CARRUTHERS, Donald Bowes-Lyon (1923-2017)

[G. Willis]

In updating files, I came across mention of the death of Donald Carruthers here: http://tributes.heraldsun.com.au/notice/451062019

He was a descendant of the 11th Earl of Strathmore via his daughter Mary Isabella (1802-1836), who according to some sources married secondly (I have not managed to locate such a record- she divorced her first husband in 1833, but had had issue in 1830 as below with) Colonel Peter Bernard (1801-1866), of the 68th Regiment. He was son of Peter Bernard (1765-1832), M.D., and Sophia (née Dallas), and the eldest brother of William Dallas Bernard (1808-1866), of Durley, Hants., sometime physician to the King of Hanover, private secretary to Lord Torrington, Governor of Ceylon 1848-51, and deputy commissary general for Ceylon 1851-66; W. D. Bernard was grandfather of Sir Dallas Gerald Mercer Bernard, 1st Bt (1888-1975).

Peter Bernard and Mary (née Bowes(-)Lyon [although sometimes also Lyon(-)Bowes]) had a son, Henry Lionel Charles Bernard (1830-1911), who was a Colonel in the Indian Army, later of Hobart, Tasmania, J.P.; his will clearly corroborates his relationship to the baronetical Bernard family. The omission of any mention of him in the Strathmore or Bernard pedigrees in Burke's Peerage 2003 (and as far as I can tell, anywhere else) strongly suggests to me that the couple were not married between 1833 and her death in 1836, but I hesitate to state this definitively. At any rate, at the time of her death in France Bernard was not present and her first husband's name was that noted on the death record.

H. L. C. Bernard's second son by Maria Charlotte Davidson Smith was (George) Claude (1861-1923), a civil engineer, including resident engineer for West Coast Government Railways; by his wife (m. 1887), Elizabeth Kate Walker (noted to be niece of Barton Lodge, Chief Inspector, Australian Joint Stock Bank), he was father of (along with eight sons and a daughter who d. inf.) Muriel Eugenie (1894-1984), who married in 1918, Rev. David Davison Carruthers, rector of Bombala, vicar of St Cuthbert's, Marshall, nr Geelong, Victoria. Donald Carruthers had two brothers and two sisters.

The Carruthers family's cousinship to the Queen Mother was remarked upon on several occasions in the Australian press in the 1920s and 1930s, with her response to photographs and letters sent by the family also reported.

Donald Carruthers (had married in 1952 Edith (Elsie) Baker, and was an architect (R.I.B.A.).