The Old Family
and how we got here
James or Jimmy Paterson was a ploughman most of his days and as such moved from farm to farm in pursuit of the work. The farmowners hired as they required and there was no real certainty of employment in those days.
He was born in 1866 in Philpstoun Mill, a wee cluster of houses beside what had been a working corn mill near the railway bridge to the south of Old Philpstoun. This was the hub of the family as others lived around the same small settlement. In fact, in the 1881 census, James is staying with his maternal grandparents while his parents have seven children still with them two doors away. His paternal grandmother is next door on the other side, albeit in the village, two hundred metres down the road. The other house between his parents and grandparents houses his uncle and auntie and cousins.
When he married he was still living in Philpstoun but was married a relatively distant ten miles away at Gogar Stone. Those houses are no longer around but the remains of the walls were discernable amongst weeds until a few years ago before the area was cleared and leveled. Subsequent censuses and valuation rolls and children's births tell us the route he took round the area before he returned to Old Philpstour where he died in 1955, aged 89, just a couple of hundred metres from where he was born.
That route was as follows, remembering that there may have been others inbetween which aren't recorded.
- 1891 Kirkliston
- 1895 and 1901 Threemiletoun Farm
- 1905 Trinlaymire
- 1911 Uphall
- 1915 Mannerston, near Blackness
The Trinlaymire reference is interesting as his grandfather John had been living there in 1841 and probably before that.
When he died he had long given up the ploughing and had been employed in the easier job of keeping the streets clean, the job going under the name of Sanitary Officer.
We are lucky enough to have a couple of good photos of him, aged around 45 and 88.
