Francis Blackwell Forbes

Francis Blackwell Forbes (August 11, 1839 – May 2, 1908) was an American botanist with expertise in Chinese seed-producing plants who also worked as a merchant and opium trader in Asia. Early life Francis Blackwell Forbes was born in New York on August 11, 1839, one of three children of the Reverend John Murray Forbes, rector of St. Luke's, New York, and his wife Anne Howell. Forbes was a cousin of John Murray Forbes and is a maternal great-grandfather of 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry. The Forbes family actively engaged in the opium trade and in the Old China Trade during the First and Second Opium Wars, amassing a large fortune. Forbes was educated at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in New York. Career After Columbia, Forbes went to China and became a partner in Russell & Co., a firm that was dominant in Far Eastern commerce in the 19th century. He was also associated with the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company, which had a fleet of flat-bottomed steamers on the Yangtze River, and he was for many years the Swedish and Norwegian Consul-General at Shanghai. In recognition of the latter undertaking, he was made a Knight Commander of the Swedish Royal Order of Wasa. Apart from a two-year stay in Europe in 1875–76, Forbes lived in China from 1857 to 1882.