Mary Hill (1730-1809) was an heiress after whom the town of

Maryhill Maryhill ( gd, Cnoc Màiri) is an area of the City of Glasgow in Scotland. Maryhill is a former burgh. Maryhill stretches over along Maryhill Road. The far north west of the area is served by Maryhill railway station. History Hew Hill, t ...

, now a district of Glasgow, was named. Mary inherited the Gairbraid Estate from her father, Hew Hill, who had no surviving male heirs. In 1763, she married Robert Graham. Generally spoken of as Captain Graham, Robert had been captured by the pirates of Algiers and was their prisoner for some time, being treated as a slave. On his return home there was considerable interest in his adventures and it was said that Mary was so impressed by his romantic story that she chose him for her husband. Mary and Robert lived in Gairbraid House overlooking the

River Kelvin The River Kelvin (Scottish Gaelic: ''Abhainn Cheilbhinn'') is a tributary of the River Clyde in northern and northeastern Glasgow, Scotland. It rises on the moor south east of the village of Banton, east of Kilsyth. At almost long, it init ...

. The original was built in 1688, but they replaced it one hundred years later when contemporaries described it as “a square house built by a square man”. It was demolished in the 1920s. The Grahams ran into money troubles after speculating in coal-mining for which their land proved to be too damp. However, these were reversed when parliament approved the planning of the route of the

Forth and Clyde Canal The Forth and Clyde Canal is a canal opened in 1790, crossing central Scotland; it provided a route for the seagoing vessels of the day between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde at the narrowest part of the Scottish Lowlands. This allo ...

in 1768, which went through the estate. They were compensated for this and once the canal was completed, around 1790, their land along the canal suddenly became much more valuable. A village began to grow up and the Grahams feued more land for its development “from Glasgow to Garscube Bridge” with the condition that it would be “in all times called the town of Mary Hill”. Mary and Robert had no male heirs either and their unmarried older daughter, Lilias, inherited the estate on Mary’s death. Their younger daughter, Janet, married Alexander Dunlop, a merchant in Greenock, and when Lilias died in 1836 it passed to their son, John Dunlop, who disposed of much of it.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Mary, of Gairbraid 1730 births 1809 deaths People from Maryhill 18th-century Scottish women Scottish landowners