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Braithwaite
Family history
Notable Braithwaite's:
1) Daniel Braithwaite: According to Anthony Pincott of the bookplate society (www.bookplatesociety.org) Daniel Braintwaite "(born c.1731) was appointed first secretary in the Post Office in 1765 and clerk to the Postmaster General in 1768 (BPMA archives, POST 58/1). He was instrumental in introducing painter George Romney into middle-class professional circles, an important society group eager to commission portraits. Daniel Braithwaite was also from Westmorland, although Romney came to know him when he moved to London in 1762. Braithwaite did well from his employment, enjoying the patronage of Anthony Todd (bap.1718-1798; see Oxford DNB), the Postmaster General 1762-65 and 1768-1798, and rising to Controller of the Foreign Department of the PO by 1789. His children included a son, James, who ‘was appointed postmaster at New York, not long before the termination of the American war’ (New Monthly Magazine, vol. X, 1818). He had a house in London’s Harpur Street, and property in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. He was active in artistic circles as a patron and collector, and for a time was one of the proprietors of the European Magazine, with John Sewell and Isaac Reed (another friend and patron of Romney). Their relationships are discussed in ‘A striking likeness’ (2000), David Cross’s biography of George Romney. Daniel Braithwaite died on 28 December 1817 at which time he was of Saint George the Martyr, Middlesex, and his Will was proved on 9 February 1818. Source: http://postalheritage.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/how-the-post-office-can-take-you-from-struggling-artist-to-famous-society-portraitist/
Herbert Joyce wrote in his "The history of the post office from its establishment down to 1836", published in 1893: There was only one person that had the slightest influence with Walsingham. This was Daniel Braithwaite, who, holding nominally the situation of clerk to the post-masters-general, was really their private secretary. Braithwaite was elected 14 March 1782 a Fellow of the Royal Society. Of consummate tact and judgment, and endowed with a peculiar sweetness of disposition, he contrived during difficult times to tone down asperities and to accommodate many a dissension which promised to become acute. Passing through his hands a harsh admonition was turned into a gentle reproof, and an imperious command into a courteous message. But under this softness of manner and a deference of language so profound that even Walsingham quizzed him on the number of " Lordships " he would introduce into a single letter, there lay concealed a solidity of character which few would have suspected. Honest Braithwaite he was called, and well he deserved the epithet. By a simple inquiry, a request for information or the expression of a doubt, he would nip some wild project in the bud, and, where occasion required, he would not hesitate to speak his mind freely."
SNBM