on 05/09/04 08:14 AM, Pat McIndoe at marchie8@hotmail.com wrote: > Hi List, > I was very interested to read Vol. 4, No.223, with the description by > Ron Bgrd848@cs.com about conditions in Scotland in the 1600's and after. > pretty grim stuff! > Does anyone have an idea of what conditions were like in Dumfires and > surrounding rural area in the early part of 19th Century ? > Thanks. > Pat > > Researching GLOVER and HAINING in Dfs and Kkd > > _________________________________________________________________ > Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > > ______________________________ Pat, There is a superb description of Dumfriesshire in the early 1800s in Dorothy Wordsworth's "A Tour Made in Scotland A. D. 1803", recently reissued by James Thin, Edinburgh. Accompanied by her brother and Coleridge, she entered the shire in the southeast, traveled west to Dumfries, went up the Nith to south of Sanquhar and left via Wanlockhead and Leadhills. She was favorably impressed with the parts she saw, although not uncritical. Wordsworth forever damned Dumfries for its ill treatment of the memory of Robert Burns, whose body then lay buried in a poorly marked grave in an obscure part of the cemetery and annoyed with their accommodations in Leadhills. Also keep in mind there are several allusions to mid 18th century Dumfriesshire in Tobias Smollett's travelogues, such as "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker". These are fictional accounts, but the genius of Smollett lies in the fact that the adventures are based on actual events vividly described, yet almost all of them known to him only second or third hand. For instance, Clinker gives an elaborate description of his visit to Drumlanrigg and meeting with the Duke of Queensberry, but Smollett made only three brief visits to Scotland ‹ where he was born but left at age 19 after completing his medical studies in 1737 ‹ none of which included Dumfriesshire. You should not be left with a negative impression of the county. Gil Nicol.