G4 - Robert Shiels & Annie Dickson
Robert Shiels was born on January 16, 1769, at Skirling in Peeblesshire, Scotland, the eldest son of James Shiels and Janet Younger. Skirling lies only a few miles east of Biggar, in the countryside where the Shiels family had now lived for several generations.
Robert & Annie — A Family Takes Root
Robert Shiels married Annie Dickson on July 9, 1790, at Drumelzier in Peeblesshire. Parish records show that both Robert and Annie were living at Drumelzier at the time, with their marriage banns recorded on June 26, 1790.
Annie had been born in 1768 and was baptized on September 18 at Kilbucho and Broughton and Glenholm. She was the daughter of James Dickson.
Robert and Annie went on to raise a family in the countryside of Peeblesshire. The surviving baptismal records of their children place the family at several communities in the area over the following two decades, including Stobo, Broughton, Eddleston and Peebles. These records provide small but valuable glimpses of the family’s movements during a period when few other details of their everyday lives survive.
The Children of Robert & Annie
Robert and Annie raised seven children, carrying the Shiels family into the nineteenth century. Surviving parish records allow us to follow the family through several communities in Peeblesshire and preserve glimpses of the places and dates that marked their children’s early lives.
Their Family
Alison Shiels — born June 3, 1791, Drumelzier
Thomas Shiels — christened September 27, 1795, Traquair
Isabella Shiels — born May 15, 1798, Stobo
Jane Dickson Shiels — born 1801, Liberton
Robert Shiels — born September 28, 1802, Broughton
Helen Shiels — born August 7, 1804, Eddleston
George Shiels — born August 9, 1810; christened August 19 in Peebles
It was through their second child, Thomas Shiels, that our main Shiels family line continued. His story, and that of his wife Barbara Jean Cranston, begins with Generation 5.
A Life on the Land
Robert spent his working life as a farmer, and the records of his family place them throughout the countryside of Peeblesshire. From Drumelzier, where Robert and Annie married in 1790, the trail of their children’s records leads through Traquair, Stobo, Broughton, Eddleston and Peebles.
These communities were all part of the relatively small world in which the early generations of the Shiels family lived and worked. Although individual records capture only moments in their lives, taken together they reveal a family firmly rooted in the Scottish Borders.
In their later years, Robert and Annie were associated with Coulter, the area that would become increasingly important to the generations that followed. Annie died there in 1840, and Robert died in 1845.
The Story Continues…
Robert and Annie’s second child, Thomas Shiels, would carry our direct Shiels line into the fifth generation.
Born in 1795 and christened at Traquair, Thomas would marry Barbara Jean Cranston in 1817. Their story brings the family to East Mains near Coulter and begins one of the most fascinating chapters in our Shiels family history.