BARCLAY, Daughter 'of Mathers' ¹

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Daughter married John OGSTON of Kirklands of Fettercairn, son of John OGSTON of the Craigs, Sheriff-depute of Aberdeenshire and Daughter ABERNETHY.¹ (John OGSTON of Kirklands of Fettercairn was born about 1465 and died about 1539 ¹.)

  Marriage Notes:

Although she (elder unmarried daughter of Thomas Ogston of Fettercairn) was the elder, she must also have been of a marriageable age about the same time as her sister of Tilquhilly, that is, in 1479.

Yet in 1490 or thereby, John Ogstoun, the first member of the second family of Ogstons of Fettercairn, is found holding her lands, and marrying the daughter of Barclay of Mathers. And he did not obtain the lands by marriage, or by right of ordinary inheritance ; he 'conquest' them (History, page 83) - they were, that is, either given to him, or he bought them.

The only visible solution of how this came about is that the elder unmarried heiress bequeathed or otherwise conferred upon him her lands of Fettercairn. And she would hardly have done so, unless he had been a near relation, such as a nephew. Attention to the known facts of Thomas's earlier life, and a calculation from the dates known of him, will show that he probably married when no longer a young man (his having only female offspring has even its own significance) ; and that both his elder daughter, and his younger, Janet, had been women well on towards middle age, when the latter, in 1479, married David Douglas. And these considerations also strengthen the probability of the explanation here advanced.

We conclude then that John Ogstoun was her nephew, and one of the Ogstons of that Ilk, the son of John of Ogistone of Crags, the eighth of that Ilk."

from Supplement to the History of the Families of Ogston ¹