When the sister of David Livingstone passed away in 1895, the Glasgow Herald wrote:
“It does not appear seemly that Janet Livingstone, the eldest sister of the great missionary and explorer, and the last but one of the Blantyre family of which David Livingstone was a member, should be laid to rest in the Hamilton Cemetery without some tribute to her memory. “
“The Livingstone family consisted of two daughters and three sons, born in the following order – John, David, Janet, Charles, and Agnes. The youngest son has been dead many years; David, as the world knows, found a resting place in our national Valhalla in 1874; but the two sisters, Janet and Agnes, have lived on in quiet retirement until the present year.”
“Until a few years ago, their home was at Hamilton in the modest cottage built for them by their famous brother. It was many a privilege to visit them often there, and to gaze upon many precious relics of the great dead Chief and most pathetic of these was the last note-book of their brother, in which one read in faint pencil writing the final tremulous words put down by his dying hand on the banks of the Molilamo.”
“The two sisters would show these relics without the least approach to ostentation, though one might detect in the tone of voice with which they spoke of “the doctor” a sense of quiet satisfaction that he had been the instrument of doing such a noble work.”
“Janet was the stronger of the two, and so, though the elder, outlived Agnes by six years, one reaching her 77th and the other her 71st year. Janet was tall and stalwart, and bore a distinct family likeness to David; Agnes was slight and frail, but possessed a nimbler soul. Both were excellent talkers. Janet in a slow and subdued, Agnes in a bright and vivacious manner. Janet was with her brother while he was writing his first book, and it was also she who saved from the flames, to which he had committed them, a handful of the pages of the MS of that volume. One of those pages the sisters were kind enough to place in my possession.”
The home of Janet Livingstone in Hamilton is pictured at Peacock Cross, Hamilton. There is a myth that Explorer DAVID LIVINGSTONE once lived here, but he didn’t. Having researched this extensively, there is no evidence in valuation rolls or any census to suggest this was the home of David, despite a little fairly modern plaque outside the house suggesting this. This was the home of his sisters who at first rented, before buying the property in latter years. Livingstone was in Africa or had passed away for the years his sisters lived here. Still there is a connection to the Great Explorer.
