Robert Haldane - Biography

Biography

Haldane was born in London, the son of James Haldane 2nd of Airthrey House, and his wife Katherine Duncan. His younger brother James Alexander Haldane was also a clergyman. Robert and James attended classes at Dundee Grammar School, the Royal High School in Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh.

In 1780 Robert joined HMS Monarch of which his maternal uncle, Adam Duncan, was in command. In the following year he was transferred to HMS Foudroyant. He was on HMS Foudroyant under John Jervis during the night engagement in April 1782 with the French ship Pegase and greatly distinguished himself. Haldane was afterwards present at the relief of Gibraltar in September 1782. Some months later after the peace treaty of 1783 he left the Royal Navy.

Soon after leaving the Navy, he settled on his estate of Airthrey, near Stirling. After selling Airthrey House in 1798 to Robert Abercromby to obtain funding for his mission work, he bought a home at Auchengray, Lanarkshire in 1809.

Read more about this topic:  Robert Haldane

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
    Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)

    Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.
    James Boswell (1740–95)

    In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)