602 DILECTA

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III

RUSKIN’S FAMILY TREE

RUSKIN’s parents being first cousins, the number of his great-grandparents is reduced from eight to six. Among these, nothing is ascertained of the parents of his mother’s father, who was English. Of the Ruskin family (the progenitors, that is, of both his father’s father and his mother’s mother) something has been said in the Introduction (pp. lviii.-lxi.). Further back than the grandfather of Ruskin’s father we know nothing definite, and of him our information is limited to his name, the date of his baptism in 1732, and the fact that he was at one time resident in the city of London. Of his origin, his occupation in life, his marriage, and children (if any) other than John Thomas Ruskin, we have no particulars.

In the case of the indisputably Scottish ancestry of Ruskin, through his father’s mother, Catherine Tweddale, the position is different. Here we know something of her father’s family, the Tweddales, and not a little of that of her mother, Catherine Adair, of her grandmother, Jean or Janet Ross, and of her great-grandmother, Mary Agnew, of the family of Lochnaw.

The Tweddales were a staunch Presbyterian family. Catherine Tweddale’s father, James Tweddale’s was minister of Glenluce from 1758 to 1777,¹ having succeeded in that post his namesake and uncle, who had held it from 1716 to 1757. Another Catherine Tweddale, aunt of this last-named James, had been thought worthy to receive charge of the “Solemn League and Covenant” from Baillie of Jerviswood. From her it passed in turn to her nephew and great-nephew, the two ministers of Glenluce, but at the death of the second of them, was sold with his library, and is now in the Museum at Glasgow. A reference to this matter will be found in Dilecta, § 34 (p. 594). John Tweddale, the writer of the letter there given, died unmarried.

The Adairs of Dunskey (Portree), Kinhilt, and Dromore, are an old Scottish family, a cadet of which, one Robert Adair, got possession of the lands of Little Gainoch or Genoch in the fifteenth century. From him no doubt descended an Andrew Adair, who was proscribed, with others of his name, in 1682, and declined Episcopacy in 1684. His son John Adair married Mary Agnew, and dying in 1721, left a son Thomas, who succeeded to Little Genoch on his father’s death. This Thomas Adair, who was a captain in the army, acquired another property, Balkail (since sold to Lord Stair), where he chiefly resided. He married Janet or Jean Ross, daughter of Andrew Ross of Balsarroch, and was the father of the Rev. Andrew Adair, minister of Whithorn, 1746-1795, of Dr. John Adair, who as an army surgeon went out to Canada, and whose portrait is seen in West’s picture of the Battle of Quebec. He died in London in 1794, leaving considerable legacies to many members of his family, including one of £1500 to his niece “Mrs. Risken (sic) married to Mr. Risken at Edinburgh.” It was a sister of his, Mary, who married the Rev. Dr. James Maitland of Sorbie, to whom Ruskin refers in a passage printed below, p. 607.

¹ [See Hew Scott’s Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, 1867, vol. i.p. 767.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]