Buchans of Borthwick

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, ...

Robert was 74 years old when a wagon struck him at eight o’clock in the morning on a winters day in January 1887. He died instantly. His wife would learn quickly of his death as his body was returned home immediately to Newtongrange, a mining village less than half a mile from the colliery.  Certainly a doctor was required to certify the cause of death, it being an accident. Two days later he was interred in the Newbattle Churchyard, now known as the Old Newbattle Cemetery.  Scotland has a system called Register of Corrected Entries (RCE).  Since 1855, all death certificates are issued  following a declaration by a medical doctor. This is the system we have in Australia. The death must be registered within 8 days. If the registration is delayed by the need for an investigation, then it will often generate an RCE.  RCE are also created about sudden and violent deaths for the same reason. As well, they are created for divorces, and any significant change about a b...

After a second day in front of a computer at the ScotlandsPeople Record Centre, I have developed a sore throat. No that is not the announcement. Regardless of that discomfort I walked to the Dalkeith Local Studies Centre, which is open to 7pm on a Thursday. Two objectives - find Esbank Lodge, where a Buchan girl was a servant to a local banker. Secondly look at burial records or monument inscriptions in search of where the Robert Buchan who died in a mining accident at the age of 74 is buried, somewhere in Newbattle Parish. He died in 1887, and because there is an Old and New Newbattle Cemetery (which opened in 1813), I didn’t know where he was buried. There is one major deficiency with Scottish records - they don’t include the burial location. As it happened I walked down a new road today on the way to the train. Close readers of this blog know that the Newbattle Cemetery is quite close to the station, but it has been raining every time I arrived back from Edinburgh. I photographed a ...