Scottish Tartans and Clans. Adam.

ADAM, a surname belonging to a family of come antiquity in Scotland. Duncan Adam, son of Alexander Adam, lived in the reign of Robert the Bruce, and had four sons, Robert, John, Reginald, and Duncan, from whom all the Adams, Adamsons, and Adies in Scotland, are descended. (Burke’s Landed Gentry.) From the youngest son, Duncan Adam, who accompanied James, Lord Douglas, in his expedition to Spain on his way to the Holy Land, with the heart of King Robert, is stated to have descended, JOHN ADAM, who was slain at Flodden in 1513. His son CHARLES ADAM was seated at Fanno, in Forfarshire, and his descendant in the fourth degree, ARCHIBALD ADAM, of Fanno, sold his patrimonial lands in the time of Charles I., and acquired those of Queenamanour in time same county. His great-grandson, JOHN married Helen Cranstoun, of the family of Lord Cranstoun, by whom he left one son, WILLIAM ADAM, an eminent architect, who purchased several estates, particularly that of Blair, in the county of Kinroes, where he built a house and village, which he named Mary-burgh. He married Mary, daughter of William Robertson, Esq. of Gladney, and, with other issue, had JOHN ADAM, his heir (the father of the Right Hon. WILLIAM ADAM, Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland, the subject of a subsequent biography), and ROBERT and JAMES ADAM, the celebrated architects, of both of whom notices are here given :—