Jean Gardner

Jean Gardner or later Jean Hill, was "a young woman of very surpassing beauty," but she may have been thirteen years older and Burns himself was not thought to have written about her, other than a disputed use of her given name as the 'darling Jean' of Burns's 'Epistle to Davie', and most recent writers have considered the reference to be to Jean Armour. in Irvine, and Janet Caldwell. James owned three houses in the Seagate and a park called Spenshill. Gardner was baptised on 14 September 1746. When James Gardiner died in 1768, his eldest daughter inherited half of his property; already a widow according to Strawhorn, her dead husband, a shipmaster, being one Alexander Armour. This would confusingly make her married name 'Jean Armour.'

It was in Gardner’s family house in Seagate (probably in the second house on the right from Highstreet) that the preacher Hugh White was supposed to have lodged.

Gardner joined the Buchanites, who numbering only around forty-six at this time, were expelled from Irvine in May 1784 after the sect had seceded from the Relief Church. She eventually joined them in the barn at New Cample in Dumfrieshire where the Buchanites had temporarily settled after 'Mother Buchan' sent Andrew Inness back to collect her. It has been speculated that she was unwilling to leave because of her attachment to Burns.

At New Cample, she met and later married George Hill, another member of the group, after the sect broke up. The couple emigrated to America where she was said to have died from a fever at Philadelphia in around 1793.

Association with Robert Burns

A fanatical member of the Buchanites sect, Andrew Innes was recorded to have said that "When I was sent back from Thornhill for Mr Hunter, Jean Gardner came with me from Irvine to Closeburn, and when we were in the neighbourhood of Tarbolton, she seemed to be in fear, and in a rather discomposed condition; when in enquired the cause, she said it was lest Burns the poet, should see her, for if he did, he would be sure to interrupt her, for they had been on terms of intimacy, but we proceeded on our journey without meeting any obstruction." It has been suggested that Jean tried to persuade the poet to join the Buchanites.

Robert was also said to have ridden after her to New Cample where he tried to persuade to return, spending a whole day and night trying to persuade her to leave the sect.