Dr. Adair's sister Catherine, the daughter of Thomas Adair and Jean
Ross, married the Rev. James Tweddale, minister of Glenluce from 1758 to
1778, representative of an old Covenanting family, and holder of the
original Covenant, which had been confided to the care of his great-aunt
Catherine by Baillie of Jarviswood on his way to execution in the
"killing time." The document was sold with his library at his death, his
children being then under age, and is now in the Glasgow Museum. One of
these children, Catherine, married a John Ruskin.

The origin of the name of Ruskin is English, dating from the middle
ages. Soon after the dissolution of Furness Abbey, Richerde Ruskyn and
his family were land-owners at Dalton-in-Furness. One branch, and that
with which we are especially concerned, settled in Edinburgh.

John Ruskin--our subject's grandfather--when he ran away with Catherine
Tweddale in 1781, was a handsome lad of twenty. His portrait as a child
proves his looks, and he evidently had some charm of character or
promise of power, for the escapade did not lose him the friendship of
the lady's family. Major Ross, her uncle and guardian, remained a good
friend to the young couple. She herself was only sixteen at her
marriage--a bright and animated brunette, as her miniature shows, in
later years ripening to a woman of uncommon strength, with old-fashioned
piety of a robust, practical type, and a spirit which the trials of her
after-life--and they were many--could not subdue. Her husband set up in
the wine trade in Edinburgh. For many years they lived in the Old Town,
then a respectable neighbourhood, among a cultivated and well-bred
society, in which they moved as equals, entertaining, with others, such
a man as Dr. Thomas Brown, the professor of philosophy, a great light in
his own day, and still conspicuous in the constellation of Scotch
metaphysicians.