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Description: | Gilbert Burns opens the first page of this letter with his not unusual complaint at not having heard from his Sister-in-law for some length of time but also acknowledges that he has not been in contact with her either. He announces the death of his mother, who has been in bed for several months and had passed away 'without a struggle or a groan' the previous day 14th January 1820.
Robert Burns gave ��200 to his brother Gilbert to release him from debts incurred at Mossgiel in Mauchline in 1789. He married in 1791 and moved to Dinning in Nithsdale in 1798 for 2 years. By 1800 had moved to East Lothian as a farm manager and in 1804 became Factor at an Estate near Haddington and lived at a house called Grant's Braes. It was here that he died in 1827 having sired 11 children, five of whom died at a young age.
He then says that the funeral will have to be held back until they can get an iron frame built around the burial plot to protect it from the nightly grave-robbers prevalent at the time. The balance of the page is taken up describing the current illness of his wife and a gruesome blood-letting treatment to deal with it. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | Burns Monument Trust | Temporal: | 1820-01-01 - 1820-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Letter of Gilbert Burns to Mrs Robert Bu | Go to resource |
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