The Grill family are noted for their contribution to the Swedish iron industry and for exports of iron and copper during the 18th century. Starting as silversmiths and experts on noble metals the Grills became engaged in a wide range of businesses. After 1700 the family began its rise to prominence. They owned ironworks, while operating wharves, and importing material related to shipbuilding. The Grills benefited from mercantilist policy. With a positive balance on their account the Grills became engaged in banking, also in the Dutch Republic; around 1720 in the market for government liabilities and then mediating large credits and clearing international bills of exchange.Peter Ericsson & Patrik Winton (2018) Politics of Credit: The Market for Government Debt in Sweden, 1715–60, pp. 16–17 The Grills had significant influence with the Swedish East India Company (SOIC); three members became directors of the SOIC and the Grill firm traded as members of the SOIC and privately.
All the noted Grills were in some way connected to the main Grill Trading House and to each other. Some Grills married a relative, others helped their nephews into business. In this way the Grill name was kept and passed on through the generations.
Origin
On 29June 1571, Andreas Grill, burgher in Augsburg received burgher arms in letters patent from a count palatine of the Holy Roman Empire. The name Grill comes from the Italian Grillo, meaning cricket, while the family's coat of arms displays a crane holding a cricket in its bill.
The family came to Sweden with the arrival of the silversmith Anthoni Grill (I) in 1659. For more than 25 years Anthoni had lived in Amsterdam, but moved to Stockholm when he was appointed as the Riksguardie (the national appraiser) responsible for the quality of alloys and the accuracy of weights and measures, and the stock of precious metals used in minting. He was succeeded at the Myntverket by his son Anthoni Grill (II).
During the 18th century the family was described as members of the Skeppsbroadeln (the Skeppsbro Nobility). Abraham Grill had six sons who cooperated in business. The name referred to the wealthiest merchant families in Stockholm at that time, especially those who lived by the quays along the Skeppsbron.
The family consisted of two branches —the Garphyttan branch, starting with Anthoni (IV) and the Godegård branch, with Jean Abraham Grill. Since 1911 the Grill family is included in the Ointroducerad Adels Förening (Association of the Unintroduced Nobility), an association for Swedish citizens whose family was ennobled in a foreign country, as well as some families who were ennobled in Sweden but for some reason never introduced at the Swedish House of Nobility.
Anthoni Grill (I)
Anthonie Grill (1607–1675) was born in Augsburg as the son of goldsmith Balthasar Grill (1568–1614) and Rosina Schweigler. The city was a centre of European silversmithery. During the Thirty Years' War, the Lutheran city was occupied by a Bavarian army but recaptured by the Swedish army in April 1632. At some point, Anthoni and his brother Andries moved to Amsterdam. The two silversmiths both got married in January 1634, and Andries for the second time in February 1640, who had then settled in The Hague. Their younger brother Johannes (I), a journeyman, got married in September 1645.
In December 1635, Anthoni promised his business partner to reveal a secret about smelting silver, which is generally found in a combined state in nature, usually with copper or lead. In 1637 and 1642 he took on and lodged two apprentices. In 1638 he became a burgher of Amsterdam. In March 1651 Anthoni bought a property for 12,000 guilders between Looiersgracht and Passeerdersstraat. There Anthoni set up a number of laboratories or furnaces, testing fresh and recycled metals to ascertain their purity for jewellery and coin making. In 1653, Anthoni, somehow connected to or observed by members of the Hartlib Circle, cooperated in an alchemist project with his brother Andries. According to Johann Friedrich Schweitzer they used a hydrochloric acid.
It is possible that a son of Michiel le Blon, a goldsmith, art dealer and agent for Christina, Queen of Sweden, informed the Swedish Board of Mines about Grill's experiments to extract precious metals from ore through the use of what Grill called a "secret matter". On 28 May 1658, this earned him the position of riksguardie, working for the Münzmeister at the Swedish Mint. He also got a 30-years patent on his "secret" extraction methods. Anthoni moved to Stockholm after 10 June 1659. His silver smelting lab was rented out by Cornelis le Blon to the chemical engineer Johann Rudolf Glauber, until it was sold for 20,880 guilders on a foreclosure auction in January 1661.
Grill continued his smelting experiments with cupellation of noble metals in Sweden. With three companions he was allowed to conduct experiments with copper and lead from the Lövåsens silvermine in Stora Skedvi. However, his methods were never successful and his work at the mint was substandard. His deficiencies at the mint were brought to light by Georg Stiernhielm in 1662, and the next year, his smelting methods were strongly criticized by the Board of Mines where its chairman, Erik Fleming, accused Grill of defaming him. In 1663, Grill was demoted to handling the weighing of precious metals and other "minor items and tasks", while Jöran Low became the new riksguardie. in 1661 he introduced credit paper (Kreditivsedlar), the first European banknotes with copper as collateral. The lack of silver, the cumbersome size and weight of copper plate money eventually prompted Sweden to become the first country in Europe to issue such notes. In 1624 Sweden had introduced a copper standard; in 1664 Sweden reintroduced the silver standard.Thomas Marmefelt (2015) Seventeenth Century Banking: Amsterdamsche Wisselbank, Stockholms Banco, and Their Consequences for Monetary Evolution, p. 14
Anthoni Grill (II)
Anthoni Grill (1639–1703) was the son of Anthoni Grill (I) and Catharina Staets. In 1664 he married Anna van Slingeland in Stockholm. Following in his father's footsteps, he was appointed riksguardie in 1667, checking the quality of the silver. Grill had numerous reform proposals for the mining industry at Sala Silver Mine, and Stora Kopparberget, which produced two thirds of the world's copper. His brother Baltasar, also worked at the Swedish Mint but as a skedare (lit. "spooner" meaning gold parter), and took part in Kungsholmen's glassworks in 1682. In 1694 Anthoni became one of the shareholders of the Big City shipyard in Stockholm. He participated in the gilding of the newly built northern wing of the Royal Palace.
After being widowed, Anna van Slingeland (−1714) moved from Gamla stan to Amsterdam, where several of her children lived. In 1716 Sophia Grill remarried – on a prenuptial agreement – Nikolaas Kohl, a tradesman on the Baltic, originating from Arensborg. On 10 August 1734, Kohl bought The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, for 60 guilders. Originally , it was the largest work Rembrandt painted. The couple had a small estate near Zwammerdam, where Sophia died in August 1766.
Anthoni Grill (III)
Anthoni Grill (1664–1727) returned to Amsterdam in 1686 and married his cousin Elisabeth Grill in 1693. He settled as silversmith in Kalverstraat, where the Grills owned a shop almost next to a hidden church. In December 1693 he was admitted as a private assayer. Between 1702 and 1742 the Grills imported copper plates (c.q. plate money) from Sweden. As Europe's copper supplier, Sweden exported copper and more so when the copper price was high, exporting their copper plate money as bullion.Marmefelt, T. (2015) Seventeenth Century Banking: Amsterdamsche Wisselbank, Stockholms Banco, and Their Consequences for Monetary Evolution, p. 22, 14. In January 1711 Anthoni and Johannes Grill (III) were appointed as assayers at the Wisselbank. From 1713 onwards, the bank reported on their profits. Until 1725, on average, nearly half of the bank profit was attributable to the activities of ten assayers. The Grills had no children and they started a courtyard with almshouses known as Grill's hofje. They were both buried in the Oude Lutherse Kerk at Singel in Amsterdam. In 1728, his collection of fine paintings and rare objects was sold.
Abraham Grill (I) the Elder
Abraham Grill (167420 March 1725) was a Swedish merchant. He was the son of Anthoni (II), a brother of Anthoni (III) as well as heir to the Grill family fortune in Sweden, which he increased through trade speculation. He married three times,Abraham Grill, Swedish biographical dictionary (art by Staffan Högberg) from 2 December 2019 and had seven children
From 1704 Abraham Grill cooperated with his brother-in-law Abraham Gemnich (1665–1711). In 1709 Sweden reintroduced the copper standard which was in use till 1766. In 1715 the company bought reclaimed land, from Countess Elisabeth Oxenstierna, in the east part of Stockholm. The land was used to establish the Terra Nova wharf, also known as the Köpmannavarvet (the Merchants Wharf). In 1716, he and his younger brother Carlos Grill, founded the Grill Trading House. The house traded mainly (90%) in wrought iron and became one of the leading trading houses in Stockholm during the 18th century. In 1722 he acquired the ironworks at Iggesund.
During the Great Northern War led by King Charles XII, Abraham gave large sums of money to the state and during a time of famine, he sold grain at reduced price to the needy. He was also the driving force behind the founding of a house for poor elderly widows in Stockholm on 14July 1724. When Abraham died in 1725, his share of the Trading House went to his son Claes (I). He owned the house by Stortorget, 1/11 share in the glassworks and 1/3 in the shipyard.
Anthoni Grill (IV) Anthoni Grill (19 April 170522 March 1783) was the son of Abraham (I) Grill and Helena Wittmack and twin brother to Claes (I). Around 1722, he moved to Amsterdam where he participated in his uncles' trading house, dealing in copper plates and iron and supplying the Dutch East India Company between 1722 and 1731 with silver.
In 1733 he married Alida Jacoba Hilken with whom he had eight children. In 1735 he cooperated with his brother Johannes (IV) to promote the trade with Sweden. Spanish pieces of eight were used to produce silver ingots that were shipped on the Rooswijk, which sank in 1740. In 1742 both brothers lived separately on Herengracht; they each owned a chaise and two horses.Het kohier van de personeele quotisatie te Amsterdam over 1742 (Amsterdam 1945) In 1747 they sold the silver melting business at the end of Spiegelgracht, and concentrated on banking and assurance on ships and goods for customers in Sweden. Around 1751, they moved into the "Huis met de Hoofden" which they rented from the descendants of Louis De Geer. He wrote twice a week to Stockholm. When Johannes died – with whom he shared many bills of exchange – Anthoni Grill became the only heir and his other siblings were bequeathed.