Robert was 74 years old when a wagon struck him at eight o’clock in the morning on a winters day in January 1887. He died instantly. His wife would learn quickly of his death as his body was returned home immediately to Newtongrange, a mining village less than one mile from the colliery.
Certainly a doctor was required to certify the cause of death, it being an accident. Two days later he was interred in the Newbattle Churchyard, now known as the Old Newbattle Cemetery.
Since 1855, all death certificates are issued following a declaration by a medical doctor. This is the system we have in Australia. The death must be registered within 8 days. If the registration is delayed by the need for an investigation, then it will often generate an RCE.
RCE are also created about sudden and violent deaths for the same reason. As well they are created for divorces, and any significant change about a birth as well. Often not much more is learned about the death, and newspapers often provide a greater amount of detail.
I have often wondered whether the mines ever compensated men who died at work, and whether this occurred for single accidents in contrast to ‘mass casualties’. Did someone pay for their funeral, and a headstone? Was Robert a pauper, sharing a common grave? After nearly 150 years how could we know. See my separate post about later recognition of deaths in mining, and sometimes name Robert and his relatives who also died in the mines.
Finding where he is buried in Newbattle Churchyard has given me some comfort. He was married in the church from which he was buried. That was in 1847, 40 years earlier. His wife and many of his children lived within a mile of two, and I expect would have been there.
Helen outside the front of the now-closed Newbattle Church of Scotland. The wooden door was very old and very thick.
The church was built of stones taken from the Newbattle Abbey destroyed by English forces in 1544. Initially a church was built a short distance away, but it was unsafe. In 1720 it was decided to build a third church, again using the stones, funded by the Marquis of Lothian and costing £4,000. It was open by 1729. In 1851 two new galleries were built for the new populations of Esbank (ritzy) and Newtongrange (mining village, see post).
Another extension occurred in 1875.
Interestingly, the nearby cemetery is surrounded by stone walls nearly 12 feet high, but these have tapered to the small walls seen here in front of the church at the road.
Robert was buried one plot away from his eldest brother James who had died just over three years earlier in late 1883. Bachelor James as head of the household, had lived in Newlandrig almost all of his 84 years, possibly in the same house. He took over the role of forrester to James Dewar of Vogrie Estate after his father died in 1818, and in 1855 was renting the second most costly house in the village. James died of senile decay, nursed by his youngest sister Helen, who also never married.
Helen was the next sibling to be buried in the plot containing James. Having lived nearly her entire life in James’ home this seems fitting, and I hope they got on well. She died in Sushie Brae House in Borthwick Parish in 1894. Did she lose tenancy of the home in Newlandrig after James’ death? Something for me to research.
The siblings’ nephew, another Robert Buchan, died in 1896 and he was buried with his uncle Robert. He was the son of another sibling, George Buchan. He was 64 when he died of chronic dyspepsia and general exhaustion, exhaustion brought on by mining.
Soon after followed Robert’s wife Margaret Ireland in 1898. As a widow she had moved from the mining village of Newtongrange to Hight St, Dalkeith. I might have walked passed her home but was not clued into the number. Living with her were the two bachelors, a nephew and her grandson with Robert. She was buried in the plot with James and Helen, not her husband. Was this because his plot already held his parents, although this is not recorded? She died at the age of 75 from heart disease and general asthenia or weakness.
Then another Margaret, the wife of nephew Robert, was buried in a plot next to Robert the elder. She had moved to Edinburgh after her husband’s death in 1896, perhaps to live with a married daughter. Once again she was not buried in the same plot as her husband, and no-one else is listed in this grave site.
Finally Robert’s daughter Isabella Murray was buried in the plot next to him in 1915.
A list in a book is now the record of a family together.
When I visited the churchyard on Day 2 it was wild, unkept and wet and the grass was often over my knees. When I went back the next day with Cousin Helen, it was in the process of being mowed by a man on a largish ride-on mower, and a man with a whipper-snipper. They had not yet reached this part of the cemetery. So all my warnings to Helen were still a little bit needed. It was lovely to see that the churchyard had not been abandoned at all!
This is the approximately Section 7 of the cemetery, where the Buchan family have been laid to rest.
This section at the rear had not yet been mowed.
How it looked on Day 2 and why I sensed it was somewhat neglected. I was struck by the 10 feet high stone walls (not literally), and the mass of trees around it. The churchyard is now about 300m away from the church, with these same dense trees between them.
Robert lies among family, reunited with siblings James and Helen, wife Margaret and nephew Robert and his wife Margaret, and his daughter Isabella.
An intriguing possibility. Within these four grave plots are several people named Brown, as well as a two day old infant named Buchan. One of these Browns, a name not connected to us as far as I know, is called Jane McCree Brown. Remember my search for Janet McRae? And that an ancestor of one of my McRae cluster matches is Jane McCree, to me a new variant spelling that I had not checked before (so my search term ‘m*ra’ would not have found it).
Jane was a 15 month child from Hunterfield who died in 1889. Knowing the propensity in Scotland to include a full name of someone when naming a wee baby, could this be my Janet McRae? Or some-one related to her?
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