Martha Brown Anderson

(21 July 1830-25 August 1830)

 

 

 

 

Named after her maternal grandmother, Martha Brown lived only a month. The record in ScotlandsPeople does not give the cause of death. She is buried in Howff Graveyard, Dundee, as is her grandfather, James Anderson. The land for the Howff Graveyard was granted to Dundee by Mary, Queen of Scots, as a burial ground. It has the same heritage status as a listed building, not least for the many important gravestones it is home to.

The Howff is an old Scottish word for a meeting place. Dundee’s Howff was where the Nine Trades met to discuss their business until they

moved to the new Trades Hall in the middle of the eighteen century.  

The land for the Howff cemetery was granted to Dundee by Mary, Queen of Scots, as an alternative burial ground to St Mary’s overloaded

cemetery that, to be frank, stunk. The Howff was closed in the 1860s. It has the same heritage status as a listed building, not least for the many important gravestones that may be found there (and some of our Andersons).

Josephine and I visited the Howff several times while we were in Dundee in 2018 but found only the headstone James installed for his

four children who died before 1812. While Martha Brown Anderson is listed as being interred there, there is no detail for her whereabouts. Apart from the refugees from nearby offices who gather at its entrance to satisfy their nicotine craving, the Howff is a quiet, contemplative place in the centre of Dundee. Within its old thick stone walls, people wander, read the epitaphs and pay tribute to the lives recorded there.