Janet Drysdale, my great-great-great-grandmother, was born in 1809 in Midlothian, the daughter of Robert. She married Thomas Paterson on 7 January 1840 in South Leith. They had five children. She died on 24 January 1850 at age 41 and was buried in Edinburgh.
Janet was born in Cockpen, a small agricultural parish in Midlothian that largely overlapped with the Barony of Dalhousie, dominated by Dalhousie Castle and its estate. She moved from Midlothian to South Leith, where she lived in Merilees Close.
Records of Janet’s life between her birth in Midlothian and her move to Merilees Close in South Leith are sketchy. Four of her five children seem to have been born before she married Thomas Paterson in January 1840. Her marriage Banns describe her as living at Stewart’s Place, Jock’s Lodge, presumably with her parents. Her father, Robert, was a “Farm Servant” at nearby East Duddingston.
Between 1833 and 1839, she had four children: Georgina Gregory (1833), Andrew (1836), Robert (1838), and Thomas (1839). After marrying Thomas Paterson, she gave birth to her second daughter, Margaret, in 1841.
The 1841 census shows the family living at Merilees Close, South Leith. Merilees Close was a narrow alley off Yardheads in South Leith, Edinburgh, typical of the crowded tenement closes in the port district during the mid-19th century. At that time, South Leith was a bustling working-class area marked by overcrowding, poor sanitation, and basic stone-built tenements housing labourers, dockworkers, and their families amid the industrial growth of Leith’s docks and shipbuilding. The close gained historical note when excavations in 1884 uncovered a prehistoric short cist containing skeletons and a food vessel, hinting at ancient activity beneath the Victorian-era housing.
Janet died on 24th January 1850 at the age of 42.
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