The Playfair family comes from the small, tucked away corner of Angus nestled between Dundee and the Carse of Gowrie region of Perthshire. The Rev James Playfair (1714-1772) was minister of Benvie parish before moving his family to Liff a few years after the two parishes were combined in 1753. (His father, another James, was a farmer at Couttie, Perthshire. Immediate ancestors farmed Cupar Grange and Bendochy in Perthshire.) He and his wife Margaret Young (d. 1805) had three sons who achieved prominence in different ways. (They had ten children in all: seven sons and three daughters.) Further back, a branch of the family was farming around Errol in the Carse of Gowrie in the seventeenth century.
Sons of Rev Playfair and Margaret
John Playfair was born at Benvie in 1748 and firstly followed his father into the ministry, becoming minister of Liff from 1773 to 1783. However, he changed tack later and became a mathematician and professor of natural philosophy and also made distinguished contributions to geology in his lifetime, as well as founding the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He died in 1819.
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| John Playfair, 1748-1819 |
Robert Playfair, the second son, married Margaret McNiven.
James Playfair, third son of the first James, was born in 1755 and became one of Scotland's most renowned neoclasssical architects. He designed many buildings in the New Town, Edinburgh, and, closer to home, Kirriemuir and the Glens old parish church. He died in 1794, aged only 38. His son, William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), followed in his footsteps and was also responsible for designing many prominent buildings in Edinburgh.*
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| William Henry Playfair, 1790-1857 |
By far the most intriguing of the brothers was William Playfair (1759- 1823) who had a wildly varied career which encompassed some of the following: 'millwright, engineer, draftsman, accountant, inventor, silversmith, merchant, investment broker, economist, statistician, pamphleteer, translator, publicist, land speculator, convict, banker, ardent royalist, editor, blackmailer, journalist, participant in the storming of the Bastille, and personal assistant to James Watt'. He was also responsible for designing the first pie charts, line graphs and bar graphs. In his youth he had been apprenticed to Andrew Meikle, inventor of ghe threshing machine. Among his written works was Commercial and Political Atlas (1786), which traced and illustrated the economic progress of England from the mid-sixteenth century. He went on to aauthor over 100 pamphlets and books. Many of his original original publications and figures exist only in obscure manuscripts, which meant that his contributions were quickly forgotten after his death.But some recognised his contributions, including W. A. Guy, who noted in 1885: 'Nor should I be doing justice to ourselves did I omit a passing notice of the works of William Playfair of Dundee, who made such early, free, and skilful use of the graphic method in his statistical, historical, and political works published towards the end of the last century and beginning of this—to be more exact, between the years 1786 and 1805.' Playfair also diversified into many business areas, such as land speculation, but few of these were profitable. He also took out a number of patents for inventions.
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| Chart representing the extent, population and revenue of the principal nations of Europe, William Playfair, 1805 |
