amed are those in which the name of
Stevenson is most common, it is in point of fact far more
wide-spread than the text indicates, and occurs from Dumfries and
Berwickshire to Aberdeen and Orkney.

[9] Mr. J.H. Stevenson is satisfied that these speculations as to a
possible Norse, Highland, or French origin are vain. All we know
about the engineer family is that it was sprung from a stock of
Westland Whigs settled in the latter part of the seventeenth century
in the parish of Neilston, as mentioned at the beginning of the next
chapter. It may be noted that the Ayrshire parish of Stevenson, the
lands of which are said to have received the name in the twelfth
century, lies within thirteen miles south-west of this place. The
lands of Stevenson in Lanarkshire first mentioned in the next
century, in the Ragman Roll, lie within twenty miles east.

CHAPTER I

DOMESTIC ANNALS

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 h