Nationality British Religion Protestant Died 1774 | Known for Diaries Name Margaret Calderwood | |
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Margaret Calderwood (1715 – 1774) was a British diarist just after the Jacobite uprising in 1745. She wrote of her journey's through England to Brussels, but these were not published until the 19th century.
Life
Margaret was the daughter of Sir James Steuart of Coltness who was a Steuart baronet.
In the year that she married Thomas Calderwood of Polton in 1735 she was painted by the leading Scottish portrait painter Allan Ramsay. She came to notice when her brother had to go into exile as he was involved in the 1745 rebellion. Calderwood met her brother in Liege and she wrote letters, in addition to keeping a journal from her departure on 3 June 1756. Her brother was living in the southern Netherlands because he was on a list of traitors. She visited him there with her husband, two servants and her sons, William and James.
At the end of 1756 she realised the value of her journals and letters and she was the first to edit them into what she called volumes. They described her journey from Scotland and through England to Rotterdam, Delft, The Hague, Haarlem, and Amsterdam, her meeting in Liege with her brother and onto Brussels. Calderwood describes contemporary transport, food and water, fuel, money, agriculture, religion and education. In a memorable description of her journey through England she admires the cows as the people lacks what she calls "smartness" more than any other "folks."
In 1771 Calderwood's brother was forgiven for his traitoress past and he returned to Britain in 1773. Calderwood and her husband died shortly afterwards. In 1774 a monument to Calderwood was commissioned from Robert and James Adam. The monument was probably ordered by her son Lieutenant-Colonel William Calderwood. The monument was not built for Calderwood but the design was used in 1992 to create a monument to Robert Adam in Edinburgh.
Calderwood'df diaries were published more widely in 1884 as previously they had only been circulated via the Maitland Club in 1842.
She is buried in the old Kirkyard at Lasswade with her husband, in the plot of her father-in-law, Sir William Calderwood, Lord Polton.