Biography
Advocate. Son of Robert Hepburn (1698-1756) and Ann Swinton (1700-1742). Married (1761) to Isabella Mitchelson. The couple had at least 8 children.
Sometime Commissioner of Customs.1
- 1Cf. The Gentleman's Magazine (Jan 1798).
Life with Boswell
Boswell was almost of the same age as Hepburn and possibly knew him from the University at Edinburgh. On October 28, 1762, he went to John Mitchelson's to wait for Hepburn and his wife, Mitchelson's daughter. He wrote in his journal that "I was somewhat hurt to see a young fellow of twenty, possessed of twelve hundred a year, tied down to a woman elder than himself, not pretty and low bred".