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Individual Record for: Thomas Couts (male)

     
          
Thomas Couts         
 
          
     

Spouse Children
Isoble Grige
  (Family Record)
Alexander Couts
Thomas Couts
Benjamin Coutts
Robert Couts
Agnes Coutts
Janet Couts

Event Date Details
Birth  
Notes:
Speculation -
There is a Thomas Couts showing as b. 02 Jul 1685 in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland - IGI only - to Robert Cowts and Margaret Porteous. But unless I find Burgess etc. info, there is nothing to say he was born in Edinburgh or was this one.

Another speculation - he may have been born in Montrose? Or indeed elsewhere?
Death    
Burgess 30 Sep 1720
Notes:
Coutts, Thomas. mt, B. and G. for reduced payment, being already B. and G. gratis 30 Sept. 1720

Note: there is an entry for 'Coutts, Thos., B. and G., mt in London, gratis 7 Aug 1695
and for
Coutts, Thos, B., servitor to the Lord Provost (George Home), gratis 18 Sept 1700.

This Thomas is described as already B&G gratis - these are the only 'gratis' entries. It's not likely he'd be missing, if he's 'gratis', that is, awarded burgess status free for services or to increase trade. But the first is or was in London, and it's 25 years before the reduced payment - seems a long stretch of time between. And as far as I'm aware, this London Thomas Coutts was apparently a merchant very involved in the Darien attempt and an early 'ancestor' of the Bank of Scotland - who remained in London and his children likewise. He had a brother Patrick Coutts, merchant and banker in Edinburgh, whose son was John Coutts
Second Thomas has only B entered not B&G. This might be more likely.
BUT apparently from 1703 the 'gratis' status of burgess could be held for only five years before rights to trade lapsed (Sanderson 1996). Therefore could assume that Thomas Coutts became a burgess 'gratis' around 1715.
BUT Thomas Couts is decribed as 'Burgess' on the baptism record of son Thomas b. 1710.
Sanderson says (p.6) that 'There was also a practice of issuing burgess tickets to the Provost, Master of the Merchant Company and other such officials which they might pass on to their friends.' Maybe this could explain no entry for a Thomas Coutts 'gratis' around this time?

The children of the 'right' Thomas Coutts seem to have included a goldsmith and a tailor.

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