Elizabeth Fletcher
Elizabeth Fletcher later Elizabeth Wedderburn was a Scottish scholar educated in Edinburgh. She had a short, but important life introducing many of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment to people of influence. She was mainly known as Miss Betty Fletcher.
Life
Fletcher was born in 1731. She was the penultimate child of eight born to Lady Elizabeth and Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton.She had no formal education but she was clever. She had spent three years at Miss Aylesworth's school in Chelsea, but it is reported that she would have learned singing and about music but nothing more academic. In 1745 she finished in Chelsea and in Edinburgh she was given further education by private tutors.
In 1747 the family moved from Saltoun Hall to Brunstane House east of Edinburgh.
Her father had great influence, especially as he knew Archibald Campbell, Lord Ilay, later the third duke of Argyll. Each summer she would be invited to Inveraray Castle, as this was the family seat of her father's business fiend Lord Ilay.
She knew the historian William Robertson, the historian, David Hume and Adam Ferguson the philosophers, Adam Smith the economist, and John Home. Because these men knew Elizabeth Fletcher, she introduced them to her father, Lord Milton. Via Lord Milton they met Lord Ilay, and Ilay had the ear of Sir Robert Walpole. Another acquaintance she met at Invererary was the young architect Robert Adam. Adam took a dislike to her, her sister Mally and her mother.
She married Captain John Wedderburn of Gosford but the marriage was short as he was posted to the West Indies. It is said that Fletcher had sufficient influence to have her new husband sent home, but despite the advice of the peers, she did not interfere.