Kept the first burial register in her own hand for 32 years, unpaid.
Margaret Lyle ran the Elderbrook common school from 1840 and, when the cemetery opened, offered to keep its register "since I write a fair hand and the sexton does not." From 1847 to 1879 every burial at Hollowmere was entered by her, with notes on cause of death, the minister present and, often, the weather.
Those notes are why Hollowmere's early records are so complete. Genealogists know her entries for their small kindnesses: a stillborn child "given the name Hope by the mother," a drowned labourer whose name nobody knew, recorded as "a stranger, about thirty, with a scar on the left hand, buried at the town's charge."
Her original register is kept in the archive at the Lodge. A full transcription is searchable on this website.