IT is believed that in 1665, James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell,
parish of Neilston, county of Renfrew, and presumably a tenant farmer,
married one Jean Keir; and in 1675, without doubt, there was born to these
two a son Robert, possibly a maltster in Glasgow. In 1710, Robert
married, for a second time, Elizabeth Cumming, and there was born to
them, in 1720, another Robert, certainly a maltster in Glasgow. In 1742,
Robert the second married Margaret Fulton (Margret, she called herself),
by whom he had ten children, among whom were Hugh, born February
1749, and Alan, born June 1752.
With these two brothers my story begins. Their deaths were
simultaneous; their lives unusually brief and full. Tradition whispered me
in childhood they were the owners of an islet near St. Kitts; and it is
certain they had risen to be at the head of considerable interests in the
West Indies, which Hugh managed abroad and Alan at home, at an age
when others are still curveting a clerk's stool. My kinsman, Mr.
Stevenson of Stirling, has heard his father mention that there had been
`something romantic' about Alan's marriage: and, alas! he has forgotten
what. It was early at least. His wife was Jean, daughter of David Lillie,
a builder in Glasgow, and several times `Deacon of the Wrights': the date
of the marriage has not reached me; but on 8th June 1772, when Robert,
the only child of the union, was born, the husband and father had scarce
passed, or had not yet attained, his twentieth year. Here was a youth
making haste to give hostages to fortune. But this early scene of
prosperity in love and business was on the point of closing.
There hung in the house of this young family, and successively in
those of my grandfather and father, an oil painting of a ship of many tons
burthen. Doubtless the brothers had an interest in the vessel; I was told
she had belonged to them outright; and the picture was preserved through
years of hardship, and remains to this day in the possession of the family,
the only memorial of my great- grandsire Alan. It was on this ship that |
