John Burns

Death

John was only sixteen when he died at Mossgiel Farm on 28 October 1785 from causes unknown.

The entry in the church records reads "John Burns, Mosgiel, Buried on 1st Nov. in second Mort cloth, for which the cost was 5 shillings".

William Scott Douglas published a report in 1877 that Isabella Burns recalled that her youngest brother had died in 1783, whilst the family were farming at Lochlea and that he was buried at Kirk Alloway in what also became his father's lair when he died on 13 February 1784. It was said that when she was buried in 1858 at the family lair in Alloway kirkyard the gravedigger exposed the bones of both her father and of John. As stated however the Mauchline Kirk records however state that he died in 1785 whilst at Mossgiel and that he was actually buried in the Mauchline parish kirkyard. or Lochlea Farm Robert wrote a story, The Marriage of Robin Redbreast and the Wren, for his young siblings. John's youngest sister Isabella remembered this story and told it to Dr Chambers in 1850/51. The story was published in Chambers's Nursery Rhymes of Scotland.

It may be significant that Burns's last, somewhat abrupt entry into his First Commonplace Book was on an unrecorded day in October 1785, the same month, possibly the same day, that his youngest brother died, the first of his siblings to do so. The entry was: "Oct: 85 } If ever any young man, on the vestibule of the world, chance to throw his eye over these pages, let him pay a warm attention to the following observation; as I assure him they are the fruit of a poor devil's dear bought Experience"; Burns finished with "In the first place, let my Pupil, as he tenders his own peace, keep up a regular, warm intercourse with the Deity".