Hugh Cleghorn of Stravithie and Cleghorn family

Hugh Cleghorn LLD of Stravithie, Dunino, by St Andrews (1752-1837), Professor of Civil and Natural History in the United College of the University of St. Andrews. He has a reputation as a gentleman spy and is said to have worked with Charles Daniel de Meuron to facilitate the British conquest of Ceylon.

In 1796 the capture of Ceylon's maritime regions was completed by the British who drove the Dutch out of the country. Initially, the captured region was administered by the British East India Company but when the British Government took over the government under a secretary of state, Frederic North was appointed as the first king's governor, with Hugh Cleghorn as first colonial secretary. Cleghorn, who had been present at the time of the siege and capture of Colombo, toured the island and returned to England to report. He wrote a memorandum on the Dutch system of administration of justice in the maritime regions which the British had just conquered. On January 1, 1802, Ceylon became a British Crown Colony. Cleghorn's work remains of significance in that he minuted the area constituting the traditional homeland of the Tamils.

Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn MD (1820-1895) was grandson of Hugh Cleghorn. A physician and forester, he was appointed to Madras Medical Service, Mysore, India in 1842. He became professor of botany at Madras in 1852, and first conservator of forests in Madras in 1856 and inspector-general in 1867. Cleghorn taught forestry at the University of St Andrews in the late 1860s.

He was active with William Carmichael McIntosh and John Hardie Wilson between 1887-1890 in the introduction of modern botanical teaching at the University and also the establishment of the University Botanic Garden which opened in the summer of 1889. In 1890 an anonymous benefaction (which would later prove to originate with Cleghorn) allowed the appointment of a full time lecturer in botany in 1892.

From the guide to the Papers of Hugh Cleghorn of Stravithie and Cleghorn family, 1718-1896, (University of St Andrews)