David Hunter Livingstone The legendary exploits of the famous 19th century christian missionary and African explorer, Dr. David Livingstone are well documented. Almost every school child knows his name and many people have been intrigued by those immortal words “Dr Livingstone I presume” which were attributed to the New York Herald journalist Henry Morton Stanley, a naturalised American citizen.
Whether Stanley actually used these words is in dispute. But perhaps, more accurately, he should have said “DR. Hunter Livingstone”, I presume. In 1865, at age 52, Livingstone set out on his last and most famous journey, along the Zambesi into central Africa. In a series of disasters he lost his medicine, his animals and most of his porters, but struggled on driven by his faith and his strength of will.
By 1869, his long absence became a matter of international concern. Stanley was commissioned to travel to Africa to find him. In October 1871 he found him, half starved and close to death, at Ujiji, an Arab slave settlement near lake Tanganyika.
However the compelling facts of David Livingstone's early life and ancestry are less well known. His father, Neil Livingstone was born 1788 on the Isle of Ulva, which lies off the west coast of the Isle of Mull. His mother Agnes Hunter, was the daughter of David Hunter and Janet Moffat of Blantyre Lanarkshire . Agnes Hunter was born at Blantyre in 1792 . She married Neil Livingstone, who made a living from selling tea. On the 2nd. January 1802, their second child was born in Blantyre In March 1813, in keeping with family tradition, he was baptised David after his maternal grandfather, on the 19th. Of March.
The family lived in near poverty, their home in Blantyre, was a single apartment in a tenement building called “Shuttle Row” which was built to house workers in the cotton spinning mill on the banks of the River Clyde. David Hunter, David's grandfather was born in 1743, and he died at Blantyre at the age of 87, in 1834.
Little is known of his great grandfather Gavin Hunter who would have been born in about 1720. In 1823, at the age of ten, David like other children of the village, was put to work in the mills, where he worked from six in the morning until eight at night. Then with other children employed in the mills he had to attend night school. He studied hard and continued with his lessons far into the night. Every spare moment, he spent on reading books.
After his encounter with Stanley, David Livingstone remained in Africa for another two years, where he died a lingering death.
In 1873 his body was carried, a thousand miles to the coast and then on to England, by two of his faithful African converts. His body was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey and his heart was buried in his beloved Africa.

In 1892 at the age of 13 his family emigrated to San Francisco but after losing all his works in the earthquake of 1906 he packed up and returned to Scotland. He died in 1931.

The painting shown hangs in The Hunterian Art gallery, Glasgow.

General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston K.C.B., D.S.O.,

27th Hunter of Hunterston

1864 - 1940

General Sir Archibald Hunter G.C.D., G.C.V.O., D.S.O., L.L.D.

1856 - 1936

An odd little quirk.

The Hunter Islands in the South Pacific were named after the whaling ship Hunter, that discovered them in the year 1798.

Fast Forward now 200 years and the Greenpeace vessel MV Robert Hunter is tackling whaling ships from Russia in the protection of the whales. The ship was named after the co-founder of Greenpeace Robert Hunter who lived in Canada.