SMITH, Adam (1723-1790). Document signed ('Adam Smith'), Edinburgh, 15 May 1786, acknowledging receipt from [his cousin] Colonel Robert Douglas of Strathendry by the hands of William Lumsdaine, clerk to the Signet, of three sums, to a total of £40, representing a year's interest on two bonds and one obligation to a total of £800, the document in the hand of Thomas Martin, clerk to William Lumsdaine, witnessed by Robert Meldrum and James McGie, clerks, one page, folio, on blind-stamped paper, docketed on verso; with ten other documents relating to the Colonel Douglas and his sons, 1768-1817, most on financial matters, but including two letters from Charles Douglas, one of them from Gibraltar, 1782, about his purchasing an infantry company there.

SMITH, Adam (1723-1790). Document signed ('Adam Smith'), Edinburgh, 15 May 1786, acknowledging receipt from [his cousin] Colonel Robert Douglas of Strathendry by the hands of William Lumsdaine, clerk to the Signet, of three sums, to a total of £40, representing a year's interest on two bonds and one obligation to a total of £800, the document in the hand of Thomas Martin, clerk to William Lumsdaine, witnessed by Robert Meldrum and James McGie, clerks, one page, folio, on blind-stamped paper, docketed on verso; with ten other documents relating to the Colonel Douglas and his sons, 1768-1817, most on financial matters, but including two letters from Charles Douglas, one of them from Gibraltar, 1782, about his purchasing an infantry company there.

Colonel Robert Douglas was the nephew of Adam Smith's mother; Smith referred to him in a letter to Henry Dundas, 18 July 1787, as 'the oldest friend and one of the nearest relations I have now living in the world'. His youngest son David Douglas, later Lord Reston, was to be Smith's heir. (11)