John Binnie

John was born in Auldhill, the farm after which virtually all of the roads in Bridgend are named.  Given that my father and his parents lived in Auldhill Avenue this is a pleasant coincidence, a coming home after three generations.  The writing on the parish register is pretty illegible but a headstone in St Michaels' churchyard confirms the identification of the place.  This farming connection is consistent throughout his and his wife Agnes Cochrane's ancestry and Gateshead and Kingscavil farms are also mentioned.  I mentioned in son James's page that there is a connection back through the farming Bennies to William Binnock or Binning, the hero of the Wars of Independance.  Three of John's grandparents were Binny, Binnie and Bennie, effectively the same name and indicative of the predominance of the name in the farming communities around Linlithgow. 

That headstone's inscription reads -

Alex Binnie farmer Auldhill, w Agnes Cochrane, s John 1804 14; John B 24.10.1885 82 w Mary Alexander 15.11.1884 85; by Alex B; ed 1892

This tells us that he had a brother John who died in 1804 aged 14.  This means that our John, born 1804, was the "replacement" for the dead sibling, a strange, even unsavoury notion for us with modern sensibilities but very common in those days.  My understanding is that with children being named after grandparents it would be unfair to leave one without their name being represented in the family.

Being the sixth son of his father Alexander he obviously wouldn't inherit the farm but would have worked on it and he was indeed a ploughman in most records.  He moved to Dechmont then Hillhead at the side of the ski-slope at the north east corner of the Pentland Hills before moving back west to Kirknewton and retiring to stay with family at the Low Port in Linlithgow.  Interestingly he was five years younger than his wife, unusual in those days.

Their marriage was irregular, which means a common-law marriage or basically, that they were married "by habit and repute".  Wikipedia's article on Marriage in Scotland says "Under early modern Scots law, there were three forms of "irregular marriage" which can be summarised as the agreement of the couple to be married and some form of witnessing or evidence of such. An irregular marriage could result from mutual agreement, by a public promise followed by consummation, or by cohabitation and repute."  There are several of those irregular marriages in our tree, mainly in the late 1700s or early 1800s.  There is an interesting Rootschat topic entitled "Irregularly married in Linlithgow" which wonders about the large proportion of such marriages there.