The poet's family
The line
One well-set page rather than a sprawling database. These are the people the records actually support, with the gaps left visible where the records stop.
One generation up
William Burnes
1721 – 1784
A Kincardineshire man, born near Dunnottar, who came south to Ayrshire as a gardener and spent his life failing at farms. He spelled the name Burnes to the end. He built the cottage at Alloway with his own hands and died worn out by a lawsuit.
Agnes Broun
1732 – 1820
An Ayrshire woman with a great stock of old Scots songs and ballads and, by every account, a fine voice. Her son got his ear from her. She outlived him by twenty-four years.
Married in 1757. Seven children followed in fourteen years.
The seven
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Robert
1759 – 1796
The poet.
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Gilbert
1760 – 1827
Farmed alongside Robert at Mossgiel, and spent the rest of his life as his brother’s keeper and first editor.
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Agnes
b. 1762
Married a Galston farmer, William Gault.
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Annabella
b. 1764
Never married. Lived with Gilbert.
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William
1767 – 1790
A saddler. Went south for work and died in London at twenty-three.
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John
1769 – 1785
Died at sixteen.
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Isabella
1771 – 1858
Outlived every one of them by decades, and became the family’s memory: Victorian visitors came to Bridge of Doon to hear her talk about her brother.
The marriage
Robert Burns married Jean Armour (1765 – 1834) at Mauchline in 1788, after a long and badly behaved courtship in which her father tried hard to prevent it and Burns fathered children elsewhere in the meantime. She had already borne him twins in 1786.
She had nine children by him. She was thirty-one when he died and she never remarried, and for thirty-eight years afterwards she received visitors who wanted to see the poet's widow, and answered their questions, and kept the house.
The nine
Three of the nine reached adulthood. The names in full black below are those three; the greyed names are the six who did not, which was an ordinary proportion for the 1790s and is still hard to read in a list.
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Robert
1786 – 1857
Born before his parents’ marriage. Clerk in the Stamp Office, London.
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Jean died young
1786
Robert’s twin. Died in infancy.
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Twins died young
1788
Born and died within days.
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Francis Wallace died young
1789 – 1803
Died at fourteen.
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William Nicol
1791 – 1872
East India Company officer. Retired a Lieutenant Colonel of the 7th Madras Native Infantry in 1843. No children.
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Elizabeth Riddell died young
1792 – 1795
Died at three, while her father was still alive.
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James Glencairn
1794 – 1865
East India Company, like his brother. His known children were daughters, Annie and Sarah.
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Maxwell died young
1796 – 1799
Born on the day of his father’s funeral. Died at two.
Accounts differ on the twins born in 1788, who are sometimes counted separately and sometimes together, which is why you will see the nine enumerated slightly differently in different books. The three survivors, the dates above and the fact of six early deaths are not in dispute.
Twelve children, four mothers
Nine of Burns's children were Jean Armour's. Twelve were his. Any family tree of this man that shows only the marriage is a tidied one, and the tidying started early.
His first child was Elizabeth Burns (1785 – 1817), daughter of Elizabeth Paton, a servant at Lochlea. Burns called her "dear-bought Bess" and wrote a poem welcoming her, and his mother Agnes raised her at Mossgiel. Jean Armour later took in another of his daughters, born elsewhere in the same month as one of her own. It says a good deal about Jean, and rather less about him.
What happened to the line
Both of the poet's surviving younger sons went out to India with the East India Company and came home to Cheltenham to retire, which is not the ending anyone writes for the family of a radical ploughman poet.
William Nicol Burns married and had no children at all. James Glencairn's known children were daughters. So the neat thing people expect, an unbroken line of Burns men from the poet down to somebody living now, is not what the records show.
There are living descendants, and they turn up at Burns suppers and in newspapers every January. They descend mainly through daughters, which means most of them are not called Burns. The name went one way and the blood went another, which is true of nearly every family and is only remarkable here because we happen to have the paperwork.
Nothing on this page makes anybody called Burns a relative of the poet. The overwhelming majority of us are not, because the name was already all over Scotland and northern England before he was born. The name page explains why there were so many unrelated Burns families to begin with.