DUFF, Margaret ^{1 2}

   Another name for Margaret was DUFF, Peggie, Mrs.³

   User ID: L999.

  General Notes:

"Mrs. Gordon, with all the common-sense tenacity of her race, survived her spouse for forty-one years, having a jointure of £55 11s. on the Gight estate to the very end. She took herself to Banff, where she lived with her sister, in a three-storeyed house in Low Street. She practically brought up her granddaughter, Mrs. Byron, whose reckless marriage must have shocked her, though it did not prevent her from entertaining her great-grandson (Lord Byron) at Banff when he was about seven or eight years old. In Dr. Cramond's Annals of Banff (i., 228-237) will be found various legends about Byron's boyhood in Banff, and a letter which shows what an illiterate speller old 'Lady Gight' was."

from Gight ²

Margaret married Alexander GORDON 11th of Gight, son of Alexander DAVIDSON of Newton of Cusalmond, then of Gight, jure uxoris, Jacobite 1715 and Marie GORDON (MRS DAVIDSON) 10th of Gight, in December 1739 in Banff parish, Banffshire, Scotland.^{1 2 3} (Alexander GORDON 11th of Gight was baptised on 25 May 1716 in Fyvie parish, Aberdeenshire, Scotland ⁴ and died in 1760.). The cause of his death was drowning in River Ythan.

  Marriage Notes:

"DUFF
PEGGIE
NAME NOT GIVEN/GORDON/
30/11/1739
147 80 / 20
Banff"

from Index of Marriages


Old Parish Registers
Banff parish Banffshire
Marriages

"1739
Decr
Gordon Laird of Gight & M^rs Peggie Duff Daug^r of Craigston"




"Margaret (Duff), born 1720, died 1801 ; married Alexander Gordon of Gight. She had nine sons and three daughters, and the eldest son, George, born 1741, who married Catherine Innes, was the father of Catherine Gordon, married to Captain John Byron, and mother of the poet."

from Book of the Duffs




"He (Alexander Gordon) married Margaret Duff, born Dec. 20, 1720 ; died at Banff, Nov. 13, 1801 (vide Gight tombstone). She was the daughter of Patrick Duff of Craigston (uncle of the first Earl Fife, and founder of the Duffs of Hatton). This alliance was interesting from several points of view besides Byron's famous love affair with his cousin, Mar)' Duff. The Duffs represented everything that the Gordons of Gight did not. They were never reckless especially where money was concerned ; for their rise is one of the most wonderful stories of success, and was mainly due to brains as applied to commerce. Sometimes (as I argued at considerable length in Scottish Notes and Queries, May, 1898) their brains led them into literature (Sir M. E. Grant-Duff and his brother, Mr. Douglas Ainslie, are cases in point to-day), and it might be advanced that Byron was a good deal indebted to this strain in his blood for his literary instincts. In any case, it may be taken for granted that the Gight family increased their balance at the bankers during the reign of Margaret Duff, despite the fact that she had a large family, and apart from the annexation of the Davidson estates." [....]

"The eleventh laird of Gight and his spouse had no fewer than twelve children nine sons and three daughters. Beyond the appearance of their names on the Gight tombstone at Fyvie and the Register of Baptisms, I have been able to discover nothing about them, so that I imagine most of them died young. Only the eldest of them took the name of Gordon. The rest were Davidsons"

from Gight ^{1 2 3 5}