Biographical Note for Lucy Rand 1777 - >1833

Born at Lewes, Sussex on October 12, 1777
Died after 1833
Married at Calcutta in India during November 1801 to Dr John Shoolbred

She was second of the four daughters of Cater Rand a prominent Lewes businessman who enjoyed careers both as a bookshop keeper and as a surveyor.   According to her father’s notes, more distant forebears included Henry (Holbech) de Rande 1477 – 1551, Bishop of Lincoln, one of the compilers of the liturgy, and the first married English Bishop.

In 1784 her father was declared bankrupt having allegedly borrowed twice on the same security, and the bankruptcy was still undischarged in 1806, though he remained active as a leading local surveyor.   The family may therefore have known financial stringencies during Lucy’s childhood.  

Lucy’s uncle Charles Rand 1754 – 1812 enjoyed a distinguished military career with the East India Company and her brother Charles Rand 1778 – 1808 would die, in Bangalore, a soldier of the EIC.  

In May 1800 Lucy embarked from Torquay headed for Madras.   The voyage was not without incident.   Their ship was burned out at San Salvadore(the island where probably Columbus had made his first American landing in 1492) and the voyage had to be completed on an accompanying sister ship.   Travelling from England to India via the is evidently less eccentric, by reference to prevailing winds, than appears from a simple look at the map, though the activities of Napoleon’s navy may have contributed an additional reason for steering clear of the Iberian peninsular. Passengers were then transferred for the balance of the voyage to Bengal to a sister ship, East Indianman Kent.  The Kent in her turn suffered, in October 1800, a bruising encounter with the French privateer Confiance. The Kent was boarded: the writer is unaware if any record exists of how the passengers nevertheless fetched up in the Bengal presidency.  It is evident, however, that Lucy Rand (and presumably others) did.

By November 1801 Lucy had recovered sufficiently to marry, at Calcutta, East India Company Surgeon John Shoolbred 1766 - 1831, he being a nephew to the prosperous London merchant John Shoolbred 1740 – 1801 and thereby cousin to Great Britain’s first ever Consul to the United States, James Shoolbred ? – 1847.

Notes of Sir William Arbuthnot indicate that Lucy Rand was mother to four children, but the compiler knows of no other reference to three of these.   The couple’s daughter, Helen Mary Shoolbred was born May 12, 1811.   Several of the letters Helen wrote from school in England to her mother or father survive:  from these and from John Shoolbred’s will dated 1830, it is apparent that Helen Mary Shoolbred was by that date her parents’ only child and heiress.   That the child was named  Helen (presumably) for her paternal grandmother and Mary for her maternal grandmother also argues against the existence of sisters.

 In December 1816 John Shoolbred sailed to Britain from India aboard the Prince Regent.   He may have been accompanied by his family.   It is not clear whether or not he ever returned to India.   He certainly would remain a member of the Asiatic Society from 1803 till his death in 1831.

By 1820, from her school in Middlesex, daughter Helen Mary Shoolbred (thus signing her name in full) was writing letters to her mother Lucy at various addresses, but ‘home’ appears to have been at various stages 27 Marlborough Buildings in Bath (1820 – 1821) and 3 South Parade, Cheltenham (1823). Both Bath and Cheltenham at this time were, famously, extensively populated by the families of EIC employees who had 'made it.  Surgeon John Shoolbred appears to have been one such.

Lucy was still alive and resident in Cheltenham or Bath when her husband died in 1831, and the family have inherited a miniature picture which is probably of her (looking remarkably young) dated 1833, the year when their daughter married a month after her twenty-second birthday.   The compiler has located no record of Lucy’s death.