In their letters, Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa’s brothers made clear that the family was a wealthy one that had only fallen on financial difficulties following their sister’s departure from India. They made reference to the difference between the style of living to which the family had been accustomed (“kharaj rūz ba-rah badastūr-i sābiq”) and their current financial means. The large divide between the financial means they possessed in the late 1780s and the style in which they had been accustomed to living caused them shame (“qabāhat mīshavad”). The brothers’ letters paint a picture of an old family fallen on hard times, a family which nevertheless retained substantial connections and landholdings in Purnea, Azimabad, Calcutta, Burdwan, and even Lucknow. This would indicate that the family was one of the old Mughal land-owning families that had been impacted by the transition from Mughal to East India Company governance.

Gerard, or “Gusty” as he was known in the family, was the eldest son of the youngest son of Jacques Ducarel and Jeanne Crommelin Ducarel, French aristocrats who had fled France as Huguenots. Gerard’s two paternal uncles (who had no sons of their own) collaborated in their aim to set up Gerard Gustavus as the future of the family by bequeathing him their fortunes and an impeccable aristocratic pedigree.Indeed, GG travelled to India for exactly that purpose. After James Ducarel died under the military service of Shah Alam in Delhi in 1770, Gerard Gustavus became the future of his family and encountered a girl who would become the mother of his children, Sharaf un-Nisa.