Showing 14 results

Names
Family

Greig Family

  • Family
  • c1832-
David Middleton Greig (1863-1936) was the son of Dr David Greig (1832-1890), a surgeon in Dundee (at DRI and founder of the Forfarshire Medical Association) who had served in the Crimean War, and Anne Sim (they were married in 1861). Dr David Greig was himself son of a druggist, David Greig, and Anne Greig (nee Middleton, married in 1831). DMG was a demonstrator at University College, Dundee and Senior Surgeon at Dundee Royal Infirmary. He was later Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the condition Greig's syndrome is named for him. He was also an internationally recognised authority on the pathology of bones. He married Isabella France Soutar in 1881.
John Keiller Greig (1881-1970) was the youngest brother of David Middelton Greig and was an estate factor (Craigendarroch) working with the Keiller family and was British national figure skating campion three times. He also competed in the 1908 Olympics in London. In 1915 he married Grace Margaret Turnbull Clapperton. Grace Margaret inherited part of Orkney (the Stewart of Masseter Estate in South Ronaldsay) on the death of her uncle R A Clapperton Stewart but sold it back to the islanders.
Ann Keiller Greig was their daughter who was a qualified nursery teacher.
R A Clapperton Stewart was related to George Stewart of Mutiny on the Bounty.

The Buist family

  • Family
  • c1762-
The Reverend John Buist was born in Abdie in around 1762 and in 1802 he married Margaret Jafferson and went on to have nine children; he died in 1845. Alexander Jafferson (A. J.) Buist (1818-1901) was born in Tannadice, Forfarshire, As a young man he joined the business of his elder brother James Jafferson Buist (1810-1844) who was engaged in spinning at Ward Mill Dundee
The Buist family had strong links to Dundee and the thriving textile industry, indeed Alexander Jafferson Buist was one of the first mill owners to provide a crèche and a school for the children of those who worked in his mills. In 1865, sometime after John James Buist's death, A. J. Buist entered into partnership with William and John Don to form Don Brothers, Buist & Company, a company that still exists today in the form of Don and Low, Forfar. A. J. Buist went on to become a Governor of University College, Dundee, an Elder of the Free Church, a Justice of the Peace, and a Deputy Lieutenant of Dundee. He was also involved in politics as a Unionist.
John Charles Buist (1852- 1944) was the son of A. J. Buist and was born on 17th March 1852. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh before joining Don Brothers, Buist & Company in 1874. He eventually became managing director of that firm, a position he held until his retirement in 1933. Dr Buist was a member of the Council of University College, Dundee, President of Dundee Chamber of Commerce and a Director of Dundee Royal Infirmary for over five decades (being Chairman of the institution on three separate occasions) . He was awarded an LLD by the University of St Andrews in 1925. Like his father he was involved in politics as a Unionist. John Charles Buist married Isabella Watson of Bullionfield, Invergowrie. He died at his home, Balgillo, Broughty Ferry on 27th August 1944.
J. C. Buist's son Frank D. J. Buist (1900-1980) became a director of Don Brothers, Buist & Company in 1933 and was chairman of the company in the 1960s. His brother Captian Charles Edward Buist MC died on active service in 1917. F. D. J Buist married the daughter of the Right Reverend Walter John Forbes Robberds (1863-1944), Bishop of Brechin (1904-1934) and Primus of the Episcopal Church in Scotland (1908-1934).

Thornton family

  • Family
  • 1720-1911
Rev James Small appointed Minister of the Church in Carmyllie in 1720, whose granddaughter, Agnes Small, became the wife of Robert Thornton.
Their son, William Thornton, was in business with the Sandeman family and he married Sibella Ann Sandeman in 1833. In 1855, they emigrated to Australia, settling in Ipswich, Queensland. William Thornton died there in 1878, and Sibella moved to Inverell, New South Wales where she died in 1888. Her youngest child, Mary Sandeman Thornton also died there in 1911.

Sharp Family

  • Family
  • 1800s-
The Sharps were a prominent family who made their fortune as jute merchants in Dundee. The family's firm, John Sharp & Sons, enjoyed considerable success in the 1800s under the management of John Sharp and later his son, also John Sharp. The firm continued to blossom and soon John Sharp Jnr. enrolled his four sons into the company as business partners. Two of his sons, John and Frederick, married into the White family line, marrying Eleanor and Beatrice White respectively. The Sharps lived in various properties in Fern Hill, West Ferry, the Balmuir estate and the Hill of Tarvit. For further biographical details about the family see, Lesley Lindsay's research notes, available in UR-SF 36.

Rettie & Mitchell family

  • Family
  • 1895-
Annie Belle Rettie (known as Isabel) was born 29th June 1895 and died in October 1987. She married Robert William Mitchell. They had two children Alan Grant Mitchell and Annabell Mitchell (married name Luzzatto). Jennetta Winifred Rettie (known as Winnie) was born in 1899. No precise date of death is known but the family state she was more than 100 years old when she died.
Winnie married John Cargill Fraser and worked as a nurse during the First World War. The parents of Isabel and Winnie were William Cooper Rettie, 1852-1922, of William Low & Co. and Annie Low, 1855-1940, sister of William Low and Sir James Low. William Rettie was also the first chairman of the Dundee Dental Hospital & School in 1917. He purchased the house at 2 Park Place and had it adapted as a dental surgery as a memorial to his son, Philip, who was killed during the First World War.
Peter Mitchell is the nephew of Annabel Luzzatto and the son of Grant Mitchell

Wilson family of Pollockshaws and Alva

  • Family
  • 1756-

James Wilson (1756-1830) originally apprenticed to A. Murray, cooper of Beith, between 1771 and 1774 was a cooper in Pollokshaws and later (possibly) a farmer in Lochwinnoch, near Paisley. In 1782 he married Margaret Blackburn, daughter of John Blackburn and Margaret Clark. They had ten children, the sixth of whom, James Wilson (1794-1863), carried on the trade of cooper and in 1816 also entered into partnership with his elder brother John (1783-1834) as a soap and candlemaker, continuing to pursue both trades in Pollokshaws.
In 1825 James married Helen Primrose, the eldest of sixteen children of William Primrose and Christian Brown. James and Helen Wilson had ten children, two of whom - William Primrose Wilson (1836-1926) and James Wilson (1848-1919) - formed the company of Wilson Brothers to manufacture wool in Alva, Clackmannanshire. Both William and James Wilson became members of the Bakers' Incorporation of Glasgow in 1893 and Burgesses of the City of Glasgow in the same year.

In 1878 the younger James Wilson married Margaret Steven, the second of seven children of Alexander Steven and Agnes Ann McNeil. They moved down to London in 1893 where he looked after the London end of the business and built it into a more successful concern. His older brother was responsible for the company's affairs in Alva. The family moved back to Alva in 1908. James and Margaret Wilson had four children: Alexander Steven Wilson (1882-1976), Helen Primrose Wilson (1885-1958), James Blackburn Wilson (1888-1961) and Agnes Ann McNeil [Nancy] (1894-1944).

Alexander Steven trained as an electrical engineer at Finsbury Technical College and then worked with the German firm of Siemens Schukert Werke in Nürnberg and with Siemens Brothers and Co Dynamo Works in London. The letters he received from his family during this period give a fascinating glimpse of life in early Edwardian London. In 1907 he was asked to help his father with the family's woollen manufacturing business in Alva, and he became a partner in 1908.

James Blackburn became a partner in 1922, along with their cousin A H W Forrest. The family connection with Wilson Brothers was continued through Alexander Steven's son Peter Sidney Steven Wilson (1925-1992).

Helen Primrose was a nurse during the Great War of 1914-1918, while James Blackburn Wilson served with the French Red Cross, in the Verdun Sector, between February 1916 and April 1917, and later the British Army, between May 1917 and February 1919, serving in both Britain and France. In 1922 he married Mary Taylor Watt, the youngest of seven children of John Watt and Agnes Taylor Dickie, and a sister of Professor Hugh Watt, sometime Moderator of the Church of Scotland.

James Watt Wilson, who gave the collection to the University, is the youngest of three children of James Blackburn and Margaret Wilson, and was born in 1930.

Professor Robert Percival Cook

  • Family
  • 1906-1989

Robert Percival Cook, M.B., B.Chir., Ph.D. (Cambridge), B.Sc. (Melbourne), F.R.S.E., was born in Melbourne, Australia, on 14 April 1906. He was educated at Trinity Grammar School, Kew, Melbourne and Scotch College, Melbourne, before attending the University of Melbourne between 1922 and 1925, graduating with a B.Sc.

In April 1926 he entered the Department of Pharmacology, University of London, to work with Professor Alfred Joseph Clark. In October of that year he went to Caius College, Cambridge where worked in the Biochemical Laboratory with Professor Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. He then spent some time at L'Institut Pasteur, in Paris, where he met his wife, Matilda. He then returned to Cambridge and, in 1930, received his Ph.D. The years from June 1932 to August 1935 were spent in industry, working on citric acid. In October 1935, he returned once more to Cambridge and 1938 began studying medicine.

In 1940 Cook took up his first post as Lecturer in Biochemistry at what was then University College, Dundee (from 1954 Queen's College, Dundee and from 1967 the University of Dundee) in the then Department of Physiology under Profosser Robert Campbell Garry. At this point Cook was the sole biochemist in the department. The department was soon after renamed, on Cook's suggestion and with Garry's consent, the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry. An honours degree course in biochemistry was started in session 1946-1947.

During this time, Cook received his D.Sc. (1942) and M.B., B.Chir. (1944). Over the next 30 years he would become a well-known member of the academic community in Dundee. His wartime research concerned nutritional values of foods in local institutions, and later he became an international authority on cholesterol, editing a definitive book and pursuing widely-quoted research, much of which he carried out on himself. He was rumoured to have consumed 12-egg omelettes, prepared by his wife, in order to measure blood and excretory values. In 1958 'Cholesterol: Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pathology', which he both edited and contributed chapters to, was published and was quickly recognised as a key work on the subject. Cook's work ultimately paved the way for Dundee to become a major centre for life sciences teaching and research.

In March 1966, largely thanks to Cook's endeavours over many years and with the strong support of Professor George Howard Bell (who had succeeded Garry in 1947), full departmental status was given to Biochemistry with Cook appointed as head of the much expanded department. He also played a key role in the development of the new Biological Sciences Institute which would house the new department and provide excellent facilities for it. Cook's efforts also led to the founding of a Chair in Biochemistry, but he refused to be considered for this post as he felt a younger outside candidate was needed, and ultimately Peter Garland was appointed to the Chair in 1970. Nevertheless in January 1972, Cook was elected to a personal Chair in Biochemistry.

In 1973 Cook became Emeritus Professor following his retirement on health grounds. In 1974, along with his wife, he produced and published an annotated English translation of Claude Bernard's 'Phenomena of Life Common to Animals and Vegetables'. Away from academia, Cook retained a strong interest in Australia and was also also a keen collector of stamps and other materials relating to postal history. He also had a strong interest in, and knowledge of, art. He died in Dundee on 26 August 1989 and was survived by his wife, who died in 1998, and children. Writing of him in Contact, the University's internal magazine, in October 1989, his colleague Geoffrey Dutton wrote "He served this University very well indeed. We remember him with gratitude."

Low, Chabot, Beke, Halley, Harland, West, Richardson & Gregory families

  • Family
  • 1723-2020

The families are all related through marriage, with James Low of Kirriemuir marrying Ann Fairweather c1803, and their descendants marrying members from the Chabot. Halley and West families. A common thread through the families is international trade, with Alexander Fairweather Low listed as a Merchant in Dundee in 1841. AF Low moved to Mexico, where he owned the La Hormiga cotton factory, and where he met his wife, Mary-Ann Julia Chabot, whose father, James Chabot had traded as a merchant in Malta and London before moving to Mexico. The Chabot family in the UK originated with Jaques Chabot, a French Huguenot refugee.

Alexander JS Low, photo-journalist is the son of Alexander Halley Low, whose mother was Annie Halley. His maternal great-great grandfather, Alexander Hally was born at Lundie Fowlis, and by 1808 was a merchant and Sardinian Consul in Madeira. His son, Dr Alexander Halley (who added an e to the spelling of Hally) returned from Madeira to Edinburgh for his medical training. He maintained interest in his Scottish roots through membership of the Gaelic Society and Highland Society of London, where he practised. Dr Halley married Emily Jane Harland, whose brother, Sir Edward Harland, was a founder of the ship building company, Harland and Wolff.

The West family, originally from Ireland, are connected to the Low's through the marriage of AJS Low's great-uncle, Charles Watson Low to Violet Augusta West. Her brother, Captain George West served in Africa and as British Vice Consul of Archangel, during the 1905 Russian revolution. George’s life was quite troubled, ending with him being sectioned and admitted to Holloway Sanatorium, Virginia Water, where he died.

Alexander Halley Low was a geologist and mining consultant who explored the oil fields of north west Canada, His marriage to Dorothy Lindesay Gregory, connected the Low family to the Gregory-Richardson families, one of whom, AH Lindesay-Richardson won the first V.C. fighting for 'Strathconer’s Horse', a Canadian regiment under British control in the Boer War.

Jean & John Richardson

  • Family
  • 1916-2013
Jean Wilson Richardson (nee Milne) was born on 5 January 1922 and died on 13 May 2013. She worked in the payroll department at the post office from 1939-1947 when she left to get married. During the war she was a WRNS telegraphist, enlisting in 1943 until 1946. She was with Admiral Ramsay, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in September 1944 when he went to France. She married John Coutts Richardson on 12 July 1947 and they had 4 children.
John Richardson was born on 11 July 1916 and died in June 1985. He also worked for the Post Office, enlisted in 1940 until 1946 where he was a trade electrician. More details are available in the collection

Bill and Margaret Laskie

  • Family
  • fl 1938-2015
They were regular playgoers in Dundee and for decades and attended most first nights at Dundee Rep. They were also heavily involved in the two very separate Dundee theatre clubs, The Theatre Club and The Playgoers Club. Their names appear together on cast lists for Playgoers Club amateur playreadings immediately post-war, while they were courting. Their collection of rep programmes begins about 1939 when the core of the company were performing on various Dundee stages prior to the acquisition of Forester’s Halls in Nicoll Street. The collection has only a couple of short chronological gaps, corresponding to the infancy of their two children, Derek and Peter, and continues more or less unbroken through to the 2010s.

Baxter family of Invereighty

  • Family
  • fl 1917-1948
The mother of the mother in law of the depositor was married to George W Baxter, who was this lady's second husband. The late husband of the depositor was descended from the latter's first husband (ie this lady was his step grandmother, his grandfather's second wife).

Anatole De Grunwald; Alex De Grunwald

  • Family
  • 1910-1967, b1940

Anatole De Grunwald (1910-1967) was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the son of a diplomat (Constantin de Grunwald) in the service of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He was seven years old when his father was forced to flee with his family to France during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Growing up in France and England, he studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he edited a student magazine, The Europa, and attended the University of Paris (Sorbonne).
Anatole started his career in films by reading scripts for Gaumont-British. He then turned to screenwriting in 1939 for the British film industry and eventually became a producer. Anatole was appointed managing director of Two Cities Films, and later formed his own production company with his brother, Dimitri de Grunwald in 1946.
De Grunwald contributed to the scripts of many of his productions, including The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Holly and the Ivy (1952). Most of his films were British productions, although in the 1960s, invited by MGM, he went to the United States where he produced several films, then returned to England for the remainder of his career. Anatole de Grunwald's final films included The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965). He worked in close collaboration with the director Anthony Asquith and the dramatist Terence Rattigan, with whom he made many films.

Alexander De Grunwald (b 1944), son of Anatole, worked mainly on the production side of film, most notably as production manager on Flash Gordon, Ghandi, East is East and Marigold

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_de_Grunwald

Grant and Robinson families

  • Family
  • c1783-fl 19th century
Peter Grant, born c1783 was a Baptist preacher in Grantown on Spey. A Gaelic speaker, he wrote several hymns which were later translated into English, by John Alexander Grant-Robinson [Peter's great- grandson and depositor's grandfather] who was Minister of the Baptist Church in Perth. Grant-Robinson was also a close friend of shipping magnate, Sir Charles Barrie.
John Robinson [depositor's great grandfather] was Baptist Minister in mid-19th century Calcutta and had close ties with missionaries William Carey and Joshua Marshman.

David Rutherford Dow and the Dow family

  • Family
  • fl 1911-1998

David Rutherford Dow was a native of Crail, Fife. He was educated in Crail and at Waid Academy in Anstruther before attending St Andrews University, graduating MB ChB with distinction in 1911. He obtained a DPH in 1912 and in 1924 his MD thesis on arteriosclerosis was awarded commendation. He was admitted FRCPE and FRSE in 1932. After graduating, he acted as house surgeon in Dundee Royal Infirmary before moving to Great Ormond Street Hospital London. In 1913, Dow was appointed assistant lecturer in anatomy at United College, St Andrews and continued there until 1925 when he was appointed to the Cox Chair of Anatomy at University College Dundee. During the Second World War, he was also in charge of the anatomy department at United College at St Andrews. He was appointed Master of Queens College in 1954 and held this post while continuing with his teaching duties until 1958 when he retired. He was awarded the degree of LLD of St Andrews, honoris causa, in 1959. Professor Dow died in December 1979.

Dr Agnes Dow (nee Morton), wife of DR Dow, also taught at University College. The Memorial Trust was set up after her death in 1998 and administered by Thorntons Solicitors. The Trust provides scholarships, student support, teaching facilities and other funding to medecine and dentistry. There is also a Dow Memorial Lecture which honours both husband and wife.