FRASER, ANDREW [SSNE 5097]
Text source
Andrew Fraser was an Aberdonian who became a burgess of Cracow in 1625.
Already in 1613, when King Sigismund of Poland granted 8 Scots permission to ply their trade in his kingdom, Andrew Fraser was amongst the names listed but he was presumably not yet a burgess. In 1625 Andrew Frazer provided a birthbrieve dated Aberdeen 6 June 1610, took the oath, paid 40 florins, a musket, and a stone of gunpowder to become a citizen of Cracow. He also promised to marry or acquire land within a year.
He is probably the same as the Andrew Fraser who married Susan Orem at the Reformed church at Leszno, Warsaw in 1626. Given her surname she was presumably a sister of Peter Orem [SSNE 5132]. When she died in 1664 she was noted as the widow of Andrew Fraser citizen and merchant of Cracow.
In 1633 and 1639 Andrew was elected elder of the Cracow Assembly. He was one of several Scottish merchants in Poland ordered to liquidate his estate on behalf of the "King of England" in February 1651. By 1 March he had complied and his estate worth 8700 Polish florins afforded a tithe of 600 Imperial thalers.
Andrew Fraser died, aged 76, in 1654. He was buried on 9 April 1654.
Sources: A.F. Steuart, Papers relating to the Scots in Poland 1576-1793, (Edinburgh, 1915), pp.8-9, p.46, pp.80-1, p.203; Lib. Jur. Civ. Crac. 1555-1612, fo.204; A.B. Pernal and R.P. Gasse, 'The 1651 Polish Subsidy to the exiled Charles II', Oxford Slavonic Papers, vol xxxii (Oxford, 1999), p.21, p.35; Z. Guldon and L. Stepkowski, Szkoci i Anglicy w Koronie w polowie XVII wieku, Kieleckie Studia Historyczne, ii (1977); Peter Paul Bajer, Scots in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 16th-18th Centuries, (Leiden, 2012), p.118, n.2.
Service record
- POLAND, CRACOW
- Arrived 1613-03-26, as TRADER
- Departed 1654-04-09, as BURGESS
- Capacity BURGESS, purpose MERCANTILE
- Arrived 1625-01-01
- Departed 1654-04-09
- Capacity BURGESS, purpose CIVIC/MERCANTILE