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Ramsay died in 1757. An elderly female told a friend of mine that she remembered, when a girl, living as an apprentice with a milliner in the Grassmarket, being sent to Ramsay Garden to assist in making dead-clothes for the poet. She could recall, however, no particulars of the scene but the roses blooming in at the window of the death-chamber.

The poet’s house passed to his son, of the same name, eminent as a painter—portrait-painter to King George III. and his queen—and a man of high mental culture; consequently much a favourite in the circles of Johnson and Boswell. The younger Allan enlarged the house, and built three additional houses to the eastward, bearing the title of Ramsay Garden. At his death, in 1784, the property went to his son, General John Ramsay, who, dying in 1845, left this mansion and a large fortune to Mr Murray of Henderland. So ended the line of the poet. His daughter Christian, an amiable, kind-hearted woman, said to possess a gift of verse, lived for many years in New Street. At seventy-four she had the misfortune to be thrown down by a hackney-coach, and had her leg broken; yet she recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-eight. Leading a solitary life, she took a great fancy for cats. Besides supporting many in her own house, curiously disposed in bandboxes, with doors to go in and out at, she caused food to be laid out for others on her stair and around her house. Not a word of obloquy would she listen to against the species, alleging, when any wickedness of a cat was spoken of, that the animal must have acted under provocation, for by nature, she asserted, cats are harmless. Often did her maid go with morning messages to her friends, inquiring, with her compliments, after their pet cats. Good Miss Ramsay was also a friend to horses, and indeed to all creatures. When she observed a carter ill-treating his horse, she would march up to him, tax him with cruelty, and, by the very earnestness of her remonstrances, arrest the barbarian’s hand. So also, when she saw one labouring on the street, with the appearance of defective diet, she would send rolls to its master, entreating him to feed the animal. These peculiarities, although a little eccentric, are not unpleasing; and I cannot be sorry to record them of the daughter of one whose heart and head were an honour to his country.