NESBITT, Albert (d.1753), of Coleman St., London and Putney, Mdx.

Nesbitt came over from Ireland and set up in business in London as a Baltic merchant c.1717. After his marriage, he went into partnership with his brother-in-law Nathaniel Gould, trading in Coleman Street under the name of Gould and Nesbitt. After Gould’s death in 1738, Nesbitt took his nephew, Arnold Nesbitt into partnership, trading under the style of Nesbitt and Arnold. He appears to have been concerned in the wine trade with France. The wealth he acquired as a merchant enabled him to purchase his family’s estates in Ireland from his elder brother Thomas c.1737.Bd. Trade Jnl. 1722-8, pp. 78, 319-20; A. and C. Nesbitt, Nesbitt Fam. 37, 39, 41; Cal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1742-5, pp. 505, 579, 702. Returned unopposed for Huntingdon at a by-election in 1741, after standing unsuccessfully for it at the general election that year against Lord Sandwich’s candidates, he voted consistently with the Administration. In 1747 Sandwich, now a member of the Government, wrote to Pelham: ‘As for Mr. Nesbitt, my only objection to him is that I can’t choose him for Huntingdon without hurting if not endangering, my interest in that borough’,25 May 1747 (N.S.), Newcastle (Clumber) mss. so he nominated him for Mitchell instead. He died suddenly on 12 Jan. 1753, leaving his Irish estates to his daughter, and his business, together with the property he had purchased in and around Winchelsea, to his nephew.PCC 24 Searle.