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Out of India

Three siblings, born in North East India in the 1880s. My grandmother and her two brothers. When their father died, the children were brought back to Scotland by their mother. The brothers would return to Raj India as adults and it would shape their lives. But my grandmother? She didn’t have their opportunities, even if she had wanted to, and became a wife and mother in Scotland.

I had almost no information about my great uncles, and they were hard to find. Here, I’m just going to describe what I know about their childhood with my grandmother, and how I found them, as one way to introduce the various Stevenson stories.

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Bricking it

Not only did I know nothing about my family’s brick-making business, it turns out that I knew nothing about bricks, and how brick-making, ironstone-mining, shale-oil and coal-mining were connected to those awful blaize / blaze / blaes school hockey and football pitches. Scottish kids like me who fell face-first onto this brutal surface will never forget it. You might have experienced the same thing on something you knew as a “cinder” track. But for me it will always be “blaes” (this spelling is new to me), though the word now conjours up more than just skint knees.

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A Toffee Triumph

On his wedding certificate (17th April 1913) my father’s uncle David (David Laughland Scobbie of Beechworth, Newarthill), was described as a brickwork salesman. But Elizabeth Mitchell, our family genealogy guru, noted that he was “owner of Triumph Confectionery, Wishaw”. And I vaguely recall that my father said his uncle and aunt “ran a sweetie shop”. Occasionally I’ve searched google half-heartedly to find out what he really was, but with no results. Time to find out more.
Spoiler alert: num-num-num!

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Jolly Hockey Sticks!

My father’s four sisters went to fee-paying Laurel Bank School in Glasgow, one of a triumvirate of girls’ schools along with Westbourne and Park. All have now merged in one way or another. Point is… I’ve got a bunch of hockey team photos from the later 1920s, some of them with names on; so I thought I’d put them online. Do you recognise a relative? Can you name someone? Do leave a comment!

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David Laughland Scobbie and Marion Young Dick

This was going to be just a set of photos, presenting images of a handsome boy who became a distinguished-looking man. He was my father’s Uncle David, whose ninety years and more spanned the major events of recent history (14 Jul 1886 – 25 Feb 1978). Even though I was a teenager by 1978, I never met him, or his wife Marion Young Dick (27 Aug 1884 – 30 Jul 1978). I’m not even sure how her name was pronounced. I’ve heard her name pronounced as if it started “Mary” with the vowel from FACE, rather than starting like “marry”, as would be expected.[1] This post is now more than photos. It’s a wee biography of the couple, and where they lived in Uddingston in Lanarkshire, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for others.

For David’s toffee factory in Craigneuk, Wishaw, go here.

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The Aitkens’ Coin-Glass Goblet

We have an antique vase from 1889. We didn’t know what it was, and more importantly we didn’t know who it was made for. Thanks to research then replies to this blog, the mysteries are solved (mostly). Wonderfully, we have heard from a descendant of the couple whose marriage it was made to commemorate (see below). The goblet is large (30cm tall with a 4 pint capacity) and beautifully engraved, with a floral thistle theme and pictorial images of Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood House. The lead crystal rings like a bell when tapped. And it has two coins/medals inside a blown glass cavity (“knop”) at the foot of its stem. 

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Two (well, three) men called Archibald Taylor – for Armistice Day

My aunt’s family history is convoluted, complex and interesting, the complexity providing a good training in genealogy. Some elements are stark and simple. The death of her mother’s first husband in WW1, the “Great War”, and of their son, her (half) brother in WW2… they were both killed in action. That’s pretty straightforward. You’d think.

It took a while, but now I know who’s who. I still know nothing personal about these men. Nor their lives before or during the wars that killed them. I am not really related to them (my mother’s sister-in-law’s mother’s first husband & son) in any clear way. But the centenary of the armistice in 1918 is a good time for a minding, and for me to mind them in particular. And some others. We are all connected. Me the writer; you the reader; and the dead. I know these soldiers’ bare details, a little general context, and something about what happened to those they left behind, but apart from that… their personalities, hopes and dreams? They are unknown to me.  But here they are.

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Six Kinnis siblings in Ledaig, Argyll

John Kinnis and Janet Black immigrated to Ardchattan to live at South Ledaig Farm just north of what is now the Connel Bridge to farm, living there together during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th.  None of their six children married, so the family and Kinnis name have evaporated locally, despite the six lifetimes and more lived in this beautiful area of Scotland. It would be nice to know more about them, and to know if such an “insular” experience was normal or unusual. Maybe they were sociable pillars of the community or perhaps they led an isolated existence. Were they happily self-sufficient?  They will never speak for themselves, but perhaps there are some folk memories (or photographs) of the family out there.

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Diamond and Gold and “Ruby”

Today, July 3rd, is a day to celebrate a long-lasting marriage. Fifteen years after the 1913 garden photograph on the eve of the Great War, discussed elsewhere, a Golden Wedding was celebrated, and ten years after that, in 1938, a much larger family of descendants and their spouses gathered with a photographer for group and individual shots that are full of formality and charm. The 1938 celebration was for the Diamond Wedding anniversary (60 years) of James Scobbie (1853-1943) and Williamina (“Mina”) Black Laughland (1852-1945), who were natives, neighbours and notable lifelong residents of Newarthill, a coal-mining village in Lanarkshire, Scotland. They were married by Mina’s father 140 years ago today, in 1878. The anniversary was written up in the local papers in 1928, 1938, and 1943 (a so-called “Ruby” anniversary), providing excellent detail of their lifelong relationship.

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Inheriting privilege

So far, Noisybrain is full of “privilege”.  This is what I think about it.

At the bottom of this posting is a list of recommended people’s family / history stories chosen in part because they differ from my own initial postings here. First, a surprisingly long discussion:

  1. The modern meaning of privilege (with an aside about institutional patronage and those angry, annoying, patronising internet cartoons and discussions).
  2. A  genealogical perspective, both specific and general, on why this topic is so relevant and helping in augmenting and interpreting the bare binary bones of family tree ancestry: family history people are generally pretty interested in the loss and acquisition of privilege down the generations.
  3. A nod to the much broader genetic or population perspective.
  4. The Scottish context, with a little history of the Highlands, Lowlands and Ireland, and a reminder that there are a variety of the ways in which an ancestor’s lack of privilege plays out for their descendants. Obviously us Scots are not all the same, but less obviously privilege can vary a lot even within a single family.
  5. A change of perspective, to the continuing diversity in privilege within contemporary Scotland, with a focus on the “Glasgow Effect”, one of the negative legacies of our economic and social history (which seems set to continue).
  6. A brief reminder that one of the national legacies of the British Empire and European colonialism has been, from a global perspective, Scotland’s relative privilege.
  7. A conclusion that reminds us there is diversity everywhere, even in a homogeneous family, while stating the obvious fact that there are far more extreme examples, and that it’s the latter that are more important in contemporary society.
  8. The links to blogs, books, podcasts and so on. Continue reading “Inheriting privilege” →
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The long summer of 1913

This Scottish summertime photograph, helpfully labelled on the back, celebrates the 35th (so-called coral) wedding anniversary of James Scobbie and Mina Laughland on July 3rd 1913, just before WW1. For photos from their diamond wedding celebrations in 1938 just before WW2 along with newspaper biographies, see the post on their diamond, gold and “ruby” anniversaries. A looming war is invisible in photographs like this, if we can resist the temptation to use hindsight to pour meaning into the expressions of the people in these gapless gatherings.

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