Any old maps or pictures from Johnstonebridge?

[Piglet01]

Hello again maggie 1895

This will be my last post on this thread. A good photo link is below -   you never know your luck.

Regards,   Steve

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/849081

[Maggie1895]

Thanks once again Steve!  Good photo - some of my family's gravestones are shown up ahead in the LH row, towards the larger stone, with my gr.grandparents and the majority of the previous generation just out of shot, on the left.
I'll certainly be keeping that!

[normatrees]

Hi there,
Just to say that the National Library of Scotland site mentioned above has lots of other very good old maps. I have used the Thomson and, I think, Roy maps to find places that don't exist any more as well as the 1845 OS maps.
This site has about 30 photos of Johnstonebridge including the mill:  http://www.dgttl.co.uk/    just type in Johnstone in the search box.
Also you might like:  http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/ which has loads of info including the Farm Horse Tax pages from 1798!
cheers
Norma

[Maggie1895]

Norma, thank you so much!
That's the first time I've ever seen a picture of the mill where my great grandmother grew up - her family had it for a couple of generations I think.
It's somewhere familiar to me through family stories but it has always been a source of frustration that although I've become the custodian (also spelt hoarder) of 2 blanket chests full of old family photographs I'd never been able to find a picture of the Mill, and although I was there a lot as a child the Mill had gone by then
I thought I'd been lucky on Google once but it was Johnstone in Renfrewshire, not Johnstonebridge.
'Thank you' seems inadequate.  It really does mean a lot to me

[normatrees]

Hi Maggie,
So glad it worked out!
I was wondering if you had any old photos of local farms in that area as I have quite a few generations who lived thereabouts. I don't have all the place names to hand but will find them if necessary.
cheers
norma

[farish]

I have just seen the reference to Blinburn. I am descended from William son of John Johnstone and Jean Ritchie born after John drowned in the Annan. A relative in Australia recently received a map from Raehills Estate which shows location of Blinburn but the map is too large to attach

[Maggie1895]

Farish, isn't it wonderful how we all fall over distant relatives on this site?

I take it you are descended from William Sibbald Johnston, the baby born in April 1807, after John's death?    Poor little boy,  arriving in the world and not ever meeting his father.    There had been an earlier William hadn't there, I think he was born in 1792 and died in 1805.    Certainly John and Jean seemed to have a decent sized family.   

After John's death, when she eventually married again to John Boyes, they had just the two girls, Jean and Janet.      Jean married into the Rogerson family, and that's the line down to me, so I suppose we are half cousins several times removed.   I always pause at John's gravestone when I'm in the churchyard because the inscription is so unusual.

Wonderful names their homes had.  I would have loved to see the map showing Blinburn, I understand it's long gone, but I believe Pleasuregate still exists?    I never managed to find it though.    Perhaps we can work out a way to look at the map, or even part of it, one day.

Thank you so much for posting - Maggie

[farish]

Thanks for replying Maggie. The map was too large to insert. My ancestor William Sibbald married Elizabeth Renwick and I am descended from the second youngest child Elspeth (called Effie) who was my great grandmother.

If you go to an older map of the area, Blin(d) burn was a row of cottages just below Johnstone Mill and as you go further south down the Annan you would get to Johnstone Cemetery. There was little burn beside which the cottages sat which ran into the Annan. The cottages were gone in maps 1857 -1861

Blinburn/Blindburn was also near the school area on the 1750 map and I think that the school is still on roughly the same site at what is now Johnstonebridge


Johnstone Mill  also had links to the Johnstones through Jean Ritchie's second marriage - her daughter married a Rogerson whose first wife was a Mary Johnstone and I often wondered if she too was in our tree somewhere. I don't know who else lived at Blinburn but I have visited the cemetery as our family cottage is in Dumfriesshire and I was born there.


Do you have a copy of the material about John's death in the river from the paper?

farish

[Maggie1895]

Farish, thank you for explaining where Blinburn was.    Last summer when I was down at the churchyard on a fine day I walked up the footpath by the Annan back up towards the village and the area where the Mill was, well as far as I could go, and I probably passed the site of Blinburn cottages without even knowing it.    I think I know the burn and as I remember it it does come down hill from roughly opposite the school.

I don't have anything from a newspaper about John Johnston's death, if you have anything from the Dumfriesshire newspaper archives I'd love to hear of it.   What I have is what is on his gravestone in the churchyard.   (Old Johnstonbridge churchyard)  The church is now a family home, oddly enough the home of another member of Rootschat, but thankfully the churchyard and the family graves are still open to us to visit.

John's gravestone reads ""John Johnson, Carter, 27, with his horse and cart was carried down by a Speat (sic) in the River Annan August 25th 1806.  His body was found at Jardine Hall."

You are right about the Rogersons and the Mill.    That's the family I'm descended from, Jean Boyes and James Rogerson of Johnston Mill.  As you say, Jean was the daughter of Jean Ritchie from her second marriage.   I have Mary Johnston in my tree as James Rogerson's first wife and the mother of his first family William, Henrietta, John, George and James but I don't have her parents.  All I know is that she was born c 1789 in Johnstonbridge, and died on 10 March 1828 when the youngest child, James was only 3.     Common name in the area but smaller population and perfectly possible, as you say they could well be linked.    If they are, they weren't a particularly lucky family, were they, with her dying young and him being drowned. 

Good luck with yours, and if I find anything further my end I'll certainly pass it on
Maggie 1895