May 19th, 2009
4 generations with 1 name
This photograph (professionally taken) is in the back garden of Retta Cottage at 2 Edward Street, Hamiton. Note the props: a rug has been flung over the fence to make a backdrop and there are potted aspidistras either side of the men. I think it was taken in or around 1933. The photo’s purpose was to show four generations of a family all named Robert Benson. I’m currently researching where and when this picture appeared and if a story was written to accompany it.
Edit: Thanks to some fantastic help from Angela at the Reference Library in Hamilton, I now know that this picture, captioned ‘The Four Robert Bensons‘, appeared in the Hamilton Advertiser for 13 May 1933. There wasn’t a story as such, just details of who the men in the photo were. Someday I’ll go and look at the original page in the newspaper.
The eldest Robert – he of the luxuriant mouser – was 82 here and had outlived two wives, Euphemia Baxter and Agnes Craig. He and Euphemia had 7 children, all boys. This accounts for the masses (and I do mean masses!) of Bensons who followed. Had it not already been a common name in the west of Scotland, Robert’s contribution (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 7th, 2009
Smile for the camera
Through a Twitter contact, I saw this and immediately thought of an old photo I have of my great-great grandfather which I’m going to submit.
It’s a studio portrait from the 1930s and he’s wearing his best tweed bunnet and watch chain. With him is his dog, whose name was Rover. I see that Rover is wearing not only a collar but what looks like an identity disc. I don’t know what occasioned the visit to the photographer in Hamilton and why he took the dog with him (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…)
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