Forsyth spent some time in a London counting-house, but returned home when his father died suddenly at the early age of seventeen.
He also employed many of the people in their own homes in spinning and weaving in connection with the British Linen Company, of which he was the first agent in the north, and encouraged fishing and farming industries.
Forsyth helped many including Charles Grant, chairman of the East India Company, and M.P.
Hugh Miller, himself a native of Cromarty, says: 'He was one of nature's noblemen; and the sincere homage of the better feelings is an honour reserved exclusively to the order to which he belonged.'
He also says of the inscription on his gravestone in Cromarty churchyard, that its 'rare merit is to be at once highly eulogistic and strictly true.'