William Alexander Stables

William Alexander Stables (1810 – 21 June 1890) was a Scottish botanist and naturalist who collected spermatophytes and pteridophytes sporadically in Great Britain and Ireland between 1832 and 1862, with the odd specimen as late as 1882.

[1][2] He was a member of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh[3] and collected extensively for a proposed Flora of Moray in the north of Scotland.

[7][8] On 7 February 1856 in Elgin, William Alexander Stables married Margaret Alicia Dunbar (1 August 1827 – 23 July 1908), daughter of Sir Archibald Dunbar, 6th Bt of Northfield, DL, JP.

Her brother, Laird of Pitgaveny, James Brander Dunbar-Brander (6 January 1825 – 1902), attained the rank of army Captain having served in India in the Madras Cavalry and in the Crimean War and wrote letters home to her from his posting in India with the Madras Cavalry.

[10] His son was also named James Brander Dunbar and wrote "first-hand accounts of schooling at Dalvreck and Rugby, big game hunting in Africa, the second Boer War and the Siege of Kimberley, the Great War, the home guard in Moray in WWII, entanglement with bureaucracy and the life and times of the Pitgaveny estate and its laird for the greater part of the twentieth century".