Source of Old Howff MI text?

[AdrianB38]

Can anyone please help me understand where the original for the attached image came from? I got it years ago (as a photocopy) and I have only just discovered that it contains something very useful for the Constable family - so I need to understand if it's a plausible source.

The text that I'm interested in is that marked with "452" - so far as I understand it, it is the Monumental Inscription for Stone 452 in the Old Howff, Dundee, William Constable and his family. The oddity is that, when I compare the text to my own photo of Stone 452, it's significantly different.

Some of the difference is understandable: the stone is dated 1834 at the top in real life and the text presumably dates from around then because later deaths on the stone (from 1846 onwards) aren't in the text.

Some differences between the text and the stone are minor - e.g. the first death has Roman numerals for the year in the text, Arabic on the stone. But others are important - the stone refers to William Constable's "Family" which could refer to nephews, whereas the text has an explicit "four brothers" (at least one of whom is definitely William's child); there is reference in the text to a still-born child not on the stone; and the four brothers have ages, not just dates of death, whereas the ages aren't on the stone. (The ages are crucial to my current task).

I have my copy of the Scottish Genealogy Society's Pre-1855 MIs for Dundee & Broughty Ferry. The MI for Old Howff 452 in there is a summary of the image text plus the post-1834 names and death dates. The introduction to the Old Howff section in Pre-1855 MIs implies that the bulk of the text in that book came from a manuscript compiled by the Howff authorities in the late 1830s, generally known as "The Book of the Howff" (146 pages plus 29 pages of notes). (Confusingly there is another manuscript "Book of the Howff" from 1843 but that only includes "the more interesting inscriptions".)

My suspicion therefore is that the imaged text comes from the 146 page, 1830s, "Book of the Howff" - can anyone confirm this or suggest an alternative origin? (And does anyone know where the 146 page "Book of the Howff" actually is now? - Pre-1855 MIs suggests Dundee Central Library.)

Thanks

[breaky]

Friends of Dundee Archives (listed in the Resources at the top of the Angus page here) has more about the Book of the Howff and the Howff Burial records themselves, worth a look.

Best wishes,
breaky

[RJ_Paton]

As previously suggested have a look at the Friends of Dundee Archives - they have transcribed the book of the Howff and have quite a bit of information in pdf format on their website. e.g. there are 3-4 pages under the surname Constable
https://www.fdca.org.uk

[AdrianB38]

Thanks for the suggestions but - unless I'm missing something (always possible) - the FDCA site has a transcript of the burial records (see http://www.fdca.org.uk/Howff_Burials.html) whereas I need the Monumental Inscriptions.

Maybe I send the image above to the FDCA guys and see if they can recognise it.

[RJ_Paton]

According to Dundee City the records of the Monumental Inscriptions are held in Dundee City Archives
https://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Burial%20Records.pdf

[AdrianB38]

Thanks for that. So far as I can see:
Registers of Burials 1772-1854 Indexed by FDCA
This will be the original registers whose indexes we see on the FDCA site and on ScotlandsPeople. (I'm not getting at the indexers but it's known that a stack of real or electronic cards was lost during the FDCA indexing process - fortunately the gap is filled in by the ScotlandsPeople data.)

Monumental Inscriptions* C.1984 Dundee City Archives*
The * indicates that this is Volume 4 of the Pre-1855 MIs published by the Scottish Genealogy Society.

Register & Plan of Tombstones 1832 Dundee City Archives
This is the only thing that might help me, though I suspect it's not "The Book of the Howff" (one of them) both because it doesn't use that simple title and because Volume 4 of the Pre-1855 MIs says that DCA has a manuscript Register & Index but that it excludes the MIs. Still, I didn't know about this beforehand so it might help me.

I've mailed FDCA to see if they recognise the image - if they don't, I might try Dundee Central Library to see what they hold in terms of things called "Book(s) of the Howff" in their Local Studies - if they do have one or more, then it looks like a visit to Dundee is needed to check the books.