David Douglas Bannerman (1842-1903)
(1842-1903) Minister of the Free Church of Scotland
Born in Ormiston, Midlothian, David Bannerman was the eldest son of the Rev James Patrick Bannerman and the grandson of David Douglas, Lord Reston, the heir of the political economist and author of "The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith (1723-1790). He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and New College, Edinburgh and was ordained at Dalkeith in 1869. For most of his life he was minister of St Leonards Free Church of Scotland, Perth where he died and where he is buried.
During the period 1884-1894 Dr Bannerman presented to the Library of New College, Edinburgh about one-third of Adam Smith's personal library. This included a first edition of "An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy", by Sir James Steuart Denham of Coltness (2 volumes, London, 1767) whose manuscripts, including that of the Inquiry, were gifted to the University Library in 1988 by Mrs Katherine Jean Wolfe Fyfe (1911-2004), née Murray, whose ancestors had inherited them on the death in 1839 of Lieutenant-General Sir James Steuart Denham of Coltness and Westshields (1744-1839).
In 1972 these books were transferred from New College Library to the Main Library, where they joined a further 32 volumes from Adam Smith's library among the library of Professor William Ballantyne Hodgson (1815-1880).
(biographical information by kind permission of Mrs Anne Fisher (née Bannerman))