| The family
name of the Earl of Seafield is Ogilvie-Grant. The Ogilvie family belongs to Cullen
and district, and the Grant clan to Strathspey. The name Ogilvie derives from one Gillebride, second son of Gillechrist, Earl of Angus. Gillebride assumed the name of his property, the Barony of Ogilvie in the parish of Glamis in Angus, granted to him by William the Lion about 1163. His descendant Walter Ogilvie, son of Sir Walter Ogilvie of Lintrathen, married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir John Sinclair of Deskford and Findlater, and had a charter of these Baronies to himself and his wife in 1440. Thus the Ogilvies came to Banffshire. |
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Sir Walter Ogilvie was created the 1st Lord Ogilvie of Deskford and Findlater in 1616, and his son James became the 1st Earl of Findlater in 1638. The 4th Earl of Findlater (also James) was in 1701 created 1st Earl of Seafield, Viscount Reidhaven and Lord Ogilvie of Deskford and Cullen (during his father's lifetime he had become, in 1698, Viscount Seafield and Lord Ogilvie of Cullen). He was Chancellor of State for Scotland and had much to do with bringing about the Union of Parliaments in 1707. He died in 1730 and was succeeded by his eldest son James, 5th Earl of Findlater and 2nd Earl of Seafield, whose daughter Lady Margaret Ogilvie married Sir Ludovick Grant, 7th Baronet, in 1735.
The first Grants appeared in Scottish history in the 13th century, and an unbroken line of their chiefs is traceable down from Ian Ruadh, Sheriff of Inverness in 1434. The Ogilvies and the Grants were joined in 1613 by the marriage between Mary, daughter of Sir Walter Ogilvie, and Sir John Grant of Freuchie, but the crucial union between the two families came with Lady Margaret's marriage in 1735. When the 7th Earl of Findlater died in 1811 this title expired, but the other dignities reverted to his cousin Sir Lewis Alexander Ogilvie Grant, 9th Baronet, a grandson of Lady Margaret and Sir Ludovick: he became 5th Earl of Seafield and assumed the name of Ogilvie in addition to his paternal name of Grant.
When the 11th Earl of Seafield died of wounds received in action in 1915, the Barony of Strathspey and Chieftainship of the Clan Grant went to his brother Sir Trevor Ogilvie Grant and the Scottish peerages to his daughter Nina Caroline as Countess of Seafield. On her death in 1969 her son, Viscount Reidhaven, succeeded as 13th Earl.