The 19th century life of Robert Buchan [b1813]

The following story was written as part of "1,500 to 2,000 biography" exercise. Some of this information can be found in this post where images provide more general interest.

Uncovering the facets of a life lived very long ago is a mixture of luck, techniques and context. Robert Buchan [b1813] emerged in piecemeal from what was only a name for me for over two decades. He was named on his son’s Victorian marriage certificate in 1860, another Robert. How I found which Robert Buchan senior was mine in Scotland through DNA is described here. Even finding him quickly through DNA brought a context. I’d found that ancestors of five of my matches were siblings George and Isabella Buchan, and that the informant on George’s death certificate was his brother Robert. Two years later, let me reveal his life in a standard chronological biography, that mixes the personal, familial, biological and historical contexts, somewhat like a tossed salad.

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Robert Buchan was born in 1813, possibly in November. No baptismal record has been found, the only record of this time likely to include a date of birth [nor for five of his siblings]. At this time perhaps 30-50% of Scottish born people were not recorded in the baptismal records of the state Church of Scotland. There were several large non-conformist churches near where his family was living in 1813. This was in Newlandrig, a village in the rural parish of Borthwick in Midlothian, a county that was called Edinburghshire later in his life. He was almost certainly born there, about 12 miles south of Edinburgh City. The village was possibly in existence even in the 1500s and has ever only had one street. In 1841 there were about 25 houses, and those same houses, and no more, exist today.

He was the fifth son, and seventh child, born to George Buchan and Jean Johnson. George and Jean appear in records as the parents of three children baptised in Dewarton on the same day; implying that at least two children were not previously baptised into the Church of Scotland. Dewarton was a small village then built only recently by the Dewar family, owners of the Vogrie Estate in eastern Borthwick. George was a sawyer or wright and so had come from some-where else to Dewarton by 1802. I postulate this might have been the neighbouring parishes of Newbattle or Dalkeith where Buchans had lived for at least 100 years.

Later, all eight children who died after 1855, when Scotland introduced compulsory civil registration, named George as a sawyer or forester, i.e. a valued worker on a valuable rural estate. The family was not a destitute labouring one. My evidence? In 1841, his eldest son James was also a forester, renting a house in Newlandrig from the Vogrie estate, and it was the third most costly rental in the village. One rental was a 50-acre farm, the next a large double story stone house built in 1629, and the third most costly, with a byre, was rented by the Buchans. James was a bachelor, and I will come back to census evidence of Robert’s life as it revolves around this home in Newlandrig. A few other renters are named at a lower rentals than the Buchans, but another 19 ‘sundry renters’ are not named.  Perhaps another indicator of a secure childhood is that only one of the nine children died in infancy in 1808; an unnamed child of George Buchan, residing in Newlandrig, was buried in Newbattle Churchyard.

Only five years later his father died, although I don’t know how. Just one day before George’s burial, his youngest sibling Helen was born. The family must have been in turmoil. As his mother never remarried, he grew up in a house headed by his then 19-year-older brother James. I propose that James took up his father’s role based on later outcomes, thus keeping the family together.  Over the 1841-1881 censuses, we see James as the head of a family that included Helen who never married and who lived with James till he died. At each census he is joined by another widowed brother returning to Newlandrig with children, and then niblings and grand-niblings. No one is there forever except Helen; this is a staging place, a place of refuge. Robert will be one of these ‘refugees’.

I knew that Robert fathered my x2 great-grandfather (another Robert) who was born in Edinburgh about 1834, when he would have been about 20 years of age. No baptismal record for this child has been found, nor a marriage of Robert senior and Janet McCray. Informal marriages were legal and not uncommon in Scotland in the 19^th century. The Buchans were not regular Church of Scotland attendees even at this time. I say that because sister Helen was only recorded in a baptismal record in 1854, prior to the start of civil registration when she was 37; as were the children of his brothers George and Andrew. Was Robert really in Edinburgh, when none of his siblings were at this time [to my knowledge]? Prior to the onset of censuses, the only potential documentation for non-landowners were church records [baptism, marriage, kirk sessions], personal papers, military attestation papers, criminal records or the newspapers. Does Robert appear in any of these? Well maybe, but here his story swings again on DNA.

One of the starting moments for me finding Robert in DNA was my match HB, who had a tree that included a Robert Buchan, farmer, as her x5 great grandfather. She had no further knowledge of him, but a daughter Jane Drysdale Buchan had named him on her marriage certificate in 1859. Similarly, HB had not found a baptism for this child, nor a marriage for her parents, or a family for the father Robert. Sound familiar? I had an advantage over HB; I ‘knew’ that Robert had earlier married Janet McCray, so wondered if Jane might be illegitimate. I searched for children of the mother, and duly found Jane Drysdale, daughter of Jane Drysdale, baptised in December 1835 in Leith, port of Edinburgh. Jane was illegitimate. They were found on the Minor Records on ScotlandsPeople, i.e. not Church of Scotland. A researcher found me the kirk session records of the Relief Church of Leith, which indicated that Jane was brought before the kirk on three occasions between October when Jane was born and December 1835, when the kirk relented and allowed the baptism as an illegitimate birth. Brave Jane, but she might have had her reasons as you’ll see below. In 1837 she married David Wylie, and in the 1841 census the daughter Jane is called Jane Wylie. In 1848 her mother died of cholera in Leith, and the three children were farmed out separately to relatives. Young Jane went to live with her maternal grandmother Jane Drysdale [who did have a different maiden surname], and in the 1851 census she was called Jane Drysdale Buchan; she married with this same name which she used till her death. Young Jane knew that her father was Robert Buchan, but did they have any contact?

In December 1835, where were Robert, Janet, and baby Robert? At this time, a Robert Buchan of the correct age is in Bridewell Prison in Edinburgh, who gave his residence as Leith, where his regiment is stationed. He was court-martialled for drunkenness and spent two months with hard labour. He was convicted again in 1836, and then I think this man was discharged, for I have not found attestation papers. There was another Robert Buchan of the same age recorded in 1841 in Edinburgh, a wright, but he was not baptised in Midlothian [although neither was my Robert!]. However, my Robert was in Leith fathering young Jane Drysdale and that makes him a definite possibility to be the soldier. There are no other soldiers among the Buchans to my knowledge, but he was a fifth son. The eldest took over his father’s role, the next oldest became a carpenter, while the remaining four sons were labourers, miners or railwaymen.

Perhaps now discharged from the army, I next find Robert as a labourer in Newlandrig living with son Robert, his two unwed siblings and his mother. Next door are his married sister and family, and in the other next door, his married brother and family. No mention of partner Janet, while daughter Jane is recorded in Leith. In 1847 Robert married in the Church of Scotland, a Borthwick girl named Margaret Ireland. Their first daughter was named Christian after his wife’s mother in accordance with custom. Their first son was named George, after his father, as is the customary naming tradition for first sons. The second daughter is named after his mother Jean Johnson, the next daughter after his wife, both according to custom. Two further daughters are named after his sisters, and lastly there is a Jemima. Does this imply that perhaps the first child born, my Robert, who was not named after his father as was custom, was also born out of wedlock? I have searched for his baptism under a mother with initial J and any surname – and still no luck. His mother died in 1849, aged 79, and Robert was the informant on her burial record.

By 1851 Robert and his new family have moved to a different house in Newlandrig [which was called Newlandburn occasionally from at least 1822 and in the 1851 census]. His census entry is given as the first house in Newlandburn, while his siblings are listed as census entries  31, 32 and 33. This sounds to me like the census enumerator started at one end, crossed the road and made his way back to the original starting place. There are some occupational and acreage details which suggest where these houses might have been. The farmer with the highest acreage is Andrew Lamerville with 36 acres - could this be Newlandburn House and Farm as identified by name when I visited in 2024? On the valuation roll of 1855 the occupier is one James Whyte who is not living in Newlandrigg in 1851. The master baker in 1851 is Robert Amos, who had been there in 1841, but the Bakehouse is rented by a John Ruthven in 1855, and the Amos family have left by 1861. The Old Bakehouse was also identified by name when I walked the street of Newlandrigg in 1824. 

The Buchan siblings, but not Robert, are next door to the master baker in the 1851 census. This will require a lot of spatial analysis!

 He was aged 37 and was working as a Brick and Tile maker, in the Brick and Tile Works adjacent to the village. There was some skill attached to this work. He still lived near 17-year-old Robert, who was a labourer. The following year, Robert junior emigrated to Melbourne; another story.

A roof tile made at the Newlandburn Brick and Tile works. The work involved making moulds for the clay, firing them and handling them out of the kiln - sounds a lot like pottery.

Workers go where jobs emerge. By 1860 he moved to Newbattle Parish where mining was expanding and a ‘model mining village’ of Newtongrange was under construction. A Brick and Tile works was established there, and Robert with now six young children was living at Lothian Bridge nearby. 12-year-old son George was a worker in the brickfields. Today it is a riverside caravan park. Soon a seventh child was born, bringing his total offspring to nine. Wages were good during this time. Add details of development of new mines and coal mining in general. In 1869 his eldest daughter gave birth to an illegitimate son, who died from spina bifida after just 2 days and was never named. Work in the tile factory continued till at least the taking of the 1871 census. Son George and daughter Helen were also workers in the brickworks, though newly-wed George was now in a nearby village. Robert’s household now included the illegitimate son of his niece, who remained with his family till wife Margaret died in 1896, and was sometimes called his son.

By 1881, aged 67, he had moved to 1 Smithy Rd, Newbattle, an address that still exists. It was a miner’s cottage, and although he was called a labourer, it is likely he was working at the Lingerwood coal mine. With him was the ‘adopted’ son William and another Robert Buchan, although I am unsure who this eight-year-boy is.

At some time before 1882, a photograph taken in Leith was sent to Australia picturing “sister Jane, [unnamed toddler] … and Mrs George Ireland”. The photographer was only working from premises in Leith in the early 1880s. When gathered by a cousin collecting photos from rural relatives many decades ago, no-one knew that the emigrant Robert even had a sister named Jane – now we know he had two! The refence to Mrs George Ireland, wife of Margaret Ireland’s brother, suggests that the image is of Jane Johnson Buchan who had one daughter at this time. [Jane was a servant at Esbank Lodge in Dalkeith in 1871, a place I found when staying in Dalkeith last year]. But Jane Drysdale Buchan lived all her life in Leith, also having a young child at the time, though I can imagine no reason why she would be pictured with Mrs George Ireland. But it is interesting. This one photograph, the only one taken in Midlothian collected by my cousin, proves that Robert’s family, and probably Robert, kept in touch with his son on the other side of the world. No other member of Robert’s close family, nor any other Buchan line emigrated to Australia in the 19^th century. The lure of gold! This photograph makes me believe that Robert knew his son owned a gold mine in Chiltern, Victoria, and that they most likely communicated by writing as both Roberts were literate.

The year 1882 is significant. For Robert would likely learn that his son died in that gold mine, working with his second son Robert [the eldest was named James after his uncle, perhaps suggesting that the bachelor uncle was a major influence of his youth]. It was the first week that Robert had worked with his father in the mine, and though also injured in the mine collapse, he gave testimony at his father’s inquest. This third Robert Buchan is my grandmother’s father. How did the senior Robert respond to this loss, his first child to die, when he, the father, was 68 years old?

1887 finds Robert working in Lingerwood mine as a carter, aged 74. On the cold January morning of 18 January he was struck by a wagon, possibly underground, and died instantly. His older brother George, the one whose death certificate helped me find him, had died in the same mine 18 years earlier. Eight years later Lady Victoria Mine opened on the same road, and his nephew Robert Buchan was killed there aged 62 in 1896. The Lady Victoria Mine is now the National Mining Museum of Scotland and I visited there on the first day of a covid illness, and I did not take it in much of the story. He was buried in Newbattle Churchyard where his parents were buried, though none of the family appear to have headstones. The family are buried in four contiguous plots containing Robert, his wife, his daughter, a nephew and his wife, and a family named Brown that includes Jane McCree, whose had a sister Janet McCree; yet another possibility. 

Collecting a family’s history encompasses all the pieces of documents, artifacts and DNA evidence of key relatives, including siblings and their descendants. Telling an individual’s story needs all these clues. This family stuck together over the entire 19^th century. I am glad I found them after all this time.