Biographical Register: C
CATHCART, Lady Elizabeth (nee ELLIOT) (d. 1847)
Wife of William Schaw Cathcart, first earl Cathcart; daughter of the lieutenant-governor of New York, Andrew Elliot, of Greenwells, Roxburghshire, and Elizabeth Plumstead. Married William Cathcart on 10 April 1779 in New York.
CATHCART, William Schaw, first Earl Cathcart (1755-1843).
Army officer and politician. Born on 17 September 1755 at Petersham, Surrey, the eldest child of Charles Schaw Cathcart, ninth Lord Cathcart (1721-1776), diplomat, and Jean (1726-1771), daughter of Lord Archibald Hamilton and Jane Hamilton, and sister of Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803), diplomat. Commander-in-Chief of the expedition to Copenhagen (1807), later he was Ambassador to the Court of Russia.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
CONSTANT, D.S.
The Director of Quarantine in Astrakhan on 23rd July 1807 was D. S. Constant, of French origin. His daughter Maria Dmitrievna Isayeva nee Constant (1824-1864) was the first wife of F. M. Dostoyevsky. Some of her personal features, as well as her nature and destiny, are reflected in the characters of Natasha Ikhmeneva (The Insulted and the Injured), Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova (Crime and Punishment) and Katerina Ivanovna Verkhovtseva (The Brothers Karamazov).
Source: personal communication Y. Aksenov [2005].
CRICHTON, Sir Alexander (1763-1856):
Creighton, Dr. [sic]
Physician and author, was born in Newington, Edinburgh, on 2 December 1763, the second surviving son of Alexander Crichton (1721-1808), a Newington coachmaker, and his wife, Barbara Boyes (1739-1787). In September 1800 married Frances Dodwell (1772-1857), daughter of Edward Dodwell, of West Molesey in Surrey, and heir to an Irish estate. Invited to become physician-in-ordinary to Tsar Alexander 1 and to Maria Federovna, the Dowager Empress. Crichton took up duties in September 1804 that also involved him in Maria's foundling hospitals and charities for the sick poor. On 9 September 1807 he was appointed physician-general to the Russian civil medical department.
For his services, and his efforts to combat a severe cholera epidemic in 1809 in the country's south-eastern provinces, he received the Knight's Grand Cross of St Vladimir's Order [third and second classes] in 1809 and 1814. These and other awards, together with the titles of Actual Councillor of State (pre-1814) and Aulic Councillor (1816), also reflected his considerable skill as a physician to the imperial family, who sponsored three baptisms of the four of his children named after them.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
CRICHTON, Frances (1772-1857) [nee Dodwell]:
Creighton, Mrs. [sic]
Francis Crichton was a talented musician and artist. Several pictures from the family collection, some of which were sold during 1817, are in the Hermitage Gallery.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
