Taking a photograph was a rigmarole involving glass plates and wet chemicals and portable tents and large cameras. Photographic Societies were just being started to promote the art and science of photography [the Scottish Photographic Society founded in 1856 drew attention to  a new portable camera made by Mr Bell of Potterow "capable of taking pictures 8 ins. Square, weighing 8 ¾ lbs. without the lens and folding into a space 18 ins. Long by 10 broad and 2 ½ deep"

And results could be very variable - in 1862, Mr MacPherson atributed his poor photographic results during Lent to “the garbage of fish which the hens ate during Lent, and which affected the albumen so as to cause a want of success”

But this is a very good picture - though Andrew Leyden certainly looks as though it was taken "the mornin after the night afore"

He is standing with his Right and Left Hand Men - Adam Knox Cornet in 1856, and John Elliot Cornet in 1855.

They are outside , standing on a cobbled surface against a big wooden gate. My first thoughts are for the courtyard of the Tower Hotel - which I recall being cobbled, and the courtyard would probably still at this stage be open at this stage though a bit gloomy because of the height of the Tower Hotel and the next door building. The big bolt on the door would give some sort of security for the coaches in what was at the time a coaching hotel [ remember the theft of five silver watches made by the 1781 Cornet James Wilson from the Bull and Mouth coaching inn in London]. And it would seem an obvious place to take a photograph.

[and the photographer? might have been William Beattie, grandfather of the William Beattie who sculpted the Horse in 1914 - he was living in the Back Row and is known to have taken a photograph of Hawick around this time. Or, more likely, the professional photographer William Walker who was a member of the Scottish Photographic Society in 1856, exhibited at the Exhibition that year, and had a studio in Wilton.

The three of them are wearing what must be green coats with favours tied in the button hole; white/cream/yellow trousers, lum hats , and brightly coloured silk waistcoats.
Guessing at colours here, but maybe yellow and quite plain for Andrew, and a more patterned but still light coloured green and yellow ? waistcoat and pale tie for Adam Knox, a flesher.  John Elliot, a railway clerk, has really gone for it -  strongly coloured maybe red and blue waistcoat with a two coloured bright tie and some sort of flashy chain or cord draped over it. The Left Hand Man John Elliot is quite a rakish figure - his lum hat is tipped forward at a bit of an angle; his hair is flying out over his ears and he looks really comfortable in his stance - feet firmly planted apart, right leg straight, left leg bent - and his hands and arms in easy positions, holding that whip across his trousers. C'mon Lassies! [This fits with with his upbringing - he grew up in 3 Orrock Place, at the Sandbed, in a spirit dealers and inn kept by his father for 30 years or more. Later, this became the Ewe and Lamb - better known as The Monkeys]

The Right Hand Man is altogether a more reserved character – standing much more upright, a more dignified and reserved stance altogether – legs just so, arms by his side, whip held higher and neatly coiled, sideburns and hair both neat; his hat absolutely square on his head, and his Sunday School face on.

Andrew Leyden looks in a terrible state – he is a short man for a start, half a head smaller than the other two and so looks shrunken beside them, and  awfi stookie.
His feet are at right angles to each other in an awkward kind of way, he has nothing to hold and his hands look very clenched – he just doesn’t know what to do with them.
His jacket is buttoned and pulling across his chest, with his collar half up, half down.
His waistcoat looks rumpled, and his hat is wearing him, rather than the other way around.

And his face? I don’t see a young man in any good state for a 27 year old.
He looks peely-wally and/or hung over.
Eyes dark and sunken, with puffy dark eye bags [hay fever?] and very close together.
Pale, maybe freckled skin, with maybe a pale ginger moustache which doesn’t show up well in the photograph – and rubbery protruding lips – or is that a moustache/beard combination which isn’t picked up well by the early photographic process ?

Andrew Leyden grew up in the Back House, 66 High Street with his father Adam, an agricultural labourer, mother Margaret Laidlaw from Melrose and his woollen stocking maker brothers and sisters.

His mother died in May 1856, the year before he was Cornet; and although they were still living in the High Street, his father was by then a farmer of 30 acres, and Andrew at 22 was a coal agent.

This was a time of great change in Hawick – and before the opening of the railway from Edinburgh in 1849, coal from Keilder and the Newcastle area had to be traded at the Carter Bar, and brought back into Hawick  in 5 stone creels on the backs of long trains of ponies by way of Ormiston, Wellogate and down the Cross Wynd [and after the 1820s by the new Bonchester Bridge road]; or over Laurieston Fells and the Bloody Bush. The ponies were often used at the common-riding, according to the Hawick Word Book.

Two years after his common-riding, Andrew married Margaret Elliot from Newcastleton, settled in  6 Cross Wynd, had 5 children, and prospered as a Coal and Lime  Agent.

“ Wool sorters were the craftsmen who processed the fleece before yarn could be spun.
Different breeds of sheep produce vastly different types of wool. The variations include fineness and length of the staple, softness of handle, crimp, colour and lustre, and different types of cloth required wool with different characteristics.
Wool Sorters identified the correct quality of fleece for a specific cloth, essential to ensuring top quality fabrics and required a high level of skill. The wool sorter worked at a bench on which the fleece was unrolled. Badly soiled parts were discarded, and then the fleece was sorted by sight and touch into wool of the various qualities” A 1924 video here shows Australian fleeces being sorted in an unidentified Scottish mill, and processed into tweed.

I worked one summer in Wilton Mills as a labourer on the wool sorting gang.

Our job started with lorries bringing in great sacks of fleeces, mostly about 6x10ft, which were winched up to the top flat, where two men with dockers hooks swung the bags into the flat. [Health and Safety Risk Assessments - don't ask!  They did have a hand grip at the door to hold onto though].
The bags were barrowed in to have the twine cut to release the fleeces.

The wool came from all over Scotland, though mainly from the West, and the size of the bags varied enormously. The largest and most numerous bags were from the big estates, with good clean wool. There were a good many small sacks from crofters, usually crammed with dirty coarse fleeces – so weighty, and unpopular with us. The photo here is from an Australian sheep farm in the 1890s, but shows how those bags must have been trampled full by the farmer, before the flap was sown shut with twine.

Once open, the fleeces were thrown into a large wooden chute in the centre of the flat, throwing it onto the sorting table below – you had to get the pace right or the wool sorters soon let you know. The 1890s Australian photo gives an idea of a farm based sorting, with no upper flat.

The sorters pulled the fleeces apart to assess the quality, and threw it into the big bins around the room – a skilled job, with an apprenticeship lasting up to 5 years.

The bins had to be emptied and wicker baskets pushed around to – I forget what happened next, I wasn’t involved! Much of the wool seemed to be of low quality – the despised “Bradford mattress” grade!

So that was what Andrew Burns was doing in 1869 when he was Cornet.

He was living in the Crown Inn at 20-22 High Street, with his mother Jane Burns

Jane Burns Head 58 b Southdean , Hotelkeeper
Andrew Burns son 21 b Selkirk, Journeyman woolsorter
Agnes Burns daughter 19, b Selkirk
Helen Burns daughter 16, b Edinburgh
Jane Brodie granddaughter 7 b Hawick
Margaret Cowan niece 22 b Selkirk, Waitress
along with Margaret Ker 38 Cook; John Oliver 19 Groom; William Scott 36 Billiard Marker; and Thomas D Kidd 78 a retired dentist from Lilliesleaf.

But that family looks familiar [to me at least !] and looking back to 1861, there is the Burns family keeping the Railway Hotel, 14 Princes Street in Wilton.
Andrew Burns is there as an 11 year old schoolboy, with his younger sisters Helen and Agnes, and cousin Margaret Cowan.
Their father George Burns however, must have died in his early 50s leaving widow Jane as Head of the family to look after the Crown Inn by 1871, with the family to help. Bessy Burns an older sister is there in the Railway Hotel – she might be the mother of the 1871 granddaughter Jane Brodie.

Most interestingly is the oldest son – John Mein Ferguson or Burns – the 1861 Cornet

And sure enough the two half brothers were together in Selkirk with George and Jane Burns at the Crown Inn .
The 1861 Cornet John was described as a stepson, and used the name Ferguson;
and 1869 Cornet Andrew is listed as a son, and a Burns.
[The distinction between sons and stepsons was probably important to the family at that census because 1861 Cornet John's father James Ferguson, keeper of another Inn in Selkirk, had died only about 4-5 years previously, and Jane had in the meantime married George and moved her family to George's inn]

Andrew Burns must have enjoyed two Common Ridings more than the others – first in the Railway Hotel as an 11 year old when his older brother John Ferguson/Burns was Cornet in 1861; and then in 1869 in the Crown Inn when he was Cornet.
Not bad going for a couple of Selkirk brothers!

William senior, merchant, didn’t get married until late – in 1841 he was a 40 year old grocer at 64 High Street, unmarried and with only a 25 year old Mary Harkness for company.
But of course, she was only a servant, and not that type of girl [except that maybe she was - 10 years later she had moved to 72 High Street, still an unmarried woollen shirt seamstress, with her teenage daughter]

Moving on – by 1851 William was still at 64 High Street, but had married [and gave his age now as 54] to 42 year old Jessie Best from a hotel which she ran with her widowed mother at 16 Buccleuch Street, and they had a two year old William Inglis – a Cornet’s son and future Cornet.

William senior was now a “Grocer and Spirit Dealer” and during this period 64 High Street developed into the Half Moon Hotel – this card was found around 1996 during alterations to the British Heart Foundation, at the bottom of O’Connell Street

The card was found with a handwritten weekly menu

Sunday

Breakfast : tea, 3 cups; Fried Smoked Haddock, Toast (Brown Bread), Toast and Marmalade
2.00 pm: tea, 1 cup; 1 cake (Chocolate Shortcake)
Tea: tea, 3 cups; Steamed White Fish and Sweet Corn, 1 Soda Scone and Plum Jam, Sponge Cake
Supper: tea, 3 cups; Poached egg and Toast, Cookie with Jam, 1 cake (Chocolate Shortcake)
10.00pm: coffee

You’d be glad of a coffee after all those cups of tea.

Unfortunately, the marriage didn’t last long – William died in May 1851, when he would have been 64ish; and Jessie moved as a widow along to 78 High Street [where the Green Cafe is now] where she lived with unmarried 30 year old John Inglis – a carter and farmer of 10 acres, and 9 year John Taylor, the son of her sister Elizabeth. John Inglis is a bit of a mystery – Jessie is described as his mother, but I can’t find any other trace of him.
But importantly for the Cornet’s story, her 11 year old son William Inglis wasn’t there – he was living in Kirkton Schoolhouse as a scholar and a boarder.

William Little had been the schoolmaster at the school , with his wife Mary, for 20 years or more. It is highly probable that sending William to school at Kirkton was Jessie’s way of ensuring that William had a good education, and a healthy upbringing.

I tend to drive past without looking, on the way to Bonchester Bridge and the Carter Bar, but the group of houses can’t have echanged much since the 1860′s.

By 1881 William was back at 64 High Street as a Hotelkeeper; three servants with him but no wife and no children – I need to follow him up to 1891, to see what happened to him

What was Hawick like in 1868? What was going on?

One big story was the closure of the oil refinery in the Haugh, after a short but contested life. I have found no pictures of the refinery, and it was shortlived, so does not appear on maps – except that its site was soon occupied by the Gas Works, as in the 1877 map.

[ Except that there is a plan in the National Archives of Scotland , Register House, Edinburgh which would be worth a look at in the Search Room - the reference is 
RHP20423 Plan of Teviotside Oil Works in Hawick 1876 ]

This was the first development of the “Bleachfields” section of the Under Haugh on the Wilton side of the river – there was no development of Commercial Road until 1871-74.

The owner John Wield from Blacketlees, Annan was an unmarried 23 year old Chemist & Druggist in 1861, lodging at 4 Bridge Street with a widow and 2 daughters aged 25 and 23; but by 1871 he had built and run and failed and been bankrupted and sold his Oil Refinery but had salvaged enough to be living at Wilton Grove – handily situated as you can see from the map, just across the road from the Refinery / Gas Works.

This was an exciting time to be in the Scottish Oil Industry – Paraffin Young was building the West Lothian shale oil industry

In 1848 Scottish chemist James Young experimented with oil discovered seeping in a coal mine as a source of lubricating oil and illuminating fuel. When the seep became exhausted he experimented with the dry distillation of coal, especially the resinous “Boghead coal” (Torbanite). He extracted a number of useful liquids from it, one of which he named “paraffine oil” because at low temperatures it congealed into a substance resembling paraffin wax. Young took out a patent on his process and the resulting products in 1850, and built the first truly commercial oil-works in the world at Bathgate in 1851, using oil extracted from locally mined Torbanite, shale, and bituminous coal.

In 1866 Young’s patents ran out – and an exhibition at Penicuik in 2008 illustrated the sort of developments which occurred in towns in the South of Scotland. It is likely that Wield used his chemical knowledge and his business drive to set up a refinery to produce paraffin for lighting and heating; or possibly even gas as those patents ran out.

The plant and equipment was considerable -this was no small undertaking for a young man  of 28: 12000 gallons of oil, “large numbers” of boilers, two 9ft by 5 ft stills, a “very large” quantity of lead and iron pipes up to 6 inches; 166 casks of tar, 400 thirty gallon Paraffin casks etc etc – and the capital required to set this up must have been equally great.

But there had been problems since the outset in August 1866, with a very suspicious Council

and in a very short space of time , Wield was bankrupt and out of business

So that was it -bankrupt in February 1868, and plant and equipment sold off in December 1868.

In November 1868 the land and buildings were up for sale …..

HAWICK- VALUABLE PROPERTY FOR SALE. To be SOLD by Private Bargain, ALL and WHOLE that Portion of the UNDER COMMON-HAUGH OF HAWICK, extending 1 acre 2 Roods 21 Poles 7 yards, or thereby, with the BUILDINGS and other HERITABLE OBJECTS thereon, lately occupied by Mr. John Wield, as a Paraffin Manufactory……… The Plan will be shown, and several Portions of Ground pointed out by Mr. YOUNG, the Manager of Hawick Gasworks. The Scotsman, 18th November 1868.

… with Mr Young of the Hawick Gasworks showing people around. I have no evidence at all, but the Penicuik exhibition includes the story of the Selkirk Gasworks which had been in existence since the 1840′s

[and on 11 November 1869, Joseph Smith Manager of Gas Works, Hawick was still advertising eqyipment for sale "To Oil Refiners, For Sale 2 Stills of 1500 gallons, 2 superheaters, 2 pumps, 12 oil retorts"

How much would be got from the sale? A - probably similar - refinery in Kirkintilloch was reported in the Glasgow Herald as being for sale on 3 September 1868 for £5,000 [about £200,000 at today's value - but comparing values is very tricky]

*Speculation alert* So maybe the Hawick Gas Works  – possibly under the management of the Young family from Selkirk – had responded to John Wield’s proposal for a paraffin refinery on some sort of “shared services” or downstream processing basis. I need a chemical engineer to sort this out – but I can imagine that the gas works heated coal to drive off the gas , and were left with coke [I remember coke being collected from the gas works in Mansfield Road] and various oils and chemicals [as in coal tar soap]. John Wield could have offered to distill their oil/tar waste products – maybe using the coke to heat his stills – and produce the lighter paraffin oil. The “boiling” of the oil/tar would probably produce vapours, and various sticky residues which the Sanitary Committee would be concerned about. However, a report to the Police Committee in 1870 on factory discharges to the Teviot says of the Gasworks “there is nothing discharged from these works into the River, Gas Tar and other refuse is collected and sold”. So maybe John Wield did try to refine this Gas Tar on site, rather than transport it elsewhere.

Where did his capital come from? One clue might be that he had married Christina Mary Turnbull aged 20 in 1866 – the only daughter of James Turnbull of 11 High Street, General Draper, employing 2 men, 2 boys and 5 women. A big draper might have accumulated enough capital, or enough credit, to support a son-in-law in what was a dot.com venture of its day. If the Kirkintilloch works were sold for £5000, and Hawick was similar in scale, then £5000 is worth aproximately 40 times more nowadays – father in law might well have been able to pay the equivalent of a mortgage on a house for his son-in-law. *speculation alert finishes*

Update – the Hawick Gas Works go back to at least 1838.

Hawick in 1846 is described as consisting of “one principal street, and of several smaller streets and lanes diverging from it on both sides; some new streets have been formed, and a handsome range of buildings called Slitrig-crescent, and another named Teviot-crescent. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas“

and going back, the Caledonian Mercury of 1 October 1838 reported that “John Scott Superintendent of Hawick Gas Works has now in his posession a stalk of oats fully seven feet long, bearing one hundred and ninety four ears or pickles”

_________________________________________________________________

William Inglis Cornet must have known the oil refinery well – something so big and so modern and so smelly must have had an impact on the town – and his year was the last year that Hawick had an oil refinery.

Even although the railway wasn’t fully open, and mail coaches  still ran to the South, John Ferguson stands out the first modern Cornet.

Partly, because he was the first Cornet of Hawick and Wilton, 1861 being the year that the two parishes amalgamated – and it may well be that John was chosen because he lived in Wilton, not Hawick.

In the annual List of Cornets booklet he doesn’t have a first name, or an occupation, just an address – the uncompromisingly modern Railway Hotel

Luckily we can find him on the 7th April in the 1861 Census [found on the superb Graham Maxwell site ] living and working, not just a visitor, in the Railway Hotel.

Not the later Station Hotel, in Dovemount Place opposite the later station when the line to the South was open, but 14 Princes Street, north side, opposite the first station in the map above.

[The Google Street view is a bit out of date]

John is 21, unmarried , and  a “waiter in a hotel” – so the first “modern” trade we find among the cornets.

Of the 129 named occupations before 1861, the most numerous group were the 25 merchants, 11 shoemakers, 9 bakers, 7 hosiers, 6 tobacconists and wrights, 5 fleshers and farmers, 3 grocers, masons and saddlers, and so on. But nothing modern at all – no waiters [and there never was a railway worker, for example]

The compilers of the List didn’t really know much about John, or they didn’t care to know, much about him – because of his occupation?

Or more probably because he wasn’t born in Hawick ?? or even Wilton?

John Mein Ferguson was born in Selkirk like his 11 year old brother Andrew, and 2 of his 3 sisters, Betsy and Agnes. Helen had been born in Edinburgh in 1855.

and he had two names – Burns and Ferguson.

Looking back to Selkirk, we can see where the Burns comes from [and Googling "Meins" this seems to be a Melrose/Selkirk name]
He had been living in Selkirk in 1851 at the Crown Inn – not marked as such on the 1858 map – but on the Hawick road out of Selkirk

So George Burns Innkeeper had married a , presumably, a widow Jane Ferguson with 4 children – Thomas and Elizabeth born in Southdean on the Carter Bar road, Cornet John and Jane born in Selkirk.

And in Selkirk in 1841, is the original Ferguson family with Cornet John 1 3/4 years old.

Jane Ferguson would be born in 1843, and then father James Ferguson Innkeeper presumably dies, and mother Jane Ferguson marries George Burns innkeeper from Jedburgh, they keep the – same? – inn in Selkirk before moving to Hawick sometime after 1855, when the youngest Helen Burns daughter is born in Edinburgh.

He hadn’t been long in Hawick [or more specifically Wilton] before his election as cornet – probably only 5 years or so, and it may have been because of his Wilton base that he was chosen.
He must have been popular,  because the 1861 Cornet is definitely a Selkirk man [unless he had actually been born in Southdean  parish , could be considered as essentially Hawick]

[And his half brother Andrew Burns will also be a cornet - 10 years later in 1869 - see his story ]

Although photography was in its infancy, we can also see – just! – what he looked like.
The earliest photo seems to be that of the 1857 Cornet Andrew Leyden, with his Right Hand man Adam Knox, and Left Hand Man John Elliot.

The second earliest photograph is of the 1862 Cornet James Richardson, with John Ferguson as his Right Hand Man, and John Scott, clerk, as Left Hand Man with their supporters, standing stiffly but fairly infomally against a harled wall.

And if the three principals are in their proper positions [and the photograph has not been reversed] 1861 Cornet John Ferguson is there on the 1862 Cornet’s right hand, in a [presumably] green jacket and light riding breeches, with polished riding boots. His riding whip is carried in his right hand, down by his side. He looks dressed for riding, but with a soft hat – unlike the lum hat of the Cornet Richardson.

And he is bewhiskered in the latest fashion, and rather solemn with no smiles for the camera, and looking considerably older than his 23 years. As does 24 year old Cornet James Richardson !

[and James Richardson looks much the same in the 1890s, though he might even have a smile on his face, when his photo was taken with a "Group of Old-Time Hawick Cornets" now in the Museum]

Watch this space!

There were several Laidlaw families in Hawick at the time – hosiery manufacturers in Teviot Crescent, grocers in the High Street and the Howegate, hand loom weavers at 14 Loan – but Robert’s father Robert “London” Laidlaw lived at 17 Loan, south side. He rented the Moat fields behind the house to graze cows, and sold their milk

The two Laidlaw brothers, Walter and William, had arrived in Hawick in the 1780s from Leith [ here as elsewhere with many a nod of thanks to Douglas Scott's magnificent Hawick Word Book ]. They had gone to work in the carpet factory in Orrock Place [1752-1806], and afterwards William, living in the Mid Raw, started his hosiery business – William Laidlaw & Sons.

1 Eldest daughter Janet had married wool spinner Robert Wilson, owned the Nixon mills at Lynnwood
2 William “Shaffles” was the first Son to go into William’s business – and his son William was the 1838 Cornet
3 Thomas was a grocer, as was his son – yet another of the many. many Williams!
4 Charles married Pawkie Paterson’s niece Hannah Harkness and lived at 14 Loan

And as for Nellie Harkness she rises in the morn
& cries “O godsake uncle, the yaud’s among the corn”
Hei tuik his muckle pleugh-staff then & cam & swabbled mei
Aw’m Pawkie Paiterson’s auld grey yaud sei how they’re guidin me

5 Robert “London” Laidlaw married Rachel Rae and had six children, starting with [yet another] William in 1815 and finishing with Cornet Robert in 1832. The “first William’s” widow Margaret was living with them as a 76 year old in 1841.
In that 1841 census, 17 Loan houses mostly Hawick born families: McMath “28, dresser of woollen hosiery”; Blaikies “22, White-smith”, as well as the Haigs, Blythes, Coombes, Huggans, Berridge, Scotts “woollen frame work knitter” – and what must be son William now aged 36 “woollen frame work knitter” with his wife Christina “36,woollen seamstress”.

10 years later, Cornet Laidlaw is safely married, to a slightly older Jessie Gow from Blair Atholl, and they have started a family

He is still a stone mason and still living at 17 Loan, and his father is still a “farmer of 15 acres” though he did eventually take over the renting of his father’s fields. Unfortunately his family didn’t thrive – James dies aged 25; John, Stewart and Robert in infancy; Robert at 17 – though Rachel lives as do Eliza, Walter and Agnes [though they moved to Huddersfield]

Cornet Robert died in 1908 and Jessie in 1910.

__________________________________________________________________________________

I presume that Robert must have been heartily sick of hearing the story of his father’s nickname “London Laidlaw” – no doubt many many times recounted.
The 1837 election for Roxburgh was marred by intimidation of voters and by rioting, and was the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry [one of many at the time].
London Laidlaw was called with others to London to give evidence to the inquiry on what was going on during the three days that voters tried to vote at the Tower Hotel.

I haven’t found his evidence, but two voters Oliver [farmer and miller, Hawick Mill ?] and Tully [farmer of 50 acres, Allars, Millpath?] “had their clothes torn off, and were left almost naked. Mr Benwick was most dangerously injured. Mr Elliot was thrown from his horse, had one of his fingers of his right hand mutilated by a cutting instrument, was struck on the temple and taken up insensible. Other persons were also shamefully maltreated” …………….. including London’s brother William “Shaffles” Laidlaw who lost his coat tails to Radical shears.

William’s wife Helen, 29 from Hobkirk, had given birth to another son Robert aged 2 months at the time of the census.

Also in the house as a House Servant lived Helen Smith, William’s niece, aged 17 and born in Jedburgh; and William Robson a 17 year old lodger – Writer’s Clerk [a solicitors clerk] born in Lilliesleaf.

[10 years later in 1861, William and Helen are still there, and Helen has another new baby William R Elliot 1 month, along with Helen T 8, Peter S 7, Janet B 5, Elizabeth 3.
Robert should have been there as a 10 year old, but isn't - and there is a new servant 16 year old Elizabeth Romanes from Ettrick, and a new lodger Crosbie Bowie from Hawick, an unmarried agricultural labourer. ]

John S Elliot has gone – and I can’t find him in the 1861 Hawick Census, so he may have moved from the town.

As an 11 year old though, he was living in the north side, east end of 2 Loan [there were other families living in the 'back house' of " Loan] with his father Robert Elliot [a slater, aged 50 in 1841], and 20 year old Jane Elliot, presumably his sister.
But 26 year old William is not listed in the house , nor his wife Helen, nor John’s mother.

The Loan surveyed 1858, North side at top

Census Information from http://www.maxwellancestry.co.uk