Barlow Trecothick (c. 1719 – 28 May 1775) was a City of London merchant brought up in the colonial Province of Massachusetts Bay who became one of the Members of Parliament for the City of London and was Lord Mayor of London in 1770.
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Early life
Trecothick was the son of a sea captain, Mark Trecothick, by his marriage to Hannah Greenleaf. His place of birth is uncertain, but it was probably either Stepney or else at sea. One biographer reports that he was born on 27 January 1720 in Stepney. His brother Edward Trecothick was baptized there in 1721.
From about 1724, the Trecothicks lived in Boston, Massachusetts Bay, where in 1734 the young Trecothick was apprenticed to Charles Apthorp, an enormously rich English-born merchant and slave trader of Boston, serving him until 1740, and then becoming a merchant.
Career
In his evidence to a parliamentary committee in England in 1766, Trecothick said he had lived at Boston between the ages of seven and twenty-two, was then in Jamaica for seven years, returned to New England for three years, and finally settled in London. His sister Hannah was born at Boston on 2 December 1724.