A collection of 26 items, in a wide variety of formats, focused mainly on the Glenquoich and Glengarry estates while they were owned by successive generations of the Ellice family. The activities of the original purchaser, Edward Ellice senior (1781-1863), best known as a deputy governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada and as a prominent member of the Westminster parliament, and who also had significant slave-owning interests in the Caribbean, are represented by, for example, a list of Hudson's Bay adventurers, proposals for the reform of Scottish representation in Parliament and obituaries to him including a funeral sermon. Of more local significance is an 1863 publication outlining the rules for the estate tenants, published very shortly after Ellice's death. The major part of the collection consists of material written or acquired by Edward C Ellice (1858-1934), inheritor of the estate in 1880, which includes his own brief history of Invergarry Castle and a variety of estate related material such as local slaughter-house regulations, weather statistics and local afforestation maps. However the principal topic represented is a set of legal proceedings involving the family at various times and their titles to different lands and in particular recording attempts by Edward C Ellice to finance the estate and eventually to sell it and confer trust status upon it. Also in the collection is a miscellany of related matter including a Barclay family tree containing the Ellice family, pencil sketch prints of local Glengarry clansmen, financial accounts of the local Highland Railway, and plans of indeterminate date for a fishing station in Wester Ross. Of wider interest are press cuttings from 1811 regarding the use of Bath tokens as local currency and an extract from the 'London Gazette' in 1848 on the current cholera epidemic.

Organisation

The books have been catalogued individually and have the shelfmark 'Ellice.'.

Acquisition

The collection was originally part of a deposit of manuscript material relating to the Ellice family made in 1949-1950, which was transferred to the manuscript collections.

Related collections

The Ellice papers are held at MSS. 15001-15195.