The Mander family has held for over 200 years a prominent position in the Midland counties of England, both in the family business and public life. In the early Industrial Revolution, the Mander family entered the vanguard of the expansion of Wolverhampton, on the edge of the largest manufacturing conurbation in the British Isles. Mander Brothers was a major employer in the city of Wolverhampton, a progressive company which became the Number One manufacturers of varnish, paint and later printing ink in the British Empire.History of Mander Brothers, Whitehead Brothers, n.d. . The family became distinguished for public service, art patronage and philanthropy. Charles Tertius Mander (1852–1929) was created the first baronet of The Mount in the baronetage of the United Kingdom in the Coronation honours of George V, on 8 July 1911.Mosley, Charles, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003) |volume=2 |page=2589, sub Mander baronetcy of the Mount [U.K.], cr. 1911.
Early history The family were franklins, settled by 1291 at Tredington on the Warwickshire/Worcestershire borders of Midland England.The Red Book of the Bishopric of Worcestershire, transcribed from a lost volume by Dr W. Thomas in the eighteenth century [PRO], ed Margery Hollings, Worcs. Historical Soc., London, 1934–50, vol. 3, p. 284Nicholas Mander, Borromean Rings: The Genealogy of the Mander Family, 2011; revised and enlarged edition, 2023 The Wolverhampton family descends from Henry Mander (1601–72), of Aston Cantlow, whose son, Samuel Mander, migrated about 1695 to Lapworth Hall (also known as 'Irelands'), where the family remained for about 200 years.Joy Woodall, Portrait of Lapworth, 1986 In 1742, his grandson Thomas Mander (1720–1764), a younger son, migrated a few miles north to Wolverhampton, then a market town of just 7,500 people. There he settled as a merchant, maltster and manufacturer, and in due course inherited property from the family of his wife, Elizabeth Clemson, in John Street, which today forms the core of the modern city.Mander, G.P. (1960) A History of Wolverhampton to the Early Nineteenth Century. Wolverhampton Corporation. Page 19
Mander baronetcy The Mander baronetcy, of The Mount, Tettenhall Wood, in the County of Staffordshire, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom on 8 July 1911Official Roll of the Baronets (Standing Council of the Baronetage, 2017) in the Coronation honours of King George V, for Sir Charles Tertius Mander, English varnish and colour manufacturer (and as such Royal Warrant holder) and public servant.
Family members
Benjamin (1752–1819) and John Mander (1754–1827) were Thomas's sons. By 1773, they were setting up a cluster of loosely integrated businesses in Wolverhampton, including one of the largest chemical manufacturing works in the country, together with businesses in baking, japanning and tin-plate working, canals and gas manufacture. Benjamin Mander was chairman of the Wolverhampton Union Flour and Bread Company, a milling co-operative company set up for charitable purposes to provide subsidised bread and flour in the period of social distress following the Napoleonic Wars.Benjamin Mander. The King versus B. Mander and Eight Others: The Trial at Large of the Committee of the Flour and Bread Co. (of which Benjamin Mander was Chairman) at Stafford Summer Assizes, 1814, 1956 (reprinted) The two brothers campaigned actively against the slave trade, founded chapels, libraries and schools, and entered into local politics as town commissioners, four Manders sitting at one time for the Georgian borough.History of Mander Brothers, Whitehead Brothers, n.d. 1952 A third brother, Thomas Mander, set up in the hardware trade, as a factor and gun and flintlock manufacturer of Five Ways, Birmingham;H.J. Blanch, Martin Rywell, English Guns and Gun Makers, Pioneer Press,1956, p. 158 he was ancestor of the Sparrows, iron masters, of Albrighton Hall, Shrewsbury.
Hereafter, the eldest sons of the senior line of the family have been given the first name Charles:
Charles Mander (1780–1853), the eldest son of Benjamin, founded a varnish works in 1803 which was to prosper though the 19th century. He was a penal reformer who campaigned against the Blood Money Act, successfully petitioning for its repeal in 1818.Ward, John, Blood Money: an incident in Wolverhampton with national consequences, Wolverhampton Public Libraries, 1988 The romantic story of how he rescued two soldiers from the gallows accused of stealing just 1s.1d. became the subject of a novel by the jurist Samuel Warren, Now and Then (1848).Burke, Peter, The Romance of the Forum, series 1, vol. II, 1854, pp. 18–34 He was a noted nonconformist, whose exertions for the tenure of endowments by a 23-year Chancery case led, with other similar cases, to the Dissenters' Chapels Act 1844.Charles Mander, A Minute Detail of Circumstances relative to the Old Meeting House in John Street, Wolverhampton, a case of great importance to orthodox dissenters, Wolverhampton, 26 March 1819, 16p.Thomas Smith James, The History of the Litigation and Legislation respecting Presbyterian Chapels and Charities in England and Ireland, between 1816 and 1849, 1867, pp. 209–227, passim. Charles Benjamin Mander JP (1819–1878) was the eldest son of Charles. He was the force behind the establishment of the first publicly funded institution for art education in Britain in 1852. As a town councillor, he campaigned for clean drinking water fountains, and for the free library in Wolverhampton.Jones, J., Historical Sketch of the Art and Literary Institutions of Wolverhampton, from the year 1794 to 1897, 1897 With the rise of the railways, he greatly expanded the business of Mander Brothers, forming a partnership with his brother Samuel in 1845. He is commemorated by a blue plaque at The Mount, Tettenhall Wood, the house he built after 1862 (now a hotel). Sir Charles Tertius Mander (16 July 1852 – 8 April 1929), JP, DL, TD, was the eldest son of Charles Benjamin Mander, of The Mount.https://www.blackcountryhistory.org/collections/getrecord/GB149_P_3953 Among many public offices, he was uniquely four times mayor of Wolverhampton from 1892 to 1896,Jones, J. The Mayors of Wolverhampton, vol. 2, [n.d.] [contains contemporary biographical essay] an alderman, and an honorary freeman of the borough."Freemen of Wolverhampton". Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies and Wolverhampton Arts and Museums Services. Archived from the original on 7 May 2013. He was a colonel in the Staffordshire Yeomanry and the first member of the family to serve as High Sheriff of Staffordshire.The County of Stafford and many of its family records. Exeter: Wm Pollard & Co., 1897. He was also an active philanthropist in many public causes. A progressive industrialist and manufacturer, he became the first chairman of Mander Brothers Ltd., the family paint and varnish works,History of Mander Brothers, Whitehead Brothers, n.d. . and was involved in many other companies, including a Midland electrical company credited with the invention of the spark plug. He was created the first baronet of the Mount, Tettenhall Wood, in the baronetage of the United Kingdom for his public services on 8 July 1911.Obituary in The Times, 10 April 1929. Sir Charles Arthur Mander (25 June 1884 – 25 January 1951), JP, DL, TD, the second baronet, was the elder son of Charles Tertius by Mary Le Mesurier Paint, daughter of Henry Nicholas Paint, a member of the Dominion Parliament of Canada, of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was twice mayor of Wolverhampton, an honorary freeman of the borough, and served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire.‘Quaestor’ (W. Byford-Jones), I Met them in the Midlands, Midland News Assn., 1937. He shot rifle for England while at Trinity College, Cambridge. In World War I he served as a major in the Staffordshire Yeomanry, attached to the Yeomanry Mounted Division, and fought in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. He was wounded in the Third Battle of Gaza at Beersheba in 1917 and, following the decisive Battle of Megiddo, entered Damascus with General Allenby.Nicholas Mander. Varnished Leaves: a biography of the Mander family of Wolverhampton. Owlpen Press, 2004. Contains biography of Sir Charles Arthur Mander, with account of public life and career, and extracts from his World War I journals of the campaign in Egypt and Palestine. He was managing director of Mander Brothers Ltd. He served on over 65 committees and organisations at one time, was in demand as a public speaker, and presented or chaired early radio discussion programmes. He was vice-chairman of the National Savings Committee and President of Rotary International for Britain and Ireland. In the United States, he was made honorary chief Red Crow of the Blackfoot tribe in Montana when he gave the address at the dedication of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in 1932. Sir Charles Marcus Mander (22 September 1921 – 9 August 2006), the third baronet, was the only son of Charles Arthur by Monica Neame, of Kent.Mosley, Charles, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 2, page 2589, sub Mander baronetcy of the Mount [U.K.], cr. 1911. He fought with the Coldstream Guards in World War II in North Africa, Germany and Italy, where, following the Salerno landings, he was gravely wounded in the fighting at Calabritto, on the slopes of Monte Camino, in October 1943. He served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1962–63. He was a director of Mander Brothers, responsible for its property portfolio, and redeveloped the centre of Wolverhampton, establishing the Mander Shopping Centre and Mander Square on the site of the early family works in 1968. He subsequently served as chairman of Arlington Securities, which was sold to British Aerospace, and of the property group London & Cambridge Investments, which collapsed in 1991.Obituaries in The Daily Telegraph, Birmingham Post, Express & Star and other Midland newspapers. He developed a township for 11,500 people at Perton, outside Wolverhampton, on the family agricultural estate, which had been requisitioned as an airfield during World War II, and also farmed in Gloucestershire. His wife sustained underwriting losses as a Name in the Lloyd's insurance market in the 1990s. The Times reported on 24 June 2000 that Lady Mander, having refused a settlement offered to her by Lloyd's, was declared bankrupt. The mansion house at Little Barrow, Donnington, near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, was subsequently sold to meet a debt believed to exceed £1 million. Sir (Charles) Nicholas Mander (born 23 March 1950), the elder son of Charles Marcus by Dolores Brödermann (died 2007), of Hamburg, is the fourth and present baronet.Official Roll of the Baronets (Standing Council of the Baronetage, 2017). He is a knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). He lives at Owlpen Manor in Gloucestershire.Who’s Who, A&C Black, 2020. He was co-founder of Mander Portman Woodward and Sutton Publishing, and is the author of a history of the family and other books and articles.Who’s Who, A & C Black, various editions. (Charles) Marcus Septimus Gustav Mander (born 1975) is the eldest son of Charles Nicholas by Karin Margareta Norin, of Stockholm, and is heir apparent to the baronetcy. He is a barrister of the Middle Temple.Kidd, Charles (editor), Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage, Debrett’s, 2008, B 626-7.
Other members of the family Descendants of the above Henry Mander (1601–72), of Aston Cantlow