Saw Chas. Alexander1 + decided to sell by [sic] Buenos Ayres shares2 which will enable me to pay up my Bank Overdraft + the Succession duty.3 Wrote Jas. Wallace4 + offered him the shares. Thawing today + very cold + disagreeable. Drove in Mr Ross had breakfast at 6.45 + I walked down to see him off at 7.15.5 Drove in forenoon to Ettrickbank + Oakwoodmill + in afternoon to Lilliesleaf, Newhouse, Sinton Mill + Ashkirk U.F. Manse.6
1 Assume Charles Alexander (1852-1911), J.P., Sheriff-substitute, Solicitor, Law Agent [1911] and Burgh Prosecutor, Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory, 1903.
2 It will be interesting to see if Dr Muir does offload these shares because he had a holding in Buenos Ayres at the end of the First World War.
3 Dr Muir had reported the day before that he had death duty to pay after the death in 1902 of his wife Andrina Barbara Henderson Muir née Rodger (1849-1902).
4 Assume James Wallace (about 1841-1922), husband of Dr Muir’s sister Mary Jane Muir.
5 It is not apparent why the Reverend Andrew Ross (1871-1942), Church of Scotland clergyman, who had moved to Selkirk in 1903 and lived at Ettrick Terrace with his wife Elizabeth Elder Ross née Sinclair, would spend the night at Dr Muir’s house and then left by train (unless that is not what Dr Muir meant).
6 It is not clear who was living at Ashkirk United Free Manse at this time. From 1905, as Kirklea, it was occupied by Jane Oliver and by the 1917 Valuation Roll by W H Ogilvie, returned from Australia and the United States. These dates must be taken with a pinch of salt because there was often a delay between someone occupying a property and that fact being recorded in the Valuation Rolls.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/7, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1904]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 