Number 45 - Information on other residents

1817 – 1823 Mrs Janet Robertson (neé Garden)

Mrs Janet Robertson was the daughter of Robert Garden, an advocate in Aberdeen, and widow of Major David Robertson, Assistant Barrack Master General, North Britain, until his death in 1804. She moved here from St James's Square with her four daughters. All four married in the 1820s. Jessie, married Francis Loch of the Royal Navy who later served as Naval aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria and became an Admiral. Catherine, married Adam Ellis, a solicitor, and a neighbour at Number 13 Albany Street. Elizabeth, married Dr George Fyfe. Rachel married George Brodie, an advocate who became Historiographer-General for Scotland and author of a History of the British Empire.

John Brown, who grew up in Albany Street, wrote this about a Mrs Robertson, widow of a major, so it is probably Janet: ‘Mrs. Major Robertson, a woman of slight make, great beauty, and remarkable energy, courage, and sense told me how, one night, going up to her bedroom in the ground floor saw a portion of a man's foot projecting from under the bed. There being no one in the house but a servant girl, she gave no cry of alarm, but shut the door as usual, set down her candle, and began as if to undress, when she said aloud to herself, with an impatient tone and gesture, " I've forgotten that key again, I declare ; " and leaving the candle burning, and the door open, she went downstairs, got the watchman, and secured the proprietor of the foot, which had not moved an inch. How many women or men could have done all this!’

The Scottish wing of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. the Society was formed by royal charter in 1709, with the purpose of founding schools ‘where religion and virtue might be taught to young and old’ in the Scottish Highlands and other ‘uncivilised’ areas of the country, thus countering the threat of Roman Catholic missionaries achieving ‘a serious landslide to Rome’, and of growing Highland Jacobitism. The Society’s schools were a valuable addition to the Church of Scotland programme of education in Scotland and, by 1808, the SPCK ran 189 schools with 13,000 pupils. In 1767, the society published a New Testament with facing pages of Gaelic and English texts so that both languages could be read alongside one another. However, there appears to have been tensions when a Pocket Gaelic Bible was proposed as, in 1826, a row broke out between Campbell and the Reverend Thomson of St George’s Edinburgh over Campbell’s opposition to the pocket version. Thomson was incensed by Campbell’s alleged misreporting of statements he had made and, not content with an exchange of letters, published a 48 page pamphlet denouncing Campbell. When Dr Campbell died in 1828 at the age of seventy, an obituary described him as ‘a theologian and a preacher of a somewhat antiquated, but highly respectable school.’ On his death a number of his sermons were published including one considered ‘a truly admirable discourse preached in London in 1808 before the London Missionary Society.’ Mrs Campbell and her daughters lived on in the house. In 1836, Mrs Campbell was one of a number donating to the appeal: ‘The greatest Distress exists at present in the Shetland Islands, from the want of FOOD consequent upon the failure of last year’s crops, and the extreme severity of the past winter. From those causes many families are reduced to a state bordering on starvation.’ The Campbells had four daughters and three married ministers: Elizabeth, married the Reverend James Gibson; Jane married the Reverend David Glass; and Mary married Reverend David Ellis. The exception was Margaret who married a neighbour at Number 53, the banker, Charles Kerr.

Following Margaret’s marriage, Mrs Campbell moved to live in Saxe Coburg Place, and Margaret and Charles moved into the house.

1858 – 1876 Lodgings These were run by John and Sarah Warner. John was a baker. At the 1861 census, lodging here were three sisters named Walker. Fanny was the eldest, aged thirty, and born in India. Her two sisters, Amelia and Caroline Walker, were in their mid-twenties. The former had been born in France and the younger in England so they may well have been daughters of a military father. Perhaps, there was a link to another lodger at that date; Major Edward Teddy of the Royal Artillery, who was lodging with his wife, also Fanny, and their infant son. Margaret Russell, a widow, was also living there at the date.

1861, John Gray Henderson of Abbotrule

John Gray resided here as it is recorded he died in the house. He was unmarried. He hunted with the Jedforest Abbotrule Harriers, and was reported to be a good horseman. He farmed his estate at Ruletownhead.

The Warners then moved their lodgings to Number 46 in 1876, perhaps linked to the fact that John was appointed to be a Church Officer.

1876 – 1881 Houston Mitchell & 1881 – 1907 Richard Blunt Mitchell

The unmarried, Houston Mitchell, then aged 75, moved into Number 45 in 1876 with his unmarried sister, Bentley, having passed his estate and house at Polmwood to his nephew Richard Mitchell, the last surviving son of Houston’s brother Sir Colonel Thomas Mitchell, a famous Australian explorer.

Born in Grangemouth, Mitchell left Scotland for Jamaica and then, in the 1830s, moved to Australia, settling in Hunter’s Valley, New South Wales. His elder brother, Thomas, was already there, having been appointed surveyor-general of New South Wales by George the Fourth in 1827. Over the next thirty years Thomas conducted four expeditions of discovery and it was he who cut all the passes which lead through the mountains to the interior of the Australian continent.

Houston was granted land and there is a record of convict labourers working for him on his station. Named Walka, it is now the town of Maitland where there is Houston Mitchell Drive.

In 1847, Houston returned to live in Scotland and bought an Edinburgh house in Trinity and the Polmwood Estate in the Tweed Valley. There he built the house shown and extended the estate.