SHORT SKETCH 
OF THE 
LIFE OF CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON. 
BY LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CLAPPERTON. 
Captain Hugh Clapperton was bom in Annan, Dumfries-shire, in the year 
1788. His grandfather, Robert Clapperton, M. D., was a man of considerable know- 
ledge, as a classical scholar, and in his profession. He first studied at Edinburgh ; but as, 
in those days, the continental colleges were considered superior in medicine and surgery, 
he went to Paris, and there studied for some time. On his return to his native country, 
he married Elizabeth Campbell, second cousin of Colonel Archibald Campbell of Glen- 
lyon; and soon after settled in Dumfries-shire, at a place called Crowden Nows, where 
he remained until George Clapperton (the father of our traveller), and another son were 
born. He afterwards removed to Lochmaben, where he had an increase to his family 
of four sons and one daughter. All the sons became medical men, except the youngest 
and the only survivor, who entered his Majesty’s service, in the beginning of 1793, as a 
second lieutenant of marines. His eldest son, George Clapperton, married young to a 
daughter of John Johnstone, proprietor of the lands of Thorniwhate and Lochmaben 
Castle, and settled in Annan, where he was a considerable time the only medical man of 
repute in the place, and performed many operations and cures which spread his fame 
over the borders of England and Scotland. His father bestowed a good education upon 
him, which proved so useful a passport to public favour, that he might have made a 
fortune; but, unfortunately, he was, like his father, careless of money. He married a 
second wife, and was the father of no fewer than twenty-one children. Of the fruit of 
the first marriage, he had six sons aud one daughter who grew to men and women’s estate. 
All the sons entered his Majesty’s service, the youngest of whom was Captain Clapperton, 
the African traveller, and the subject of this memoir. In his person he resembled his 
father greatly, but was not so tall by two inches, being five feet eleven inches; had great 
breadth of chest and expansion of shoulders, and otherwise proportionably strong; and 
b 
