The Current Baron

The current Baron is Alan Robert Dennis, Baron of Cowie. Alan is the 14^th great grandson of King James IV and Janet Kennedy, the daughter of Lord Kennedy. Alan descends from their son, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, through the Stewart Barons of Ardgown and Blackhall. Alan and John Eskine, the 1st Baron of Cowie, share the same ancestor in Lord Kennedy. The Erskines and Stewarts were close for 200 years, starting in the late 1400s, through both friendships and marriages. In the five centuries after leaving the royal line in 1499, our family has served the Crown (and society as a whole) as royal officials, elected officials, civil servants, military officers, ministers, and teachers.  

Robert Stewart, Alan’s 5^th great grandfather, moved our family to the New World in 1770. Robert received a royal land grant from King George III of Lot 18 (about 93 km²) in the newly formed colony on the Island of St. John (renamed Prince Edward Island in 1799). Robert led the colony of about 60 families, sailing from Campbelltown on the Anabella. The Anabella sank upon arrival in Malpeque Bay, and the settlers lost most of their goods, but no lives were lost. Thanks to the Mi’kmaq (the indigenous people) and a few French settlers, the colony survived the winter and prospered.

Alan was born in Prince Edward Island and moved to the United States in 1987. He became the Baron in 2020 after the death of his father, G. Douglas (Doug) Dennis. Doug trained to fly as an Air Force pilot, but the war ended and the surplus of pilots convinced him to become an accountant. He worked for H. R. Doane & Company and the Government of Canada, before serving as Deputy Minister of Finance for Prince Edward Island for 25 years. He was central to the acquisition of the government’s first computer and the conversion of government operations to use computers. He retired at age 59, and spent the rest of his life traveling and enjoying life on the Island with his wife, Millie Dennis.

Alan is an accomplished scholar. He is a Professor of Information Systems in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, where he holds the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems. He was named a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems in 2012, and received the LEO Award in 2021. His research has received over 30,000 academic citations and has been reported in the popular press almost 1000 times, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CBS, Fox Business News, and PBS, Canada’s CBC and CTV, and the UK’s Daily Mail and Telegraph. He is a Past President of the Association for Information Systems. Alan collects antique maps, and tries to find time to ski, snorkel, and boogie board.

Alan is married to Lisa DeVon Rightley-Tucker, Baroness of Cowie. DeVon is the founder of 100 Workforce Solutions, a training and development firm. She is also an award-winning artist specializing in pencil drawing. DeVon and Alan both enjoy driving classic and modern performance cars, and traveling, especially in the UK, Europe, and Hawaii. Our photos have over 100 million views on Google maps. We divide our time between Tuckmore House in Floyds Knobs and Bloomington, Indiana.

Alan’s son, Alexander (Alec) Stuart Dennis, Younger of Cowie, is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems in the Ivy College of Business at Iowa State University. His wife Vianna Newman Dennis is completing her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Maryland. The pair honeymooned in Scotland in 2019. 

We have endowed scholarships with the Guildry of Stirling, Indiana University (one in the Kelley School and one in the Media School), Acadia University, Queen’s University, and the University of Arizona, as well as an annual award for civil service on Prince Edward Island. Noblesse Oblige has guided our family for centuries.

You can find out more about our family genealogy in Burke’s Peerage.

Our Corvette Stingray and Excalibur Series IV Phaeton