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Robert Paterson




Robert Paterson ( 1715 - 1801 ) was a Scottish stone-mason, who suggested to Sir Walter Scott the character of " Old Mortality ".

He was born near Hawick in 1715. Through the patronage of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick , whose cook he had married, he obtained the lease of a quarry at Gatelawbrig, but in 1745 his house was plundered by the retreating Jacobites , and Paterson himself, a pronounced Cameronian , was carried off a prisoner.

He subsequently devoted his life to cutting and erecting stones for the graves of the Covenanters , for 40 years wandering from place to place in the lowlands. He died in poverty in 1801, and a stone to his memory was erected by Scott's publishers in 1869 in Caerlaverock churchyard.


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