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Monument Inscription
ERECTED BY
JAMES SCOTT MASON
IN MEMORYOF HIS WIFE
CATHERINE CURRIE
DIED 9TH FEBY.1879, AGED 38 YEARS
ALSO HIS WIFE
CATHERINE WILLIAMSON
died 24th July 1913 aged 62 YEARS
THE ABOVE JAMES SCOTT, MASON
DIED 2ND JANY. 1921 AGED 74 YEARS
Family History
This monument is unusual in the graveyard as it may possibly have been constructed by one of the persons it now stands over. The grave marker made out of local stone with a marble panel insert, displays symbolic designs at its head of oak and laurel leaves surrounding a heraldic shield. The stone appears to have been toppled at some time and has lost its top knot and incurred some damage to the edges.
The person who was perhaps its designer and maker was James Scott, a stone mason to trade. Where James originally came from is unclear, although it is most probable it may be Berwickshire as it was there that his parents were married in the village of Earlston around 1852. James’s father, also named James, was a labourer by occupation and his mother was called Margaret Fairbairn. James, apprenticed to a stone mason, pursued that craft from then on.
Owing to the demand for stone masons caused by the upsurge in construction of commercial buildings and private dwellings created by the Industrial Revolution, James would have travelled extensively to ply his trade. By 1870 he had met and married a girl called Catherine Currie and the wedding took place in the parish of Mearns on 17th June of that year. Catherine’s father Duncan Currie worked as a farm steward, but it is not known which if any farm he occupied in Mearns. Her mother was named Mary Campbell. This couple were married in Lochgilphead, Argyll on 5th June, 1862. Perhaps James was engaged in construction works at one of the many mills in the parish, or even at a large house where his Argyllshire wife was working. Unfortunately the marriage only lasted nine years as Catherine Currie died of acute bronchitis in 1879.
Within two and a half years James Scott married again, on this occasion to another Catherine. Catherine Williamson worked as a power loom weaver in Selkirk where she and her sister Isabella had been raised by their parents. Co-incidentally Catherine Williamson’s deceased father had been a stone mason to trade, and it may have been through this connection that the couple met. Her mother’s name was Margaret Laidlaw. The couple married in the Selkirk United Presbyterian Church Manse on 8th July 1881, where the ceremony was performed by the then minister of that church John Lawson. The groom by this time was thirty-five years of age and his new bride was a thirty year old spinster. The couple initially resided at the bride’s home at Forest Road, Selkirk.
James Scott outlived his second wife, who died aged sixty-two years in 1913. James himself lived for another eight years expiring at the age of seventy-four years in 1921.