Researching Robert Armstrong

Previously Armstrong played three seasons for the Maryland club of Baltimore, Maryland in the National Association of Base Ball Players. The Marylands were a strong club among the hundreds of NABBP members but a weak club among the twelve that contested the first professional pennant race in 1869, or the second one in 1870.

Bob Armstrong was the son of John Horatio Armstrong and Caroline Amelia Scheldt and great grandson of John Armstrong Jr. He was 6'2" and was married to Betty Arnold. Armstrong was a Baltimore native like most of his Maryland teammates.

This work, running to nearly 1100 pages, was the first Gaelic dictionary to attempt to provide etymological information. It also improved on previous works by incorporating a grammar of Gaelic and by indicating the word-class of entries. In the Dictionary of National Biography published 1885, Thompson Cooper calls it "a most meritorious work," writing "the affinities of the Celtic words being traced in most of the languages of ancient and modern times. To it is prefixed a Gaelic grammar, and there is a short historical appendix of ancient names, deduced from the authority of Ossian and other poets." However, in the modern edition of the Dictionary of National Biography published in 2004, W. Steven Dodd writes "Armstrong can be seen in hindsight as overcredulous in accepting the authenticity of ‘Ossian’—devoting an appendix to characters from his poems—and overenthusiastic in offering not just (frequently accurate) Indo-European cognates for the words whose etymologies he provides, but also parallels from other language families which later developments in linguistic sciences have discredited. He makes it plain in his preface that he believes all languages have a single origin, which is highly debatable, and that Scottish Gaelic is the ancestor of Irish, Manx, and even Welsh, which is definitely wrong."

Armstrong's dictionary was partially eclipsed, three years after its appearance, by the publication of the still more comprehensive Dictionarium Scoto-Celticum, compiled under the direction of the Highland Society of Scotland (2 vols. 4to, 1828). Armstrong sank his small fortune in the publication of his three-guinea quarto, and in a pecuniary sense he was a considerable loser by its publication. For about twenty-two years he maintained his family by establishing the South Lambeth Grammar School, and on his retirement from the head-mastership to Richmond in 1852 a representation of his necessitous condition was sent to Lord Palmerston, who obtained for him a civil list pension of £60. This opportune assistance and a grant from the Royal Literary Fund enabled him to recommence his scholastic business, which, though now of small proportions on account of his great age, he continued till he was struck down by paralysis about a week before he died.

In 1826 he had been appointed Gaelic lexicographer in ordinary to the king, but the appointment was honorary and no salary was attached to it. He died in Choumert Road, Peckham Rye, Surrey, 25 May 1867. Lord Derby advised her majesty to cheer the last days of the veteran scholar by a grant of £100 from the Royal Bounty Fund; and in 1869 Queen Victoria, on the recommendation of Prime Minister Gladstone, granted an annual pension of £50 to his widow. Dr. Armstrong married, in 1842, Emma, daughter of Stephen Dungate, by whom he left three daughters.

Armstrong was the son of Samuel Francis and Agnes Armstrong. His father was a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and as a young man Robert played cricket for Gravesend and in the Peckham Rye area where he lived for most of his life.

He made his first-class cricket debut for Kent against Middlesex at Southgate in 1859, making a pair on debut. Armstrong went on to make total of nine first-class appearances for the county, the last of which came against England in 1861. He was considered a batsman with "good style" who had once promised "future excellence" but in his 13 innings only once made a double figure score, 10 not out against an England XI at Lord's in 1860. He was considered "slow" as a fielder.

Armstrong played for a range of other sides in other matches, including for United and All England sides a number of times. He died of tuberculosis at Peckham in what was then Surrey in June 1863 aged 26.