For much of my childhood I lived in the Wilton side of Hawick, near where my ancestors had lived for generations. I didn’t realise, though, that on my way to and from Wilton Primary School I was crossing the site of the Wilton Old Church and graveyard, which was cleared almost completely in the 1950s. Generations of my Hall and Cavers ancestors would have been buried there, and when the site was cleared there were still legible gravestones for some of the very earliest known Cavers ancestors. In addition some Usher relatives were buried in part of the crypt.
I’ve just, thanks to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland website, had my first glimpse of what Wilton Old Church and graveyard looked like before the site was cleared. It’s eerie, a glimpse into the past.
Looking at the picture it looks as though it is looking east across the site, with Princes Street to the left, and the path to the newsagent’s I used to walk along a lot in the distance, beyond the church, to the right.
Reblogged this on Cavers One-Name Study Blog and commented:
Just posted this to my general-purpose ancestry blog, but it’s a place where Cavers people (including my own ancestors) were buried too, so of interest to Cavers researchers as well.
Thanks Viv, for posting the image of the old Wilton Church. If I can believe my family lore, I had a third great grandfather, John Clark, who was born in about 1779 in the area in or around Wilton. Apparently it was a community near Hawick??
Wilton was both a parish and part of the town of Hawick. The parish of Wilton covered the part of the town to the north of the River Teviot, and also rural areas further away. To read more about the parish, including links to further relevant resources, see my GENUKI parish page about it at
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/sct/ROX/Wilton/
Fascinating photo and story. Have those graves been recorded on your blog? Many thanks from Suzanne Cavers,whose ancestor Charles Cavers born 1827 in Scotland, and who immigrated to Middlesex On CA 1834 with his parents James Cavers and Margaret Biggar. James is s/o Thomas Cavers and Janet Scott. She was born in Hawick, Roxburghshire 1759.
The children of Charles and wife Eliza Richardson, his 2nd family inCanada, were Verner James, Charles Walker, Jessie Rache, and John Thompson.
SEE 1 family of Marilyn Whatley and
2 famiy of Suzanne Cavers ancestry .ca
Yes the gravestone inscriptions of my early Cavers ancestors are detailed at
https://caversonenamestudy.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/family-of-james-cavers-and-isabella-coltherd-roxburgshire/
I don’t know if there were any other Cavers inscriptions there, but will recheck the list next time I get a chance. Many graves did not have stones though, or the stones could no longer be read by the time the inscriptions were recorded.