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Reminiscences of Dollar, Tillicoultry and other Districts adjoining the Ochils
Appendix to the First Edition


HAVING, from the pressure of business and other causes, been unable to get my manuscript ready for the press till now, death in the meantime has been busy with some of those referred to in the foregoing pages. WARDLAW RAMSAY, Esq., of Whitehill and Tillicoultry, died in the month of July last, 1882; and his lady in about six weeks after. JAMES PATON, Esq., of Lethangie and Tillicoultry, died on the 9th of August 1882, aged eighty-five years. Mrs. Paton is left alone now in the old home; and four members of his family, all married, and resident in different parts of the country, were left, along with her, to mourn his loss. Five of his family (three sons and two daughters) predeceased him. The first Mrs. Paton died on September 5th, 1850, aged forty-seven years. The first Mrs. David Paton (her sister) died 16th June 1853, aged forty-eight. ROBERT ARCHIBALD, Esq., of Devonvale, Tillicoultry, and Cluny Bank, Forres, their brother, died on the 24th September 1882, agd sixty-six; Mrs. Gibson of Dollar (his sister) being the only one now left of the family. His widow and four sons were left along with her to mourn his loss. Two daughters predeceased him. Dr. TAIT (Archibald Campbell Tait), ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, who was born at Edinburgh in 1811, died at Addington Park, Croydon, on 3rd December 1882, aged seventy-one years, and was buried in Addington Churchyard on December the 8th. His genealogy from 1682 is as follows:—William Tait, joiner in the village of Lang- side, Aberdeenshire, was the great-great-grandfather of the Archbishop. He died in 1739, aged fifty-seven years. His son Thomas—a mason at Thundertonwas father of John Tait, Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh, and of Harviestoun, Dollar, and Cumloden in Argyleshire; and John Tait's son Craufurd was the Archbishop's father.

DAVID MILLER, Esq., of Auchterarder, died last; month after a short illness of only five days, aged eighty-three years, leaving his widow and three of a family to mourn his loss. When Mr. Miller and I paid a visit to Blackford churchyard in March last year, and laid bare part of the inscription on the old family tombstone,— that was of so much interest to us both,—we left instructions to have it all thoroughly cleaned and washed, so as to be able, if possible, to make out the whole of the inscription. On paying a subsequent visit to it, however, I was sorry to find that these operations had so rubbed away the letters as to make the first part of it almost unreadable, and the rest of it wholly so.

Having referred to the deep debt of gratitude Mr. Archibald of Beechwood had laid the town of Tillicoultry under, in building a handsome tower to our Town Hall, I have now to add that he has just supplemented his noble gift by ornamenting externally the Hall itself, at a cost of between £400 and £500, so as to be more in keeping with the beautiful tower; and now we have got such an elegant and commodious Town Hall as few country towns can boast of, and of which we have justly great reason to be proud.

W. G.

March 1883.



 


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