‘Articles to be left in the house’, the 1801 roup Another manuscript, also in the Library of Scotland, lists items that were to be left in the house after Lady Alva’s death. These were described as Lady Alva’s property and some of them went on to be auctioned in May 1801. It is interesting to…
Portraits The Alvas displayed their most important family portraits in their dining room. Most were recent – from the previous or present generations – but there was also an ‘old family’ portrait in a white frame and ‘Three old family portraits of the Marr family white frames’.[1] These must have been gifts from Lord Alva…
Special inventories were taken for linen, coins and jewels, pamphlets, and pictures and prints found at Drumsheugh House after Jean Stirling’s death in 1797. These were designed to resolve inheritance queries raised by her step-daughter-in-law Isabella Erskine. Linen The linen inventory is particularly interesting since it includes the marks the family used to identify their…
When he died in 1796, James Erskine, Lord Alva (b. 1722) left a complex estate. One of his homes was Drumsheugh House in the West End of Edinburgh. When his descendants contested the provisions of his will early in the nineteenth century, the Court ordered that an inventory of the contents of the manor house…
David Allan painted Lord Alva and his family in 1780 and the resulting conversation piece, ‘James Erskine, Lord Alva (1722-1796) and His Family‘ is now held by the National Gallery of Scotland. Lord Alva is the small gentleman in black. Jean Stirling, Lady Alva is seated next to him and his three surviving children from…
Tales from the Session Papers Continued from Part 1 Phebe Forbes’s former brother-in-law had little sympathy for her plight. David Scot’s ‘Answers’ via advocate Andrew Pringle of 19 December 1755, did not hide his obvious dislike for his sister-in-law. He accused her of gold-digging, not just as his brother’s wife but, since she had remarried,…
Tales from the Session Papers Phebe Forbes felt trapped and frustrated as she considered her options in the 1750s. Married young in 1752, she was a widow in the next year. She did not get along with her brother-in-law, David Scot (or Scott) of Hedderwick, who had control over the house she lived in as…
