Thomas blake glover biography of martin luther

Thomas Glover was born in Fraserburgh on 6 June 1838, the fifth son of a family of seven boys and one girl. His mother was from Fordyce in Banffshire and his English father was an officer in the Royal Navy.

Glover visited Shanghai with his brother in 1857, and in 1859, in the closing days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, he arrived in Nagasaki, aged 21. He worked for Jardine, Matheson & Co., tea merchants (possibly also a bit of opium trading too), and two years later set up his own independent business.

He clearly did very well, and in 1863 built Glover House on Minami Yamate, a beautiful hillside overlooking Nagasaki Harbour. It is the oldest western-style building in Japan and the house and garden are visited by two million Japanese every year.

Thomas blake glover biography of martin luther

Last year, the plaque on the building was changed to describe him as a "Scotsman" rather than English.

He and other foreign residents financed the building of the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in 1862 at the foot of the hillside.

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