Closeburn

The arrest of Mr Hunter and the departure of many of the disciples for Irvine to put their business in order meant that Mother Buchan and the rest of her followers would have to wait somewhere until they returned. By this time they were near to Closeburn just south of Thornhill and managed to find suitable quarters at New Cample Farm.

When he saw the plight of the group the tenant of the farm Mr Thomas Davidson gave them the temporary use of an empty barn. In the words of Andrew Innes.

“All that believed were together, and had all things in common. Our money was put into a common stock, and placed at the disposal of John Gibson as treasurer, to purchase all that might be requisite. All spare clothes were placed under the care of Janet Grant, formerly Mrs Muir, who had kept a clothes shop in Irvine. She had the charge of seeing them kept clean and whole, and of giving them out when change was wanted. The other women assisted in washing, knitting and mending stockings. We had tailors who mended our clothes, and cobblers who repaired our shoes, all was as common as circumstances would admit, yet no one was wholly idle. We occasionally wrought gratuitously to our neighbours, and scrupulously abjured all worldly considerations for the work thus performed”

The housekeeping and family arrangements were as follows. Due to the many visitors Mother Buchan and Mr White had, cooking was initially done in the farmer’s kitchen. The food was simple and consisted mainly of potatoes boiled in their skins or salt herring. Sometimes there was milk. As the visitors dwindled over time the barn became less crowded and the cooking was then done there. Everyone ate together and all ate the same food except for Friend Mother who either served at the table or directed others to do so. After the meal they would all sing a hymn and then go about their various tasks.

Sleeping arrangements were quite liberal for the period; Beds were made of bundles of heather and placed in a double row on the barn floor, leaving hardly room for a single person to pass through them,

“Here men women and children herded together promiscuously, Were not the Apolistic Church “all together” and had they not “all things in common” and were not “they who had wives to become as though they had none?”

This was the new Buchanite code, and they avowedly acted it out from this time on although it is more than certain it was going on well before this time.

At first the only children in the society were those of Mrs White and Mrs Hunter and these children were taken from their mothers and placed with strangers within the group. Mrs White’s children being younger than Mrs Hunters soon lost all memory of their parents but Mrs Hunter secretly “fostered their affections by little gifts of sweets and kindly attentions” The children were the common property of the society.

Robert Buchan now sought and obtained a divorce from Elspeth; she had been the one who had fixed his name to a sect that he hated with all his heart. Their three children who were now grown up had sided with their mother.

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