Clare returns from Borthwick with success!

My trip to Borthwick was very successful. Firstly I survived, I only got Covid on the third day before coming home and really only two days were seriously disrupted - I didn't know it was Covid till I got back to Australia. I do wish I had not got Covid because it limited what Helen and I could do in Newtongrange and Lothian Bridge, and I did not get to wander around the Old Town of Edinburgh. But I did have a next best thing of doing 3 hours of hop-on hop-off tours of Edinburgh and Leith when I was mildly ill on my last day. It was sunny, and I sat on the open top level and I reckon not too many people would have caught my bug.

Let me run through what emerged:

National Records Centre (of ScotlandsPeople)

I booked two days at the centre. The first day was spent recording all the people who lived in Newlandrig from 1841 to 1921. It was clear by 1911 that there were no more Buchan descendants living there. I was disappointed. Nevertheless I think there was a discovery at Newlandrig, see below.

The second day was very productive. I decided to find death certificates for every one of my Robert Buchan (b1813)'s descendants. I thought that the death certificate would provide age, marital status, parental details, cause of death (interesting to me as a GP) and 'informant' as useful information not available on the indexes. I started with his children and went as far towards the present as possible. The last visible death records seemed to be 1973, so about 50 years ago. It is still possible to order any certificate after this date for about 15 euros and several weeks of snail mail time.

This was a great strategy. At times I also did birth and marriage searches for people if I was lacking information. In the Edinburgh office you can not download images or take screenshots or camera images, as you can in the other three offices in Scotland. Nevertheless, I had my ancestry tree open on my shiny new pink ipad, and I shorthanded information directly into the Ancestry 'Fact', eg 'Death Fact,' for them all. 

I would have loved to have had several more days there to do all of William (b1801), George (b1802), Isabella (b1806), Andrew (b1809) and Alexander (b1816)'s descendants as well.

The Duke of Wellington points to way to the National Records Centre


The massive facade of the NRC, the Duke in the front. The first two days were beautifully sunny. It was so lovely outside I seriously wondered whether I should go on a hop-on hop-off tour instead of staying in the room.
I had a nice desk near the window. As I came back to the desk after a quick lunch or toilet break, I felt quite like I belonged just there! Not everyone's idea of visiting Edinburgh.




This is the dome inside the National Records Centre. Along the walls beneath the dome were rows and rows of official records - none of which you could photograph. Every time you walked through one of the doors leading to this central circular room, an 'attendant' would politely step into the room to watch you. The first time he stepped out, he told me in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to take images of the books. Honestly whyever not, it was only the spines of books. Very nice spines though.



Newbattle Churchyard

I found where Robert Buchan, his siblings James and Helen, his wife and his daughter are buried in Newbattle Churchyard. I visited this beautiful old burying ground twice. The first time I found time it was by passing out of the Newbattle Cemetery by a side gate, passing through some dark woods, un-signposted, and entering an overgrown wilderness peppered with headstones. I'd popped into the new cemetery on the way to the train station to go into Edinburgh for my second day at NRC (a Thursday). 

The Midlothian Archives are located in Dalkeith Library, a really low key modern building. They are open till 7pm on Thursdays. One alcove constituted the "Local Study Centre". Amongst its many books on the local area, was a set of Monument Inscription books compiled by the local history group, "The Recording Angels".


Yet again I wish I had more time than the 60 minutes. I was sickening, but didn't know it yet. I looked for all the known surnames in these books and photographed them. Then I speed-skimmed loads of shelves looking for books about Newlandrig - nothing, finally finding a book on the meaning of the placenames. 

Helen and I returned on Friday, armed with the map of the Churchyard and the knowledge of where the Buchans lay. We didn't bring flowers, and there were no headstones anyway, but our enthusiasm was tribute indeed.

Newtongrange and the National Mining Museum

Robert Buchan's children all lived in the Newtongrange area for generations. It became an important mining village from the 1860s onwards. It was possibly why Robert moved to the area prior to the birth of Jemima in 1862. Robert and his brother George both died in the Lingerwood Colliery (or Pit) at Newtongrange. That pit was closed and the site now repurposed. Just next door is the Lady Victory Pit, which has been recast as the Scotland National Mining Museum. What a pity I was sick and glided through the exhibition and declined to go down into the min with a retired miner. I rationalised it at the time as "Robert never was a miner, he was a tile maker." I had made the fatal mistake of thinking that the wagon that killed him was above ground. It may not have been.

There was a lot to see at Newtongrange, and at least something was recorded [see future post on Newtongrange].

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