Old Photograph Antermony House Scotland

Old photograph of Antermony House, Milton of Campsie, Scotland. John Bell, born 1601, died 1780, was a Scottish doctor and traveller. He was born at Antermony and studied medicine in Glasgow and in 1714 set out for St Petersburg, Russia, where, through the introduction of a fellow Scot, he was nominated medical attendant to Artemy Petrovich Volynsky, recently appointed to the Persian embassy, with whom he travelled from 1715 to 1718. The next four years he spent in an embassy to China, passing through Siberia and the great Tatar deserts. He had scarcely rested from this last journey when he was summoned to attend Peter the Great in his expedition to Derbend and the Caspian Gates. In 1738 he was sent by the Russian government on a mission to Constantinople, returning in May to St Petersburg. It appears that after this he was for several years established as a merchant at Constantinople, where he married Mary Peters, a Russian lady, and returned to Scotland in 1746, where he spent the latter part of his life on his estate, enjoying the society of his friends. After a long life spent in active beneficence and philanthropic exertions he died at Antermony House on 1 July 1780, at the advanced age of eighty nine. He is buried in Campsie Glen. His travels, published at Glasgow in 1763, were speedily translated into French, and widely circulated in Europe. Milton of Campsie is a large Scottish village in East Dunbartonshire, 10 miles North of Glasgow, nestling at the foot of the Campsie Fells.



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