Author: RAE, Robert
Biography:
RAE, Robert (1805-61: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 10 July 1805 at Biggar, Lanarkshire, to Thomas Rae, stonemason, and his wife Jane Pairman. The family moved to the west of Scotland but Rae returned to Biggar when he was still a child to live with his uncle, Robert Pairman, a merchant. At the age of fourteen he moved to Glasgow where census records show that he worked in various businesses including a wine and spirits shop and an iron foundry where he was the clerk. The 1851 Census indicates that he married and his wife’s first name was Rachel; they do not seem to have had children. They lived for a short time in London where Rae joined a large mercantile house but they had returned to Glasgow by the time of his death. The preface to his book states that some of the poems were composed when he was seventeen. (ancestry.co.uk 1 Sept. 2021; William Hunter, Biggar and the House of Fleming: An Account of the Biggar District [1862])