Agnes Burns

Agnes Burns or Agnes Galt was the eldest sister of Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns. She was born in 1762 at the Alloway Cottage in South Ayrshire to William Burnes and Agnes Broun. She did not adopt the spelling 'Burnes'. At the advanced age of forty-two, late for the times in which she lived, she married William Galt at Dinning in 1804 who had worked for her brother Gilbert at Dinning Farm in Nithsdale. Life and character Agnes's siblings were Robert Burns (b. 25 January 1759); Gilbert (b. 28 September 1760); Annabella Burns (b. 14 November 1764); William (b. 30 July 1767); John (b. 10 July 1769); Isabella (b. 27 July 1771). Agnes Broun recalled that her husband only once took a strap to his children and that was to their daughter Agnes when she showed reluctance to pay attention to his reading lessons and that "..it had had a good effect upon the child's temper."