AL(H)W's maternal grandparents, John Burns and Catherine Blues, had 5 children including Margaret Strachan Blues who became AL(H)W's mother. I have relied heavily on letters from Amy Louisa (Hutcheon) Wighton and her niece Margaret Herrald. Also, Margaret Serzans provided a wealth of research. The pictures below are of Inverkeithing, Fife where the couple married and raised their family. Fife is the large land mass on the east coast of Scotland that protrudes into the North Sea just below Dundee. On the north, Fife is bound by the Tay river flowing past Dundee and inland to Perth. On the south, it is defined by the Firth of Forth. Inverkeithing is a port city on the southernmost section of Fife, close to the Firth of Forth bridge. Edinburgh is south-east of Inverkeithing and on the south side of the Firth.

Inverkeithing Tolbooth

Inverkeithing Harbour

John Burns, AL(H)W's maternal grandfather, was born in 1789 in Hamilton (near Glasgow), the 7th of 11 children. We don't know when he left Hamilton, but he showed up in Inverkeithing sometime in the early 1820s and set up a chemical works plant there. John was an analytical chemist (and/or a manufacturing chemist) by profession. Margaret Herrald refers to him as the owner of the magnesia works in Inverkeithing. Local inhabitants apparently referred to it as Sootie Works , presumably because of the by-products it spewed into the air. Margaret Herrald also tells us that the family was considered "well-off." Margaret Strachan Burns had told Margaret Herrald that her husband was looked on as a rich man and earned an income of 1,000 pounds a year.

According to Margaret Herrald, she had heard family references to John Burns being a kinsman of Gilbert Burns, the poet Robbie Burns' brother. The Burns were not of peasant stock, the poet I mean – they were from Kincardineshire, before they went to Ayr. An article explains that the Burns’ forebears were named Campbell, and were from Center Scotland, North. They were lairds, and held the lands of Burnside. They were Jacobites, and when those killing times were going on, they fled to the east of Scotland and gave up their name Campbell and took as their name, the name of their lands – Burnside – which eventually became in the speech of that day, not Burnside, but Burness, a slurring of the word Burnside. In later days, it became Burns.

Robbie Burns was born in 1759, in Alloway in south Ayrshire about the same time as John Burns' father (Thomas Burns) would have been born. Margaret Herrald speculated that the relationship might have been as cousins, but didn't really know. History tells us that the poet's father was a migrant worker who had lived previously in Kincardineshire (on Scotland's east coast, north-east of Montrose) and was forced to relocate during the unsettling times of the Jacobite rebellion. There were a lot of Burns families in Scotland at that time. There's no way of determining how close John Burns and his family was to the poet's brother.

Catherine Strachan Blues, AL(H)W's maternal grandmother, was born in 1806 in Montrose. According to AL(H)W, one of Catherine Blues' uncles (a bachelor) asked his sister (Catherine's mother) if one of her daughters could come and live with him in Inverkeithing. (I presume to be a housekeeper for him.) The youngest was chosen and she left Montrose by boat and landed in Inverkeithing, a girl of 16 years. In those days, there was only stage coach or travel by sea. John Burns must have seemed to her quite old. He was the first person she met on landing. He was walking along the road deep in thought when a girl stopped him to ask her way to her uncle’s home. He walked back with her and took her straight in and introduced her to her uncle. The two men were great cronies so no one thought anything about him going there too often.

Catherine was 18 years old when she married 35 year old John Burns on August 9, 1824 in Inverkeithing. (Inverkeithing is about 80 miles south of Montrose where the Hutcheon grandparents were residing at the time.) All 5 of their children were born in Inverkeithing. John Burns died when he was 35 years old, leaving a young Catherine to raise them. Catherine died in 1878 at the age of 72 in Montrose where she was living with her daughter Margaret.

John Burns married Catherine Blues in Inverkeithing, Fife. All of the Burns children (see below) were born in Inverkeithing. (Note: some of our family correspondents had slightly different birth data than those shown below. I have used the birth data as provided in the Church of Latterday Saints database which is based on parish records.)

1. Daughter: Margaret Strachan Burns (b. December 27, 1826)
2. Son: John (b. May 4, 1829)
3. Son: Alexander (b. June 1, 1831)
4. Son #3: Unknown name and birth date
5. Son #4: Unknown name and birth date

The couple's first child, Margaret Strachan Burns, was born December 27, 1826 in Inverkeithing. According to Margaret Herrald, when John Burns died, Catherine had the other four children to bring up, and for some reason, little Margaret was sent to Hamilton to live there for a while. You'll learn more about Margaret in the biography on AL(H)W's parents.

The second child in the family was John Burns, born on May 4, 1829. John was an experimental chemist, a bit of a genius in his way. (Source: AL(H)W) John Burns died in Norway in 1874 in an accident of some kind.

Alexander Blues Burns, the third child, was born June 1, 1831, also in Inverkeithing. From Margaret Serzan's research, we learn that Alexander married Elizabeth Lindsay Chalmers of Montrose in London on February 10, 1862. A master mariner, he died from liver disease in Calcutta, India on September 29, 1880. At the time of his death, he was a mate on the ship Newark. When he made out his will, his ship was the Napoleon III. Alexander left an estate of 44 pounds, consisting of furniture worth 19 pounds and a life insurance policy worth 25 pounds. (This puts the 2,000 pound estate of William Hutcheon in perspective.) Alexander's wife and his three children were living in Dundee at 12 Benvie Road at the time of his death. Here's what Margaret found out about Alexander's children.

1. Alexander Blues Burns, Junior was born April 27, 1863 in a house on 26 North Street, Montrose. He was a Wine and Spirits dealer. Alexander married Irish born Alexina Margaret Foulis on July 9, 1890 in Dundee. Alexina’s father, Patrick Foulis, was also a wine and spirit merchant and her mother was Alexina Foulis, nee McIntosh. Alexina died April 5 1942 of cardiac failure at the age of 77 at 1 Lamb's Lane in Dundee. The couple had two children:
   • Patricia Burns, b. 1892 in Dundee.
   • Hope Walker Chalmers Burns, b. March 22, 1895 at 1 Lamb's Lane in Dundee. At the time of her birth, her father Alexander was working as a printer/compositor.
2. Mary Barclay Milne Burns, Alexander Blues Burns (Senior)'s second child, was born May 9, 1865 in the house at 26 North Street, Montrose. Later in her life, she joined her sister Isabella in Ballantrae, Ayr where she worked as a domestic servant for her younger sister and her husband. After her younger sister died, and at the age of 56, she married a ploughman named James Hanvey. He was 42 at the time. Ballantrae Ayr is on the isolated western coast of Scotland. Robert Louis Stevenson, author of The Master of Ballantrae , is said to have been stoned here in 1876 by locals who, he alleged, were upset by his clothing.
3. Isabella Stewart Chalmers Burns was the third child born to Alexander Blues Burns (Senior) and Elizabeth Chalmers on December 2, 1870 at 26 North Street, Montrose. She was married on January 23, 1895 in the district of St. Andrew Dundee to Charles E. B. Maitland, a tailor & clothier who was living at 25 Stewart Street, Dundee at the time of his marriage. Mr. Maitland was born in Glasgow. His father was also named Charles Maitland and he also was a tailor & clothier. His mother’s name was Elisa Ann Burns. Isabella Burns was living at 82 Victoria Rd. Dundee at the time of her marriage. Margaret Serzans found no records of any children, but she did determine that the couple left Dundee at some point and moved to Ballantrae, Ayr and were proprietors of the Royal Hotel there. Isabella died in 1923 and two years later, Charles Maitland was remarried to a spinster almost 20 years younger than he was.

Brother #3 and Brother #4 According to Margaret Herrald, Margaret had four brothers, but I could find nothing in the genealogical records. AL(H)W did not mention them, so the last two brothers must remain a mystery.

Main street, Ballantrae

Famous cousins: As you know, John Burns came from a family of eleven children. Margaret Herrald wrote of two descendents of note from this family who were cousins to Margaret Strachan Burns.

Reverend Thomas Burns was one of the famous preachers of the day. He lived when I was young. I used to hear grandma speak of going in to hear him and visit him. The grandma that Margaret was referring to was Margaret Strachan Burns. Reverend Burns preached at a church in Edinburgh called Lady Glenorchy's Parish Church. Situated in the centre of Edinburgh's Old Town (2 Roxburgh Place), it was much later converted into the Roxy Art House. We don't know Reverend Burn's father; however, information about Reverend Thomas Burns is on the Internet and we can be pretty sure that he married Agnes Maxwell McNaughton on April 12, 1845 in Lesmahagow Parish, Lanark, Edinburgh. The couple had 10 children between 1845 and 1865. Thomas died on May 26, 1869.

Another cousin of note according to Margaret Herrald was Alexander Burns, a son of another of John Burns' brothers. That brother died when Alexander was 5 and his mother married a lawyer named Shand who was a good father to his stepson, adopted him, and trained him to be a lawyer as he himself was. Then, after university at Aberdeen, Alexander Burns came to Edinburgh. He became a judge of the Court of Session and a Senator of the College of Justice there at Parliament Square where the advocates are. After years there, he was created a peer, Lord Shand. He was one of Scotland’s great lawmen and was elevated to the peerage so that he could sit in the House of Lords, as Lord of Appeals there in London. He lived at New Hailes House outside of Edinburgh for 8 years previous to going to London to take up his new position there. When he retired, he and his wife, Lady Shand, went to Mentone France to live. He was not there very long when he died in 1904. (Alexander Burns was created a Baron on August 20, 1892. In the image above, he is shown sitting in the House of Lords.)

Here's a speech from the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Halsbury, that was entered into Hansard, March 7, 1904. My Lords, I cannot forbear from saying on the present occasion a word or two on the subject of the loss which your Lordships' House has sustained in the death of my noble and learned friend Lord Shand. He was sitting with us in the performance of his judicial duties a very short time ago, and I think it is only due to his memory to say that, after a long and a distinguished career as a Judge in Scotland, he, while being under no sort of obligation to attend our sittings and without any remuneration or reward of any kind, was for more than eleven years aiding and assisting, both in this House and on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in the discharge of judicial business. We have derived great advantage from his assistance, which was always most cheerfully rendered in either of these tribunals; and without his assistance sometimes it would not have been easy to have had both Courts going at the same time, and the concentration of both into one would have resulted in serious delays to the judicial business of the House. It would be very ungrateful if we did not recognise the most generous and disinterested services which for so long a time Lord Shand rendered with such great advantage to the public.

Unfortunately, as may be the case with family stories that get handed down over many generations, the above biography of Alexander Burns, Baron Shand is probably not exactly correct. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Baron Shand was born in Aberdeen on December 13, 1828 to Alexander Shand, a merchant in Aberdeen, and to his wife Louisa Whyte. Losing his father in early boyhood, he was taken to Glasgow by his mother, who there married William Burns, writer, in whose office her son worked as a clerk while attending lectures at Glasgow University (1842-48). He assumed the surname of Burns, and was a law student at Edinburgh University (1848-52), spending during the period a short time at Heidelberg University.

Genealogical records from the Church of Latterday Saints confirm: An Alexander Shand was born in Aberdeen in 1828, although his parents were not shown in the register. Louisa Whyte did marry a William Burns on September 26, 1838 in Glasgow. There was a William Burns, born in Hamilton in 1779 who was an older brother to our John Burns. I could find no genealogical evidence to support the suggestion that Alexander was first born as a Burns. The story of his birth to Alexander Shand and Louisa White is confirmed in Peerage.com. Even though we must admit that Lord Shand was not born a Burns, he was still a part of the Burns family and continued to recognize that. In fact, it was Baron Shand who conveyed the news to the Burns family that John Burns (the genius analytical chemist who was Margaret Strachan Burns' brother) had died in Norway. (Source: AL(H)W) Baron Shand had received that news from the British Consul - so the link between Baron Shand and the Burns was well known.

Sources

Margaret Serzans

Letter from Margaret Herald to Harry Latta Wighton in 1953

Letters from Amy Louisa Hutcheon Wighton to John Latta Wighton and Ella Peterson around 1939

Letter from Amy C. Hutcheon, AL(H)W's niece, to Margaret Serzans, 1968.

Various web sites, including:

ScotlandsPeople Database (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/)

The Latter-Day Saints website: http://www.familysearch.org/

Hansard, March 7, 1904: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1904/mar/07/the-death-of-lord-shand

Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney Lee. Second Supplement. (The URL for this site is much too long to be reproduced here. To find the source, search in Google for "Baron Shand" and "William Burns" and you'll find it.

Peerage.com: http://thepeerage.com/p24198.htm