Charles Gascoigne

Charles Gascoigne (1737–1806) was British industrialist at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Gascoigne was an architect, mechanic, inventor, businessman and industrialist. He spent the final twenty years of his life in the Russian Empire, gaining fame as an engineer-inventor, entrepreneur, and specialist in production. Gascoigne is regarded as the founder of the industrial city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, in 1795. Early life Charles Gascoigne was born in 1737 in Great Britain. His father was Captain Woodroffe Gascoigne, who was deployed in Scotland after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. His mother was Grizel, eldest daughter of Charles Elphinstone, 9th Lord Elphinstone and his wife Elizabeth Primrose. Career Gascoigne worked for the British East India Company and as a partner in "Coney and Gascoigne", a firm of drysalters in London. He married Mary, the daughter of Samuel Garbett, at St Martin's, Birmingham, in 1759. Garbett was a founding partner in the Carron Company, also founded in 1759, and Gascoigne become a partner in the ironworks in 1765, having been manager of Garbett's nearby turpentine factory, Garbett & Co., since 1763.