Jun 13th, 2009

The wee shop on Waverley Street

I never saw this picture of my dad’s mother, Martha, until about 10 years ago.  She died, aged only 54,  thirteen years before I was born and I’m glad to say at the time of writing,  I’ve outlived her. She and a friend went to have their photograph taken in their best hats and furs in the early years of the 1920s. She wasn’t to know that before long, her world would collapse around her.

Martha Robertson Higgins (I’m fairly sure she would have been known as Matty, Matt or even Oor Matt) was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, the middle child of 12 children.  Her father Joseph was an underground fireman down the pit and he and mother Martha both came from Lanarkshire. It’s possible, though, that the Higginses hailed originally from Ireland.

In 1912, she married a coal miner (more…)

May 17th, 2009

Wartime weddings

It was 1942, bang in the middle of World War II. Two Cowan family weddings were planned – one for March and the other for June.  The first was the wedding of Daisy Cowan, my Dad’s only surviving sister.

Her name wasn’t really Daisy – it was Anne Brown Cowan (on her marriage certificate, she’s known as Annie).  The name’s important – she was named directly for her paternal grandmother Anne, who was born in India and married a Scottish solider. Family legend says that Daisy came about because somebody gazing into her pram, cooed ‘awww she looks like a wee daisy’.  It’s a nice story but of course it isn’t true – I’ve found a reference to the original Annie Brown being called Daisy.  For all I know, there are more – enough for a daisy chain perhaps?

At the age of 25, she was marrying Ian MacEwan, also 25 – whose real name was John. This happens a lot in Scottish families – Ian is an equivalent of John.  And then there’s Johns who become (more…)

May 16th, 2009

Thomas Cowan & half a life of soldiering

I’m poring over Thomas Cowan’s four-page service record that arrived a couple of days ago.

He joined up in 1860 to take the Queen’s shilling for 12 years – although what he actually got was “Two pounds and a free kit“. He was a 23 year old coal miner at the time – all six of the Cowan boys were down the pits, a brutal and badly-paid occupation.  I imagine the recruiting sergeants coming to the pit heads looking for likely recruits who’d swell the ranks of the lately depleted Army in India were met with open arms. Peter Bailey of Fibis tells me that

After the Indian Mutiny of  1857-1858/9, the European soldiers of the East India Company’s arnies were offered a choice to leave, with a bounty, or transfer to the British Army. About half transferred – but this left the remaining regiments a bit short of soldiers. Accordingly, fresh recruits were needed.

The second page is the meat of the record and would have accompanied Thomas throughout (more…)

May 15th, 2009

Have your ID ready, please

Identity is something we’re quite preoccupied with these days.  Identity theft and the issue of identity cards for the general population. And of course the ‘who do you think you are?’ generation.

For two of my ancestors, ID cards were a fact of life. Both carried them during periods when Britain was at war with Germany.  First, my father, Tom.

Tom, a policeman, had what was called a reserved occupation in World War II.   A Schedule of Reserved Occupations was drawn up in 1938 and included farmers and railwaymen as well as policemen. These jobs were regarded as vital to the country at home.  Nonetheless, Tom went to the recruiting offices of every armed service and tried to enlist.  He was turned down – because a stray cricket ball had punctured his eardrum (more…)

Oct 5th, 2008

The Indian connection

I’ve done a lot of work through the years on my family’s history.  Unable to contain myself, I’ve gone spinning off into distant cousins of great-great-grandfathers and the like, fascinated by the spreading web of family. Recently, I’ve begun to look at it again, and to focus on the couple who were my paternal great-grandparents.

He was a coalminer turned soldier, she the daughter of a soldier. The twist is that he served in the British Army in India, where he married her when she was aged only fourteen. And I think that her ancestry wasn’t totally British. Curiously, there appear to be no children from this marriage until five years later.  That was very unusual in those days. I wonder if he was posted away from home immediately after the marriage, or there were children, but these died from some tropical disease (cholera was very much a fact of life then).

He was posted back to England and their first child was born on the way in Cape Town. There were to be at least twelve (more…)