Hello. I just got back from a week's holiday in the south of France today and am getting to grips with my emails.
I'm going to attach the death certificate of Jane Smeaton or Nicholson. Assuming I do it correctly, you will see that her "reputed father" is given as James Smeaton, a woollen knitwear worker. That could maybe be a new line of research for you? I don't think the name was all that common in Hawick.
Jane was one of the six illegitimate children of Martha Welsh, a seamstress in Hawick. I'm descended from her eldest child, James Stewart (her children all had different surnames!), who married a girl from Northern Ireland called Agnes Pettigrew.
Martha Welsh was born in 1803 in Wilton, Hawick, to Thomas Welsh, coachman to Gilbert Chisholm Esq. of Stirches, and his wife Jean Ballantyne. Thomas and Jean were married in 1795 in Glasgow. She was a "residenter" of Glasgow but Thomas was a soldier stationed there with the Hopetoun Fencibles, a sort of home guard regiment. I think he was the Thomas born in 1775 at Castleton in Roxb. to Thomas Welsh and Agnes Hall. Most of what I know about Thomas was gleaned from the Wanted notice published in the Edinburgh Courant and Kelso Mail in July 1808, when the procurator fiscal's office in Hawick were interested in his whereabouts (a long story).
Harry
P.S. I've just had a warning that I can't post the Jane Smeaton death certificate as an attachment as it's a TIF file, which Rootschat obviously doesn't like.