Sir David Hunter Blair

Sir David Hunter Blair and Sir James Fergusson (q.v.) are identified as 'owners-in-fee' of the Rozelle estate in St Thomas-in-the-East in the compensation records, and the estate appears against the names of Sir A. Fergusson and Sir D. H. Blair in the Jamaica Almanacs in 1811 and then as Fergusson and Blair thereafter. The Rozelle estate was one of three belonging to Robert Hamilton of Bourtreehill (died c. 1777) who named his Ayrshire estate after the Jamaica property on the building of Rozelle House by Robert Adam in 1760. In 1763, Robert Hamilton sold the Rozelle estate to an Ayrshire neighbour, Charles Montgomery of Broomlands, for £6000. Montgomery in turn sold a half share to Robert Hamilton's step-son William Hunter of Mainholm and Brownhill (the uncle of Sir David Hunter Blair), and left his own half share to the banker Charles Fergusson, the younger brother of Sir Adam Fergusson 3rd bart.

1. Son of the Edinburgh banker and Provost James Hunter, later Sir James Hunter Blair. Married (1) Dorothea, dau. of Edward Hay-Mckenzie and (2) Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Hay. Succeeded his father in the 'Old Corruption' post of King's Printer: his costs on a record commission were scrutinised in a House of Commons debate on supply in 1821. Blair's Blairquhan Castle, which he built in 1821, was recently for sale through Savill's, presumably after the death of James Hunter Blair in 2005.

T71/867 St Thomas-in-the-East No. 510; Jamaica Almanacs 1811 et seq., at www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com [accessed 15/05/2011] [Sir A. Fergusson was Sir Adam Fergusson, Sir James Fergusson's uncle, from whom Sir James inherited in 1813]; http://guide.visitscotland.com/vs/guide/5,en,SCH1/objectId,SIG49211Svs,curr,GBP,season,at1,selectedEntry,home/home.html [accessed 15/05/2011]; Eric Graham, Burns and the Sugar Plantocracy of Ayrshire (2014) pp. 28-29.

1. Times 14/07/1821 p. 2 and 29/06/1821 p. 2; letter from 'Radical' Times 30/03/1831 p. 7; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1480342/James-Hunter-Blair.html [accessed 15/05/2011]; http://ruralsearch.savills.co.uk/PropertyDetails.aspx?SiteRef=261856&mode=Rural; Burke's Landed Gentry of Scotland (2001) shows James (b. 1926) as heir presumptive to his brother Edward Thomas, the 8th bart. The James Hunter of the Ayr sugar refinery was the cousin of Sir James Hunter Blair, while Sir James Hunter Blair's brother William Hunter of Mainholm and Brownhill was a partner in the Hunter Bank of Ayr in the 1770s, http://southayrshirehistory.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/enterprise-and-refinement-james-hunter-and-the-ayr-sugar-house/.