John Wardlaw Ramsay

The youngest child of Lady Anne and Robert Wardlaw Ramsay, shown in this silhouette still in his petticoats, and holding a whip. As a younger son, John benefitted from a good education and an inheritance. He married quite young, but our information about him suffers from the fact that his mother’s later correspondence was not preserved by his older brother Robert.

However, a charming letter that he wrote aged six to Robert in India is still in the Archive. In it, he tells Robert how he hopes to join him there, one day.

He can also be glimpsed in vol 1 of his brother Balcarres’s Rough Recollections of Military Service and Society, which records their childhood in Leamington Spa, where they lived with their widowed mother Lady Anne in the same street as the elderly General Wellington.

He appears to have had business interests in Edinburgh and Inverness, and, after his marriage to Penelope McDouall, travelled to South Africa with his wife and two children. He died at Kimberley in 1876, shortly after his son’s death, but his widow lived on until 1900, and died in Paddington.

“Poor John’s propensity …” letter dated 1843 GD143/88

Thank you to the Down Family for this succinct family tree http://genealogy.downau.com/individual.php?pid=I17772&ged=down

The Reverend William McDouall was Prebendary of Peterborough. Penelope was the fifth of his eight children.