Charles Cowan
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Charles Cowan (1801 – 1889) was a Scottish politician and paper-maker.
He was the son of Alexander Cowan, and followed his father into the paper-making industry; he would later write the article on this for the Encyclopaedia Britannica[1]. In May 1819, he was sent to learn the papermaking trade at St Mary Cray, Kent, where he worked at either Lay's or Hall's mill on the River Cray.[2]
In the general election of June 1847, he ran as a Radical free-trade candidate in Edinburgh, defeating the incumbent Whig Thomas Babington Macaulay. His initial election was declared null and void due to his being a party to a government contract, but he was re-elected in a second election that December[3]. He was re-elected in the 1852 election in second place on the ballot, and returned unopposed in the 1857 election. He did not stand in 1859, and retired from politics.
[edit] References
- ^ Six generations of Cowans at the Valleyfield Mills, Penicuik Community Arts Association
- ^ Rootsweb
- ^ Oliver & Boyd's new Edinburgh almanac and national repository for the year 1850. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1850
- Ian Machin, 'Cowan, Charles (1801–1889)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
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