2. | Admiral James (1st of Airth) Graham was born in 1676; died in 1746. Notes:
Judge Admiral of Scotland
First of the Tower of Airth, which he purchased by 1717 and converted into a castle
Dean of the Faculty of Advocates
The Airth Bible states he was born in 1676, and in 1700 he had married his first wife (who was also his first cousin), Marion Hamilton, daughter of Lord Pencaitland; of this marriage there were three sons who all died early, James, the eldest, died at the age of nineteen in Rome in 1723. Hugh, of whom we know nothing more than his birth, and John born in 1707, died in infancy; the surviving daughters of James Grahame and Marion Hamilton were Agnes, who married her cousin, Arthur Forbes of Pittcncrieff, Co. Fife, and Marion, who married in 1729 David Bruce of Kinnaird, and died in 1733; her child was James Bruce who became the noted Abyssinian traveller.
Twice we meet the Judge Admiral's name in the Retours as heir-general to his father in 1705 (Sept. 4th), and as heir-special to his uncle the late Henry Graham, the W.S. (who died 1699), in the lands of Gilchriston in Haddington, this service occurs in 1707, and by 1717 he had purchased Airth and altered the Tower of Airth into the Castle. In maps of 150 years ago it is shown as the Tower of Airth; it is about twenty-five miles from Edinburgh.
The Judge's first wife, Marion Hamilton, having died, he married secondly, Lady Mary Livingstone, daughter of Alexander the third Earl of Callendar, by his wife the Lady Anne Graeme, daughter of the second Marquis of Montrose (the gallant little prisoner of 1645); Lady Mary added fresh vigour to any royalist inclinations shown by her husband and their children
Judge Graham, unlike his father, was a Royalist; in the list of Councils held at Holyrood by Prince Charles Edward, we find his name; the names of peers attending come first, then follows Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees; Wauchop of Niddree; Hamilton of Boag; M'Leod of Minavonside; Stirling of Keir; Graham of Airth and Lord Provost Stewart, etc. Lady Kincardine in a letter to Lord Aylesbury, relates how Judge Graham had gone to London "at his own charges" to defend some of the Jacobites taken prisoners at Preston; the judge was guardian to Lady Kincardine's children.
James + Lady Mary Livingston. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
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