The gravestone of Mary Robertson

Image: © Lairich Rig Taken: 7 Aug 2012

Several of the old gravestones in the kirkyard of the ruined Millburn Church are of historic interest. For example, two nieces of Highland Mary are buried here. The present photograph shows the resting place of one of them, namely, Mary Anderson; for the other, Ann Anderson, see Image The gravestone of Mary Robertson is located in the part of the kirkyard that is to the south of the ruined church; that area is shown in Image As that picture reveals, the church is in a sorry state; see Image for another view, and for an explanation. For an earlier picture, showing the building intact, see Image This gravestone is likewise in poor condition. The part in front was clearly the top of the stone, and the date visible on it is 1859. The name Mary Robertson can also be seen there. She died in October 1830. The remainder of the stone is lying prone behind it, and the last of the names listed there is Mary Anderson. The text is rather worn, but, as recorded in "Dunbartonshire Monumental Inscriptions (pre 1855)" [1979; John Fowler Mitchell & Sheila Mitchell], she died on the 27th of July, 1877, aged 72. This Mary Anderson was a niece of "Highland Mary", Margaret Campbell(*), on whom see the Image Highland Mary's sister Annie married James Anderson. Their two youngest daughters were Mary, who married Thomas Robertson, and who is the Mary Anderson named on this stone, and Ann, who married Matthew Turnbull: Image For more on the Anderson sisters, see the article about the church on page 11 of the "Lennox Herald" issue of the 23rd of January, 2009, and the follow-up correspondence in the issues of the 6th of March and the 13th of March of the same year. (*) Highland Mary's name is usually given as Mary Campbell, but as Ian McIntyre writes on page 79 of his "Robert Burns: A Life" (2009), "James Mackay ... established, by trawling through the Dunoon register of births, now in New Register House, Edinburgh, that the girl's name was not Mary but Margaret". He also notes in passing that the two names are more similar in Gaelic than in English.

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