Biography | Adam Smith — Buried in His Own Lair at Canongate Kirk

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Adam Smith was buried in the parish yard beside the house where he died.

The Canongate register for July 1790 records the burial on the 22nd: Adam Smith Esq., in his own burial place, aged 68 years, died of a decay.

James Hamilton was the undertaker.

He had died five days earlier at Panmure House, a short walk through Lochend Close.

The lair was already a family ground.

His mother Margaret Douglas had been buried here in May 1784; his cousin Janet Douglas followed in October 1788.

The stone that now faces the path names him as author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and of the Wealth of Nations, and it gives the dates 5 June 1723 and 17 July 1790.

The first of those dates is the baptism recorded at Kirkcaldy, not a proven birthday.

The monument is associated with Robert Adam.

Canongate Kirkyard sits at 153 Canongate, across from the Museum of Edinburgh, inside an active churchyard.

The grave lies to the left as you face the kirk, toward the front corner of the yard.

Keep voices down and do not photograph other mourners.

Hours are posted at the gate.

This is the afterlife pin, not the death pin.

The death belongs to the townhouse behind the close.

What the kirkyard holds is the choice the parish made: a customs commissioner and moral philosopher laid in his own ground, a few yards from the Mile, under a stone that still uses the title of both books.

Photo: grave of Adam Smith, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait etching after James Tassie's 1787 medallion, public domain.