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Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, 1st
Baronet, (1798-1868)
Born 1 November 1798
Died 19 May 1868
Married 24 February 1837
Elizabeth Guinness,
daughter of Edward Guinness and Margaret Blair
Born 1813
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The youngest son of the Second Arthur, Benjamin started working in
the brewery at the age of sixteen became a full partner six years later.
He was fifty-seven at the time of his father's death in 1855.
The years he was in charge, 1855 till 1868, would witness the rise
of the Guinness family out of the milieu of respected tradesmen and towards
the headier realms of national politics, civic honours and social ascendancy
via marriages into the aristocracy. He was the third and last of the Guinnesses
to direct the brewery's affairs almost exclusively from his base in Dublin.
In 1851 he was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin. He then bought the magnificent
Ashford estate in County Galway and, shortly afterwards, adopted as the
Guinness emblem the harp of the Irish king, Brian Boru. He then restored
St. Patrick's Cathedral, saving it from
collapse, at a cost to his personal fortune of some œ150,000. Long
afflicted by poor health, his wife died in 1865. In 1867 he was rewarded
with a baronetcy and, aged seventy, he died in 1868.
Before his death he had set up various family trusts but he was still
able to leave an estate of œ1,100,000, making it the largest will ever
proved in Ireland up to that date.
Source: Leo van de Pas |
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