymgeour is an interesting issue: was she perhaps of Scottish descent herself? In any case she had been married to Hans Hansson first, and Hansson was a fairly well-to-do Stockholm burgess. James Mesterton's apparent second wife was Petronella Scheaij. With these women he had seven children; Sara(1660-), Kristina (1664-), Peter (1671-1774), Jakob (1673-1720) [SSNE 919], Eva Maria (1677-), Petronella (1678-1752), Lucia (1680-). Several of these were baptised in Stockholm's Nikolai Kyrka between 1671 and 1681. The records of Maria Kyrka in Stockholm reveal that James buried several people in the church including a child of Alexander Pattillo [SSNE 7241] on 22 August 1684, and William Smith's child on 23 March 1694.
Sources: In 1684 he co-signed a letter in Stockholm with the British merchants Adam Leyell [SSNE 6493], Henry Leyell [SSNE 3614], John Bower [SSNE 7761], Thomas Lake [SSNE 8343], Johan Geddes (possibly [SSNE 2321]) and John Strother [SSNE 8344]. See https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/A0073901_00251#?c=&m=&s=&cv=250&xywh=2859%2C577%2C4757%2C2608
Stockholms Stadsarkivet, Maria Församling, Register över döda, 1681-1700, p.489; Stockholm Stadsarkiv, (Storkyrkan) Nikolai församling dopböker, 1623-1717, I, p.339; National Archives of Scotland, Russell Papers, RH15/106/636, f2. James Thomson to Andrew Russell, 12 September 1687. Also f5. Patrick Thomson to Andrew Russell, Invoice of iron shipped aboard 'The Mary', 24 June 1687; Svenska Riksradets Protokoll, vol. XVIII, pp.104-106; T. Fischer, The Scots in Sweden, (Edinburgh, 1907), p.32; A. Hansson, ‘Ett stockholmskt borgarhus från slutet av vasatiden’, in Fataburen, C. Axel-Nilssson (ed.), Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag,p.223; Eric E. Etzel, 'Notes on Swedo-Scottish Families' in Scottish Historical Review, vol. IX (1912), p.271; Steve Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603-1746 (Brill, Leiden, 2006), pp.161, 193, 245. With thanks to Ossian Mesterton for information from his website on the children of James Mesterton.
HouseinStockholm
Service record
- SWEDEN, STOCKHOLM, ARBOGA
- Arrived 1650-01-01
- Departed 1689-12-31
- Capacity IRON MERCHANT, FARM OWNER, BURGESS?, purpose TRADE, COMMERCE