Tour Scotland photograph of the Bruce Fountain in Falkland, Fife, Scotland. The Bruce Fountain was donated to the village of Falkland by Onesiphorus Tyndall Bruce in 1856. Onesiphorus was born in 1790 in Bristol, England, where his family had been merchants, slave traders and bankers. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he became an impecunious barrister, with debts amounting to £50,000. In 1828 he married Margaret Steuart Hamilton Bruce, the illegitimate daughter of Lt Colonel Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce by an Indian lady. Her father had died when she was 8 years old, and she was adopted by her uncle, John Hamilton Bruce, Professor of Logic at the University of Edinburgh and proprietor of Falkland. On her uncle's death in 1826, Margaret inherited, becoming proprietor of Falkland, Nuthill and Myres, very wealthy, and Hereditary Keeper of Falkland Palace. Her uncle had disapproved of Onesiphorus because of his large debts, but when Margaret married him two years after her uncle's death she paid off his debts and made him an allowance. Onesiphorus took her surname in addition to his own, and in 1839 they commissioned William Burn to build the a new House of Falkland, replacing Nuthill House where they had lived until then. They also managed their estates well, improving and extending the farms, and earning the approval of the people. They paid for the building of the present Falkland Parish church, and Onesiphorus was commemorated by a prominent monument on the Lomond Hills, the Tyndall Bruce Monument, as well as by a statue next to the church. Both Onesiphorus and Margaret are buried in the parish cemetery.
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