Cornet James Stuart Menteth
(1846-1926)
24 March 1865

Volume 12, page 261, sitting number 16,191.

[An inked inscription verso in a period hand identifies the sitter as ‘James Monteith.’ He is identified as ‘J. Stuart Mentealth Esq.’ in the Silvy daybooks. He had visited the studio three weeks early on 4 March (sititng number 16,164) when he had sat for his portrait in civilian dress. On that occasion too his name was recorded as 'J. Stuart Mentealth.' Hart’s Army List (1867), numerous official records and several newspapers identify him as ‘James Frederick Stuart Menteth.’]

Born in India in or about 1846, James Frederick Stuart Menteth was the son of William Stuart Menteth, who rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the 69th Bengal Native Infantry, in the service of the Honourable East India Company.

Like his father before him he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel; he served in the 2nd Dragoon Guards, although on leaving the Royal Military College he originally joined the 3rd Foot. 

On 12 August 1868 at St John the Evangelist in London’s Notting Hill he married Frances Octavia Moore Sleigh, youngest daughter of the late General Sir James Wallace Sleigh, KCB, of the 9th Lancers. 

He married secondly on 5 September 1888 Elizabeth Alyson Blackett, daughter of Captain Edward Algernon Blackett of the Royal Navy. 

Sir James Frederick Stuart-Menteth died on 7 September 1926 at Rownhams Mount, Nursling, Hampshire. He left an estate valued at £53,751.

‘The Times records the death of Lieut-Colonel Sir James Frederick Stuart-Menteth, Bart., late Queen’s Bays, which took place yesterday at Rownhams Mount, Nursling, near Southampton, at the age of 80. The family descended from the Stuarts. On the death of the third Baronet, who was a naturalised American, in 1918, Colonel Stuart-Menteth succeeded to the title. He is succeeded by his third and eldest surviving son, William Frederick, who was born in 1874, and has a son’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1926).