KEITH, a co. in s.w. Nebraska, adjoining Colorado, intersected by the two branches of the Platte river, and traversed by the Union Pacific railroad; 2,016 sq.m.; pop. '80, 194.
ItEITH, THE FAMILY or. The origin of this, as of most other Scottish historical houses, is unaseertained, It first :wears in record during the latter half of the 12th c., and undoubtedly took its name from the lands of Keith in East Lothian, to which the office of the king's marischal was attached. The family enters the page of history in the beginning of the 14th century. In 1305 sir Robert of Keith, hereditary marischal of Scotland, is found high in the confidence of king Edward 1. of England, holding under hint the Office of joint justiciar of Scotland from the Forth to the Mounth, and sitting in the English council at as one of the representatives of Scotland. He kept his allegiance to .England for some years after Bruce was crowned king of the Scots, but joined that prince before Bannockburn, where he commanded the cavalry, and by a well-timed charge upon the English archers contributed not a little to the for tune of the day. His services were rewarded by a large grant of land in Aberdeenshire; and the possessions of the family were still further increased, before the close of the century, by a marriage with one of the co-heiresses of sir Alexander Fraser, chamberlain of Scotland. Bruce's brother-in-law. Through this alliance the Keiths acquired great estates in Kincardineshire, and having added to them the remarkable sea-girt rock of Dunnottar, they built or restored a castle upon it, which was henceforth their chief scat.
Earls Marischal.—About 1458 the family was ennobled in the person of sir William Keith, who was created earl marischal and lord Keith. His house reached its highest pitch of power in the person of his great-great-grandson, the fourth earl, nicknamed. from the seclusion in which he lived at Dunnottar, "William who kept the tower." By marriage with his kinswoman, the co-heiress of Inverugie, he nearly doubled the family domains, which now included lands in seven shires, Haddington, Linlithgow, Kincardine, Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin, and Caithness. He was reputed the wealthiest peer in Scotland, having a rental of 270,000 marks a year, and being able, it was boasted, to travel from the Tweed to the Pentland Firth, eating every meal and sleeping every night on his own lands. These vast possessions passed to his grandson, George, the fifth earl, who, in 1593, founded the Marischal college and university of Aberdeen. Its walls were inscribed with the words: " THAT HATE SAM; QUHAT BAY THAT: LAT THAME SAY;" in allusion, it would seem, to the popular reproach which the earl had brought upon himself by adding the lands of the ancient abbey of Deer (q.v.) to his already over
grown estates. The story ran that his wife earnestly entreated him to forego the spoil. " But fourteen score chalders of meal and bear was a sore temptation," says Patrick Gordon of Cluny, and the earl was deaf to her entreaties. Hereupon, it is said, she dreamed a dream, which was thought to portend the downfall of the house of Keith.
She saw the monks of Deer set themselves to work to hew down the crag of Dunnottar with their pen-knives, and while she was laughing them to scorn, "behold! the whole crag, with all its strong and stately buildings, was undermined and fallen iu the sea." This was written before 1660. Within little more than half a century Dunnottar was. in ruins, and its lord a landless exile. At the age of 22 George, the tenth and last earl marischal, took part, with his younger brother James, in the rising of 1715. He was attainted, and his estates (yielding £1676 a year) were forfeited, but he himself escaped abroad, where he rose to distinction in the Prussian service. His communication to the British government of a political secret which he learned when Prussian ambassador at Madrid procured his pardon in 1759. A year or two afterwards he revisited Scotland, and bought back part of the family estates, but refused the proffered restoration of the family titles. Ile speedily returned to Prussia, and died there in 1778 at the age of 86. His hrother,..who had risen in the Prussian service to the rank of field-marshal, fell at Hoelikirch in 1758. See KEITH, MARSHAL.
Lords having any issue, the direct male line of the house came to an end. His sister, lady Mary, by her marriage, in 1711, with John, sixth earl of Wigton, had a daughter, lady Clementine, who married Charles, tenth lord Elphinstone, by whom, besides other children, she had sir George Keith Elphinstone, who, in 1797, was created lord Keith of Sionehaven marischal in the Irish peerage, and in 1803, lord Keith of Banheath in the peerage of the United Kingdom.
Earls of John Keith, third son of the sixth earl marischal, was, for his services in saving the Scottish regalia during the commonwealth, raised to the peerage by the titles of earl of Kintore and lord Keith of Inverury and Keith hall. On the death of his grandson, the fourth earl, in 1761, the estates devolved on the last earl marischal; and on his death in 1778 the estates and titles passed to Alexander, sixth lord Falconer of Halkertoun, the grandson of the eldest daughter of the second earl, in whose family they remain.