A nice day with intermittent sunshine : N.W. wind. Excellent for cycling. I cycled to Heatherlie Park + Hospital. Called at Wellwood. [The] Reverend H Hamilton1 from Greenock called to be examined for insurance. Left at 1.30 with the cycle club. Picked up Ann Dobson2, Jean Bateman3 + Mrs Kemp4 at Whitmuihall Toll (making 6 men + three ladies) + went to Penielheugh.5 Went up the Tower. 3 men from St Boswells there one whom, Kerr asked if I was the son of the Dr Muir who was with Dr Anderson + said he used to hold my horse in Bowden!6 We came back by Ancrum + Belses Was down at Mauldsheugh7 for supper.
1 Assume the Reverend William H Hamilton who briefly appears at Union Street, Greenock in the Valuation Roll of 1925. He may conceivably be William H Hamilton (1886-1958), later (1927) the General Secretary of the World Alliance of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches in 1927. In addition to being a United Free Church minister (he had no middle name but adopted the letter H seeking to avoid confusion with relatives called William Hamilton [The Cambridge Dictionary of Hymnology ‘William (H) Hamilton’, accessed 14 August 2023].
2 Perhaps Annie Dobson (1887-), powerloom weaver.
3 Jean Bateman may be Jane Ann Bateman (1904-).
4 Mrs Kemp cannot be distinguished from a number of married women of a likely age named Kemp in Selkirk.
5 The Waterloo Monument at Penielheugh, Crailing, Roxburghshire, grid reference NGR NT65350,26300.
6 This is an understandable assumption. Dr Muir had been in practice at Selkirk for about 55 years at the time of this meeting. John Stewart Muir entered medical practice at Selkirk in the late 1860s when he started working for Henry Scott Anderson (about 1812-1890), MD, FRCS. The 1871 Census records that Dr Muir lodged with Dr Anderson after moving to Selkirk. Dr Muir also rode a horse before he took up cycling and that transition may have confused Mr Kerr too.
7 Dr Muir must have dined with David Charteris ‘Dav.’ Graham (1889-1963), M.B., Ch.B., medical practitioner and Dr Muir’s business partner, and his wife Norah Campion Graham née West (1887-1971).
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 