Buchanan (Finnick Malice, Stirling)

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George Buchanan

George Buchanan [1782–1832] was the eldest son of George Buchanan, a farmer at Finnick Drummond (Stirlingshire). He became a merchant in Demerara, where he was treasurer of the Scots Kirk [Demerara & Essequebo Vade Mecum, 1825] and was part of the firm of McInroy, Sandbach & Co. until 1824, after which he returned to Scotland. In 1829 he bought the property of Finnick Malice, where he died in 1832.

In his will [SC67/36/14] he made provision for ‘the coloured boy Henry Buchanan, presently under the care of Mr Baran at Whitfield House near Liverpool’, to whom he left £2700, and for ‘the five coloured children Eliza Buchanan, John Buchanan, Robert Buchanan, Ann Buchanan and George Buchanan at present under the care of the Rev George Barclay at Irvine’, leaving them a total of £2500.

He left the rest of his property in trust to his brothers Benjamin Buchanan, merchant in Liverpool, John Buchanan, farmer in Finnick-Drummond, and James Buchanan, merchant in Liverpool; his uncle, James Buchanan of Dowanhil; and George Rainy and Peter MacLagan, both formerly of Demerara. On the 23rd March 1838 these trustees sold Finnick-Malice and Crofton MacCulloch to John Todd, merchant and manufacturer in Glasgow, for £10,000.

Brother

George also had a brother Peter. One of his brothers was also in Demerara, from where he returned in 1824 on the Glenbervie, along with John Castlefranc Cheveley who noted that he had been ‘strictly brought up but had fallen into Colonial habits’. [John Castlefranc Cheveley (ed C C Thornburn), No Messing – The Story of an Essex Man: the autobiography of John Castlefranc Cheveley 1795–1870 (Chichester: Crosswave Publishing, 2012), p136]