1809 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Archibald Colquhoun
• Solicitor General for Scotland – David Boyle

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Avontoun
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Granton

  Events

• – the General Association of Operative Weavers is formed.
• May – a construction railway at the site of Bell Rock Lighthouse is completed.
• August – Crinan Canal declared "finally complete".
• 16 August – Meikle Ferry disaster: An overloaded ferry crossing the Dornoch Firth to Tain market sinks, drowning 99.
• November – Thomas Telford certifies completion of his Dunkeld-Birnam bridge. His bridges at Ballater and Conon Bridge are also completed this year.
• 11 November – the North British and Mercantile Insurance company commences business as a fire insurance office in Edinburgh.
• 9 December – the Dumfries Courier is established as a weekly newspaper in Annan by Rev. Dr. Henry Duncan as The Dumfries and Galloway Courier.
• Highland Clearances – first commissioner for clearance of the Leveson-Gower family estates in Scotland for sheep farming, William Young, is appointed.
• The Tally Toor, a Martello tower, is erected off Leith.
• A bridge over the River Cart is washed away in a flood.
• Blackie and Son, publishers, are established in Glasgow by John Blackie as Blackie, Fullarton and Company.
• The Scottish Bible Society is established as the Edinburgh Bible Society, a missionary organization, by Christopher Anderson.
• The Caledonian Horticultural Society is established in Edinburgh.
• Arthur Edmondston's A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands is published.

  Births

• 16 February – John Laing, bibliographer and Free Church minister
• 20 April – James David Forbes, physicist, glaciologist and seismologist
• 7 June – William Forbes Skene, historian
• 22 August – John Hill Burton, historian
• 27 August – John West, pioneer of food canning
• 8 September – Robert Reid Kalley, physician and Presbyterian missionary to the lusophone countries
• 21 October – John Stenhouse, chemist
• 24 October – John Barr, poet
• 29 December – William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• Alexander Allan, locomotive engineer
• Archibald Campbell, born Douglas, laird

  Deaths

• 14 January – Robert Anstruther, British Army general
• 16 January – John Moore, British Army general
• 24 January – James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife
• 25 February – John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, colonial governor
• 10 May – Andrew Bell, engraver, co-founder of the Encyclopædia Britannica
• 3 August – Andrew Mackay, mathematician
• 29 August – Robert Melvill, British Army general and antiquary
• 8 October – James Elphinston, philologist
• 18 December – Alexander Adam, classical scholar
• Sir William Douglas, 1st Baronet, landowner and industrialist