Series 3 > Papers from the collection of Sir William Fraser

SIR WILLIAM FRASER’S PAPERS
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relative, a Fraser of good position. All the elements of a
romance seemed ready to hand. But there the curtain
fell, and nothing more could be ascertained—not even from
a son of Clementina Fraser, William Garden by name,
who died in 1885 at the age of ninety-nine.
James Fraser, like his father and elder brother William,
became a mason. In 1815 he married Ann Walker,
daughter of James Walker, tenant of the farm of Elf hill
of Fetteresso, and Jean Aitershanks his wife, and took up
house at Links of Arduthie, near Stonehaven. They had
three children : William, born 18th February 1816 ; John,
born 31st July 1818 ; and Ann, born 29th August 1820.
Sir William was educated at a private school in
Stonehaven kept by the Rev. Charles Michie. On 23rd
August 1830 he entered on a five-years’ apprenticeship
with Messrs. Brand and Burnett, Solicitors, Stonehaven.
During these years he made many friends among the other
lads of his own age, with whom, after he left Stonehaven, he
kept up a correspondence dignified and precocious on both
sides. He also seems to have been caught by the prevailing
excitement about the Reform Bill of 1832, for one of his
most cherished possessions was a banner with an appro¬
priate inscription, apparently home-made, which he had
carried in a procession to celebrate the passing of that
measure and welcome the new heaven and new earth
which, it was understood, this alteration of electoral
machinery would soon produce.
In 1834 James Fraser died at the age of forty-seven.
His wife had died in 1821, and their child John a few
months after that. So the brother and sister were left
orphans at the ages of eighteen and thirteen respectively.
That the boy had commended himself to his employers,
and that the family circumstances were somewhat narrow,
is evidenced by the terms of a letter of sympathy from Mr.
Brand with a gift of £5, and by the lad’s reply. Even in