Also George's father William Dickson, who came from Warton, Lancashire, died rather young, in 1804, at 41, of an infectious disease in Gibraltar. George Frederick, a single child anyway, was an orphan at the age of 17. All the more remarkable is the path of success which he was able to follow from early on and all his life long. And for all his life this success was closely connected to South America, in particular to the territory which was going to become Argentina.
 
As one of the first steps on this ladder, George Frederick Dickson - who was familiarly called Frederick - learnt French from a Romish priest, and later learnt Spanish, initially teaching himself when his father who encouraged this in a letter was still alive. According to the chronicle by his daughter-in-law, Harriett, he started work with Mr [John?] Hodgson in Bucklersbury, a small road in the City of London, as she says, very close to Mansion House, and it was Hodgson who sent Frederick, and his own son, out to South America in 1807. He was at the age of 20, then, and aiming for Buenos Aires, but then was re-routed to Montevideo, and may have spent some time in "the Brazils" because the British had just been thrown out of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. 1809 is specified as the date G.F.Dickson started in Buenos Aires when he was not older than 22.
 
Now a whole decade of apparently great commercial success followed which was connected to Buenos Aires and the territory of the Rio de la Plata (River Plate, later: Argentina). Starting already in 1810, the country - on the background of the Napoleonic occupation of the mother country, Spain - was on its way to independence which was reached in 1816 though an approximately stable situation and fixed borders and territory were not to come for decades.

A fundamental change came about  in 1821. In the month of May G.F.Dickson still remained in Montevideo (opposite Buenos Aires, on the banks of the Rio de la Plata as well), but only a few weeks later in London a legal controversy took place, leading - as a late consequence of a financial conflict that started in 1817 - to the dissolution of Dickson's commercial partnerships, as reported by the "European Magazine and London Review". The case seems to have gained some prominence, even, among jurisprudents of the time because it was very controversial whether the dissolution of the partnership really took effect in a legal sense (see below).

For G.F.Dickson now a new period of his life began, since he - at first together with his  remaining partner Montgomery - moved the location of his firm and also his own main place of residence back to England, i.e. to Liverpool / Everton. South America, though - and particularly Rio de la Plata (later Argentina) - stayed his preferred professional target area.

The complete dispute is to be found through Google Books in

.

George Frederick Dickson was born in Manchester, where his mother came from (and her paternal Willatt family), who died, when he, her only child, was not even one year old. It was probably in Manchester, as well, where he spent his childhood, here his grandmother

, for 2 decades (1772 - 1793) led the post office, as the successor of her husband

who had died in 1772,  just 40 years old, and as an early female entrepreneur, with the help of her daughter Martha.

Above: George Frederick Dickson as a young man *

Left: Baptism record of G.F. Dickson's son Thomas Ashton Hodgson Dickson (here he is wrongly called "Thomas Dick- son Dickson"). Thomas was born 13th January 1816 and baptised 21st May 1816: "... se llama Tomas hijo legitimo de Don Federico Dickson, y de Doña Juana Dickson". In the absence of a wider confessional selection in Buenos Aires - an Anglican Church was not be established before 1825 -, it was a Catholic baptism; like his sib- lings the boy was baptised into the Anglican faith after their eventual return home (23.01.1823  in

).

Manchester 1787 - 1821  Buenos Aires

Five of G.F.Dickson's children were born in Buenos Aires (two of them, though, died as infants and did not survive their first year). Some of his altogether 8 children (i.e. of the 6 surviving ones) kept their connections to South America, be it for the good or the bad: one son became, at 23, the tragic victim of a shooting on the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, another son consul general of Chili.