THE REID FAMILY
Alexander Reid born about 1666 at Easter Mains Uphall, West Lothian. Married Margaret Storie about 1691 (family search organisation disc#5 Pin#1162959, records of Church of Latter Day Saints). No. 1 on the family tree?
The Reid family owned three properties. Ratho Hall, Ratho Bank now called Ashley and Gogar Bank. Their father was George Reid of Ratho d.20.6.1785 and is noted as having been distinguished in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. He was married to Sarah Laurie d.9.11.1790.
1739 Alexander Reid and Janet Grey, his spouse, had a daughter named Janet, baptized at Ratho on 10th August. Witnesses James and George Reid.
1740 George Reid and Sarah Laurie, his spouse, had a son named Walter b.4th June and baptized at Ratho on 10th. Witnesses Walter and Alexander Reid.
1743 Elizabeth Reid, lawful daughter to Alexander Reid and Janet Grey, was b.22nd March and baptized at Ratho on 31st. Witnesses Walter and George Reid.
1744 Alexander Reid, lawful son of George Reid and Sarah Laurie, b.11th May and baptized at Ratho on 16th. Witnesses Walter and Alexander Reid.
Cumberland Reid, of Gogar Bank. Son of George Reid and Sarah Laurie, b.28th April christened at Ratho on 5th May 1746. Witnesses Walter and Alexander Reid.
He died on 15th June 1818, was unmarried and left his estate to his nephew John, who married a Miss Douglas of Leith. He also made a settlement on Jane, his great niece, (£800 to be life rented by her father).
1747 David Reid, lawful son to George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.11th December and baptized at Ratho on 17th. Witnesses Alexander and James Reid.
1750 Mary Reid, lawful daughter to George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.5th March and baptized at Ratho on 11th. Witnesses Alexander Reid and William Finlay.
1751 Margaret Reid, lawful daughter to George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.11th December and baptized at Ratho on 15th. Witnesses Alexander Reid and Henry Hugh Hi?
1752 Margaret Reid, lawful daughter to John Reid and ? Williamson, b.3rd August and baptized at Ratho on 15th. Witnesses John Wilkie and ? Grey.
1753 George Reid, lawful son of George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.26th December and baptized at Ratho on 6th January 1754. Witnesses Alexander and James Reid.
1753 Bettie ? Reid, lawful daughter to James Reid and Janet Murray, was b. ? and baptized at Ratho on 12th October. Witnesses James Reid and John Murray.
1755 Sarah Reid, lawful daughter to George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.13th April and baptized at Ratho on 24th. Witnesses James and Alexander Reid.
1757 Mary Reid, lawful daughter to Alexander Reid in Norton and Janet Allen, was b.15th February and baptized at Ratho on the 19th. Witnesses William Bell and John Grinton. (This entry is the only one to give an address).
1757 Mary Reid, lawful daughter to George Reid and Sarah Laurie was b.21st May and baptized at Ratho on 29th. Witnesses Alexander and James Reid.
1759 Christian Reid, lawful daughter of George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.9th June and baptized at Ratho on 27th. Witnesses not appended.
1759 James Reid, lawful son to James Reid and Janet Murray, was b.2nd December and baptized at Ratho on 9th. Witnesses James Reid Snr. and John Murray.
1761 Anne Reid, lawful daughter of George Reid and Sarah Laurie, was b.10th July and baptized at Ratho on 16th. Witnesses Alexander and James Reid.
Alexander Reid and Janet Grey married 30th November 1766 at Currie.
1777 Alexander Reid listed as a landowner in Ratho, in Landowners in Scotland.
The family farm was Ratho Bank now called Ashley, this estate comprehends the following lands: -
1. Those formerly known by the name Ratho Bank, consisting of three parts of the Abthan of Ratho, which at one time belonged to Sir James Fleming of Ratho Byres, and another part of the said Abthan of Ratho, all lying within the barony of Kirkliston, regality of St. Andrews, and sheriffdom of Fife, which whole lands subsequently belonged to Sir W. A. Cunningham of Livingston, Bart. and were disposed in 1779 to George Reid, Esq. of Balerno, who was succeeded by his grandson, G. Reid, Esq., by whom in 1819, they were disponed to George Veitch.
2. The lands of Marylands, which originally formed part of the estate of Ratho.
3. The remaining portion of the estate of Ratho, lying on the north side of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal, and extending from Marylands to the Parish church, was lately added by Mr Brown.
These lands now comprehended in the estate of Ashley, extend to upwards of 250 acres, of which about 10 acres are laid out in ornamental grounds and plantations.
1784 Janet Reid, lawful daughter to James Reid and Agnes Dunsmuir, was b.4th and baptized on the 15th November at Ratho. Witnesses James Reid and William Dunsmuir.
1785 Janet Reid married Patrick
Hadaway a brewer from Leith, bans proclaimed at Ratho 2
Family:-
John christened South Leith, 19th February 1786.
Sarah christened South Leith, 15th July 1787.
George christened South Leith, 24th November 1788.
Peter christened South Leith, 9th December.
Ann christened South Leith, -- January 1795.
Cumberland christened South Leith, 8th February 1797.
Robert Anderson christened South Leith, 4th August 1802.
Samuel Maitland christened South Leith, 15th November 1805.
Thomas christened South Leith, 10th May 1791 or 1801 (date is indistinct).
1785 Alexander Reid married Mary Muirhead at South Leith on 6th December.
1788 Cumberland Reid, lawful son of Alexander Reid of Balerno and Mrs Janet Grey, was b.11th August and baptized at Ratho on the 19th. Witnesses William Handyside and William Fleming.
The Statistical Account of 1791/9 states that Messrs. Alexander Reid of Ratho Byres and his brother Cumberland Reid of Gogar Bank, were landowners in the area.
Alexander Reid of Ratho. Master brewer, (brother of Cumberland Reid), d.14th August 1803. He was married to Elizabeth or Mary Grey d.2th May 1810. They had a large family.
(1) George of Ratho Bank, who married a Jean Laing, d.10th May 1846. They had two children Alexander George W.S. of Auchterarder who died unmarried and Jessie who married a man Smitton.
(2) A daughter Jessie.
(3) A daughter Margaret who became Mrs Ritchie.
(4) A daughter Anne, who married a Lt. Nash Scott R.N. Their son, who was in the army, was killed with his wife during the Indian mutiny.
(5) A daughter Mary, who became Mrs Ainslie. Her son died aged 21 and her daughter married her cousin, Mr Ainslie.
(6) A daughter Jane married to someone in Callender.
(7) John of Gogar, who married a Miss Douglas of Leith.
(8) Alexander Reid, b.13th August 1783 d.23rd May 1858 at Ratho. By August 1805 he was a partner in the family of Reid & Liddell of Leith. He was married to a Mary Muirhead Reid b.23rd October 1789, married 6th December 1809 at South Leith, d.5th September 1867. They emigrated from Leith to Van Deimens' Land now Tasmania, on the ship Castle Forbes in August 1821.
(9) James of Greenock, married Marion Newton.
24th June 1818, The Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal Coy. acquired part of the lands of South Platt from George Reid of Ratho Bank.
2nd July 1821 George Reid of Ratho Bank, sold part of Ratho Byres.
13th May 1826 the Trustees of George Reid of Ratho Bank, sold the lands of Westfield to John Innes of Cowie.
10th July 1826 The Trustees of George Reid of Ratho Bank, and the said George Reid sold the lands of Ratho Hall and mansion house to John Innes of Cowie.
(In D. Hunter's account of the 750 years of the church in Ratho, he quotes from the records, “In 1704 the Kirkton Farm accounts were being examined and Session appointing one of their number to hire but one of the houses in Kirkton Farm for a school.” It is therefore possible that George Reid actually owned the farm of Kirkton and that Ratho Hall was built on the site of the old farmhouse.
In the introduction to the Clyde Company papers: -
Alexander Reid, the third son to a landed proprietor near Edinburgh, had failed as a merchant in Leith a result it was said, of Napoleon’s continental decrees.
His great grand uncle, the Rev. George Reid, was chaplain to Johnson, Boswell’s grandfather; his great grand aunt played a remote prentice part in the founding of the Anti Corn Law League. His father was apparently a farmer and master brewer who enlarged the family’s long established interests in the parish of Ratho, six miles west of Edinburgh, and eventually acquired the estate of Ratho Bank. This property and the two or three farms to which it was added, were said to have been valued at £100,000. There were eleven children: Ratho Bank passed to George, the eldest son, and by August 1805, two years after his father's death, Alexander Reid was a partner with Evan Liddell in the Leith business of Liddell & Reid, merchants. Inexperience and Napoleon perhaps combined to turn the screw; by August 1814 the firm was bankrupt. Discharge was granted them two years later, and Alexander Reid seems to have stayed in Leith and continued business there on his own account in difficult times.
In December 1809 he married Mary Muirhead, a girl of twenty from the Scottish Clyde, and their daughter Jane was born within a month of his bankruptcy. A portrait gives a humorous twist to his lips. Somehow he recovered and Jane’s bachelor great-uncle, Cumberland Reid of Gogar Bank near Ratho, who died in June 1818, left her £800 to be life rented by her father; and there were other helpers. By February 1820, when his only son was born, Alexander Reid had recovered sufficiently to fund emigration, risking the plunge into the antipodean void with his family.
They chose Van Diemen’s Land, the younger of the two Australian colonies, sailing from Leith on the Castle Forbes.
On 1st March 1822, they arrived at Hobart Town and lived there for a short time until Reid was granted land on the Clyde River, nearly 50 miles from Hobart. The land was in two sections: 1400 acres which he called Ratho, and 600 acres, 5 miles downstream, which he named Humbie.
Bothwell ©
In mid 1837 Ratho was let for seven years to a family called Horne, at a high annual rent of £1000, and in April 1838, the Reids left Ratho for Scotland on board the vessel Derwent.
One of Reid’s first outings was to a cattle show at Glasgow, and the family settled into a house in Edinburgh before moving to a rented property next to the Old Ratho Bank estate, which was no longer in family hands. He prospered again in raising sheep and was active in the social life of the area: hunting, visiting relations and touring. After lengthy considerations they returned to their own Ratho in Van Deimen's Land in 1842.
He had four children: -
Jane, b.1814-d.1.4.1897. She was widowed in 1836, whilst in India (her husband was Lt. William Williams, both their children were stillborn). She spent many of the following years with her parents.
Alexander b.19.2.1820-d.27.8.1881, who had most of his father's characteristics and interests, he married Lucy Lempriere, had 7 children. His son Alexander Reid sold Ratho about 1936 to ancestors of the present owners, (Ramsay’s.)
Elizabeth Margaret, b.10.10.1825 at Ratho and d.18.2.1838, a few weeks before the family sailed for Scotland. (Buried in a paddock at Ratho.)
Mary, b.18.11.1829 at Ratho and d.6.4.1838, at sea during the voyage to Scotland. She was buried at sea.
The family grave in Tasmania, records the following details:-
Alexander Reid 13th August 1783 – 23rd May 1858
Mary Reid 23rd October 1789 – 5th September 1867
The following three articles are reproduced in the article Farming.
(1) Observations on the Parish of RATHO, by George Reid. Dated, Ratho, 10th December 1795.
(2) Alexander McKnights, Farming at Ratho. Dated, Ratho House 18th January 1796. In which Cumberland Reid is also mentioned.
(3) Mr. Dudgeon, at Gogar Bank Farm, (Gogar Bank Farm was the home farm of Gogar Bank House, owned at this time by Cumberland Reid). Dated, Gogar Bank, 13th January 1796.
The New Statistical Account of Scotland by The Rev. Jas. Clason contains this information attributed to George Reid: -
The South Platt hill is the site of an ancient encampment. The remains of it were to be seen about thirty years ago, (1809) when the ground was turned up, and the stones appropriated for building the present fences (1839) upon the Ratho Hall property. The camp, as described in a letter by George Reid Esq., at that time proprietor of the grounds of which it formed a part, occupied about an acre of ground on the summit of the eminence and was surrounded with a ditch and rampart formed with large stones mixed with black earth. There were also two circular enclosures, one on the east, the other on the west side of the main camp, from 30 to 40 feet diameter, surrounded in like manner with a rampart of large blocks and black earth, and paved in the area with flags of freestone, which last must have been brought from a distance.
On the removal of rubbish, the bones of some persons of large dimension were discovered, all of which were enclosed in coffins formed with flags of freestone. One of these stones now forms a seat on the top of the hill, at the corner of the wood. Some large beads of blue and yellow colour also were discovered; none of which are known to have been preserved.
At the time the improvements upon the hill were going on, a tradition existed of a woman’s having been burnt here for witchcraft. This led to the examination of the spot specified as the scene of the superstitious execution, when a quantity of burnt ashes were found quite entire.
It is difficult arriving at any thing like a satisfactory solution of the nature of this and similar positions throughout the country, especially when not only history is silent in regard to the events there transacted, but when the demolition of the works has been conducted more with a view to immediate agricultural improvement than the furtherance of scientific enquiry. We know from the remains of bodies found in the plains to the north, about Newbridge and Gogar Camp now Hanley, that these fields were the scene of not a few severe struggles, generally supposed to have been with the Norwegians; and this rising-ground may not improbably have been seized by them as a place of some strength, on their advance into the country after these engagements. This supposition is rendered all the more likely as the coffins found in Gogar Camp and on the Platt hill were of similar construction, and in both cases resembled those found in Largs, in Ayrshire, where it is historically known the Norsemen buried there dead, slain in an unsuccessful engagement with the Scots under Alexander III. The quantity of black earth found on the hill, which must either have been the result of the decomposition of many dead bodies, or, what is perhaps as probable, the remains of the ashes of their camp-fires, as well as the substantial way in which the enclosures to the east and west of the camp were executed, apparently for increasing the strength of the works, shew that the position had been occupied for a considerable time.
Valuation Roll 1814
Description of Property Present Proprietor Scots Money
George Reid, junior, for South Platts George Reid L.91 2 0
(William Rose Robinson, superior) Vide Abstract afterwards.
N.B. North and South Platts, are a
Forty shilling land of old extent.
James Windraham for lands of two George Reid 100 0 0
Oxgates, &c. of Ratho, held in feu Vide Abstract below.
of James Gibson.
William Wilkie, afterwards James - L. 157 3 4
Sir
James Fleming - L.303 13 4
L. 460 16 8
Divided thus,
Called Abthen of Ratho,
Part of the eastmost park of Ratho-Byres, consisting
of 13 acres L. 39 18 9
Remainder of the lands called
Abthen of Ratho 420 17 11
Per decreet 30th April 1807. Agrees L.460 16 8
George Reid of Rathobank - 460 16 8
Vide Abstract.
Abstract.
George Reid for his part of Norton before
stated L. 91 2 0
Ditto, for Windraham’s lands, as before
stated 100 0 0
Ditto, for his part of Ratho-Byres, &c. as
before stated 460 16 8
L.561 18 8
Kincaid’s lands, being the lands of
Gogarbank, belonging to Cumberland
Reid L.160 0 0
Cumberland Reid of Gogarbank 160 0 0
FAMILY TOMBSTONE
Reid Tombstone ©
Situated in the Grave Yard at Ratho Parish Church the family tombstone carries the following inscription: -