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Updated: June 22, 2025
At the end of two years, however, the brothers heard that better wages were being given, a couple of miles away, at Grandholm, up the river Don.
No stronger incentive to exertion could have been offered to a man of Dr Burton's character, than the desire to falsify the implied prediction of such a missive. With a view to its effect in this way it had probably been given him by his mother. It is an entire letter, and the whole is here printed. "GRANDHOLM, June 6th.
In the end of last century he came to Aberdeen as a lieutenant in a regiment of "Fencibles," or some such volunteer title, and there captivated the affections of a beautiful young lady, Miss Eliza Paton, a daughter of the laird of Grandholm, an estate four miles distant from Aberdeen. Of this lady and of her family a few words must be said.
Family tradition adds that his escape was achieved by his disguising himself as a miller and swimming across the Don from Stoneywood to Grandholm, where the laird of Grandholm, who was of opposite politics, had removed the ferry-boat, and saw but did not denounce his kinsman. The houses of Grandholm and Stoneywood are exactly opposite each other on the two sides of the Don.
At the end of two years, however, the brothers heard that better wages were being given, a couple of miles away, at Grandholm, up the river Don.
Mrs Burton was entitled to an abode at Grandholm as well as her sisters, and the little family went there occasionally, at least after Lieutenant Burton's death. The place, which is a rather interesting one, filled a considerable space in the affections of the children. Its inmates did not. Clearly sister Eliza never was forgiven for her unfortunate marriage.
He would not allow her body to be buried in the ordinary manner, but caused a tomb to be erected in a wood near the house of Grandholm, where the corpse was placed in an open coffin, and where the bereaved husband could go daily to bewail his loss.
A house in Old Aberdeen has been already mentioned as the abode of Mrs Margaret Brown, Dr Burton's last surviving aunt. This quaint old house had been purchased by Mrs Brown's grandmother, mother of the laird of Grandholm, and at the beginning of the century was inhabited by her maiden daughter Margaret, or, as she was oftener called, Peggy Paton.
So small was the value of land in Scotland in the beginning of the century, that it is safe to suppose the estate of Grandholm yielded less than one-third of its present rental. The circumstances and social position of the family were, besides, seriously lowered by the extraordinary character of the then laird.
In these holiday rambles Dr Burton made the acquaintance of several families either more or less related to him through his Grandholm kindred, or willing, in the old Scotch fashion, to extend hospitality to any wayfarer who needed it.
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