Topic: Language.

My Scottish ancestors came from the Scottish Borders where in the 1700s to at least early 1800s the Lowland Scots language used was Lalans – both Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson used it.

From https://nativetribe.info/lallans-indigenous-heritage-scottish-lowland-traditional-language-cultural-practices/:

Lallans, also known as Scots Lowland, is a vibrant language with a long and complex history. It’s not merely a dialect; it’s a distinct language with its own grammar and vocabulary. Its roots stretch back to the Old English spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland.

For centuries, Lallans thrived as the common tongue of the Scottish Lowlands. It was the language of literature, law, and everyday life. However, the influence of English, particularly after the Acts of Union in 1707, led to a decline in its usage.

Despite the challenges, Lallans has persevered. Dedicated individuals and organizations work tirelessly to promote and preserve this valuable linguistic heritage. Lallans Indigenous Heritage continues to inspire and enrich Scottish culture.

Topic: Brick Wall.

Was the Rev. John Johnston married twice?

My GG Uncle John Johnston (1831-1909) married Benjamina “Jessie” Leckie (1833 – ?) in Glasgow when he was 24 and she was 22, according to the forms of the United Presbyterian Church. Soon after the birth of their first child less than a year later, they moved to Edinburgh where John studied for the Congregational Ministry at the Edinburgh Theological Hall. This was a little surprising seeing the Johnstons were mostly strong Presbyterians with several Reverends among the immediate family.

John and Jessie had five children between 1857 and 1863, all born in Scotland – Edinburgh (two) and then Stirlingshire (two). The last one, a little daughter named Jane, lived for less than a year. She was born in Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire.


Some time after that the family moved to Stoke Newington in London where John was the Congregationalist Minister at the Abney Park Memorial Church. Another child was born in 1874, eleven years after Jane. A surprise!

The 1871 Census was checked – and John had declared himself a “widower”. There was no doubt the Census entry was for the correct family, according to the address given. So, was John’s youngest child, born three years after this Census, by a different mother also named Jessie (who maiden surname was not given)? Unless the first Jessie was away from home at the time and the Census taker made an incorrect assumption about John being a widower?

A transcript of the birth certificate for the 1874-born child gave the information that the mother’s maiden surname was Will, but no christian name given. It could easily have been Wills, Mill(s), etc as is the nature of transcriptions.

Surprisingly a possible marriage was found, for a John Johnston to Susan Mills, in Isleworth, London on 8 January 1865. (No indication of whether this John was a Reverend). John’s last child with his first wife was born in October 1863 and died in February 1864 in Pitligo, Aberdeenshire. Was this the correct John Johnston? Isleworth (in the South West West) and Stoke Newington (in the North), while both within the area known as ‘Greater London’, are 25 km apart which would have been a far greater distance in those days than is considered now. However, John’s living children at that time would have been aged 8, 6, 5 and 3 – definitely children in need of a mother!

But a further search recently has turned up a Jessie C. Will born about 1839 in Aberdeen to Thomas and Margaret Will, living in Hackney, London in 1871 with her parents – aged 32, unmarried, occupation not given. If this was the correct Jessie, she must have married John later in 1871 (the Censuses were usually taken early in the year). Hackney is very close to Stoke Newington.

I feel reasonably certain I have found the correct second wife, but all searches for a marriage have so far been negative.

Themes: Family Secret and Siblings.

I am behind with this series of 52 Ancestors but conveniently can combine two weeks’ stories into one!

I nearly missed recording the birth and death of my GGGrandparents’ fourth child, a little girl called Zebra Hunt who was born in November 1831 and died in July 1834 in Reading, Berkshire. As was common at the time, the death of a child was rarely if ever spoken about …. But I am still surprised that Zebra’s elder sister Elizabeth (aged 11 at the time Zebra was born) never spoke about her even much later in life. Elizabeth was a nurse and the Matron on an immigrant ship arriving in Australia in 1864. She would have seen her share of children’s deaths particularly as she later worked as an accoucheuse (midwife) in Sydney.

The name Zebra may have been a form of Ziporah, a popular name in Victorian times. Another form was Zillah. That was the name given to another distant cousin born in 1843, while yet another was Lizzie Zebra born 1863 (yes, Lizzie, not Elizabeth). The latter had several children including Elizabeth Stella born in 1903; she became a dancing teacher who styled herself “Estella Donalda Zebra Eugene Brown-de-Boshier”, Boshier being her mother Lizzie Zebra’s maiden surname.

Little Zebra only came to light when a cousin started to wonder where the name Zillah came from, and also noticed there was an almost five year gap between Zebra’s immediate siblings. Otherwise we would probably never have discovered her (My grateful thanks to Alison P. for her research in this regard).

Curiously, there was also a 4 year gap between the first two children – Elizabeth born in 1820 and Reuben in 1824 (the family moved from Worcestershire to Berkshire during that time, perhaps when father Thomas Hunt was seeking work); then 5 years until Emma appeared in 1829, followed by Zebra in Nov 1831 and then Mary Ann in October 1833 – and finally Edwin in 1937 who must have been quite a surprise as their mother, my namesake Nancy, would have been aged 47 by then.

Theme: Migration.

My Great Grandmother was Adela Campbell Scott Macloskey (1848-1874), the 13th child of merchant tailor John Macloskey (1789-1854) and Mary Ann Brooks/ Brookes (1805-1886). Her father is thought to have come from Rostrevor, County Antrim in what is now Northern Ireland; her mother was also Irish but where they met and married is not known. Their children were all born in Greenock in Scotland apart from the last one, James Power Macloskey (c1851-1926) who was born in Liverpool; perhaps the family had moved there for business reasons.

The name of their immigrant ship so far remains undiscovered, but what is known is that the whole family with the exception of the first and sixth-born (who both lived less than a year) arrived in what is now Melbourne, Australia in early 1854.

Why did they emigrate? It was the time of the Victorian goldrush. John was a tailor, not a gold miner; perhaps he saw business opportunities in Ballarat, one of the towns which sprang up after the discovery of gold in 1851.

Initially the family lived at Collingwood Flat, low lying ground along the Yarra River in Melbourne, an overcrowded working-class suburb doubtless with water and sanitation problems. Sadly the father John Macloskey died of dysentery six weeks after their arrival, on 11 March 1854.

Mary Ann was left with ten children aged from 25 to 2 – all listed on John’s death certificate, the informant being his eldest living child William Joseph Macloskey, aged 23.

She remarried just a year later, to Alexander Richard Minzies/Menzies (c1807-1883), who must have been a wonderful man to take on ten step-children! There were no further children. They always lived in Melbourne but as Richard was a Victorian Treasury official, doubtlesss in far more comfortable surroundings.

Alexander himself had emigrated from Liverpool just months before the Macloskeys, on the “Covenantor” which arrived in 1852. Like Mary Ann he had been married before, to Christina Campbell (c 1806 -c 1839), and had a daughter Mary Campbell Menzies (1835-1921) who in 1855 married the Macloskey’s eldest son Richard Brooke Macloskey (1830-1876) – just a year after Richard’s mother had remarried – to his new father-in-law !

It was probably just serendipity that Mary Ann’s second name was Campbell. No family link can be found – perhaps thankfully as the family tree was already very complicated and difficult to draw.

In addition, my Great Grandmother Adela Macloskey married Frederick Wentworth Wade (1838-1912) and had seven children with him before dying of phthisis (TB) at the age of 26; within two years Frederick remarried …. To Richard Brooke Macloskey and Mary Campbell Menzies’ second child Ada Gresham Macloskey (1858-1931)!!

Theme: Letters and Diaries

My Great Grandfather Alexander Johnston (1829-1906) came from a family of seven, and from all accounts they were a loving, tight-knit family.

Only one sibling emigrated from their home town of Glasgow, and that was Alexander, who with his wife Margaret (Lyle) and little son Charles made the long journey to Tasmania in southern Australia, through some of the stormiest seas in the world. That was in 1855, the passage having taken 71 days on the perhaps aptly named “Storm Cloud”.

They must have kept in close touch with their Glasgow siblings. The only way would have been by letter transported via sailing ship. Such letters would have been very eagerly awaited. So much so that it became a custom to have a photograph taken holding a letter …. As in this precious photograph.

It shows Alexander’s older brother Peter Johnston (1824-1916) and his wife Agnes (Todd) (1829-1902). The photo is doubly precious as it is the only one which survived a house flooding which resulted in all earlier family mementos, photographs, etc being destroyed. Somehow this one survived.

We do not have any of the letters received by Alexander, but we do have a number of letters written to his Tasmanian-based family by his son George Johnston (1855-1885), an ocean-going merchant seaman. He frequently visited his aunts and uncles in Glasgow and mentioned them in his letters, including Uncle Peter and Agnes. George’s letters will doubtless be covered in a later theme.

Theme: Surprise

I am reposting this blog due to the amazing number of typos and other errors … I plead being under the influence of a strong painkiller at the time I wrote it … but that is no real excuse (!) My thanks to Lesley, Arthur and Dave for pointing out some of the errors.

My Great Great Uncle John Lyle (1789-1822), born in Paisley, Scotland was a soldier with the 51st Regiment of Foot. He fought at Waterloo – and survived. Seeking more information about him, I hired a researcher to check the Regimental files in the British Archives. The British Army kept very detailed records in those days so among other things I learnt that he had enlisted on 24 August 1805 when he was 18 (the Battle of Trafalgar was in October of that year) and that he was 5 feet 3 inches in height which increased to 5 feet 7 inches over the next six years. He had a brown complexion, grey eyes, brown hair and a round face. He rose through the ranks quickly, becoming a Corporal the year after enlistment and attaining Sergeant (”Serjeant”) rank 7 years later. He is mentioned in detailed Muster Lists and Pay lists and notes about long marches.

In 1822 John was sent to Jamaica with the Regiment, where he died of yellow fever a few months later. The Regimental Returns for June-July 1822 show that following John’s death, a quite reasonable sum of money for those days was retained “… for the benefit of his three orphan children left with the Regiment”. What a surprise!

The births of all three children are in the Regimental records, which give his wife’s name as Agnes Lyle (it is not certain that Agnes’ maiden name was also Lyle). I have not been able to discover a marriage record. Their first child, named John, was born in Dumfries in 1810, after the Regiment had served in the Peninsular Wars for several years and returned home. His second child, a girl named Agnes, was born in 1813 in Liverpool; soon after John would have been sent away to fight in the Pyrenees. How many years was it before he saw his daughter again? Or did his wife and children follow the Regiment? The third child, another daughter, was born in Valenciennes, France in 1819, where the Regiment was posted after Waterloo.

Regimental records do not show whether his wife accompanied John during his various campaigns, and there is no record of her death. Did she go to Jamaica with him? No burial records can be found. The children, too, cannot be traced. Maybe one day a DNA match will be found ….

Theme: Challenge.

My second cousin Peter John Hunt (1929-2012) was a surveyor on the New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition (1960–61), He received the Polar Medal and RGS Sir Cuthbert Peek award in 1969. Hunt Mountain (3660m) in Antarctica was named after him.

Originally a British Army officer, “……during the summer of 1959/60 he took part in the Geological and Topographical Survey Expedition, and after spending the following winter at Scott Base, he led the Southern Party of the 1960/61 Summer Expedition. The work of these field parties covered about 12,000 square miles of previously unexplored land in the Ross Dependency from Cape Parr (80° 30′ S) to the Beardmore Glacier (84° S), about 400 miles south of Scott Base. (Royal Engineers Journal, No. 2 1962)

He spent the winter at Scott Base in 1960. At that time they had none of the modern Antarctic-style clothing such as down-filled parkas, and very few of the modern comforts now available such as well-insulated huts, a cinema, etc . Transport was mainly by dog sledge. They had one smallish bulldozer, 4 tractors and a Landrover. Heaters ran on kerosene.

Peter kept a diary over that winter. On 30 March 1960 he wrote “Today we have seen the sun from (Scott) Base for the last time – till about the third week of August. ‘Officially’ it sets at this latitude on 4th April but of course we are screened here by the hills to the north and west. As the sun recedes slowly from the dog lines down on the Ice Shelf those dogs still in the light seem quite content, while those in the shade kick up a fantastic rumpus in an attempt perhaps to persuade the sun to return!”

By 1 May 1960 they only had 2-3 hours of twilight and ran the dogs for exercise when the moon was up.

While on a brief field expedition during the winter, sleeping in a tent, he wrote: “I would like to spend a penny outside but it would be suicidal.”

The diary was finally posted to his mother in early Spring. Until then his family had had to rely on the occasional radio message.

Theme: Overlooked.

When I first started investigating my maternal grandparents’ line, it was known that my Great Grandparents Edwin Hunt and Margaret Morgan and their large family had emigrated to Australia from Berkshire in 1879, and that he had two sisters Elizabeth and Mary Anne who had emigrated earlier. A third sister Emma and a brother Reuben remained behind in England.

Over the years, and particularly once internet searching became available, the various lines were investigated and recorded. It was fortunate that the 1841 Census showed Reuben, at that time aged 17, living with his parents and siblings – otherwise his existence may have been doubted, as he cannot be traced further.

So matters rested for many years. Edwin and Margaret had 5 children born between 1820 and 1837 …. with gaps of several years between most of them. Perhaps that is why the gap between two of the sisters went unremarked (1829 and 1833).

But a few years ago, a cousin directly descended from Mary Anne did think to check, and with increased access to death records discovered there had been another sister, named Zebra, born in 1831 and died aged 2 in 1834. As was customary in those times, the deaths of little children were rarely if ever spoken about.

Her name may have been a contraction of Zipporah, a popular name at the time. A distant cousin born in 1843 was named Zilla(h), and the fourth child of Edwin’s sister Mary Anne was named Lizzie Zebra, born 1863 – indeed it was while searching for a source of her name Zebra that the 2-year-old was discovered.

Theme: Nickname

I am late with this – I couldn’t think of anything new to write about concerning my family’s or my husband’s family’s various nicknames – nothing very startling or unusual – but then I remembered…..

I once owned a gorgeous little sports car – British racing green with a black hood and tonneau – an Austin Healey Sprite Mark 1. Always known as a Bugeye.

According to the Austin Healey website:
“The Austin-Healey Sprite series AN5 (produced between 1958-1960) is the original Sprite. It is perhaps better known in North America as the Bugeye and elsewhere as the Frogeye. This nickname is owing to the unique headlight mounting. … Power was supplied by the Austin 948 cc A-Series engine producing 43 hp, and while performance was hardly neck snapping, no one complained because the car was just so much fun to drive.”

And it was. Whenever possible I drove with the hood down, even in light rain, which meant sometimes I was invisible to the car in front, being so low to the ground … the steering wheel was minuscule compared to modern styles and in addition was very, very sensitive, racing-car style – which scared a friend who tried to drive it. The suspension was very low so I had to be wary of speed bumps and potholes.

There were no outside door handles and no roll-up windows. An invitation to thieves. But a previous owner had fitted a nifty little switch well hidden under the dashboard and although my dear little Bugeye WAS stolen twice, each time it was abandoned just down the road with wires hanging down under the dashboard – but that hidden switch foiled the thieves every time.

Only recently have I discovered that a cousin owned exactly the same type of car at exactly the same time! His most enduring memory was waiting at traffic lights in the middle of a three-lane road, with huge trucks on both sides of him, and the thought – “I hope they know I’m here” !!!

This is not my photo, my Bugeye did not have a racing number on it or a roll bar, but the colour is so close….. A wonderful memory.
 

Theme: Favourite Photo.

This photo shows my Aunt Betty and my mother Vada d’Archy in the grounds of their home in Toowoomba, Queensland. It must have been taken soon after their father Dick d’Archy left to fight in the First World War. He had been managing a large cattle station in far North Queensland, where my mother was born in 1913. Their mother Lily Hunt was a gentle Englishwoman who not surprisingly took the girls back to her own mother and sisters in Toowoomba. They had a large house which was shared at different times with a number of relatives.

My aunt had a special fondness for the house, named “Redmarley” after the Hunt family’s ancestral village in Worcestershire. Many years later she made more than one trip to Toowomba to try and locate the house. Here it is in a second photo – with a number of relatives – my mother Vada is the little girl being held by – I think – her Aunt Margaret. My grandmother Lily is standing to their left, and Betty is in front of her mother.