Youngest daughter of Col. James Cochrane of Ochiltree and Culross (1690-1758) and Margaret Hawkison. She was a first cousin of Boswell's mother, Euphemia Erskine, as her father was the brother of Boswell's maternal grandmother, Euphemia Cochrane.
Married firstly (1750) to Henry Carey Hamilton (b. ca. 1708, d. 1754) of Holycross. Married secondly (1759) to Nathaniel Gould. One of her sisters was Mary Ann Cochrane (d. 1780), who married the Dublin attorney Robert Sibthorpe.
While she had no children of her own from either marriage, she became stepmother to the young children of her second husband, Fanny and Bulkeley (see Nathaniel Gould for further details).
Boswell first visited the Goulds in London on December 2, 1762. Despite his kinship with Mrs. Gould, he had not met the family prior to this occasion. Over the following months, he dined with them frequently and greatly enjoyed their company.
Nevertheless, on January 6, 1763, Mrs. Gould teasingly chided Boswell for not visiting often enough. Ironically, just the day before, Lady Betty Macfarlane had joked that Boswell's "weakness is that he would prefer Mrs. Gould's to this [the company of Macfarlane and her family]."