Raeburn Family of East Lothian

[Gavin Wilson]

Your James Raeburn is indeed the son of James Raeburn and Mary Reid. I taken a picture of his brother Alexander's headstone at Dunbar Parish Churchyard and added it with transcription and a little research to the Find-A-Grave website. Alexander was a ship master which may be an indication to how James became a joiner. (ship building/repair perhaps.) To date I haven't discovered their parents grave. But I am slowly working through all the cemetery to add to the Find-a-grave website because it's free to everyone, and easy to use.

[Forfarian]

I have come across David Waddell and Margaret Raeburn/Rayburn before. Among the notes I have on them is the following

The following riddle was located loose within the pages of a family Bible. This hand-written note was found attached to a sermonette clipping which had been printed in Edinburgh, Scotland.
in one house in the perish of Beith Lives
three mothers and three daughters two
Grand mothers and a Grategrandmother
two Grand daugthers and a Grategrand
daugther a widow a wife and two
unmaried persons yet all thes ar
comprised in four indiviuels
This riddle is presented with the original punctuation and spelling. It indicates that either the Waddells or Rayburns may have originally been from Beith Parish located within the counties of Ayr and Renfrew.  [Jim Ball, http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/Waddell/1997-12/0883519627]

I have been unable to determine who his father Gavin Waddell was, apart from the following

1853, May 14. Gavin Waddell, Labourer, Waterloo, aged 89 years. [Shotts Parish Register, burial records] which indicates that he must have been born about 1763/1764. This Gavin and his wife Elizabeth Russell had nine children that I know of, and I have a few snippets of information about four of them apart from David. 

James, born 1801, had a son named David and a grandson, but I have never been able to find any more about any of them. They may have emigrated.
Elizabeth married Daniel Gold and died in 1866.
Agnes married James Cooper and died in 1878.
William died unmarried in 1870.