Author: Sillar, David
Biography:
SILLAR, David (1760-1830: Goodridge)
Best known now for being the “brother poet” of Robert Burns’s two “Epistles to Davie” (one published in 1786 and one in 1830), he was one of four sons born at Tarbolton, Ayrshire, to Jean (Richmond) and Patrick Sillar. He was a teacher at Tarbolton but struggled financially. Seeking better prospects, he moved to Irvine where he set up as a grocer. Despite the move to a larger centre, in 1786 he was briefly imprisoned for debt; after this, he returned to teaching but stayed in Irvine. He married a widow, Margaret Gemmill Kerr, in 1789 and they had four children. (After Margaret’s death in 1800, he married again but the name of his second wife is unknown.) He benefited financially from the deaths of his brothers: from one, William, he inherited the family farm and, from another, he gained a fortune made in the manufacture of soap. He knew Charles Gray (q.v.) whose “Epistle to Mr. David Sillar” is included in his 1811 Poems. He died at Irvine and his grave is in the Irvine Old Parish Churchyard. (Goodridge; ancestry.co.uk 29 Sept. 2020; James Patterson, The Contemporaries of Burns [1840])