A L Bruce Estates

Alexander Low Bruce

Alexander Low Bruce was born in Edinburgh in 1839, the son of Robert Bruce and Ann Low, and he attended the Royal High School there. After leaving school, he went to work for the brewing firm of William Younger and Company at the age of 19. In his 20s, Bruce worked in the firm's London office and in promoting its activities in North America. In 1876, he became a partner and joint manager of the main Edinburgh brewery. In 1887, Alexander Low Bruce became Deputy Chairman of Younger's, and he had other significant financial interests. Bruce was an active member of the Liberal Party until the Irish Home Rule crisis of 1886 split the party and he became a leading Scottish member of the Liberal Unionist Party.

Bruce married twice; by his first wife he had three children, Agnes (b. 1865), Robert (b. 1867) and Daniel (b. 1869), all born when he was living in Islington, Middlesex. In 1875, Alexander Low Bruce's second marriage was to Agnes (1847–1912), the daughter of David Livingstone and his wife Mary (née Moffat). The Bruces had four children, David Livingstone Bruce (1877–1915), Mary Livingstone Bruce (1879–1883), Alexander Livingstone Bruce (1881–1954) and Annie Livingstone Bruce (1883–1954) who married Thomas Russell in 1909. Alexander Low Bruce shared Livingstone's views on the role of legitimate trade in combating the East African slave trade and, after his marriage to Agnes Livingstone, Bruce's interests turned towards the support of commercial and missionary organisations in East and Central Africa, and in 1888 he visited Kuruman, where Robert Moffat established his mission, and where his wife had been born. He was a founding member of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and became a director of the African Lakes Company, which had interests in what is now Malawi, and of the Imperial British East Africa Company, with interests in Kenya.

Magomero

Bruce never visited Nyasaland, but obtained title to some 170,000 acres of land, most of it in a single block south of Zomba through his association with the African Lakes Company and the agency of John Buchanan, a planter who brokered sales of land by local chiefs. He named this estate Magomero after an earlier, unsuccessful, missionary venture there which Livingstone had promoted. On his death in 1893, aged 54, title to his African assets passed under his will to the A. L. Bruce Trust, whose main beneficiaries were his two sons.

Shortly before his death in November 1893, Bruce had appointed two managers for his principal estates in Nyasaland. These were William Jervis Livingstone, who took control of the main estate of Magomero (Chiradzulu District) and D. B. Ritchie in charge of the Likulezi Estate at Mlanje. Initially, Agnes assumed oversight of the A. L. Bruce Trust until Bruce's heirs, David and Alexander, came of age, when they were able take it over its management, and she remained a trustee until her death. The provisions of their father's will expressed his wish about how his sons, as trustees, should manage the estates:

"...in the hope and expectation that they will take an interest in the opening up of Africa to Christianity and Commerce on the lines laid down by their grandfather the late David Livingstone."

However, after their mother's death in 1912, and as the Magomero estate showed potential, David Livingstone Bruce and Alexander Livingstone Bruce purchased the assets of the A. L. Bruce Trust in 1913, paying just over £41,000 for the estates. They then incorporated A. L. Bruce Estates Ltd in 1913 with a share capital of £54,000, largely held by themselves and their surviving sister Annie Russell (née Bruce).