Tomes, Francis, 1780-1869

Francis Tomes was an English-born businessman.

He was born October 14, 1780, in Chipping Campden, Gloucester, England. Due to financial hardship caused by the death of his father in 1785, Francis began working early in life as a clerk to Edward Lewis, who had a Birmingham-based trading business. In 1812 Tomes married Maria Roberts, and soon after he started his own trading business, which failed. His former employer Lewis hired him to start a branch of his business in New York City, to be called "Lewis & Tomes." Francis moved to New York in 1815 to start up the business: the firm imported British manufactured goods and exported cotton from the United States to England. His wife and two infant sons followed him to New York in 1816, and the couple had four more children (including Robert Tomes, b. 1817). The trading business became so successful Tomes bought out Lewis and became "Francis Tomes & Sons." When Tomes reached old age he handed over the control of the company to his sons Francis Jr. and Benjamin, and Tomes (Sr.) moved back to England. He died in Little Longstone, Derbyshire, England, in 1869, age 79. His trading business made it necessary for Tomes to travel frequently, both across the Atlantic to England and within the United States. Even with the great difficulties of traveling in the early-to-mid 1800s, Tomes loved to travel, especially by ship. He was less enthused about the United States and its cities. Being a relatively moderate and temperate man, he was dismayed by the debauchery of the frontier life he witnessed while journeying from one city to another throughout the Eastern, Midwestern, and Southern states. His memories of these trips make up his part of the collection, which are his travel journals.

Robert Tomes was an American physician and author.

Robert Tomes, son of Francis and Maria Tomes, was born in New York City on March 27, 1817. He attended Columbia College Grammar School in New York, and Washington College (now Trinity College) in Hartford, Connecticut. After one year at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School he continued his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1840. After studying further in Paris, he moved back to New York to start his medical practice. Beginning to write around 1853, Tomes gradually relinquished his medical business and became an author. Dr. Tomes married Katherine Fasnet of Wiesbaden, Germany, and had one daughter and two sons. The family lived in New York City, Wiesbaden, Germany, and Rheims, France. Not unlike his father Francis, Robert Tomes wrote prodigiously about his life and travels. Among his books relating to his journeys and adventures are: Panama in 1855, which he wrote after being invited to inspect the Panama Railroad, and The Champagne Country (1867), about Rheims, France, when he was appointed as U.S. Consul there. He also wrote on historic topics, translating the German publication The Black Man: The Comparative Anatomy and Psychology of the African Negro, publishing an abridgment of The Narrative of Commodore Perry's Expedition to Japan in 1857, a book on American Battles in 1861, and a three-volume work on the Civil War, which appeared in parts from 1862-1867 and was also issued in German. The remainder of his life was spent writing handbooks for Harper and Brothers publishers, including The Bazar Book of Decorum (1870), The Bazar Book of the Household (1875), Youth's Health Book (1878), and My College Days (1880). Dr. Tomes died at his home in Brooklyn, NY, August 28, 1882.