Robert Wallace

Merchant (partner in Wallace, Hunter, q.v.) and MP, son of the West India merchant John Wallace (of Cessnock and then of Kelly) and brother of the soldier Sir James Maxwell Wallace (q.v.), and owner of the Cessnock and Glasgow estates in western Jamaica.

1. Second son of John Wallace (1712-1805) of Cessnock and Kelly and his third wife Janet, daughter of Robert Colquhoun of St Kitts. His father was a merchant in Glasgow, who amassed a large fortune in the West Indies and became proprietor of several large estates. 'By his father's will Robert Wallace received the estate of Kelly and part of the West Indian property.' He married Margaret, daughter of Sir William Forbes of Craigievar; they had no children. 'A devoted Whig', first MP for Greenock under the Act (until 1846). Law and postal reformer. 'In 1846 Wallace became embarrassed financially by the depreciation in value of some of his West Indian estates and deemed it prudent to resign his seat in Parliament. The estate of Kelly was sold, and Wallace lived in retirement at Seafield Cottage, Greenock. After his resignation a liberal public subscription was made for him, which proved an annuity of £500 p.a. Wallace died at Seafield on 1 April 1855.'

T71/872 Hanover claim no. 440 for Cessnock; T71/871 Westmoreland No. 266 for Glasgow.

1. A. H. Millar, ‘Wallace, Robert (1773–1855)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28541, accessed 12/08/012].