Keith Stewart-Mackenzie

A carte-de-visite portrait of Keith Stewart Mackenzie of Brahan Castle near Dingwall in NW Scotland.

A pencilled inscription verso in a period hand reads: ‘Keith Stewart Mackenzie / “Seaforth” / Brahan Castle / 1862.’

Born on 9 May 1818 at Murray in Ross-shire, Keith William Stewart-Mackenzie was the son of James Alexander Stewart-Mackenzie (né Stewart), the Member of Parliament for Ross-shire and then for Ross and Cromarty when that constituency was created in 1832. On his marriage in 1817 to Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie, daughter of Francis Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth (whose title had become extinct when all four of his sons predeceased him), the father had taken the additional surname Mackenzie.

In 1844 the son married Hannah Charlotte Hope-Vere, daughter of James Joseph Hope-Vere and Lady Elizabeth Hay (a daughter of George Hay, 7th Marquess of Tweedale). Their marriage produced one son and three daughters before Hannah’s death in 1868. The third daughter died a few months after her mother, at the age of seventeen.

In 1871 he married secondly Alicia Almira Seymour Bell, daughter of Robert Henry Bell of Bellbrook, County Antrim. This marriage produced another daughter.

Keith Stewart-Mackenzie died, aged 63, in 1881. He was buried in the grounds of the ruined Fortrose Cathedral on 25 June 1881.

Photographed by J. Stuart of Inverness.

‘DEATH OF KEITH STEWART MACKENZIE OF SEAFORTH — On Saturday forenoon intimation was received here of the death of the above well known gentleman. The news has an interest for everyone who has known the Highlands for any length of time, for though of a wayward and impulsive nature, Seaforth possessed, in a remarkable degree, the happy faculty of ingratiating himself with people of all classes, and of every age. With exception of the last few years, and a few years in his youth when he served in his regiment in China and Ceylon, Seaforth spent the greater part of his life in Ross-shire, and no face was more familiar in the Lews, in Kintail, or in Wester Ross than that of the kindly, frank, out-spoken, and popular laird of Brahan. At the death of his father in 1843, he came home to assume the duties of a country gentleman, and assist his mother the Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie in the administration of her vast Highland estates, which at one time stretched in an almost unbroken line from the Outer Hebrides to the German Ocean. Seaforth was early elected Convener of the county of Ross, and discharged his duties until induced to resign in consequence of increasing deafness, an infirmity which, as it grew upon him, led to progressive withdrawal from public life, and ultimate removal to London as a place of residence. […] When the volunteer movement was inaugurated Seaforth was one of its most active supporters, and was, we believe, the first officer gazetted in the North, on his appointment as captain of the Dingwall Company (Ross-shire Journal, 24 June 1881).