| Administrative History | James Hay Beattie [1768-1790]. Eldest son of Beattie. Named, with permission, after Beattie's patron James Hay, Earl of Erroll. His childhood is lovingly recorded in many letters, which show that Beattie was always a deeply involved parent, and in the memoir Beattie wrote shortly after James Hay's death. His childhood and adolescence were marred by his mother's mental illness, and her total disasppearance from his life when he was aged about eleven. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School, and then Marischal College from 1781 to 1786. He considered entering the church, but Beattie secured his appointment on 28 Spetember 1787 as his own assistant and successor. James Hay sometimes taught the Arts class, but was already ill with tubercolosis, of which he died on 19 November 1790. His father assembled a substantial volume of his prose and verse, printed in an edition of 200 copies for circulation among his friends in 1794, and subsequently published with Beattie's own poems in 1799 |
| Description | Letters from James Beattie's son, James Hay Beattie, to his father, Major Mercer [presumably James Mercer (bap. 1734, d. 1804), poet and soldier, baptized in Aberdeen], Dr James Dun, Montagu Beattie and Mr George Glennie [professor of moral philosophy at Marischal College from 1796]. Also, one letter, dated 8 June 1789, from Professor Patrick Copland [presumably Patrick Copland (1748 - 1822), natural philosopher and university teacher] to James Hay Beattie and a poem from James Hay, dated 28 February 1788. |