| Administrative History | Thomas Gordon was born in 1714, the son of George Gordon, Professor of Hebrew at King's College, 1693 - 1730. Thomas Gordon graduated MA there in 1731 and held various university appointments from 1734 until his death in 1797, as Humanist, Regent, and finally Professor of Greek. His collections of manuscripts relating to staff and students formed a valuable source of information for the compilation of the works on the history of the universities of Aberdeen and their alumni edited by P. J. Anderson (c. 1850-1926).
William Kennedy was probably born in 1759 and attended Marischal College, Aberdeen, from 1774 to 1775/6. He was an advocate in Aberdeen from 1783 and sometime town clerk. He published the 'Annals of Aberdeen' in 1818, and compiled an index to the first 67 volumes of the Aberdeen Council Register, 1398 - 1800, in 1813. He died in 1836.
George Chalmers (1742-1825) was born at Fochabers in Moray, a descendant of the family of Pittensear, and was educated at the parish school of Fochabers and King's College, Aberdeen. He afterwards studied law in Edinburgh. When twenty-one he accompanied his uncle to Maryland and practised as a lawyer at Baltimore. Returning to Great Britain at the outbreak of war, he settled in London in 1775, and devoted himself to literature. His first publications were political, and chiefly connected with the colonies. In 1786 he was appointed chief clerk of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations. He next turned to biography, and published lives of Defoe, Thomas Paine (under the pseudonym of Oldys), and Thomas Ruddiman, the Scottish grammarian and printer. In the beginning of 19th century he was attracted to Scottish poetry and history, and he printed editions of the poems of Allan Ramsay and Sir David Lyndsay, with lives of these poets. In 1807 he issued the first volume of his ‘Caledonia,’ designed to encompass the antiquities and history of Scotland in six volumes, but only three were published, although he did publish other works on Scottish historical topics. Besides his published works, Chalmers left large manuscript collections for the completion of the ‘Caledonia’ and other works, most of which are now in the National Library of Scotland or Edinburgh University Library (Laing Bequest). He died on 31 May 1825. |