The Old Family
and how we got here
Mary might actually be Marion. Using the census ages to project back we should find a Mary being born around 1822. In fact, we find no Mary but a Marion born to the correct parents in the right time and place so maybe it's a Sunday name. By the age of 20 she was a servant to a ship's master on the Shore at Leith, which isn't actually the shore but the right bank of the river before it passes the pier and meets the sea. It would still have been the busiest part of the bustling seaport though with steamships mixing with sailing ships and all sorts of hybrids and all shapes and sizes of craft and sailers of different nationalities around the place.
Her father was a sailor in the herring fleet and seems to have been at sea in 1841 and 1851 when the censuses took place. Her mother seems to have died somewhere between 1841 and 1851 and although Mary married in 1845 there is no clue there about her mother as only fathers were mentioned in some parish records.
When her husband David died in 1877 he left a fair business behind with a total value of £394, a fair amount in those days. When Mary died four years later she left only £21 less and the wording of the documents suggest that it was still a working business. I assume that it was their son William, who would have been 19 at the time of his father's death, who run the practical side of the business while his mother looked after the finances. Within a year of her death the business had become Hogg and McVicar though whether McVicar was the other saddler employed by David or whether this was a new partner I can't say.