Robert LeBlond born August 4, 1816 in London. Married Sarah Brooker on November 19, 1837. This Robert was the printer who was in business with his brother Abraham. He is my third great grandfather.

Birth

Robert was born on September 4, 1816, in London to parents Robert LeBlond and Elizabeth Saling. Baptized on the 29th of September, parish of St. Dunstan’s in Stepney, Middlesex County, London, England.

Marriage

Married Sarah Brooker on November 19, 1837.

Children

1. Emily LeBlond. Born 1839; married Charles Henry Brutton; died Feb 2, 1882, in Indiana. Children: Lucy Brutton, Rose Brutton, Harry LeBlond Brutton, Alice Belle Brutton.
2. Robert Emmett LeBlond. Born November 24, 1840; married Sarah Jane Knight on May 15, 1863; died October 6, 1928, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Children: Richard Knight LeBlond, Robert Arthur LeBlond, Frederick LeBlond, John Abram LeBlond, William Russell LeBlond.
3. John Frederick LeBlond. Born September 23, 1842; married Emma Smith on June 10, 1874; died October 26, 1926 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Children: Alfred Herbert LeBlond, Edgar Knight LeBlond.
4. Sarah Alice LeBlond. Born 06 Feb 1844; married George Henshaw on Feb 5, 1861; died Feb 24 1898, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Children: Annie Henshaw, Arthur Henshaw, Robert Henshaw, Martha Henshaw, Mary Henshaw, William Frederick Henshaw, Edith Henshaw, Herbert Henshaw, David Henshaw.

Occupation

Robert appears in “Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975,” Vol II: G-O, page 1975. “First visited America in 1840 after having established his own business in London. He returning shortly to England and worked as an engraver in London until 1856 when he again left for America. He settled in Cincinnati, OH, and remained there until 1863 when he returned again to England. His sons remained in the U.S.”

A similar entry appears in “The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America” by George C. Groce and David H. Wallace.

The LeBlond Prints

Read “LeBlond & Co., Printers” from Antiques Magazine, June 1937, pp. 292-295. Click here for the PDF. This was written by Robert William LeBlond, who was my grandmother’s brother.

Biography

The following essay, the source of which is unknown by family members, was written by a person with the initials RSP, and focuses on Robert LeBlond’s business career.

A Forgotten Freethinker
Robert LeBlond

The spirit of Scott’s Old Mortality who re-chiseled the gravestones of the martyrs to inspire modern Freethinkers more than it does. Mr. McCabe has done a magnificent work in this direction in is Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists, and the amazing thing about that great encyclopedia is the discovery that so many famous men and women in the world’s history were Rationalists. It is in the spirit of rescuing from oblivion the memory of a pioneer – zealous though unfortunate – that I have collected the following notes about Robert LeBlond, who was not only Chairman of the London Secular Society in Holyoake’s day, but was also intimately associated with the development and production of what are known to modern collectors as “Baxter Prints.” As Mr. LeBlond is not included in Mr. McCabe’s work, I hope these notes will have the more novelty to readers.

Robert LeBlond was one of two brothers, of French Huguenot descent, who in 1840 were established in Walbrook and Budge Row, E. C. (just behind the Mansion House), as steel and copper-plate engravers and printers. Robert was born on August 4, 1816, and learned the trade of a copper-plate printer with Thomas Brooker, whose sister Sarah he married on November 17, 1837. Three years afterwards he went to America to see what prospects might present themselves to a young man in that country, but he only stopped a few months and then returned to England.

For this part of his career one has to turn to the LeBlond Book, written by Mr. C. T. Courtney Lewis, and published in 1920 by Sampson Low and Marten. Mr. Lewis is a great authority on what are called “Baxter Prints”, the method of printing in colors invented by George Baxter, and patented by him in 1836. Mr. Lewis declares that the firm of LeBlond and Co. were the first and the most successful licensees of Baxter, and among collectors their productions stand very high today – so high that the greater part of Mr. Lewis’s book is a catalogue of the various prints which they produced over a considerable period of years as holders of licenses from the patentee.

Baxter prints were produced by what he called “picture-printing in oil colors.” Briefly, it may be explained that the foundation of the print was obtained in black by the use of an engraved steel plate, and then the various colors required were afterwards imposed by means of wood blocks, a special block being cut for each color, and the printed surface having to be passed as many times through the hand press as there were colors. This was an enormous advance on anything then existing in regard to the production of pictures in correct colors, and until the inventions of chromo-lithography the Baxter process was enormously successful.

Robert LeBlond and his brother Abraham took this method up with zeal and enterprise. It will be realized that, as each color had to be applied by a separate wood-block, great care was necessary in the preparation of the color inks, and exactness in what is called the “registering’ of the plate; and LeBlond and Co. produced an number of prints relating to its opening. They then produced a long series of colored pictures of the Queen, Prince consort, and their children at Windsor, at Balmoral, or at Osborne, and a whole string of allegorical paintings – The Rose, Love’s Messenger, The Gleaner, The Spanish Lovers. These colored prints at first were intended for the wrappers of dress goods, but they soon became so popular that they appeared on ladies’ needle cases and as illustrations for ladies pocket-books and the annual volumes of poetry which were then issued. Another very extensive use was found for them as the colored pictures which then adorned the covers of music sheets and ballads, while whole sets of landscapes at home and abroad were produced and sold separately on white or gilt mounts. To this day, as I have said, the collectors are paying high prices for the Baxter prints, which either Baxter himself or LeBlond and Co. produced. I gather from the length of Mr. Lewis’s catalogue that for several years the business must have been an exceedingly lucrative one, and that Robert LeBlond drew a good income from it.

In August, 1853, we find the Reasoner, Mr. Holyoake’s journal, announcing that Mr. Robert LeBlond, of the London Secular Society, had taken a fine mansion at No. 10 Liverpool Street, City, (before the construction of the G. E. R. terminus the residence of wealthy City merchants), and that his library there would be thrown open to the members of the Society four nights a week. There is a description of the large room, with a stupendous chandelier, on the first floor that contained the library, which from the account given of the books must have been both interesting and valuable. On another occasion, in the same year, it is noted that Mr. LeBlond and his wife gave a soiree to the members in the library, and that seventy or eighty were present. In every direction at this time Mr. LeBlond seems to have been a munificent supporter of Holyoake’s work. The Potteries Free Press, a propagandist venture of Mr. C.D. Collet, had ended in debt, and Mr. LeBlond comes forward with £5 to start a fund to help. The various funds to help the Reasoner found his purse ever open. Mr. Holyoake says that in 1855 LeBlond gave him £10 on several successive Sunday mornings at South Place Chapel as loans for the Fleet Street publishing house which Holyoake was then running, but that after the fifth sum he declined any more. There was a movement to raise a fund to present a chronometer to an American sea captain who had rescued an Italian revolutionist from an Austrian gunboat in Smyrna, and Mr. LeBlond’s name is found heading the subscriptions. Then it is reported in 1855 that Richard Carlile’s widow is in poor circumstances in Milwaukee, and Mr. LeBlond forms a committee in London which raises a small fund. But Robert LeBlond was not one of those Rationalists who attained prominence merely because they had a longer purse than others. In 1853 he and Mr. Holyoake were appointed what was then called a “deputation” from the London Secular Society to visit the principal towns of the North and to hold meetings explanatory of the principles of Secularism. They went from Newcastle to Aberdeen, and excited a vast amount of local interest and opposition in Scotland. On their return a soiree and meeting was held at the Hall of science, with Mr. W. J. Birch, M.A., in the chair at which the deputation gave its report. Louis Blanc was among those on the platform.

In June 1855, we find that LeBlond signed, with Holyoake, Robert Cooper, and others, a manifesto calling for better organization of Freethinkers, and a Conference was held to further this end. The esteem in which LeBlond was held is shown by Robert Cooper’s declaration at the conference that he was “one of the most liberal and independent men who have courageously identified themselves with the cause of religious and political liberty.” “Mr. LeBlond,” he added, “is a novel example to his class.”

We cannot tell now what stroke of misfortune or imprudence brought this valuable and promising career to an end. It would appear that ill health had something to do with it, for on January 30, 1856, there was a public party in the John Street Institution, with Holyoake presiding, at which the London Secular Society presented an address to Mr. LeBlond. In it they alluded to the period of ill health and “anxious occupation” through which he had passed, and desired to express their undiminished regard. It is noted in the Reasoner that Mr. LeBlond who was “still suffering from ill health,” returned thanks and again demanded more Freethought organization for effective political action. That year saw LeBlond’s affairs further involved. It may have been that the Crimean War injured the sale of prints, but his fine house and library were seized by one of his creditors, and he resigned the business of LeBlond and Co. to his brother Abraham, who removed it to Kingston and carried it on with varying success, until 1864. That was the end of Robert LeBlond’s connection both with the Baxter prints and with British Secularism. In March 1856, he went to America with his son, now Mr. Robert Emmet LeBlond, to prepare a new home for the family. Mr. Robert Emmet LeBlond who still lives a hale veteran in Cincinnati, tells me in a letter that he was named after the Irish patriot, of whom his father was a great admirer. Unfortunately, his father had a hard struggle in the new country. He was first a bookkeeper and proof-reader to a firm of printers, and then became American agent for Blackie and Co., of Glasgow. At one time he and his sons ran a small printing business, but this was closed up, apparently in the commercial crisis caused by the Civil War, and in 1863 Robert LeBlond returned to England – to die. He was taken ill with dropsy a month or two later, and died at his brother Abraham’s house, 13 Walbrook, E. C., on October 18, 1863, at the age of forty seven. He had taken his family to the United States in 1856, and one is glad to find that his son, Robert Emmet LeBlond, has carried on for many years a flourishing business in Cincinnati. He was a small boy when the library existed in Liverpool Street, and can well remember that he used to attend the street door before the librarian had arrived in the evenings. His recollections of assisting to make the Baxter prints are still clear, and all the details are fresh in his memory, although it is seventy years ago. There, then, is the history of the labors and vicissitudes of Robert LeBlond.
R. S. P.

Residence

1840

Robert’s business was located at Walbrook and Budge Row. Presumably, he lived somewhat nearby.

“Robert LeBlond was one of two brothers, of French Huguenot descent, who in 1840 were established in Walbrook and Budge Row, E. C. (just behind the Mansion House), as steel and copper-plate engravers and printers.”

1845

“Robert Le Blond, esq.” appears in the 1845 Post Office Directory of London (UK, Midlands and Various UK Trade Directories, 1770-1941) at 7 Grove, Tollington Park, Hornsey Road. His brother Abraham has an identical entry. (“Esquire” was used as a general courtesy title for any man in a formal setting, usually as a suffix to his name, as in “John Smith, Esq.”, with no precise significance.)

1851

Robert appears in the 1851 census for Middlesex County. He is 35 and was born in Mile End in East London. Sarah is 37 and was born in Blackfriars, an area of central London, which lies in the south-west corner of the City of London. They lived at 14 Crescent Road in the Parish of Islington, and the district of St. Paul’s, Borough of Finsbury. Robert’s occupation is “Engraver Lithography letter press, and Copper Plate Printer employing 60 men & boys.” Children Emily, 12, born in Bloomsbury, a fashionable residential area in the 17th and 18th centuries, and Sarah A., 7, born in Walbrook (central London), live with them, along with two servants.

1853

“In August, 1853, we find the Reasoner, Mr. Holyoake’s journal, announcing that Mr. Robert LeBlond, of the London Secular Society, had taken a fine mansion at No. 10 Liverpool Street, City, (before the construction of the G. E. R. terminus the residence of wealthy City merchants), and that his library there would be thrown open to the members of the Society four nights a week.” (A Forgotten Freethinker: Robert LeBlond)

1856

“It may have been that the Crimean War injured the sale of prints, but his fine house and library were seized by one of his creditors, and he resigned the business of LeBlond and Co. to his brother Abraham, who removed it to Kingston and carried it on with varying success, until 1864.” (A Forgotten Freethinker: Robert LeBlond)

Robert then moved, with his family, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained until the year of his death, 1863.

1860

Robert LeBlond, senior, appears in the 1860 Cincinnati city directory. He is listed as a printer living at 47 Gest. His business is listed at 5th and West Row. His sons, Robert and John, live with him. John is a clerk. Robert, jr., is a printer working at 167 Walnut Street.

1862

In 1862 he is listed under “Book Sellers and Publishers” at 324 West 6th Street.

Death

Died October 18, 1863.

“He was taken ill with dropsy a month or two later, and died at his brother Abraham’s house, 13 Walbrook, E. C., on October 18, 1863, at the age of forty seven.” (A Forgotten Freethinker: Robert LeBlond)

Robert was said to have been buried at the Tower Hamlets Cemtery in London’s East End. I created a memorial page for him at FindAGrave.com and requested a photo.