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Early in the nineteenth century many Scotsmen who had been forced to seek their fortune outside the British Isles bestowed the benefits of their wealth on their native land by legacies and endowments for educational purposes. The counties of north-eastern Scotland were particularly favoured in this respect, perhaps because there were so few opportunities that kept ambitious and enterprising young men at home! None of the charitable foundations in the area was as generous as influential or as long-lived as James Dick's legacy to the parish schoolmasters of the counties of Aberdeen, Banff and Moray. The legacy was unusual in being directed at the schoolmasters rather than the pupils, but unique among Scottish educational charities of the period in the scale of its application. The rural parishes in the three counties contained nearly a tenth of the total population of Scotland. |
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