Westburn House - history help please

The History and Geography of Auld Scotia

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johnniegarve
Posts: 126
Joined: Thu Mar 18, 2010 11:57 am

Re: Westburn House - history help please

Post by johnniegarve » Sat Dec 12, 2015 12:00 am

Folks, some info' on Westburn here, http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/smihou/smihou096.htm

Johnnie.

Mc_Intosh
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jun 29, 2017 6:59 am

Re: Westburn House - history help please

Post by Mc_Intosh » Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:26 am

Hello jaffacakes,

Perhaps by now you've already found the trail you wanted. I hope so - the search is fascinating! I came across your post in searching my own Scottish ancestry. In the 1851 & 1861 censuses, my 4th great-grandfather, Thomas Couper, was the Farm Overseer at Westburn House. In 1871 he is shown as "Farm Wasser". I don't know what that job is, but he was 84 years old at the time. His daughter, Elizabeth Couper McIntosh was also employed at Westburn House, first as a sewer, then as housekeeper. Perhaps your ancestors and mine rubbed elbows? Or mine were employed by yours?

I found a couple of references in travel books of the time re the property. One notes that In 1857 the land was worked (rented) by a farmer named Andrew Wallace. Nelson’s Hand-book to Scotland: for Tourists, published in 1860 "…the site of the stately baronial Castle of Drumsargard, the seat of successively the Oliphants, the Murrays, the Douglases, and the Hamiltons, but now extinct. Westburn House now occupied by a farmer.”

From a US geneology: ...Wiiliam Hamilton of Wishaw, writing in 1710 says: Westburn was lately fewed out by the Duchess of Hamilton to Hamilton of Westburn. It is a pleasant house, upon the river, with good gardens. ... show the succession in this family to have embraced, between 1618 and 1825, the following names: Andrew, Gabriel, Gabriel, Archibald, Gabriel, Gabriel, John, Gabriel.” (These names are excerpted from Anderson's "Memoirs of the House of Hamilton".

Cheers!

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