Topic: A Breakthrough Moment.

I wasn’t getting very far with my wider Glasgow-based Johnston famiiy. Census entries were useful but not always to be trusted, with multiple common names like Charles, George, Peter and Mary.

I had established that my GGGF Charles Johnston was born in 1797 and died in 1848, and that he married Mary Learmonth in Glasgow. They had seven children including Charles b. 1817, plus George, Peter, Robert, Alexander, John and Mary. The elder Charles died in 1848 aged 56; he did not leave a will but I discovered a huge legal document signed by two of his sons and his wife, who ”… entered upon the management of the deceased’s personal Estate”. So I can be certain of his date of death.

I knew Charles was buried in the Southern Necropolis, Glasgow. So I contacted the Necropolis office in the hope that some more information would be forthcoming. It was!

they told me that either Charles or his son a younger Charles (born 1817) was the registered owner of a lair (grave), and there was a huge tombstone … (Incidentally I am very lucky to have this photo as I’ve been told it has since fallen over).

Curiously the top portion is engraved IS … 42 (Isaiah 42?). The property of Charles Johnston”. But which one? Charles Senior, born 1797, died in 1848; his son Charles (born 1817) and also his wife Isabella are known to have died before 1857. Their son, yet another Charles, was born about 1838 and died in 1857 – his death certificate says both his parents were deceased.

The monument has Charles’ name and two others. One is George Johnston (d. 1906), son of Charles and Isabella; the other is Jessie Johnston, who was George’s wife. The surprise was that another five people aged between 2 months and 82 years, who died between 1848 and 1935, were also interred in this lair according to the Necropolis office – who helpfully gave me full details of their names, death dates and ages.

With all these names and the certain knowledge that they were part of my wider family, I was able to expand my family tree. Modern-day DNA matching has turned up several distant cousins all easily traceable to Charles Johnston and Mary Learmonth.

As to why the second Charles and his wife Isabella were not buried there, I surmise that either there is another undiscovered lair nearby, which seems unlikely, or that they succumbed to typhoid or cholera and had to be buried quickly in a mass grave – there were known outbreaks in 1848 and 1853. Glasgow was desperately overcrowded at the time with fresh water and sewerage problems.

So although learning the names of the family members buried the lair undoubtedly gave me a breakthrough, it also raised some more questions.

(Amendment – after some discussion it is agreed the top of the tombstone is a biblical reference – Isaiah 52. )

Theme: A Theory in Progress.

As another participant in 52 Ancestors has written, “There are times when you aren’t quite sure what is right in your research. This is a good week to explore a theory that you have about someone in your family tree”.

My Paternal Grandmother Bertha Wade was born in Invercargill, New Zealand on 5 January 1868 to barrister and solicitor Frederick Wentworth Wade and his wife Adela Macloskey. The sixth of their children, she was only six months old when her mother died during a visit to her family in Melbourne. Bertha was with her at the time but it is not known when she returned to New Zealand. One theory is that she was taken back by her uncle Richard Macloskey’s eldest daughter Ada Gresham Macloskey, although no shipping record can be found. It is known however that Ada had visited her aunt in NZ just a year previously when she was 17.

What is also known is that three years after his wife’s death, Bertha’s father married Ada in Melbourne (so the family must have approved). So 19 year old Ada, besides having a daughter of her own just a year later in 1878, became stepmother to five children between the ages of eleven and three.

But this story is about Bertha. Her eldest sister Annie was an enlightened young woman who signed the first NZ Suffrage petition in 1873 together with her step mother Ada. At that time Annie was working in her father’s office, but she soon took off for the wilds of Western Australia where records show she lived for 3 years, and later in Melbourne, Victoria. One of her brothers Frederick was also on the WA goldfields for some years before marrying in Perth in 1905. Bertha’s second eldest sister Adela also left home early to become a nurse (and much later Matron of the prestigious Geelong Grammar school near Melbourne). Her other brother seemed to have remained in NZ.

Bertha herself must have soon followed her elder sisters to Australia and doubtless adventure. No record of her arrival can be found, but by the time she was 26 in 1901 she seems to have found her feet as Manageress of “Guest’s Toilet Salon” in Bourke Street, Melbourne (a very prestigious address). I cannot be entirely sure that the Manageress was my Bertha but it seems very likely. Advertisements appeared regularly in the Melbourne newspapers, always at the bottom of the social pages, until 1907. In an interview with Mr. Guest himself in 1900, Miss Bertha Wade was described as an expert manicurist. She must have been promoted soon after. Unfortunately it was not said if she came from New Zealand.

One advertisement contained a very poor photograph of Bertha – it is impossible to make out her features but she does appear to have a huge cloud of hair. My one lasting memory of my grandmother just before she died is that she had a huge cloud of snow white hair.

The last advertisement for the Salon with Manageress Miss Bertha Wade appeared on 1 August 1907. Guests continued to operate at a different address, but there was no further mention of a manageress.

Just over a year later, Bertha Elizabeth Wade married my Grandfather Alexander Johnston in Melbourne. Both gave their address as a boarding house. The wedding must have been rather hush-hush as there were no engagement or marriage notices, and they were married at a Manse which advertised its marriage services for a fee. Alex was a journalist from Tasmania who had previously led an adventurous life in WA and who had made several trips to Japan and the Far East. He was 42 and Bertha was 34.

It seems reasonably certain that Miss Wade, Manageress was indeed my Grandmother Bertha. There was one other Bertha Wade in Melbourne for a time but the electoral rolls showed she was elsewhere after the time Bertha married, whereas Bertha’s electoral roll entry simply stopped.

My father never really talked about his mother, and her will made no mention of any early profession of hers – but there is one other supporting fact, she was a wealthy woman and owned the house where my grandparents lived. Of course she may well have received a legacy from her father. Her will indicates a strong forthright woman who stated that granddad could continue to live in the house until he died but must maintain the insurance, house rates etc and not ask their son to pay them!

Topic: What this story means to me.

My GGGM Ann (Nancy) Welding was born in the little village of Upton St. Leonard in rural Gloucestershire and baptised on 10 January 1790. Her parents Thomas Wilday/Weldin/Wilding and his wife Elizabeth Fowler later had two more children. She was baptised Nancy but referred to as Ann in several legal documents including her marriage and the 1851 Census, but as Nancy in the 1841 Census when the information was given by her husband.

It is not known where or how Nancy received an education, most likely at the instigation of her father who signed his marriage register in 1786. When Nancy married Thomas Hunt in Redmarley d’Abitot, Glos on 1 Feb 1819, she also signed the marriage register in full. By then she was 29. Thomas, a cordwainer (shoemaker), made a cross. It is thought that Nancy was a governess or lady’s maid at the nearby grand “Down House”.

Nancy and Thomas had six children. The eldest, Elizabeth, was a nurse and later the matron on an immigrant ship which also carried her sister Mary Anne and the latter’s first four children to Australia in 1864. In Sydney Elizabeth became known as an “accoucheusse”, helping mothers with new babies, and Mary Anne, by then with eight children by two husbands, taught French. Next came Reuben, about whom, very frustratingly, I still know nothing. Then 3 sisters including Mary Anne, one of whom stayed in England and the third died aged 2. Finally my GGGF Edwin Hunt came along when Nancy was 48 if the dates are to be believed … he was a pupil teacher at 14 according to the Census, and before long headmaster at a school in Reading, Berkshire – where he speedily married the headmistress of the nearby girls’ school. They had 10 children of whom 9 survived and all emigrated to Australia as well, in 1879.

Thomas died when he was 54 and the children were mostly still at home. Nancy went to work as a nurse and lived to 70 (1859). I have a photograph of her, a rather determined-looking old lady in a frilly mob cap, with work-worn hands. How would she have felt about three of her children going to the other side of the world, where all her numerous grandchildren thrived?

What appeals to me about Nancy – apart from our shared name – is what a strong woman she must have been and her obvious influence on her children’s education. Her influence has endured – one of her grandchildren was the first woman Science graduate from the University of Sydney in the 1880s, and several great great grandchildren have been or are teachers and/or scientists.

Theme: A Record That Adds Color.

I’ve chosen to interpret this theme a little differently. 

My Scottish Great Great Grandfather Dr. Thomas Lyle had a brother, John Lyle (1789-1822). For a long time I knew little about John, then discovered he had been a soldier in the 51st Regiment of Foot and had fought at Waterloo. I paid a researcher in London to go to the National Archives where she discovered a whole set of papers about him. Initially a foot soldier, he must have shown promise as he was promoted to Sergeant, then at the time of Waterloo he was made Colour Sergeant – ie he was privileged to carry the banner of the Regiment into battle. According to Wikipedia, “… the colour sergeant was a non-commissioned officer rank that is above sergeant and below warrant officer class 2. This rank, introduced in 1813, is typically responsible for training and discipline within a company and is considered prestigious due to its historical role in protecting the regimental colors during battles.”

Somehow John survived Waterloo; by then he and his wife had 2 children and after the battle his Regiment was one of those which remained in France. His wife either followed the Regiment or joined it at Valenceinnes, for that is where she bore their third child. 

But within a few years he and his family were off to Jamaica, where he speedily succumbed to yellow fever. It is not known what happened to his wife, but the official papers say he left three orphaned children “in the care of the Regiment”. I have been unable to trace them further.

Week 1, 2026.

Theme: An Ancestor I Admire.

My Scottish GGMother Margaret Lyle (1827-1925), born in Glasgow, spent much of her chidlhood in Airth, Stirlngshire – a small village where her father Dr. Thomas Lyle (1791-1859) practiced – although it would seem he was more inclined to write poetry and to follow his hobby of bryology, spending long days in the surounding hills. He still found time to fill in the Census entries for his neighbours! Margaret had three brothers and three sisters. Dr. Lyle seems to have neglected the education of his daughters at least as Margaret signed her name with a cross. She married cabinet maker and precentor (choir leader) Alexander Johnston in Glasgow in 1853 when aged 26; the 1851 Census showed her living in Glasgow with her sisters and working as a cap maker. Dr. Lyle could not have been a good provider!

Margaret and Alexander Johnston emigrated to Tasmania at the bottom of Australia in 1854, only a few months after her mother died. The voyage took 71 days in the stormiest seas of the world. By then they had a small son, Charles, less than a year old; then a few weeks after arrival Margaret was delivered of another son, George. How did she cope with baby Charles and life aboard the Immigrant ship? 

The family settled in Launceston, Tasmania where eventually a daughter and final son arrived, the latter when Margaret was over 40. Later her two sisters also emigrated, but they lived in a different part of Tasmania. 

Margaret’s second son George, the one almost born at sea, was to lose his life at sea aged 29 in 1855. After years serving as a seaman on the huge windjammers which sailed the world’s oceans (I have many of his letters written home over that time from all over the world which show his deep affection for his family) George must have decided to settle a little closer to home, becoming second officer on an almost-new coastal steamer. But tragedy struck on a moonlit night just off the Australian coast when the ship hit rocks;  fortunately help was not too far away but after working all night helping offload passengers to a nearby steamer, George (by then probably exhausted, and thinly clad) insisted on returning to the wreck for the mail and was swept overboard and lost. 

Margaret’s husband Alexander died in 1906, aged 76, and Margaret moved to Sydney to be near her surviving children, all married with their own children. In her old age Margaret was mainly with her daughter and granddaughter – yet another Margaret (1896-1978) who lived quite close to my own Grandfather. All the Huxtable children lived long lives, the eldest to 90, but Margaret trumped that, living to 97. Photos of her show a tiny upright little lady.

How I wish I had known her!