There is a small village in Berwickshire whose name is printed on sugar bags in every supermarket in Canada. Redpath sits on the Leader Water two miles south of Earlston, and it is the reason a Canadian brand founded in 1854 carries a Scottish Borders place-name.
Almost every Redpath in the world descends, at some remove, from someone who lived at or near that spot. The name is territorial in the strict sense: it describes ground, not a person or a trade.
What Does Redpath Mean?
Exactly what it looks like. The Oxford-backed Dictionary of American Family Names calls it a habitational name from Redpath in Berwickshire, apparently formed from Old English rēad, red, and pæth, path: a track cut through red soil or sandstone, the kind of detail that told one way over the hill from another before maps.
The Scots form of the place-name is Rippath, which is how local people said it and how many registers wrote it. Ridpath is the same name with a different vowel, favored in Northumberland and Durham. Anyone searching one form without the others loses half the family. Territorial names are the commonest type in the Borders, as our survey of Nesbitt shows for the same county.
What Kind of Country Produced the Name?
Lauderdale, the valley of the Leader running down to the Tweed: good arable and grazing land lying in the path of every army that moved between Edinburgh and the English border.
Earlston, the parish town two miles up the road, was historically Arcioldun or Ercildoune. Its most famous son is Thomas Learmonth, born there about 1225 and remembered as Thomas the Rhymer, poet, prophet and, in the ballad, the man who rode away with the Queen of Elfland. The Rhymer's Tower still stands in ruin. Our history of the Learmonth name covers his family, and the Haigs of Bemersyde held land in sight of the same hills.
Families of this sort were not clans but landholding kindreds on a militarized frontier, sharing the county with the Homes under the raiding economy in our account of the Border clans and reiver families. One early Ridpath is worth noting: George Ridpath, died 1726, a Whig journalist raised at Cockburnspath and jailed in Newgate for seditious libel in 1712.
The 1901 census of Scotland counted 881 Redpaths, ranked 791st, concentrated in the Borders. In the United States it is rarer, at 724 bearers in 2020. The Canadian story is the one that matters, and it turns on a single man.
Who Was John Redpath?
The most consequential person the name ever produced, and his life reads like a parable of Scottish emigration. John Redpath was born at Earlston in 1796 and trained as a stonemason in Edinburgh. In 1816, aged twenty, he took ship for Canada with barely enough money for the passage, landed at Quebec City and walked to Montreal barefoot. Within a decade he was a principal contractor on the Lachine Canal, which opened in 1825 after a century of failed attempts to get around the rapids above the city.
From there the work compounded. With Thomas McKay he built locks on the Rideau Canal in 1827 and 1828, then Notre-Dame Basilica and some of the earliest McGill University buildings. He sat on Montreal City Council from 1840 to 1843, and Drummond Street was named in 1842 after his second wife, Jane Drummond.
In 1854 he founded the Canada Sugar Refining Company on Saint Patrick Street beside the canal he had helped dig, the first refinery of its kind in Canada, working cane from the British West Indies. His son Peter joined in 1857. He died in Montreal on 5 March 1869. A Borders stonemason who arrived with nothing and left a canal, a basilica, a university campus and a national brand is as complete a version of the Scottish-Canadian link as anyone could ask for.
Is Redpath Sugar Still Going?
Yes, and it has outlived nearly everything else from its era. American competition stopped production between 1876 and 1878; it resumed in 1879 under the tariff protection of the National Policy. The firm merged with Dominion Sugar in 1930, passed to Tate and Lyle in 1959, and became Redpath Industries in 1973. A new refinery went up on the Toronto waterfront in the late 1950s and still runs; Montreal closed in 1980. Since 2007 it has belonged to the ASR Group, and the Redpath logo is Canada's oldest continuously used food product trademark.
Why Is There a Redpath Museum at McGill?
Because Peter Redpath, 1821 to 1894, gave one. Built in 1882 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sir John William Dawson's appointment as principal, it is the oldest building in Canada put up to be a museum. Its collections contain more than half a million objects, including Burgess Shale fossils, a Gorgosaurus skeleton, an extinct Labrador duck and Carolina parakeet, and an ethnological collection of over 17,000 items. Redpath Hall, McGill's first library, carries the name too.
Which Redpaths Stayed in Scotland?
Anne Redpath, 1895 to 1965, was born in Galashiels, the daughter of a tweed designer, and studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1913. She is remembered for still lifes of domestic objects and interiors built from flat bold surfaces and pattern. In 1952 she became the first woman painter elected Academician of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Jean Redpath, 1937 to 2014, was born in Edinburgh and raised at Leven in Fife. She emigrated to the United States in 1961 with almost nothing and became a defining voice of Scottish song in America, a regular on A Prairie Home Companion from 1974 to 1987. Her great project, begun in 1976 with the composer Serge Hovey, was to record every song of Robert Burns; twenty-two volumes were planned and seven finished before Hovey died. Bryan Redpath, born in 1971, won 60 Scotland caps, captained the side and came up through Melrose, a few miles from the village itself.
How Should a Redpath Line Be Traced?
There is no Clan Redpath to start from: no chief, no clan seat, no historic sett. It is a Lowland territorial surname, a different and equally old thing, as our comparison of Highland clans and Lowland families explains.
- Search Redpath, Ridpath, Rippath, Reidpath and Redpeth together. One family often appears under three of them.
- Start in Earlston, Melrose, Lauder and the neighboring Berwickshire and Roxburghshire parishes, then widen into Edinburgh, where Borders families went for work.
- Treat Northumberland and Durham as part of the search area, since the Ridpath spelling is common there.
- For Canadian lines, work the Montreal records first, with our guide to passenger lists for the crossing and our ScotlandsPeople guide for the Scottish end.
- Remember that a territorial surname does not prove kinship, so the link must be documented rather than assumed.
Own a Piece of Redpath Heritage
Few surnames can point at the exact patch of ground they came from, and Redpath can: a red track on the Leader Water that became a village, then a Montreal refinery. The Redpath designs run to a mug, a garden flag and a framed keepsake ornament, each carrying the family crest over a tartan background. No sett was ever assigned to Redpath, so that cloth is a heritage design chosen for the name, as our explainer on who may wear which tartan makes clear.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Redpath Name
Where does the surname Redpath come from?
From the village of Redpath in Berwickshire, near Earlston. The place-name appears to combine Old English rēad, red, with pæth, path.
Is Redpath Scottish or English?
Scottish in origin, though the Ridpath form became common in northeastern England. Scotland recorded 881 Redpaths in 1901, ranked 791st.
Is the Canadian sugar company named after the Scottish village?
Indirectly. John Redpath, born at Earlston in 1796, founded the Canada Sugar Refining Company in 1854, and his surname came from the village two miles away.
Sources and Further Reading
- Dictionary of American Family Names: Redpath — the Berwickshire origin and Old English elements.
- Redpath, Scottish Borders — the village and the Scots form Rippath.
- Earlston — Ercildoune and Thomas the Rhymer.
- Redpath in the 1901 Scottish census — 881 bearers, ranked 791st.
- Redpath in the United States census — 724 bearers in 2020.
- John Redpath — Earlston, Montreal and the 1854 refinery.
- Redpath Sugar — the company history and trademark note.
- Redpath Museum — the 1882 gift and the McGill collections.
- Anne Redpath — Galashiels and the Royal Scottish Academy.
- Jean Redpath — Fife, Burns and the American years.
- Bryan Redpath — 60 Scotland caps and Melrose.
- George Ridpath — Cockburnspath and the Flying Post.
- George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland — early Redpath forms.
- McGill University: Redpath Museum mission and history