Born in London in January 1788, he was brought to Aberdeen in the summer of 1789 by his mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight. Her husband, Captain John Byron, joined them from time to time, before deserting them in 1790. Byron and his mother left Aberdeen eight years later; his time in Scotland, its mountains and the sea, and his four years at the ‘squeel’ (as he called it) on Schoolhill left him with enduring impressions and certain Scottish traits that were sometimes reflected in his enormously influential poetry, and in his attitudes.
Much of his adult life, during which he gained a reputation for immorality, was spent abroad. He died in 1824 helping the Greeks during their War of Independence, and when his Grammar School statue was unveiled it was said that pupils should ‘judge fairly and generously of their fellow-men,’ and ‘estimate their lives not by their faults but by their achievements.’
Patrick Dun was born in Aberdeen about 1580, the son of a burgess of the city. It is likely that he attended the Grammar School before going either to King’s College or Marischal College. Further studies followed on the continent where he graduated from Basel in 1607. Back in Aberdeen not only was he a successful doctor who attended to the nobility in the surrounding country, but he also taught at both of Aberdeen’s colleges, becoming the Principal of Marischal (where scholars rose at 5 a.m.) in 1621; he was also its first librarian. He died in 1652.
He is now chiefly remembered as a benefactor, and although his valuable bequest to the Town Council of Aberdeen, on behalf of the Grammar School, of the lands of Ferryhill was frittered away by incompetent trustees, Dun’s support for the School is commemorated by his coat of arms, namely a sword between three padlocks, being incorporated in its arms.
House: Dun
Named after: Patrick Dun
House Colour: Red
Head of House: Mr A Martin
PTPS: Miss J Leiper
House: Keith
Named after: Field Marshall Keith
House Color: Yellow
Head of House: Mrs S Torrie
PTPS: Mrs L Gibson
Mr A Henderson
Miss B McKeown
James Keith was born at Inverugie Castle, near Peterhead, in 1696, the youngest child of the Earl Marischal of Scotland. Over the years, a number of boys from this important family were pupils at the Grammar School, as was James. Afterwards he attended Marischal College (founded by an ancestor in 1593) where he may have become an MA, but the possibility of a career in the legal profession was given up for that of a soldier.
Involvement, together with his brother, in the Jacobite rising of 1715 resulted in his brother losing, for the family, the hereditary title of Earls Marischal, and both having to flee to the continent. There, James Keith eventually followed an outstanding military, and later, also an administrative career, in the service of Spain, Russia, and Prussia, a former independent kingdom of Germany. He died in battle in 1758, and it has been said that ‘as a soldier he was beyond question by far the greatest of all “Scots abroad”’.
James Melvin was born of poor parents in Aberdeen in 1794, and, after attending the Grammar School, he studied at Marischal College. Graduating MA in 1816, he first taught in a private ‘academy’ at Udny and then at Old Aberdeen Grammar School, returning to his old school in 1822. A few years later, aged 32, he was appointed Rector, a post which he held until June 1853 when he collapsed in school and died the following day.
The Grammar School curriculum was largely confined to Latin, and its daily timetable so arranged that those boys who so wished could attend lessons on other subjects at the nearby ‘Town’s Schools’. This arrangement also allowed Melvin to hold, in addition to his Rectorship, the post of Lecturer in Humanity at Marischal College, and today he is remembered not only as an inspiring (even if old-fashioned) teacher, but also as one of the finest Latin scholars of his day.