Janet Lockhart

Janet married John Cunningham before 8 Jan 1634. John (son of William Cunningham and Agnes Cunningham) died before 17 Apr 1672. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Margaret Cunningham died in Apr 1700.
2. Barbara Cunningham was born about 1634; died after 22 Feb 1694.

Notes:

"In 1595 in the church at Stewarton a marriage contract was signed between John Lockhart and Marion Cunningham, daughter of the late William Cunningham of Aiket and his wife Helen Colquhoun. Their eldest son was born in 1598 (he was the only son by 1614) followed be two daughters, Margaret and Janet. John Lockhart, for many years the town's commissioner at Parliament, acquired a taste for living in style, and when he died the furnishings of his house were valued at 800 pounds, plus 500 pounds worth of silver work. With his connections in high places (in his will the Earl of Dunfermline and Lord Abercorn were asked to be patrons 'of his poor wife and bairns and to see them not oppressed or wronged') John Lockhart had ambitions to be more than a minor Ayrshire laird. For centuries his kinsmen the Lockharts of Bar had been a powerful family at Galston but in 1609 their fortunes had declined, the last laird, George Lockhart and his wife living in rented rooms in Ayr and unable to pay the thirteen merks owing to the schoolmaster for teaching their two sons and daughter in 1606. In 1610 John Lockhart purchased their lands and the tower of Bar and henceforth was known as the Laird of Bar, a title that carried far more authority in Ayrshire than 'John Lockhart of Boghall.'" [Ayr and Its People, citation details below]

John married Marion Cunningham in 1595 in Stewarton, Ayrshire, Scotland. Marion (daughter of William Cunningham and Helen Colquhoun) died in Jan 1623 in Ayr, Ayrshire, Scotland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"Marion Cunningham, Lady Bar, died at her home in Ayr in January 1623. She was the daughter of William Cunningham of Aiket and Helen Colquhoun, daughter of a Highland chief. […] She grew up in an age of aggression in northern Ayrshire, the time of the great feud betewen the Montgomery Earl of Eglinton and the Cunningham Earl of Glencairn which lasted over seventy years in the sixteenth century." [Ayr and Its People, citation details below]

Notes:

He was baillie of Ayr in the 1590s, and provost in 1601.

Alexander married Margaret Kennedy. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

He and his family appear to have had some excitement in their lives. From Janet and Robert Wolfe Genealogy, all citing Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland by Robert Pitcairn, Volume 1, parts 2 and 3 (Edinburgh: The Bannatyne Club, 1833):

1570 On November 4, William Cunningham of Aiket, his servants William Fergushill and Florence Crawfurd, and John Raburne of that Ilk were accused of the murder of John Mure of Cauldwell. They were acquitted on testimony that the murder was committed by the late Alexander Cunningham the younger of Aiket. […]

1578/79 On January 12, Helen Colquhoun did not appear in court. She was accused of administering poison to her husband William Cunningham the previous October. […]

1585 On February 12, brothers Alexander and William Cunningham of Aiket and Patrick Cunningham in Bordland were accused of taking part in the murder of Hugh Mure, Earl of Eglinton.

——

Note that while Helen Colquhoun was, on 12 Jan 1579, charged with "administering poison to her husband" the previous October, the inconclusive surviving record does not appear to confirm that her husband actually died at that time. He may have, and the "brothers Alexander and William Cunningham of Aiket" who were accused of taking part in the murder of the 4th Earl of Eglinton may have been the Alexander and William who were among the sons of William Cunningham and Helen Colquhoun. Or the William of this pair may have been this William Cunningham. The Wikipedia article Barony of Aiket, citing Castles of the Clans by Martin Coventry (Musselburgh, Scotland: Goblinshead, 2010), calling the husband of Helen Colquhoun "Robert Cunninghame", asserts that he, who was accused of the murder of John Mure and was the target of a poisoning attempt by his wife, was also among those implicated in the murder of Hugh Mure / Montgomerie, the 4th Earl.

Ayr and Its People (citation details below) calls William Cunningham of Aiket "the late" at the time of his daughter Marion's 1595 marriage contract with John Lockhart.

William married Helen Colquhoun before 24 Oct 1564. Helen (daughter of Humphrey Colquhoun and Helen Graham) died between 13 Jun 1594 and 13 Mar 1596 in Aiket, Ayrshire, Scotland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Lady Aikitt, elder, sheriffdom of Ayr.

"In 1578-79, another of [the Colquhoun] clan, Helen Colquhoun, was accused of the 'treasonable administering of poysoun' to her spouse, William Cunninghame of Aiket; but the fragmentary records give us little information about these trials…" ["Poisoning in Scotland", citation details below]

The will of Helene Colquhoun, Lady Aikitt, elder, sheriffdom of Ayr, was proved in the Edinburgh commissary court on 13 Mar 1596.

The 1877 Colquhoun pedigree ("Colquhoun of Luss", citation details below) shows Helen Colquhoun, daughter of Humphrey, marrying a "James" Cunningham of Aiket; it also gives her mother's name as "Katherine", rather than Helen, a mistake that also appears in many Burke's Pedigrees products. In a pair of posts to soc.genealogy.medieval on 10 Oct 2019, John Brandon points out that the papal dispensation of 1509 clearly identifies Humphrey Colquhoun's wife as Helen. As to whether Humphrey Colquhoun's and Helen Graham's daughter Helen was indeed, the Helen who married Cunningham of Aiket, Brandon points to the marriage of Robert Graham of Knockdolian, who was known to have been involved in dealings with William and Helen (Colquhoun) Cunningham, to Christian Graham, daughter of the second William Graham, 2nd earl of Montrose — further evidence of Graham-Colquhoun prosopographical adjancency.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Abt 1594

Notes:

From Ayr and Its People, citation details below:

In 1533 Alexander [Lockhart] obtained the lease of the waulkmill of Alloway, which remained in the family's hands until the 1650s, and his son John in 1556 purchased from the Abbot of Paisley the lands of Boghall across the river in the territory of Dalmilling. John married Janet Bannatyne, provost Richard's eldest daughter, sometime before 1548 and they had a family of a girl and five boys. In 1588 John Lockhart, in a complaint against the magistrates of Ayr, is described as "being now become aged and subject to diverse diseases and infirmities of body, and thereby unable to travail in the trade of merchandise or otherwise in winning of his living by means of industry, has withdrawn himself, his spouse and family, for his better ease, furth of the burgh of Ayr where he made his residence and dwelling, to his own place of Boghall, where he now makes residence, of intention to rest there quietly during the course of his life."

He complained to the Privy Council that although he no longer resided in the burgh, the council was still taxing him as though he was. His complaint was upheld.

John married Janet Bannatyne before 1548. Janet (daughter of Richard Bannatyne) died after 1590. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Humphrey married Helen Graham about 13 Jul 1509. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

She was definitely a daughter of the first earl of Montrose. The will of William Graham, who was killed at the battle of Flodden Field in 1513, acknowledges a debt to the Laird of Luss (i.e. John Colquhoun, father of Humphrey), on account of his daughter's dowry, and also the Laird of Luss younger (i.e. Humphrey).

Burke's Peerage and Burke's Landed Gentry, and thus many online sources, show William Graham's daughters Margaret, Elizabeth, and Helen, in that order, as daughters of William Graham by his second wife Janet Edmondstone.

This cannot be true of Elizabeth. The Complete Peerage 4:470 says that Walter Drummond, grandson of John Drummond and Elizabeth Lindsay, "m., in Feb. 1513/4, his cousin Elizabeth, 2nd da. of William (Graham), 1st Earl of Montrose [S.], by his first wife Annabel, 4th da. of John (Drummond), Lord Drummond abovenamed." It can be seen that if Walter Drummond and his wife Elizabeth were cousins, it would have to be the case that Elizabeth was a daughter of William Graham's first wife, Annabel Drummond.

CP says of Annabel Drummond that "[s]he was living 1492" and that her son William Graham, second earl of Montrose, was "a minor at his father's death", 9 Sep 1513, but "was served heir to him" 24 Oct 1513. The Scots Peerage narrates this latter event in a way that suggests that the younger William was still a minor on 24 Oct 1513: "William […] was under age at the death of his father, but in virtue of the Act of 24 August, was served his heir 24 October, 1513." SP goes on to emphasize and extoll his precocity: "He early displayed qualities of prudence and statesmanship which enabled him, over a long life," [etc.]. CP notes that the younger William "was present in Parl. [S.] 2 Jun 1514" and that he married his only wife, Janet Keith, in Dec 1515. All of which suggests that the second earl attained his majority no earlier than the end of 1513, which means that he has to have been born to Annabel Drummond no earlier than the end of 1492, and given that he could perfectly well have married while still a minor, plausibly as late as 1497 or 1498.

Also, according to SP, William Graham and Annabel Drummond had a second son following William: "Walter, a younger son of the first marriage, who had a tack of Little Cairnie for nineteen years from the Abbot of Inchaffray, 8 January 1541-42, and appears to have been ancestor of the second family of the Grahams of Thornick, afterwards Cairnie." If so, this moves the end of Annabel Drummond's life to no earlier than the end of 1493. And again, given that the first son could easily have been born as late as 1497-98, she was quite possibly still living in 1498-99.

The date of William Graham's marriage to Janet Edmondstone is unknown to us, but the earliest record of them as married is a charter dated 17 Mar 1505. According to CP she died between that date and 15 Apr 1506.

The papal dispensation for Helen Graham's marriage to Humphrey Colquhoun was dated 13 Jul 1509.

If Annabel Drummond died as soon as the records allow, say December 1493, and William Graham married Janet Edmondstone as soon as possible, say the first part of 1494, and Helen Graham was their first child, born say early 1495, then the papal dispensation for her marriage to Humphrey Colquhoun, dated 13 Jul 1509, was issued when she was fourteen. Which is hardly unheard-of among the aristocracy of 15th/16th century Scotland, but also adds up to a pretty tight fit.

Additional to this is the fact that William Graham and Annabel Drummond married in 1479, and yet their eldest son and heir cannot have been born earlier than late 1513. It is implausible that they spent the first dozen years of their marriage having no children. We have seen that daughter Elizabeth has to have been the issue of William and Annabel. Margaret is specified by SP as a daughter of the second marriage. Aside from the fact that this implies, in SP's usual manner of listing offspring, that the other daughters, whose mothers are not noted, were from the first marriage, it also means that Helen, Jean, and Elizabeth are the only known offspring of William Graham whose birth can be used to fill the childbearing years from 1480 to 1492. (The other legitimate child of William Graham, Patrick, is given by SP as his son by his third wife, Christian Wawane.)

Taken together, we think the evidence preponderantly suggests that Helen Graham was a daughter of William Graham's first wife, and probably, as the order of William's children in SP suggests, his eldest daughter.