Details

Name

Isabella Glassford

Brief Biography

born 1770, Scottish

Description

Isabella Glassford was born in 1770, the first child of John Glassford and his third wife, Lady Margaret Mackenzie, and John Glassford’s seventh child. Isabella grew up at the Glassford’s houses in Glasgow, the Shawfield Mansion, and Dougalston. Of the seven children painted in the Glassford family portrait Isabella may be the one beside Lady Margaret Mackenzie, playing with the family’s dog. Another option is that this child could be John Glassford junior (1762–1777).

Like her siblings, Isabella moved to Edinburgh through a marriage which retained the Glassford family’s connections to money, power and business. In November 1804 she married William Simpson, cashier to the Royal Bank of Scotland. He had once worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s branch in Glasgow (on the site of the Gallery of Modern Art) but had property to the east of Edinburgh, then called Parsons Green (today’s Meadowbank). He and his family were well established in the bank and close to its leading figures such as Gilbert Innes of Stow.

Isabella was Simpson’s second wife; he had been married previously, to Anna Ingram in 1773. There were no children from either marriage. William Simpson died in 1808 but it is not recorded when Isabella died. She was mentioned in the will of her half-sister, Catherine Glassford, who left Isabella a miniature of her brother James, made when he was young, a small brooch with Isabella’s hair set in pearls, which was given at Isabella’s marriage to Catherine, a jewel box and two books – one of which was Dr Barrow’s Sermons.