Old Photographs High Street Laurencekirk Scotland

Old photograph of cottages, houses and people on the High Street in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. James Beattie was born on 25 October 1735 the youngest of six children of a shopkeeper and small farmer at Laurencekirk in the Mearns, and educated at Marischal, graduating in 1753. He became schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun in 1753. He took the position of usher at the grammar-school of Aberdeen in 1758. In 1760, he was, to his surprise, appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College, later part of Aberdeen University, as a result of the influence exerted by his close friend, Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo. Beattie was prominent in arguing against the institution of slavery. Beattie co-founded the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1786. Beattie underwent much domestic sorrow in his later years, which broke down his own health and spirits. His wife, Mary née Dunn, whom he had married in 1767, went mad and was committed to a Musselburgh asylum. His two promising sons both died: James Hay in 1790 aged 22 from nervous atrophy, and Montagu in 1796, a promising poet aged 18 after a short illnes. He relinquished his duties at Marischal in 1797.That year he became afflicted with rheumatism, and in 1799 he had a stroke of palsy. He died in Aberdeen in 1803.

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