Robert Gordon of Straloch 1580-1661

Robert Gordon was the very first graduate of Marischal College and University, Aberdeen. After a period living in Paris, he became laird of Straloch in about 1606. A real ‘Renaissance man’, he was soon well-known as a scholar and musician and respected as someone able to rise above faction in the vicious politics of the mid seventeenth century. He wrote treatises in Latin or English. But it is as a pioneer cartographer that he is now best known. When in 1641 the great Dutch mapmaker, Blaeu, asked Charles I for help with correcting ‘certane cairttis of divers schyres’ of Scotland, the King turned to Robert Gordon. Despite wars and other troubles, Gordon was allowed to get on with this work for the next dozen years and the results were the beautiful maps in Blaeu’s Atlas of 1648, 1655 and 1664. At this time, it has been argued, Scotland was the best mapped region in the world and this was a result of Gordon’s work. Some of his manuscript maps have survived including what is the first ever map of the New Machar area.

Thomas Reid 1710-1796

Thomas Reid is the greatest person associated with New Machar. Yet when he arrived as the new minister for the parish in 1737, people hostile to the way he had been appointed ducked him in a pond. By the time he left in 1752 he was loved and respected for his kindness although very few of the parishioners could understand his sermons. For Reid was one of the great luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, the author among many other things, of An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).
Reid graduated from Marischal College in 1726 and later became licensed to preach. He was Librarian of the College before being appointed to New Machar. All this time, he was in contact with members of the Royal Society in London whom he visited on a number of occasions as well as with the great scientists and philosophers of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Appointed Professor of Philosophy at King’s College, Aberdeen when he left New Machar, his reputation increased and he was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University in 1764 (succeeding Adam Smith). He remained in Glasgow until he died.
Reid’s philosophy rejected the scepticism of David Hume and so provided an important alternative approach to understanding human nature and human behaviour. His work is often held to have provided the basis for the development of later human sciences, especially psychology.

Sir George Nares 1831-1915

George Nares entered the Royal Navy in 1845 and retired as a Rear-Admiral in 1886. He commanded HMS Challenger (a steamship with sails) when in 1873-6 it conducted the first ever proper oceanographic survey using dredging and other methods to find out what life (if any) there was near the ocean floors. The newly discovered crinoid, Promachocrinus naresi, was named after him. Some geographical features were also named after him for he was detached from the Challenger Expedition to lead an expedition seeking to get to the North Pole in 1875. Nares’ expedition reached further north (83ÿ) than anyone had before managed. Nares Strait and Nares Land in Greenland are among features named after him.
Nares had been born 24th April 1831 probably at Straloch House where his family had been staying although his baptism took place in Monmouthshire in May of that year. After his mother’s death, his father was remarried – to Susan Ramsay who was the widow of the former proprietor of Straloch and the couple lived there. Hence much of Nares’ early life was lived in New Machar and he naturally remained in close touch with his father and stepmother with whom he seems to have had a very affectionate relationship.

Some Notable People Connected With Newmachar