Clan Brisbane People
Thomas Brisbane
Major-General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, 1st Baronet (1773 – 1860)
Brisbane was born at Brisbane House in Noddsdale, near Largs in Ayrshire. He studied astronomy and mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. Brisbane. After graduating he served with the British Army in Flanders, the West Indies, Spain and North America, serving under the Duke of Wellington. He rose to the rank of Major General and saw action during the Peninsular War and was awarded the Army Gold Cross.
in 1821 he was appointed governor of New South Wales – a position he held for 5 years while the colony expanded rapidly. He was first president of the Philosophical Society of Australasia that later became the Royal Society of New South Wales, the oldest learned institution in the Southern Hemisphere.
In 1824 an area in Moreton Bay was designated as a convict settlement. This was named after Brisbane and was declared a town in 1834 and free settlement 5 years later. The settlement became the city of Brisbane.
Brisbane returned to Scotland in 1826 and devoted his life to science and his estate. he succeeded Sir Walter Scott as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1832 and was created Baronet in 1836.
Brisbane died in Largs and is buried in the Brisbane Aisle Vault, which is in the small kirkyard next to Skelmorlie Aisle, Largs Old Kirk.