The little wanderer used all the
influence in his power to induce his father to return to his family;
but in vain. Mrs. Paterson sent even some of her female children
into Galloway in search of their father, for the same purpose of
persuading him to return home; but without any success. At last, in
the summer of 1768, she removed to the little upland village of
Balmaclellan, in the Glenkens of Galloway, where, upon the small
pittance derived from keeping a little school, she supported her
numerous family in a respectable manner.
"There is a small monumental stone in the farm of the Caldon, near
the House of the Hill, in Wigtonshire, which is highly venerated as
being the first erected, by Old Mortality, to the memory of several
persons who fell at that place in defence of their religious tenets
in the civil war, in the reign of Charles Second.
"From the Caldon, the labours of Old Mortality, in the course of
time, spread over nearly all the Lowlands of Scotland. There are few
churchyards in Ayrshire, Galloway, or Dumfries-shire, where the work
of his chisel is not yet to be seen. It is easily distinguished from
the work of any other artist by the primitive rudeness of the
emblems of death, and of the inscriptions which adorn the ill-formed
blocks of his erection. This task of repairing and erecting
gravestones, practised without fee or reward, was the only
ostensible employment of this singular person for upwards of forty
years.
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