Hugh Clapperton (1788–1827) by G. Manton Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Article
Christopher Fyfe
Clapperton, Hugh (1788–1827), naval officer and traveller in Africa, was born at Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, the youngest son of George Clapperton, a surgeon, and his first wife, the daughter of John Johnstone. His mother died when he was a child, and his father remarried. Feckless (he fathered altogether twenty-one children), negligent of his medical practice, and, as a result, impoverished, his father left him to the charge of a spiteful stepmother who cared only for her own children. His schooling was neglected, and he learned little more than to read and write. Eventually the town schoolmaster gave him lessons in practical mathematics and navigation, and he taught himself to draw....
Article
Cheryl Piggott
Douglas, David (1799–1834), plant collector and traveller, was born on 25 June 1799 at Scone, Perthshire, one of six children of John Douglas, a stonemason, and his wife, Jean, née Drummond. Quick to learn but often truant from school owing to his passion for natural history, he was apprenticed at the age of ten in the gardens of the ...
Article
H. M. Chichester
revised by James Falkner
Kinneir, Sir John Macdonald (1782–1830), army officer, traveller, and diplomatist, born at Carnden, Linlithgow, on 3 February 1782, was the illegitimate son of John Macdonald, comptroller of customs at Bo'ness, and Mrs Cecilia Maria Kinneir. In 1802 he was nominated to a cadetship by ...
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Mungo Park (1771–1806) by Thomas Rowlandson, c. 1805 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Article
Christopher Fyfe
Park, Mungo (1771–1806), traveller in Africa, was born on 11 September 1771 at Foulshiels (sometimes misspelt Fowlshiels), near Selkirk, the seventh of the thirteen children of Mungo Park (1714?–1793), a prosperous tenant farmer on the estate of the duke of Buccleuch, and ...
Article
Ramsay, John, of Ochtertyre (1736–1814), writer on Scotland, was born on 26 August 1736, the elder son of James Ramsay of Ochtertyre, near Stirling (d. 1748), writer to the signet, and Anne Dundas, daughter of Ralph Dundas of Manor. Educated at the grammar school at ...
