Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stewart-Mackenzie, Maria Elizabeth Frederica
STEWART-MACKENZIE, MARIA ELIZABETH FREDERICA, Lady Hood (1783–1862), eldest daughter and coheiress of Francis Mackenzie, earl of Seaforth, and Mary, daughter of Baptist Proby, dean of Lichfield, and brother of Lord Carysfort, was born at Tarnadale on 27 March 1783. She married, on 6 Nov. 1804, Sir Samuel Hood (1762–1814) [q. v.], vice-admiral of the white, whom she accompanied to the East Indies when he commanded on that station. He died on 24 Dec. 1814, and in the following year she succeeded to the family estates on the death of her father, and became the chieftainess of the clan Mackenzie. Scott, who refers to her as having ‘the spirit of a chieftainess in every drop of her blood’ (Lockhart, Life of Scott, ed. 1845, p. 306), devotes some lines to her in his poetical ‘Farewell to Mackenzie,’ as one
Whom brief rolling moons in six changes have left
Of thy husband and father and brothers bereft.
He also describes her ‘as an enthusiastic highlander, and deep in all manner of northern tradition’ (Familiar Letters, i. 142); and he doubtless profited not a little by the tales with which her memory was stored. On 21 May 1817 she married the Right Hon. James Alexander Stewart of Glasserton, elder son of Admiral Keith Stewart (d. 1795), who was third son of Alexander Stewart, sixth earl of Galloway. On his marriage he added the name Mackenzie to that of Stewart. He was M.P. for Ross and Cromarty from 1831 to 1837. From November 1837 till 1840 he was governor of Ceylon, and from 1840 to 1843 lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands. He died at Southampton on 24 Sept. 1843. His widow died at Brahan Castle on 28 Nov. 1862. By her second husband she had three sons, of whom the eldest was Keith William Stewart-Mackenzie (1818–1880), and three daughters.
[Gent. Mag. 1862, ii. 379–80; Lockhart's Life of Scott; Sir Walter Scott's Familiar Letters, 1893.]