Admiral Beecroft

I’ve just had an email asking me if I was any relation to Admiral Beecroft.  This gave me pause for thought, partly because I don’t know of any Admiral Beecroft.  Do you?

And partly because I wouldn’t know if he was a relative even if he was.  The Beecroft side of the family is my mother’s, and I don’t know even what my grandparents’ first names were, let alone any relatives further back than that.

When I was googling to see if I could find Admiral Beecroft, I did come across a John Beecroft, British Consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin who had splendid mutton-chop whiskers and apparently was

“H.M.’s first consul for Bights of Benin and Biafra. In this capacity he did very good work and was instrumental in making many of the treaties for the suppression of the export slave trade. The naval expedition of 1841 up the Niger under Captain Bird Allen would have suftered even more terribly than it did had it not been for the prompt action taken by Governor Beecroft in going to their rescue. Governor Beecroft was the first to discover and survey the Cross river as far as the rapids.”

It would be interesting if he was a relative, but I have no way of knowing (not without some hefty genealogical research for which I don’t have the tools or time.)  He probably wasn’t, though.  I’ve always thought we were a lot more lower deck than that.