Excerpted from The Hannays of Sorbie, 4th Edition, available on Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle. All profits from sales go to the Clan Hannay Society.

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George Hannay, the son of James Hannay, D.D., was born December 12, 1631. He fought, possibly along with his brother James, with King Charles II in the ill-fated Worcester campaign of 1650 and was taken prisoner by the Commonwealth forces after the battle. He did not receive the death sentence which might reasonably have been expected, but instead was transported as a slave to Barbados. However at the Restoration his fortunes improved and by 1672 he was “Deputy Provost Marshal (head of military police) of the Barbados to a certain Edwyn Steed.”

In 1673 he is ordered to “search the ships and places in St. Michaels town and seize and deliver the provisions necessary to the Master of the Garland as she is at present retarded for want provisions.”

In 1682 Colonel Edwyn Steed recommended that his appointment of Provost Marshal be transferred to Hannay, whom he described as follows:

“The Marshal is much troubled by his fortune. I can call it by no other name for he is an honest man, who was sold out here as a slave for helping the King at Worcester and is resolved to make a vigorous protest of his position to England though it was a great risk for one who lived so long in a hot climate to expose himself to the extremity of the winter and the expense of the voyage must needs be great.”

The trouble was that Colonel Steed “was so much affected with the Gout that he cannot perform his duties without the help of his deputy that he prays that he may surrender the patent and that it be granted to George Hannay.”

In 1683 George left for England on leave, and on October 31 the Crown Law officers were ordered to prepare a bill constituting him Provost Marshal of the Barbados.

During his absence there was some trouble over the case of Samuel Hanson whom George had arrested in 1682. And as the common jail had been destroyed by the hurricane of 1675, he was forced to confine him in George’s house. This form of custody seems to have been pretty lax for persons of quality. But George seems to have been stricter than most, for when Hanson escaped on November 27, 1682, after giving his parole “the Lords find no blame in Hannay for Hansons escape for Mr. Hannay had refused to let him go and drink with his friends in town whilst in custody.”

Samuel Hanson and an accomplice, Richard Piers, tried to sue George for wrongful imprisonment in 1684, but the King in Council ordered the Attorney General, Sir Robert Sanger, to defend him from “Urgent and vexatious suits” brought against him by these two.

In Hanson’s statement he also appears to have tried to set the Governor Sir Richard Dutton against George for he complains: “That Dutton had ousted George Hannay out of the Clerkship of Bridgetown and put in Rawlins, one of the musicians he brought from England, in his place,” and continues that “no man who can leave the Island will stay while Sir Richard Dutton remains Governor.”

Dutton’s answer was that “he knew nothing of Hannay and the appointment took place a month after Dutton’s arrival, in any case Rawlins was not a ‘common fiddler’ but had been educated in the Law at the Temple.”

In spite of these tribulations, George maintained his position except for a short period, for in 1689 Sir George Eyles and Colonel Kendall petitioned for his continuance in the appointment and on June 11, 1690, the Council agreed to restore him to his appointment.

A curious insight into the West Indies in general, and the position of the aristocracy before the law is shown in a memorandum from George on June 28, 1690, in the case of Sir Thomas Montgomerie:

“Sir Thomas Montgomerie was committed by order of 28th Feb 1690 and delivered to my custody on March 1st having been caught trying to escape in a boat to the French. I gave him three rooms in my house for respect to his dignity and all good usage but such was his strange lewd behaviour that I could not enjoy quiet in my own house and was obliged to keep a guard over him at my own expense, while his behaviour was so bad that the court passed several orders to prohibit him from receiving visitors, news ink or paper. On Governor Kendall’s account he had great hopes of release but has remained to my house until his departure when he refuses to pay my fees whereupon I distrained on his property. On my return he attacked me with a sword. I am ready to release him on payment of my just fees.”

In 1691 he went on leave to England again, and returned the next year. He was now a fairly old man, for in 1694 Lord Willoughby wrote to Sir John Trenchard begging the office of Provost Marshal for Captain Finney as Mr. George Hannay “the present holder is very infirm and aged.” He however seems to have held his post till his death in 1695, when on December 31 a warrant was issued to his son, James Hannay, as Provost Marshal of Barbados.

James took on where his father left off and was at once sued by one Ralph Lane regarding his imprisonment. His petition makes interesting reading:

“Petition to the Council of Trade and Plantations—I omitted to tell you in my last address that after the death of George Hannay I was released from jail and since December 1695 have been living in my own house though under restraint that I am liable upon any humour to be confined again in the common jail. This is such an awe to me that I have not ventured to seek for proofs of the wrongs I have sustained.

“I sent a petition to Governor Russell for copies of papers I required, but no answer was returned and I was told that if I made another attempt to attend you James Hannay will confine me with severity in the loathsome common jail. I am obliged therefore to remove my grievences to royall determination (i.e. London) dated April 29th, 1697.”

In 1701, James is also described as Marshal of the Court of Vice Admiralty, which dealt with the arrest of privateers. In 1709, there is an entry in the State Papers referring to George holding certain appointments. This might be a misprint for James as the appointments appear under James’s name elsewhere. They are the Marshal of Assembly, Marshal of Council of Court of Errors, Marshal of Court of Admiralty and Serjeant at Arms of the Court of Chancery.

There may have been another George as both James and George appear in 1709, together with a George Hays, as executing the office of Marshal of the Admiralty Court. So perhaps George was the younger son also holding a legal benefice due to his late father’s influence.[1]

James subscribed to the Loyal address to Queen Anne on May 18, 1702 when she was proclaimed at Bridgetown:

“We pray your Majesty may preserve the balance of Empire against the overgrowing and exhorbitant power of the French King and all other that shall attempt to disturb the peace thereof of any of your Kingdoms, especially on the score of the supposed Prince of Wales[2] whose pretention we abhor and renounce from the bottom of our hearts being ready to offer up the last drop of our blood and the utmost penny of our fourtunes in defence of yr majesty’s right.”

In 1705, James petitioned and was granted leave for one year by the Queen. On May 10, 1707, the Queen wrote to the Attorney General stating, “you are to prepare a warrent for George Gordon to be Provost Marshal of the Barbadoes and thereby revoking the patent whereby James Hannay was so constituted.”

James thus resigned his post and became a private gentleman. In 1709, James married Elizabeth Price. They had a daughter Elizabeth and a son George. James is described in 1714 in the list of Gentlemen proposed by President Sharpe for vacancies on the Council of Barbados on June 1 as “a worthy gent of good parts improved by a liberal education at Oxford, of great prudence, resolution and integrety and of very good estate.” He appears to have continued to serve on the Council until 1728. In this year he could not serve on the Grand Jury of Session on December 10, but it is stated that he was a “proper person to do so” as he owned a large number of slaves. The seventeen Gentlemen listed as “proper persons” owned 339 slaves between them.

The Provost Marshal General’s second son George may in turn have had a son, also George, for one is recorded as living from 1700 to 1783[3]. He married Jane Thompson and lived in Lunenburg County, Virginia. His son Andrew married Ann Cunningham and died in 1793. Andrew’s son, Captain George Hannah, served in the War of 1812 against the British, and in 1806 married first Betsy Brent by whom he had three children. Later after they had moved to Arkansas, his wife died and he married Lucy Morton and had a further three children. His son, also a Captain in the U.S. Army, George Cunningham Hannah, was born in 1817 and died in 1878.

He married Ann Spragins in 1842; they had eleven children. His son Samuel Baldwin also served in the Army, and married, in 1874, Martha Elizabeth Hevener[4]. They had also eleven children, the most notable of whom is the Revd. Samuel Baldwin Hannah, who died in 1959 and was a noted Presbyterian divine in Virginia and also in Arizona.

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[1] Stewart Francis, in previous editions of The Hannays of Sorbie, added:

“Supporting this theory, the Reverend James A.M. Hanna [1924-2007] of Oak Hill, Ohio, asserted that the second George was the younger son of George Hannay, the Provost Marshal General”.

The Reverend James, however, in his 1959 work Hanna of Castle Sorbie, Scotland and Descendants, also believed that Provost Marshall George was the son of John Hannay of Sorbie (d. 1640). James wrote that the younger George Hannay (or Hannah as spelled in the Rev. Hanna’s book), the Provost’s son, died in Lunenberg County, Virginia, in 1783. This implies a 143-year gap between the death of George and his grandfather. There is likely either one or more missing generations between Barbados and Virginia or a case of mistaken identity in conflating two different George Hannays. As noted later in this chapter, Stewart Francis believed that the George Hannay in Virginia was the grandson of Provost Marshall George.

[2] James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), Prince of Wales until his father James II was deposed.  James Francis Edward was known as The Old Pretender and was the father of “Bonnie” Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender.

[3] although as noted later in this chapter, there was a contemporaneous George Hannay (1702-1776) born in the Barbados, who subsequently emigrated to the United Kingdom.

[4] In previous editions, Stewart Francis stated that Samuel’s wife was incorrectly listed as Elizabeth Andrew Stevenson.  This is possibly due to some records being improperly transcribed. For example, one census entry lists Samuel’s wife as “Elizabeth A. Hannah”, and it is plausible that “Hevener” was at one point misheard as “Stevenson”.

Rob and Mary Hanna are luminaries of the equestrian world.

Rob Hanna was for many years the manager (chef d’équipe) of the Australian national equestrian team. Rob is himself a former competitive rider, but his wife Mary is a world-class athlete.

Mary Sutherland Hanna competed in five Olympic Games, most recently in 2016. Born in Melbourne in 1954, Mary started riding horses when she was two years old, and she’s still riding competitively! Currently ranked 86^th in the world (as of 2020) in dressage, she likely has the longest ongoing career of any Australian equestrian (as well as being Australia’s oldest competing Olympian). In 2018, she was inducted into the Equestrian Victoria Hall of Fame.

Mary’s Olympic Games and ranking

• 2016: 9^th (team), 39^th (individual)
• 2012: 9^th (team), 43^rd (individual)
• 2004: 39^th (individual)
• 2000: 6^th (team), 34^th (individual)
• 1996: 24^th (individual)

Up until 2020, Rob and Mary ran a breeding and training center in Victoria, Australia. They recently sold the 60 acre property to be closer to family.

Sources

• Fédération Equestre Internationale website, Mary Hanna member page (retrieved 27 Oct, 2020)
• Australian Olympic Team website, Mary Hanna page (retrieved 27 Oct, 2020)
• Rudall, Jenny, “Australian teams selected for Olympics”, article from Horse and Country News, 20 June, 2012
• Statene Park Dressage Centre “About Us” page (retrieved 27 Oct, 2020)
• Mayne, Nicole, “Melbourne buyers beat overseas interest to purchase Olympian Mary Hanna’s Bellarine property”, Geelong Advertiser, 4 Mar, 2020

by Robert Keith Hanna, Clan Hannay Genealogist

This article originally dates from June of 2011.  The chief, Dr. David Hannay, subsequently raised doubts as to whether this painting is indeed of his ancestor, as some of the dates mentioned by Mr. Wood in his research do not match family records held by the Kirkdale branch of the Hannays.  Further study into this matter continues as of June, 2020.

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Artist: Thomas Peat
fl.1791 – 1831

 

Oil painting on canvas 28 x 36 inches and contained in a carved giltwood frame

Signed lower left “T. Peat” and dated “179(0 ?). It has been suggested that the final digit has been somewhat abraded and was originally an “8”

Thomas Peat was a London-based portraitist (he lived at 290 Holborn, near Great Turnstile and subsequently at 16, Rathbone Place), the majority of whose work is in miniature, both painted and enamel. He shared a house with his sister, who also painted portraits and sent them to the Royal Academy. Few biographical details remain about them, though a doggerel poem survives which praises:

In striking likenesses, those talents rare,
With the ingenious Peat few can compare;

Peat exhibited at the Academy until 1805 from his London houses, but seems to have been peripatetic, his work being recorded in Bath, Leamington Spa and Bristol.

The following is a research report prepared by Stephen Wood MA FSA about the identity of the sitter in the painting:

“The uniform details of the sitter positively identify him as an officer of 2^nd Life Guards during the period from the creation of the regiment in 1788 to approximately 1806. The defining factors of the uniform are the black and red plume on his cocked hat and the goat-skin covers to his saddle holsters: this was a combination, together with the rest of the uniform depicted, unique to 2^nd Life Guards in the 1790s.[i] The sitter appears to be wearing an oval badge suspended from an orange ribbon below his shirt ruffle and hanging between the fifth and sixth button of his coatee: this is almost certainly the badge of a Baronet of Nova Scotia – which was of that size and shape and worn suspended around the neck from an orange, or ‘tawny’ ribbon.[ii] In the period 1788-c.1806, only one Baronet of Nova Scotia served in 2^nd Life Guards: this was Sir Samuel Hannay, 4^th Baronet of Mochrum and Kirkdale.[iii] It is thus very probable indeed that the sitter in this portrait is Sir Samuel Hannay, who was born on 12^th August 1772. He was the eldest surviving son of Sir Samuel Hannay, Bart. MP (c.1742-90) by his wife Mary Meade (d. 1800).[iv]

The elder Samuel Hannay was descended from the Hannays of Kirkdale in Kirkcudbrightshire and made his fortune in the City of London as a chemist and druggist. With two of his brothers and in partnership with other Scots, he also invested and speculated successfully in the East India Company’s trade with India and China. Having made a fortune, Hannay spent lavishly on the appurtenances of wealth and social position: he lived at 31 Bedford Square 1783-89 before moving to Portland Place, he commissioned portraits of two of his children, Samuel and Mary, from George Romney in 1786 and 1790 and in 1786 he commissioned drawings from Robert and James Adam for a villa on Putney Heath that, in the event, was never built. In 1783, he successfully laid claim to the dormant baronetcy of Hannay of Mochrum and was created the 3^rd baronet of that title. In 1784, he obtained a parliamentary seat, Camelford in Cornwall, and sat as one of the two members for that borough – the other member being one of his business partners, James Macpherson – until his death on 11^th December 1790. A notable member of the ‘Bengal Squad’ in the House of Commons, Hannay voted with the government until the Regency crisis of 1788, when he went into opposition – a move for which he was much criticised and, indeed, mocked: his background as a chemist was ridiculed by his opponents, who made much of the fact that the medicine for which he was most well-known – Sir Samuel Hannay’s Original, Genuine and Only Infallible Preventative of a Certain Disease – was supposedly a protection against venereal disease. On Sir Samuel Hannay’s death, he was found to be immensely in debt, a position that may in part have resulted from his commissioning a mansion – Kirkdale House – from Robert and John Adam in 1787 but was probably also due to his reputedly heavy gambling. Although, under Scottish laws of inheritance, his widow was not left destitute – being allowed to retain one-third of his estate and its income – the remainder of his estate, including the house and contents in Portland Place, had to be sold to satisfy his numerous creditors. Thus, while the younger Samuel Hannay inherited his father’s title in 1790, becoming the 4^th Baronet of Mochrum, he did not inherit anything else until he came of age on 12^th August 1793.[v]

[i]     Lawson.

[ii]    Jocelyn. Only baronets of Scotland (called baronets of Nova Scotia) wore badges prior to 1929, when baronets of Great Britain were allowed to wear badges signifying their rank.

[iii]   Printed Army Lists of the period noted.

[iv]    Burke.

[v]     Byrne; Christie; Clarke; Gifford; Namier & Brooke; Philips; Rowan; Thorne; Ward & Roberts.

No details have been traced of the education of Sir Samuel Hannay, believed to be the sitter in this portrait: he does not appear to have attended any English public school or any British university of the period. Given his inheritance, it may be that a military career was one of the few open to him and so, the cost of living being lower in Ireland than in Britain at that time, it is not surprising that he was first commissioned in a regiment stationed in Ireland. He became ensign in 38^th Regiment of Foot on 30^th July 1791 but exchanged to another Ireland-based regiment, 5^th Dragoon Guards, later the same year – becoming a cornet in that regiment on 31^st October 1791. He clearly did not spend all his time in Ireland since he is recorded as attending the Prince of Wales’s levée at Carlton House on 27^th February 1792: perhaps the prince remembered the tacit support given him by the young officer’s father at the time of the Regency crisis four years earlier. On 31^st March 1793, Hannay was promoted lieutenant in 5^th Dragoon Guards and remained in the regiment until the last day of 1796, when he exchanged with a lieutenant in 61^st (South Gloucestershire) Regiment of Foot. It is unlikely that this exchange resulted in Hannay joining his new regiment, which was serving in the West Indies at the time, but it probably brought him back to Britain where, now that he had inherited his estate, he would have been able to preside over the sale of the most of the remaining lands, buildings and farms at Kirkdale which took place in January 1797.[vii]

The income resulting from the sale of the Kirkdale estate may have enabled Sir Samuel to increase his social status within the army since, on 24^th August 1797, he sold his lieutenancy in the unfashionable 61^st Foot and bought the rank of cornet and sub-lieutenant in 2^nd Life Guards, a regiment of which his fellow-Scot, Lord Cathcart, had recently become colonel. On 17^th January 1799, he purchased promotion to lieutenant and adjutant and acquired command of a troop, in the rank of captain and without purchase, on 3^rd June 1801. During the short-lived ‘Peace of Amiens’, on 25^th March 1802, Hannay exchanged from 2^nd Life Guards into the relatively newly raised Queen’s German Regiment but, probably sometime in the following six months, went to Altona, near Hamburg, to fight a duel. As The Times reported, on 11^th September 1802,

‘On Wednesday morning, Capt. MURRAY arrived in town from Hamburgh, accompanied by Major BLAIR and Colonel CALLAND. Capt. MURRAY went over to the Continent for the purpose of fighting Sir SAMUEL HANNAY, in consequence of some blows which passed some time ago at Steevens’s, in Bond-street.

The meeting took place at Altona. The parties fired a case of pistols each. Capt. MURRAY’s last shot was fired in the air, and put an end to the dispute. Sir SAMUEL HANNAY is not yet returned. It is said that he quits Lord CATHCART’s Regiment in consequence of this unfortunate affray.’

Since the date of the duel is not known, it is not possible to substantiate the suggestion that Hannay had to leave 2^nd Life Guards as a result of it. Given the discrepancy in dates between The Times report and Hannay’s transfer out of 2^nd Life Guards, as well as the fact that The Times incorrectly reported the ranks of Blair and Calland – who were both regimental captains, although Calland was a brevet major – it is conceivable that the gossip, as reported, was inaccurate. Since his antagonist, Captain The Hon. George Murray, and both of his supporters, were all officers in 2^nd Life Guards at the time, the reason for the blows exchanged at Stevens’s Hotel in Bond Street may have been a regimental matter or, since all those named by The Times were Scots, some question of ancestry or birth.[viii]

It seems probable that Hannay remained on the European continent for some time after the duel since he appears to have been there when war with France resumed on 15^th May 1803. He is recorded, together with his sister and brother-in-law, Mr and Mrs Thomas Rainsford, as being a prisoner-of-war in France after 1803. Given Napoleon’s reluctance to allow British prisoners-of-war to be exchanged, it is possible that Hannay – and the Rainsfords – remained as prisoners in France until 1814.[ix] Certainly, Hannay retired from the Army by sale of his captain’s commission in Queen’s German Regiment on 18^th October 1803: this was an act that would have released some funds needed to make his imprisonment less unpleasant.[x]

Little more is known after 1803 of Sir Samuel Hannay. In the 1830s he is said to have been ‘in the service of the Emperor of Austria’ with ‘an official post at Vienna’ but no further details are available from printed British sources.[xi] He died of tuberculosis (‘Lungensucht’) in Vienna on 1^st December 1841, as the Wiener Zeitung announced, 

‘Verstorbene zu Wien. … Den 1. December. Der hochwohlgeborne Sir Baronet Samuel Hannay of Mochrum, königl. Grossbritannischer Ober Lieutenant, alt 69 J., in der Plankengasse Nr. 1064, an der Lungensucht.’

Death notices subsequently appeared in the Annual Register and Gentleman’s Magazine.[xii] Although he neither married nor left legitimate offspring, he may not have spent his declining years alone since, in 1839, he settled his estate upon the dowager Baroness Schaffalitsky with remainder to his elder sister Mary Hastings Hannay – who had been painted by Romney in 1790[xiii]. The baroness dying soon after Hannay, the estate was then inherited by Mary, who died in 1850 and left it to her nephew, William Henry Rainsford Hannay.

Given that the sitter in this portrait is most probably Sir Samuel Hannay, 4^th Baronet of Mochrum and Kirkdale, the house depicted in the background is most probably intended to represent Kirkdale House, designed by Robert and James Adam in 1787 and built between 1787 and 1789. It is not a scrupulously accurate representation of the house, which may not have been visited by the artist in any case, but its position adjacent to a body of water replicates the position of Kirkdale House close by the shore of Wigtown Bay. The artist may have worked on his depiction either from a sketch by Sir Samuel Hannay, who commissioned the house from the Adams, or from one of a series of plans for different versions of the house that the Adams produced for the third baronet around 1786-87, or from a sketch provided by the fourth baronet, the probable sitter in the portrait.

Since the date ‘1790’ cannot refer to the sitter in that year – since he did not join the Army until 1791 or wear the uniform shown before 1797 – it may be a retrospective use of the date indicating when the sitter inherited his title and became heir presumptive to the house and lands depicted in the background. The small gold key depicted on his shirt ruffle may be one of two things: a contemporary reference to his position as a military member of the British Royal Household – as an officer of 2^nd Life Guards 1797-1802, or a later addition perhaps reflecting the position that he is said to have held – perhaps that of a Gentleman of the Bedchamber – at the Imperial Court in Vienna. “

[vii]     The London Gazette, passim, and The Times, passim; the Army List.

[viii]    Ibid..

[ix]   Bulloch et al. Thomas Rainsford had married Hannay’s sister Jane and served in 2^nd Life Guards from 1791, retiring in 1799. Their son, William Henry Rainsford-Hannay, inherited the Kirkdale Estate in 1850.

[x]    The London Gazette 15632, 18^th October 1803, p. 1437.

[xi]     Burke.

[xii]    Wiener Zeitung 2505, 5^th December 1841; Annual Register, 1843, p. 241 and Gentleman’s Magazine, 1842, p. 425. Both the AR and GM death notices confuse him with his father of the same name

[xiii]   The Scottish Jurist 1852, pp. 221-222 (case 128 of 6^th February 1852).

Mr Wood was formerly the director of the Scottish United Services Museum in Edinburgh and is now an independent military historian.

27^th June 2011.