Robert Colquhoun (East India Company officer)

For other people named Robert Colquhoun, see Robert Colquhoun (disambiguation).

Sir Robert David Colquhoun, 12th Baronet (15 May 1786 – 2 June 1838) served in the British Indian Army.[1][2][3] In 1815 in present-day Almora, holding the rank of lieutenant, he organized the Kemaoon Battalion, predecessor of the 3rd Gorkha Rifles, to fight in what became known as the Gurkha War.[4]

Colquhoun was a plant collector and early patron of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens.[5][6] The evergreen genus Colquhounia was named in his honor.[6]

There is a memorial to Colquhoun in the Holy Ghost cemetery in Basingstoke. Its headstone says that he died at sea aboard the ship Reliance.

  1. ^ Asiatic Journal. 1838. part II. page 231.
  2. ^ Colbourn, Henry (1839). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire. p. 230. Retrieved 20 December 2018.
  3. ^ Family Search. Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950.
  4. ^ "3rd Gorkha Rifles". Lt. Nawang Kapadia. 31 January 2018. Retrieved 20 December 2018.
  5. ^ Colquhoun, Sir Robert
  6. ^ a b Smith, Archibald William (1997). A Gardener's Handbook of Plant Names: Their Meanings and Origins. Courier Dover Publications. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-486-29715-6.