Tom and Forfarian, with confirmation of the location of Hawthornden, still cannot see the connection to James Drummond chr. Jan 1787 in Inverarity and Methy, Angus. Is there anything remotely similar to that in that parish I wonder?
Well, there are quite a lot of big houses in Angus, not dissimilar to Hawthornden. One of these is Foth(e)ringham, but I have no knowledge of a Hawthornden in Angus, and certainly not in Inverarity.
The fact that James Drummond named his Australian property Hawthornden suggests to me that he believed himself to be connected to the Drummonds of Hawthornden. Perhaps his father Thomas had come from there to work at Fotheringham? Though I suspect it would be more than a little difficult to prove it
I see a marriage of Thomas Drummond to Elizabeth Nicoll in Inverarity in 1786. If this Thomas is a gardener, it could be his marriage. There are three other baptisms of Drummonds in Inverarity: Margaret 1788; Euphemia 1790; Thomas 1793. The fact that there are no other Drummonds in Inverarity does suggest that Thomas had moved there from some other place.
(Wild and improbable speculation: could Elizabeth Nicoll have been connected to William Nicol, inventor of the Nicol prism? William Nicol came from Midlothian, not far from Hawthornden, and a relative of his, Jean Nicol, was the wife of Edward Sang, one of a large dynasty of Sang gardeners, and the author of various gardening books. He also edited
The Planter's Kalendar, published in 1812, the work of Walter Nicol, who had died in 1811. Walter too was 'a near and an esteemed relation' of Jean Nicol, though Sang, annoyingly, does not specify the exact relationship. )
