Meeting grandad - the meeting I never knew about

I never knew either of my grandfathers.

Ernie Graham

My mother's father, Ernest Graham was born in Belfast in 1922, and was tragically killed in an industrial accident at Pembroke Dock in October 1972, where he was working as a boilermaker. A person who was supposed to be on a job that day did not turn up, and Ernie, on his day off, volunteered to take his place. A scaffold he then worked on suddenly collapsed beneath him, and he tragically fell to his death. I was only 2 years old, and never had the chance to meet him. In recent times, I did manage to hear an echo of his life, via two letters that he wrote in the 1950s. I had written an article about an earlier family generation in the UK's Your Family Tree magazine, and had included a family tree chart showing how I connected to that person via Ernie. A reader recognised his name, and contacted me to inform me that her parents were very great friends of Ernie, her father having worked with him as a boilermaker in Aden. She sent me copies of photos that her parents had taken of my own grandparents - one of which I in fact already owned - and also two letters. The words in the letters not only told me about activities in his life in the 1950s, but also allowed me for the first time to hear his own 'voice'. It was my grandfather talking, not to me, but to a friend from another time and another place.

Charlie Paton, outside his wireless shop in Belfast

My father's father, Charles Paton, was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1905, to two Scottish parents. He survived the occupation of Brussels in the First World War, later moved to Northern Ireland, survived an encounter again with the Germans during the Belfast Blitz, served in the RAF and later worked as a wireless shop manager. I have spent many years finding out about Charlie also, and have even been to Belgium to trace his war story there as a child civilian, having been enthralled by his life story. My father did not get on with him, however, and I sadly never got to meet him, particularly tragic as I returned from Britain to live in Northern Ireland in 1979, and never knew that Charlie lived down the road from us in Donaghadee. He died in 1987, when I was 17, and I have often wondered if I could have visited him if I had known he was so close. But a meeting with him was sadly not to be either.

Or so I thought... I am just back from a visit to Manchester to visit my mother, currently in hospital for a treatment - and she has just told me, out of the blue, that she actually met him in 1971, myself in tow. We were living in Scotland at the time, and she had returned home to see my aunt Sheila following my christening in Helensburgh, who had then taken her down to Donaghadee, along with my infant self, to see him. So it turns out, 13 years after I first started researching my family tree, that I now learn that I did in fact meet one of the ancestors I have always wanted to know more about.

I have met one of my grandfathers, but what I know of him now still comes from a pile of documents and recollections of others. I have heard the voice of another from an echo on a few sheets of papers from half a century before, but in a conversation to someone else.

But what I wouldn't give to trade all those documents for a ten minute chat with either of them today.

Tailzies in Skelmorlie

(The following is something I published a couple of years back - I was intending to update it, but some bizarre Google formatting would not go, so instead I have just republished it as a new post!)

Just down the road from where I live in Largs is a small village called Skelmorlie, right on the border between the historic counties of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. The following account describes how the lands of Skelmorlie were 'entailed' through a device known as a 'tailzie', and how the terms of the tailzie were redefined by subsequent generations. To set the scene, a wee bit first about the use of tailzies within inheritance from a book I had published in 2010, Researching Scottish Family History:

"A landowner could actually dictate the course of his land’s disposal long after his death by creating a deed called a tailzie, through which he could lay down a series of conditions that had to be adhered to. The breach of such conditions could actually force his successor to give up the land altogether. Tailzies can be extremely useful in identifying entire families, as they would list the name of the person to whom the land should go upon the death of the present incumbent, but also suggest alternative lines should that person die."

Also

"Often within a tailzie, if the line of inheritance should fall onto a daughter or other female member of the family, a condition would be set whereby she could only inherit the land if she first married somebody with the same surname as the creator of the tailzie, or somebody who would be willing to take on that name. In addition, that husband would also have to assume the set of Arms inherited by his wife, and in effect legally become a member of that family as if he had done so from birth. This would allow the identity of that family, and more importantly, the political weight of that family name, to remain undiminished in an area. Such arrangements were recorded in the Register of Tailzies from 1688... Land could be removed from a tailzie, or ‘disentailed’, from 1848 onwards, the details of which are also included in the register."

OK, here goes then - back to Skelmorlie!

On August 27th 1728 Hugh Montgomerie entailed the vicarage teinds and ten pound lands of Skelmorlie, along with additional lands in Renfrewshire at Lochliboside, Hartfield and Ormsheugh. The tailzie decreed the land should go back to his nephew, Sir Robert, Baronet, and then on to Robert's eldest male heir; but if the male lines failed, to continue to the first female line and then to her first male heir, etc. The heirs-entailed were to adopt the name of ‘Montgomerie of Skelmorlie’ and to use the family arms. When Sir Robert predeceased his uncle in 1731, the land soon found its way to his eldest daughter, Lilias Montgomerie.

Lilias was subsequently able to dispose of Lochliboside and Hartfield through an Act of Parliament granted in 1757. As they were entailed, a condition of the sale was that any money raised would have to be used to purchase lands contiguous to Skelmorlie, to then be entailed in place of the original land. To satisfy this condition, she purchased the lands of Coilsfield from her husband, Alexander Montgomerie, and in November 1757 a new deed was drawn up by the couple entailing these lands together.

In June 1774, Lilias executed a further deed in favour of her eldest son Hugh Montgomerie, Esq, Captain in the 1st Regiment of Foot, granting him and his heirs the lands of “the vicarage teinds of Skelmorlie and Montgomerie, the ten pound land of old extent of Skelmorlie, the lands of Ormandsheugh” and the “lands and estate of Coilfield”. This was never entered into the Register of Tailzies, but Hugh Montgomerie (later to inherit the Earldom of Eglinton in 1796 from a third cousin), became infeft under it in June 1774, as confirmed in a sasine in August later that year. Hugh further obtained a charter in 1784, confirming the deed of 1757 regarding the purchase of Coilfield and the disposal of Lochliboside and Hartfield, which also reconfirmed the deed of 1774. He continued to live within Skelmorlie until his death in December 1819.

Hugh Montgomerie was succeeded as Earl of Eglinton by his grandson, Archibald, who inherited both the village and the main Skelmorlie estate. Upon considering the legality of his grandfather’s deed of 1774, which he deemed to be the creation of a new title separate to that described in the previous tailzie set down by Lilias Montgomerie, and as it had not been registered within the Register of Tailzies, he felt bold enough to be able to sell not just the land of Coilfield, in 1838, but also his lands in Skelmorlie in the following year.

As the lands were believed by others to have been entailed under the earlier tailzies, Hugh's actions were challenged but his judgement on the validity of the 1774 charter was upheld by the Court of Appeal in 1843, which decreed that the document's wording was broad enough to allow for acts of sale. It therefore agreed that he could dispose of the lands and that the profits from the sales did not have to be reinvested into the purchase of new lands. The land was effectively disentailed 5 years before a new act of parliament made such an action a lot easier.

So that's a wee bit on the shenanigans that could surround tailzies!

Some recommended reading on Skelmorlie's history and the above case:

ANON. (1791-99) The Parish of Largs, By a Friend to Statistical Enquiries, Sinclair, Sir John.

BELL, S. S. (1843) Cases Decided in the House of Lords on Appeal from the Courts of Scotland, Session of Parliament 1843, Vol. 2, The House of Lords.

DOW, R. J. (1842) The Parish of Largs, Presbytery of Greenock, Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London.

GROOME, F. H. (1882-84) Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland. Edinburgh, T. C. Jack.

PATERSON, J. (1852) History of the County of Ayr with a Genealogical Account of the families of Ayrshire.

SMART, W. (1968a) Skelmorlie: The Story of the Parish Consisting of Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay. The Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay Community Centre.

NB: For more on the world of Scottish land and property inheritance, read my book Discover Scottish Land Records - available in print from www.gould.com.au/Discover-Scottish-Land-Records-p/utp0283.htm or as an ebook from www.gen-ebooks.com.

Chris

All hail the conquering heir...!

So you've read the books, and they tell you that Scotland is a wee bit different to the rest of the UK in how land was inherited - for one thing, land could not be conveyed in a Scottish will until 1868, three centuries after the same thing happened in England. You may also be aware that as such, one possible and very separate way to formally inherit land was to go through a process called the Services of Heirs, whereby a jury confirmed who you said you were, before you could take possession of the inheritance.

So far so good... except, that this does not even begin to cover the many potential complexities surrounding the issue of inheritance!

Take, for example, conquest. By that I don't mean a person going out with a warhammer and clubbing his enemies into submission, but the Scottish legal term for a specific part of the property or land that an heir might inherit. Land that had previously been inherited from a relative or ancestor was known as heritage - but land that was purchased in a person's lifetime, received as a gift, or even obtained by way of an exchange (excambion), had the very different designation of conquest. And in certain circumstances, the person who inherited the conquest was not necessarily the person who inherited the heritage.

Under Scots Law, land was historically conveyed to an heir since the days of old, when the knights were bold, via the rules of primogeniture - so to a first born son, but if he died, to the next eldest son, and so on. If there were no sons, it then went to all the surviving daughters in equal shares (they became known as heirs portioners). If the deceased had no children, however, what would then happen to his estate? That's when it gets interesting!

If the deceased had one brother, either younger or older, all the estate - both the heritage and the conquest - went to the other brother. But if the deceased had an older brother and a younger brother, that's when something very unusual happened - the heritage went to the younger brother, as the next heir of line, but the conquest went to the older brother, as the heir of conquest. As a law in Scotland, this continued right up to 1874.

A simple rule summed up the process - heritage descends, conquest ascends.

But what if there were no brothers? Then it went to the uncles - the heritage to the next youngest brother of the deceased's father, the conquest to the next oldest brother of the deceased's father. And there could be many other combinations of the property going in different directions.

Just for good measure - conquest, when it passed to an heir of conquest, was only ever designated as such the once. When the heir of conquest later died, the conquest he had previously inherited in his lifetime would at this point be designated as heritage, and inherited by his heirs through the normal route of primogeniture. The conquest he had personally obtained in his lifetime - by purchase, gift or exchange - would, however, be designated as conquest until it was inherited, and later became heritage in its own right. (Still with me?!)

The bottom line is, never take anything for granted with Scottish genealogical or land history research - it is wonderfully complicated!

For more on Scottish land records and inheritance, my book Discover Scottish Land Records is available in paperback from Gould Genealogy at http://www.gould.com.au/Discover-Scottish-Land-Records-p/utp0283.htm or via PDF format ebook (slightly cheaper and no postage!) at http://www.gen-ebooks.com.

Good hunting!

Chris

Youthful indiscretion in the First World War

For a few years now I have been working on a project to try to identify those British civilians (and civilians from the British Empire) who were interned at the Ruhleben internment camp near Berlin during the First World War (see http://ruhleben.tripod.com). My interest comes from the fact that my great uncle John Brownlie Paton was interned there in 1916, just a few months after the death of my great grandfather David Hepburn Paton in Brussels in April of that year. My own family story fascinates me no end (but then again, whose doesn't?!) but occasionally I come across wee gems that just add another insightful glimpse into the attitudes of society at that time.

I am currently working through a series of Foreign Office file images from the National Archives at Kew, which contain various lists of people who were interned, as well as some additional details. The files were sourced from FO 369/710. Amongst them was the following tale of a young lad who was living in Germany when the war broke out, and who should have perhaps kept his opinions to himself about the war!

Harold Ewart Crick was one of two lads who in the eyes of the British had been unjustly arrested by the Germans and imprisoned in Berlin. They had been detained as 'seamen' (i.e. merchant seamen). The American Legation, acting as an intermediary for the British with the Germans prior to their own entering the war, was asked to look into his case, with the British summary of his plight as follows:

Harold Ewart Crick. "in prison for making defamatory statements about Germany".

This boy wrote a letter, which under the circumstances must be at least described as foolish, to his mother in this country, and Mrs Crick sent it to the "Times" for publication - without giving the boy's name or address. The German authorities identified the writer, who has since been imprisoned.

Could we not ask that the matter may again be put before the German Government, urging that in view of the period of imprisonment already under-gone by Crick, a sufficient punishment has now been meted out to him for his youthful indiscretion? It may be added that the boy is stated to be very delicate, having been frequently in the hands of doctors for heart trouble, and that he is also of an epileptic tendency. 

For good measure, the newspaper clipping from October 9th 1914 is also included, with the offending letter included as follows:

My dear Mother, - At last a chance of writing to you a decent letter. We are quite well here, and as happy as can be expected. The feeling here has undergone a decided change during the last fortnight. At first everybody thought the Germans were going to have a kind of picnic, and that all would be over by Christmas. Now, however, they are not nearly so hopeful. We hear the wildest stories about the brutalism and cowardice of the British troops, which everybody believes. They call every battle a victory here, which, if it wasn't so sickening, would be amusing.

Here everything is going on as if there was no war at all, except that we are overrun with soldiers. We have two quartered on us; they are very decent fellows, their patriotism being conspicuous by its absence.

You may depend upon it that the very day after peace has been signed aunt and I will go to E.; we are quite fed up with these dirty self-righteous Germans.

According to their papers the only army which contains any brave men is the German. Whenever they lose, it is by the meanness of the British, who have no respect for the laws of humanity or any other laws.

They bate us most. They say we forced France and Russia to make the war, and are responsible  for every unfortunate happening since the world began, including the Flood. The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah have been proved to be direct ancestors of the British!

Be sure and treasure up the newspapers. If you come across a German be as kind to him as you can. "Heaping coals of fire".

Fortunately, the outcome of the appeal was a happy one for young Harold:

Crick has now been released and has safely returned to England. 

Boys will be boys...!

(With thanks to Simon Fowler)

Chris

RIP Auntie Sheila

A week ago my father's sister, my aunt Sheila, passed away in Belfast after a seven year battle with cancer. The funeral was on Thursday, but as often the case at such events, you never really get a chance to say how much someone means to you. So I want you all to know about my Aunt Sheila!

Sheila & my father in Eden

Sheila Elizabeth Cobby, nee Paton, was born in Belfast on Valentine's Day in 1943, in the middle of the Second World War. Her father Charlie and mum Jean had been residing in the city's Whitewell area, where two years before their house had been damaged during the Belfast Blitz. Her father, a wireless shop manager, was born in Belgium to two Scots, and spent the First World War in Brussels as a small child during the occupation by the Germans. Her mother, a Glaswegian, was descended from family of an Irish protestant background in Derry, and had only moved to Belfast in the late 1930s. Sheila was the third of four children, with two older brothers Robert and Charlie, and a younger brother Colin, born just after the war.

When her parents separated in the mid 1950s, Sheila and her mum briefly returned to Scotland. They made their way north to Auchterarder in Perthshire, where Sheila's mother (my grandmother) had already obtained work as a domestic servant at the huge Gleneagles Hotel, her job being to supervise the laundry in the hotel etc. Sheila had to stay in the village with a lady called Mrs. King and her son, Charles, and was enrolled into a local school in the town, having to wear a uniform of maroon and grey.

In Carrick

(I once asked Sheila what events made her proud in her life. There were the obvious - her marriage, her daughter, and so on - but she also told me that when she was young in Auchterarder she was always forced to sneak into the back door of Gleneagles Hotel, and up a small stone, spiral staircase to secretly meet up with her mother whenever she could. She was never allowed in through the front door. Years later, she took much pride, when, having won a prestigious golf tournament in Belfast, for which the first prize was a weekend at the Gleneagles Hotel, she could actually walk through the front door of the place as a guest, without any objection from the staff.)

Sheila and her mum returned to Northern Ireland not long after, and when her mum regained custody of the three boys, they all moved to Carrickfergus, further north along the shore of Belfast Lough. They initially stayed in the village of Eden, but not long after relocated to Joymount in the town itself, residing at Robinson's Row. In the late 1950s, Sheila developed polio, and it was believed that she would never walk again in her lifetime. She was treated at Purdysburn Hospital in Belfast, and at one point, when it was believed that the virus had reached her brain, things did not look good for her. She once told me that she remembered the nurses saying that they might have to call her father in to see her for a last time, but fortunately her condition improved and she was discharged from the hospital with a pair of calipers to help her when walking. She overcame her polio with sheer grit and determination.

As a teenager, Sheila worked for Betty Wilson in Dobbins Inn Hotel in Carrickfergus. With the money she earned from here, Sheila was the first to buy a Mini car in the town in the 1960s. She later worked at Dunmore race course.

Wedding - with her father, Colin & Charlie

Sheila later married Allen Cobby, a merchant seaman, in Hull. She gave birth to her daughter when living at Carnmoney, County Antrim, at a place she had bought prior to meeting Allen. About six years later, the family moved to Waterloo Park North just off the Belfast Road in the city's Fortwilliam area. Many years later she also became a grandmother to Australian born Lauren. Sheila worked as a saleswoman all over Ireland, and eventually retired in April 2003. As already mentioned, she loved her golf, and was one of Northern Ireland's top amateur golfers. In the 1980s, she was lady captain of both Carrickfergus Golf Club and Fortwilliam Golf Club in Belfast, and was a member of the Irish Ladies Golf Union.

Sheila had no time for the sectarian nonsense still happening in Ireland - politically she was a member of the Alliance party, with as many Catholic friends as Protestant. When I married my Irish Catholic wife Claire in Kilkenny in 2000, Sheila was the only member of my extended family to bother coming to the service from Northern Ireland - and in Kilkenny today my wife's brothers still toast "Auntie Sheila", she made quite an impact! Nobody told Sheila where the boundaries were, she was capable of making her own mind up in such matters. In that regard she was a true hero, and there are not enough like her.

Overall, if there is one word that describes Sheila's approach to life it was a 'grafter' - she worked hard to get where she got to, overcoming extraordinary odds and challenges.

Sheila at my wedding in June 2000

When I was baptised on the submarine HMS Churchill in January 1971, Sheila was there as my godmother.  When my parents split up in the late 1970s, and my brother and I returned to Northern Ireland with my father, it was Sheila who came and picked us up from the ferry. As lady captain in Carrickfergus Golf Club, it was my aunt Sheila who first introduced me to scampi in a basket! When I gained a place at university in Bristol in 1991, for various reasons I was unable to get funding for my first year. I took a job in Belfast as a security guard to save up to pay my fees, and Sheila put me up in her house for the summer. When I worked a 12 hour shift, and sometimes 24, I would return to her house to find something in a pot on the stove and the electric blanket in the bedroom I was staying in always switched on. When my first son Calum was born, it was she who bought him his first soft toy, a wee blue rabbit called "Floppity"!

I can hear her now - "Now Christopher, let me tell you, have you nothing better to be doing with your time than writing all this nonsense?"

RIP Auntie Sheila, you will be much missed...

And make way Big Yin, there's a Paton coming - and she'll be making sure your handicap gets better on the big celestial golf course in the sky!

Carrick Golf Club Ladies annual dinner, abt 1981

After my christening in Helensburgh

Ladies Captain's Day at Carrickfergus Golf Club, 1981

On a winning streak!

The Scottish Cemetery at Kolkata, India

Known as Calcutta until 2001, the West Bengal city of Kolkata was founded on the banks of the River Hooghly in 1690 as a trading post for the English East India Company. Soon after its foundation, and the union in 1707 between Scotland and England, thousands of British migrants were making there way to the settlement to partake of the economic opportunities that soon followed - particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries, when the city was the centre of the Company’s opium trade, with the locally grown opium crop shipped to China after auction. Kolkata remained the capital of the British Raj until 1911.

The Scottish Cemetery was established in Kolkata about a mile and half from the original British cemetery site at North Park Street, and was opened shortly after the construction of St. Andrew’s Church at Dalhousie Square in 1818. The kirk, now part of the Church of India, was the first adhering to the Church of Scotland to be built in India, and was raised to cater for an ever growing Scottish contingent within the Kolkata population. Amongst its worshippers were migrants from Dundee who came to develop and work within the city’s fledgling jute industry, building new jute mills and facilitating the export of raw materials from India back to the Highland city for processing. Other settlers from Scotland included industrialists, soldiers, and missionaries. Between eighty and ninety per cent of the burials are believed to be of Scots, with the remainder comprising of Christian Bengalis, and adherents to non-Anglican faiths, such as members of the English and Welsh dissenting churches.

Many of the monuments in the cemetery were constructed from Aberdeen granite, with others from brick and lime mortar, and remain in good condition, despite the deterioration of the site. The monuments were extensively photographed in November 2008 by the RCAHMS, with most of the images recorded now available to view on its Canmore database at http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/search/?keyword=Kolkata&submit=search. From a genealogical point of view, the images provide a great deal of information for those who may have ancestors buried there. A good example is that of James Miller, who died in Calcutta on November 2nd 1918, with his stone recording that he was ‘aged 27 years, dearly loved and only son of Alexander & Jeanne Miller, Inverkeithing, Scotland’.

Whilst the cemetery was believed to have commenced its burials in the early 1820s, it is thought that the last bodies to be interred there were done so during the 1960s. The monumental styles discovered by the survey team ranged from very ornate classical monuments and urns to the most simplistic inscribed headstones. Amongst some of the more interesting discoveries on the site were the graves of a Glasgow iron master named Boyle, a director of Calcutta’s zoological gardens, and the Reverend John Adam, noted as a ‘late Missionary to the heathen…’. Within the site, James Wilson of Hawick is also believed to lie, who in addition to introducing a paper currency and income tax into India was also the founder of the Economist magazine in Britain.

For more on the RCAHMS visit in 2008, see its dedicated blog at http://scottishcemeterykolkata.wordpress.com.

Chris

Convict blood - thanks to a horsewhipping

I've just been playing with the online offerings of FindmyPast Australasia (www.findmypast.com.au) as part of my world subscription on FindmyPast.com, and was surprised to make an unusual discovery about the husband of one of my family members. David Bell was the husband of Helen Paton, the sister of my three times great grandfather William Paton, the couple having married in the Scottish city of Perth in 1836. In 1849 both David and Helen emigrated to Queensland on board the Chaseley with their family, and to this day at the city's Kangaroo Point there exists two streets named after them, Paton Street and Bell Street. Two years ago I actually managed to walk down both streets, as I recalled some time ago on this blog at http://walkingineternity.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/paton-street-flag-on-moon.html

David Bell initially worked for a Captain Robert Towns for several years after his arrival, his obituary many years later stating that he did this in the 'early fifties', where he managed punts between Brisbane and Ipswich, before building his own hardware store in Stanley Street in 1863. In 1868, when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Brisbane, David was one of the fully costumed Brisbane Highlanders to personally greet him at Queen’s Park. A newspaper article from May 1871 showed that as part of his Highland outfit, David had commissioned a local Brisbane craftsman to make him an expensive ornamented dirk, to promote the talents of the settlement’s skilled silversmiths. David clearly had some standing in the community - which makes the following story all the more remarkable!

The FindmyPast.com site has surprisingly revealed that David was briefly imprisoned on December 5th 1856, the entry confirming that it was the correct person by noting his arrival on the Chaseley in 1849 (Brisbane Gaol. Register of prisoners admitted & discharged 1856 -1859, PRI 1/25, Column Or Folio:267). The record notes him to have been a storekeeper at this point also, though he was clearly still working for someone else, as identified from the following newspaper article from the Moreton Bay Courier of Saturday December 6th 1856, which explained what happened:

POLICE COURT: Yesterday, David Bell and James Bryon were charged by Mr. Souter, of South Brisbane, with assaulting him on the 28th of last month. It appears, though the facts did not come out at the Police Court, that Mr. Souter had had some differences with a gentleman, also resident in South Brisbane, and had taken the liberty of chastising him with a horsewhip, which he borrowed for the purpose from one of the defendants, but without informing him as to the use to which it was to be applied. Both defendants are in the employment of the party alluded to; and the one who lent the whip to Mr. Souter, feeling exasperated at being made the innocent instrument in the chastisement of his employer, took the first opportunity of making an attack on Mr. Souter, in which he was assisted by his fellow employee. Mr. Little appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr Ocock for the defendants. The assault being proved, both defendants were sentenced to two months' imprisonment.

Either David or James had lent a horsewhip to Souter, who immediately began to assault their employer with it! In retaliation they struck Souter - and they were the pair convicted of assault! There's justice for you...

It's not many who can claim a badge of honour by stating that they have family that gained convict blood after it reached Oz. But all credit to David and James - I think I would probably have done the same!

NB: for newspaper coverage in Australia, visit the excellent Trove website at http://trove.nla.gov.au

Chris