Alexander Earle Monteith

Alexander Earle Monteith
Alexander Earle Monteith by Hill & Adamson
Personal details
Born1793
Died12 January 1861
Marquis of Breadalbane, Sir David Brewster, Rev. Dr David Welsh, James Hamilton and Alexander Earle Monteath by Hill & Adamson
Edinburgh Presbytery: Seated, Patrick Clason, Alexander Earle Monteath, Robert Cunningham Graham Speirs, George Muirhead, Thomas Chalmers, John Bruce; standing, Alexander Dunlop, Rev. Alexander Watson Brown, unknown man, Patrick Graham, unknown man, Alexander Fraser, Thomas Guthrie, perhaps Rev. Foggo, unknown man, Charles Chalmers, James Begg, Rev. James Fairbairn
Alexander Earle Monteath by Hill & Adamson
In the Disruption painting Monteith is on the viewer's left of Thomas Chalmers. He is wearing a yellow waistcoat and is in front of a group of women. His right hand is on his hat.

Alexander Earle Monteith (1793 – 12 January 1861) trained as a lawyer in Edinburgh and became Sheriff of Fife in 1838. He is remembered as one of the Disruption Worthies - those church leaders who, at the Disruption of 1843, left to set up the Free Church of Scotland. Monteith was an active member of many commissions involved in reforming Aberdeen University, prisons and treatment of those then called lunatics for example. Monteith was also photographed by Hill & Adamson and by his second wife, Frances, who herself was an early pioneer of calotype photography and some of whose pictures ended up in an album by David Brewster.