clarilaw/lilliesleaf estates/landowners

[Carole A]

I am trying to find more information about my 4G grandfather, William Adamson, who was born late 1738/early 1739 in Clarilaw, baptised in Bowden, to George Adamson and Janet Simpson. He and his younger brother, James (b1745, baptised Lilliesleaf), both settled in London (William by the 1760s) owning property in Clare market, Covent Garden. William was a tailor. They clearly had some money (both left wills/property) and aside from their baptisms in Scotland's people, I haven't a clue about why they would have moved south. William was a non-conformist in London.

One train of thought I am following is that they were associated in some way with local landowners/gentry and made the move because of this - does anyone know who the likely families of wealth in the 1740s/50s/60s would have been?

Carole

[still_looking]

Assuming they all had property around Lilliesleaf you could try the register of sasines as this would reflect those carrying out land transactions.

S_L

[Carole A]

Thanks. That was new source for me, as I haven't investigated Scottish ancestry for any other family. However, according to http://www.nas.gov.uk/guides/sasines.asp there aren't any Roxburgh records. But a great idea, thanks.

[still_looking]

I could have misread the page but isn't it saying simply that the sasines of Roxburgh are not indexed rather than they don't exist?

I've used the printed indexes myself (not for Roxburghshire) and I suppose it is possible that no index has been created yet.

S_L

[still_looking]

some records are clearly in the national archives of Scotland e.g.
search by reference    GD1/584/2

http://www.nas.gov.uk/onlineCatalogue/

you might also want to try searching for lilliesleaf


also try lilliesleaf in the register of archives
http://www.nas.gov.uk/onlineRegister/

[Carole A]

Thank you, I will get on to that. Am in NZ so have to rely on digitalised records at the moment.

[still_looking]

Also for a general description you could try the statistical accounts, there are three separate editions and they do give an idea of the scale of the place:

e.g. (text is affected by the format it's - I'll post a better link in a moment)
http://www.electricscotland.com/etexts/NewStatisticalAccountofScotland03.txt

[still_looking]

possibly much more readable:

http://stat-acc-scot.edina.ac.uk//sas/sas.asp//?action=public&naecache=2&parishsearchflag=parish&parishsearchterm=lilliesleaf&searchtype=search&session-id=0873d1dab3a194015235de7170597611&submit=Search#search

[Carole A]

Thank you, that is fascinating reading. Gives me a feel of the place. It's slightly later than I was looking for but it has some useful basis for working on. Much appreciated.