Frederick Hamilton Temple Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
Frederick HamiltonTempleBlackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava KP GCB GCSI GCMG GCIE PC was a British public servant and prominent member of Victorian society. In his youth he was a popular figure in the court of Queen Victoria, and became well known to the public after publishing a bestselling account of his travels in the North Atlantic.
He was born into the Ascendancy, Irelands AngloIrish aristocracy. On his fathers side, Dufferin was descended from Scottish settlers who had moved to County Down in the early 17th century. The Blackwood family became prominent landowners in Ulster over the following two hundred years, and were created baronets in 1763, entering the Peerage of Ireland in 1800 as Baron Dufferin. The family had influence in parliament because they controlled the return for the borough of Killyleagh. Marriages in the Blackwood family were often advantageous to their landowning and highsociety ambitions, but Dufferins father, Captain Lord Dufferin and Claneboye, R.N., did not marry into a landowning family. His wife, Helen Selina Sheridan, was the granddaughter of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and through her the family became connected to English literary and political circles.
Source: Wikipedia