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Updated: June 22, 2025
What the laird of Grandholm and his daughter Mary did was no doubt done in the harshest manner, but their actions themselves seem hardly blamable. When William Burton found it impossible to maintain his wife in London, she was received again into her paternal home with her infant, William, John Hill Burton's elder brother.
She managed the very small resources left at her command with consummate skill, and in her later years made of Grandholm a hospitable, cheerful, old-fashioned home for those whom it pleased her to receive there. Her sister Eliza's marriage had not pleased her. There was much to justify her objection to it; William Burton, not then holding a commission, was entirely without pecuniary resources.
When young Edward was eleven years old, his father took him away from Grandholm, and apprenticed him to a working shoemaker. The apprenticeship was to go on for six years; the wages to begin at eighteen-pence a week; and the hours, too sadly long, to be from six in the morning till nine at night.
Ultimately, it is believed, none of them was selected, and the laird fled from his natural home, and from that time till his death lived chiefly in London, leaving his large young family to take care of themselves as they best could. The three sons went successively to India or other foreign parts, and died there, one of them leaving a son, whose family are the present possessors of Grandholm.
Of the seven daughters several of whom were very handsome two only were married, namely, Eliza, who became Mrs Burton, mother of the historiographer; and Margaret, who espoused rather late in life a Dr Brown, and continued as a widow to inhabit an old house belonging to the Grandholm family in Old Aberdeen till June 1879, when she died at the age of ninety-eight.
When young Edward was eleven years old, his father took him away from Grandholm, and apprenticed him to a working shoemaker. The apprenticeship was to go on for six years; the wages to begin at eighteen-pence a week; and the hours, too sadly long, to be from six in the morning till nine at night.
Not only to her niece Margaret, her adopted daughter, but also to her other nieces at Grandholm, motherless by death, and fatherless by desertion, did she fill a mother's part as far as these robust virgins would permit her.
His wife, from some writings to be hereafter mentioned, seems also to have enjoyed an allowance of £40 per annum from her father. Besides William and John Hill, there were born in Aberdeen to William Burton and Eliza Paton three sons two of whom died early, one of them being accidentally drowned in the Don at Grandholm and one daughter.
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