Major General David Stewart - Keltneyburn, Perth & Kinross, Scotland
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creg-ny-baa
N 56° 37.072 W 003° 59.994
30V E 438638 N 6275297
Memorial to Major General David Stewart, Scottish soldier and antiquarian, with a statue of him in his costume of a Captain in the Black Watch, situated by the roadside in the hamlet of Keltneyburn in highland Perthshire in central Scotland.
Waymark Code: WM16CW1
Location: Northern Scotland, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/03/2022
Views: 1
This memorial sits by the side of the beginning of the Glen Lyon road in Perthshire, near the geographical centre of Scotland. It commemorates Major General David Stewart from nearby Drumcharry which was erected by the Stewart Society in 1925.
David Stewart was born on June 1st 1768 at Drumcharry House, Fortingall, the son of James Stewart, the grandson of Robert II. He would join the 42nd Highlanders, later the Black Watch, on August 10th 1787, becoming a Lieutenant on August 8th 1792, and a Captain-Lieutenant on June 24th 1796. He served in Flanders in 1794, in the French Revolutionary Wars, and was part of the capture of the French colonies of St Lucia and St Vincent.
Back in the Mediterranean, he was involved in the capture of Minorca in 1798 where he was a prisoner at sea and detained for five months before being exchanged by the Spanish. In Egypt he was a part of Abercromby's expedition, and was wounded at the Battle of Alexandria on March 21st 1801. He was also wounded at Maida on July 4th 1806, when under General John Stuart, he commanded a battalion of light company ensuring defeat of the French outside the town.
He was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel to the West India Rangers on April 21st 1808, and was involved in the capture of Guadaloupe in 1810.
He was promoted to Colonel in the Army in 1814, and the following year was awarded the Company of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath.
In 1817 the Officer commanding the 42nd, applied information to him regarding the history of the regiment as records had been lost, and it was then that the idea of writing a book came about. In 1819 he was awarded a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in 1823 Sketches of the Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland was published in two volumes.
David Stewart was made a Major General of the Black Watch on May 25th 1825, and he would become the Governor of St Lucia in 1829. He would die of a fever there that year on December 18th.
A memorial was paid for by the Stewart Society in 1919 and was unveiled at Keltneyburn at a public ceremony by the Duke of Atholl on June 27th 1925. It shows him in the costume of a Black Watch captain upon a plinth. The memorial was designed by Henry Snell Gamley RSA and executed by Stewart & Company of Aberdeen and Dumfries. It is constructed out of granite from Creetown near Newton Stewart in Dumfries & Galloway. The inscription on the plinth reads as follows:
'MAJOR GENERAL
DAVID STEWART C.B.
OF DRUMCHARRY AND GARTH
HISTORIAN OF THE HIGHLANDS
AND THE HIGHLAND REGIMENTS
1768-1829
ERECTED BY
THE STEWART SOCIETY AND
OTHER ADMIRERS, IN MEMORY OF
A TRUE HIGHLANDER
1925
"CUIMHNICHIBU NA DAOINE O'N D'THAINIG SIBH"'
The memorial lies on the north side of the road at Keltneyburn at a bend just over the bridge a few hundred yards west of the junction with the B846 Aberfeldy to Kinloch Rannoch road.