David Charteris, 12th Earl of Wemyss

Who was David Charteris, 12th Earl of Wemyss?

Francis David Charteris, 12th Earl of Wemyss and 8th Earl of March, KT, DL succeeded his grandfather in the family titles in 1937.

He was the eldest son of Hugo Francis Charteris, Lord Elcho, who was killed in the First World War. He was educated at Eton College and at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a Colonial Administrator in Basutoland from 1937 until 1944. He was commissioned into the Lovat Scouts in 1932. He was promoted Lieutenant in 1935 and transferred to the TA Reserve of Officers in 1937. He served with the African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps in the Middle East from 1941 to 1944.

He married, 1st, in 1940 Mavis Lynette Gordon Murray, daughter of Edwin Edward Murray, of Hermanus, Cape Province, South Africa. They had two daughters and two sons. The elder son, Iain David Charteris, Lord Elcho, was born in 1945 but died as the result of an accident in 1954; his younger brother, James Donald Charteris, Lord Neidpath, succeeded his father to the Earldoms in December 2008. Lord Wemyss married, secondly, 1995, Shelagh Kathleen Kennedy, née Thrift.