The family belonged originally to the Borders, but certain of them having been engaged in the Jacobite rising of 1715, they came north to Perthshire, under the protection of the Duke of Perth, and settled on a farm near Dunkeld.

Other matters which occupied the attention of the council during the three years above mentioned were the abolition of the office of public executioner; the preparation of a memorial to the Commissioners on Burghs, asking that a stipendiary magistrate be appointed and paid for by government; the demolition of the old East Church, built in the latter quarter of the fifteenth century, and the erection of the present structure.

[1] Provost James Blaikie died suddenly in the vestibule of the old Town-House, on 3 October 1836, within a month of completing his third year of office.

His character, as sketched by Alexander Dyce Davidson who later married Blaikie's daughter, in the funeral sermon preached by him, was as follows : – " He was a man of thorough integrity, kindliness of heart, and unruffled evenness of temper.

The memory of Provost Blaikie is still kept green by the statue in marble – one of the earliest works of the late Sir John Steell, R.S.A.