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Charles Maule Ramsay

British army officer and politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5080735 ↗
Source-derived summary

Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Charles Maule Ramsay (27 January 1859 – 7 April 1936) was a British army officer and briefly a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament (MP).

Personal life

He was the youngest son of the 12th Earl of Dalhousie, an admiral in the Royal Navy, and his wife Sarah née Roberts. He obtained a commission as an officer in the Royal Artillery, but retired from the army at a young age.

He moved to the United States where he took up ranching, and married in 1885 Martha Estelle Garrison, of New York, granddaughter of C. K. Garrison. He later unsuccessfully took part in the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory.

He returned to Scotland where he became an officer in the Forfar and Kincardine Artillery Militia, rising to be its Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant in 1906. He was a major landlord in the area having inherited a large estate in Forfarshire. In 1894, he was chosen as Liberal Unionist candidate to contest a parliamentary by-election in Forfarshire in November 1894. The vacancy was caused when the sitting Liberal MP, Sir John Rigby was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal. The Liberals had chosen a London-based stockbroker as their candidate in preference to a local businessman, Martin White, a decision that led to many voters switching their allegiance to Ramsay, who gained the seat.

Editorial summary

“Charles Maule Ramsay” enters the record as british army officer and politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Maule and Ramsay can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1859, 1936, 1885, 1906—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1859-01-27, 1859-01-29—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Charles, Maule and Ramsay.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Charles Maule Ramsay” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Charles, Maule and Ramsay provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5080735. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1859, 1936, 1885 and 1906.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Charles Maule Ramsay”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Charles Maule Ramsay primary sources, Charles Maule Ramsay archive and Charles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charles Maule Ramsay”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Charles Maule Ramsay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.