The Old Family
and how we got here
Andrew Brown was born, the son of a sailor named Robert Brown, in Wemyss (one census) or Markinch (three censuses). No birth record can be found to validate either option but given that his father was a sailor the coast parish of Wemyss must be favourite over the inland parish of Markinch. That would be unless it was the isolated detached fragment of Markinch at Innerleven, which is what I favour. That would explain the confusion.
Interestingly, his mother-in-law Barbara Brown was also born to a sailor named Robert Brown though not the same one. Brown is such a common name though that we can't rush to the conclusion of relationship and the records are incomplete so we can't prove one way or another.
Andrew was married young and had four children with his first wife Agnes before marrying May Melville and having two more children including our David.
He worked all his days as a flax dresser which means he combed the rotting flax stems to separate the fibres, ready for spinning. It was an awful, smelly, lung-damaging job, as described here in this page about Robert Burns' involvement in the industry. The Kirkland Mills which Andrew worked at had various factories for heckling (see the previous link), spinning, weaving, bleaching and the manufacture of the Sailcloth and Linen.
Kinghorn, by contrast seemingly only had a flax spinning mill for linen which stood until fairly recent times.
