] Here's information from the Feiling bio:

] `Mary Elliot had married Captain John Buchanan of Craigieven just before they sailed to India in 1753. [Buchanan died in the Black Hole of Calcutta.] ... his money chest was pillaged, and his wife with two infant daughters escaped to Fulta.' She married Hastings shortly after.

This was the one bit I copied from the State library. Some sources based on Gleig say she married a Campbell (I suspect this is one error by Gleig transcribed into all bigraphies based on his). How would one find army records for Cptn. John Buchanan who died in the Black Hole?

] (The refugees at Fulta, by the way, included `old Lady Russell' - who died there, as did many others.)

Tantalising isn't it? I am sure her family will trun out tpo be very significant to JA and Hastings.

] There's a later reference: `One of her daughters by Buchanan, perhaps both, had been sent home to their grandmother in Ireland,

No names then?

] I'm going to put something separate on the George Austen connection; and I'm sorry, I can't track down that reference to "letters to Auriol, in the posession of Sir Henry Dashwood".

Maybe in the bibliography?

] Feiling is seriously irritating: it's jammed full of facts and names,

Yep. Pretty dull. it's the one book on Hastings we've got here in the Perth State library.