Jacob Lettersted

Abt 1797 -

• Name	Jacob Lettersted  [1]
  Birth	Abt 1797
  Gender	Male
  Settler	28 Dec 1819	Brixham, Devon, England   [2]
  	Wilkinson's party on the Amphitrite
  Settler ID	3725
  Occupation	Brewer
  Person ID	I183871	master
  Last Modified	22 Dec 2024

  
  

• Event Map

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  Settler - 28 Dec 1819 - Brixham, Devon, England  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Notes

  Could possibly be the Jacob with estate at SA Estate 1862 Jacob Lettersted Smit wrote: Interesting about the Nightingale passenger. He was no relation but he turned out to be a very successful business man who died with no offspring. He owned a brewery in Cape Town which was later bought by what we knew as South African Breweries. If you were to visit the SAB offices in Cape Town they have a pub called The Lettersted Inn, which is named after him. One of our relatives, on my grandfather's side, was great friends with Lettersted & thought that if he named his first born son after him that the son would inherit some of the wealth. Well, that never happened! Chris Halse wrote in November 2024:I was interested in the Lettersted name shown in your book and website as in the Salisbury/Harare chartered accountancy practice that I was a partner in, one of the partners was Jacob Letterstedt Smit, known as Led. We were partners for many years and I had always assumed that his two first names were Afrikaans names because of his South African surname. My curiosity was really aroused - how could Led have the name of an 1820 Settler when he was clearly of Afrikaner stock? I had noted the slight difference in spelling in that was it Lettersted or Letterstedt? With the fact that Leds second name definitely ended with a t (confirmed by him) and that everything I found in my research (including the South African Death Notice) used the longer form of the name I have used Letterstedt throughout an article. Led said that Jacob Letterstedts wealth came from a brewery he owned in Cape Town and which was later bought by what was more recently known as South African Breweries (SAB); and that if one was to now visit the SAB offices in Cape Town one would find that they have a pub there called The Letterstedt Inn. Led also said that an ancestor was named after the brewery owner in the hopes he might inherit some of the wealth. This did not happen! My further research has found that Jacob Letterstedt was born on 15 December, 1796 in Sweden and married in Cape Town, when he was 26, the widow Maria Barendina Dreyer (previously Becker or Bekker), who was 18 years his senior. There were no children of the marriage and she died in 1848. He was born Lallerstedt [ note there is a t at the end of this family name] to Johan Gabriel Lallerstedt and Greta Kristina Palmgren, and probably changed his name because he fled from debtors arising from a loan for a failed business in Sweden. Jacob Letterstedt met his second wife, Lydia Meredith Boys, in England, she being the daughter of Captain Vernon Boys and Sarah Meredith, and they married on 9 October, 1851. They had a daughter Lydia Corinna DOligny Letterstedt who was born c. 1852 (d. 1943). Jacob Letterstedt died in Paris, France on 18 March, 1862 and his widow took for her second husband Paul de Jouvencal, in France. It is unclear who ran the business immediately after Jacob Letterstedts death as his daughter, Lydia, was only 13, but after her marriage to Vicomte Jean Loppin Antoine Etienne de Montmort Lydia and her husband ran the business under the name Letterstedt and Company until 1888 when a lease arrangement came into place. Letterstedt settled his pre-1820 debts in Sweden. He was appointed as Consul for the King of that country for the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and ennobled after a £10 000 donation to the Royal Academy of Stockholm. He was appointed to the Cape of Good Hopes Legislative Council by Governor Sir Harry Smith.

  
  

• Sources

  [S2243] Halse, Christopher. [S6] M D Nash, "The Settler Handbook", (Chameleon Press ISBN 0 620 10940 8).