1739 in Scotland
Events from the year 1739 in Scotland.Incumbents
- Monarch – George II
- Secretary of State for Scotland: vacant
Law officers
- Lord Advocate – Charles Erskine
- Solicitor General for Scotland – William Grant of Prestongrange
Judiciary
- Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Culloden
- Lord Justice General – Lord Ilay
- Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Milton
Events
- January – the original version of The Scots Magazine begins publication in Edinburgh.
- Suspended ministers of the "Associate Presbytery" led by Ebenezer Erskine are summoned to appear before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, but fail to attend because they do not acknowledge its authority.
- The six Independent Highland Companies known as the Black Watch are augmented to ten and formed into the 43rd Highland Regiment of Foot, a regular British Army regiment of the line. Its first colonel is John Lindsay, 20th Earl of Crawford.
- The potato is first cultivated in Scotland as a field crop, at Kilsyth.
Births
- 4 February – John Robison, physicist, inventor, natural philosopher and conspiracy theorist
- 21 August – Archibald Campbell, British Army officer, colonial governor, landowner and politician
- 31 October – James Craig, architect
- James Anderson of Hermiston, agriculturalist
- Alexander Gordon, Lord Rockville, judge
- Udney Hay, American revolutionary and politician
Deaths
- November – William Cockburn, physician
