Major George Ramsay

As the second son of Robert Balfour and Anne Ramsay, George was destined for the Army. He served with the Royal Scots and took the name of Ramsay when he succeeded to the Whitehill estate on 18 March 1767, which had been settled on him and his heirs and his younger brothers and sisters and their heirs. He was an officer with the Scots Guards during the 1770s when they moved back North and then, in April 1776, moved to Lancashire for 11 months and to Worcester in March 1777 only to spend the autumn and winter in Gloucester and nearby towns.  Not surprisingly, George formed a romantic attachment when in Lincoln, and subsequently appears to have let the young lady down with a bump. This letter survives and has provided successive generations of unsympathetic Ramsays with amusement.

By 1795 George was back in Edinburgh, serving on the jury for the trial of Sir A.Gordon Kinloch.

In 1798, the year when the government was taking urgent measures to protect the realm against invasion, George was one of the military men assigned a number of parishes close to Whitehill. His task was to collate schedules recording the names of men prepared to learn how to bear arms, and details about stock and crops that might need removing in the event of enemy incursions. He was living in Whitehill along with his sister, Elizabeth Balfour, whose husband, Captain Wardlaw, was generally away running ships for the East India Company. George died in 1825, and the Whitehill estate passed to William Wardlaw, who resigned his commission so he could take over the management.