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DESCENT AND ANCESTRY
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are concerned was to spread itself. For the enterprising spirit inherited of their father the young men of that branch found scope on the banks of a river far remote from the Carron of their youth.

Among those who made their way to the Húglí, where the path of fortune had been prepared for them by Clive, was a son of the Denovan bleacher. Alexander Colvin, in or about 1778, was the first of the family to risk his fortunes in India, tempted by what connexion, or led by what hopes, cannot now be known. There, he established a house of business, known later as the house of Colvin, Ainslie, and Cowie; and there, when in 1818 at the age of 62 he died, his brother merchants erected to his memory a marble monument, from the hands of Westmacott, in St. John's, the parish church of Calcutta. They raised also over his remains, in the South Park Street Cemetery, a tomb on which they recorded his worth. He had landed in India in the reign of Warren Hastings; for Indian annals are divided, not by George or William, but by Clive, Wellesley, Dalhousie, their predecessors or their successors. While Hastings was enlarging the limits of the Company's rule, Alexander Colvin attended to his ventures. His name not infrequently recurs in old Calcutta gazettes and records. He may have served on a jury before Sir Elijah Impey. He must have discussed over his tea and his bananas the squabbles of the Governor and his councillors; and have presented his homage to the adored 'Marian.' The scandal of Madame Grand