Archibald and Agnes Black postscript … the rest of the family in Aberdeen

Castlegate and Union St, Aberdeen. Sept 2010

In my previous post, I thought I had fully described the seven children who made up the family of Archibald and Agnes in Aberdeen.  But, checking through all sources, I discovered that there were in fact eleven children born to them.  Sadly only six survived to adulthood.

• Mary McKay Black was the first born child, named for her paternal grandmother, born 3rd May 1855 and died 2 June 1857 in Aberdeen, aged 2.  The family were then living at 11 Yeats Lane, Aberdeen.  Mary had had chronic hydrocephalus for 12 months – this was given as the cause of death.  She was buried in Spital (St Peter’s) Cemetery, Aberdeen.

• Hugh McColl Black was born 8th October 1857 and died at the age of 72, in May 1930.  (I haven’t yet discovered where the name McColl came from.) He was working as a plant attendant at a chemical works and living at Woodside, Aberdeen.  He married Matilda McIntosh and had a family of eight children: Isabella, Annie, Hugh, Agnes, Georgina, Matilda, Fanny and Arthur. Arthur was the informant for his death certificate.  His wife Matilda outlived him by 24 years, dying in 1954 at the age of 95. Hugh was buried in St Peter’s Cemetery on 17 May 1930.  HIs daughter Georgina migrated to Canada and was married in Vancouver in 1920, to William Lamont, also from Aberdeen.

• William Selbie Black, born 14 February 1859 lived to the age of 66, dying on 25 December 1925. He also worked at the chemical works and it was there that he died, on the job.  His marriage to Margaret Grassick led to the birth of ten children, eight of whom survived to adulthood: Hugh, Frederick, William, Margaret, Alexander, Mary, Archibald, and Duncan.

• Isabella Black was born on 24th October 1861.  She married David Malcolm in August 1881 and had five children: Agnes, David, Robert, Archibald; the youngest child, Isabella, died at two years of age in 1906.  Isabella died in Aberdeen on 12 February 1917.

• Duncan Black was born in November 1863 but died on 31st July 1868, aged 4, from “hooping cough 12 weeks, bronchitis 10 days“.  The family were living at Sandilands Links at the time. He was buried on 3rd August in St Peter’s Cemetery, Aberdeen.

• Agnes Black was born in 1866.  She died at the age of 21 on 5 July 1887, of typhoid fever. She was buried on 7th July in St Peter’s Cemetery, Aberdeen.

• Margaret Black was born on 18 July 1867, but died at eleven months of age on 17 June 1868. She had had “hooping cough” for three weeks. She was buried on 19 June in St Peter’s Cemetery, Aberdeen.

• Archibald Black was born 27 January 1869, but died at two years age on 5th June 1871. The cause of death was “hemiplegia 5 weeks, convulsions 3 days“. He was also buried in St Peter’s Cemetery on 7th June.

• George Black (Liam’s ancestor) was born 29 September 1870, fathered eight children and died in Arbroath in 1923, aged 52.  George also worked at the chemical works. More on him in a further post.

• A second child named Archibald Black was born on September 1st, 1872, one year after the death of the first Archibald, but he too did not survive, dying on 3rd July 1873, at ten months of age. His cause of death was phthisis (a previous term for tuberculosis) of three months duration.  At the time the family were living at Sandilands Links, Aberdeen.  He lies with his siblings at St Peter’s Cemetery, buried on 5th July.

• The youngest child, John Black, was born in 1875, and died in 1938 aged 63.  He also worked at the chemical works. He married twice, first to Alice Jane Davidson in 1893.  They had four children: Jessie Ross, Rachel Crighton, John, and Frederick Davidson Black.  Alice died on 20th June 1900 in the Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen, from phthisis pulmonalis (tuberculosis) aged 27.  John married Elizabeth or Lizzie Sinclair in March 1901.  Lizzie came from Wick in Caithness and had a son from her first marriage, James Houston.  Lizzie died before John, in 1935.  John and Lizzie appear to have had no children together.

My source for this information is principally Scotlands People for birth, death, marriage and census records.  However I am also indebted to a user on Family Search who has added a Black genealogy which has helped to point the way towards some of the children of Archibald and Agnes and other generations of Blacks.  The family tree for Archibald and Agnes is shown in the attachment (click to open in new window).

Archibald Black and Agnes Selbie family (at 16 October 2014) Click to open in new window.

 

Archibald Black in Aberdeen

Archibald Black is Liam’s 4 x great (paternal) grandfather, the son of Duncan Black of Port Appin. As a young man, Archibald swapped the green hills and blue water vistas of Loch Linnhe and Port Appin for the granite grey of Aberdeen, possibly for the economic benefits of working in an industrial enterprise, compared to the returns to be expected from a crofter’s life.

The census of 1851 locates him in Aberdeen, living as lodger at 12 Yeats Lane, aged 22, unmarried, and occupation chemist. In fact he was working at the Sandilands Chemical Works, which commenced operations in 1848 and continued on the same site until the mid twentieth century, as a chemical works and fertiliser plant (according to the Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry website http://www.scottishshale.co.uk/GazWorks/AberdeenOilWorks.html). Archibald was to continue working at the plant for the remainder of his life.

He married Agnes Selbie in 1853 at Holburn Church, Aberdeen.  Agnes came from Banff, also in the north east of Scotland, and was aged 22; Archibald was 24. They were living at 15 Yeats Lane at the time of the 1861 census, with the first of their seven children, Hugh, then aged about 3. By the 1871 census, they were living at Chemical Works Road, Aberdeen; Archibald was an overseer and son Hugh aged 14 had joined him as a labourer at the Chemical Works.  Other children were William 12, Isabella 10, Agnes 5, Archibald 2, and George 6 months (Liam’s 3 x great grandfather).

Unfortunately, son Archibald died in 1871 aged two, just two months after the census.

Trouble seems to have struck the family since at the 1881 census, wife Agnes, aged 50, is listed as a pauper in an institutional census listing for the St Nicholas Poorhouse, which was on Nelson Street, Aberdeen.  There were no other family members listed at that address. Archibald is aged 54 and living with George, 11 and John, 6 at 184 Gallowgate, along with what appear to be others with the surname Black (relatives?) in the household. Eldest son Hugh is married and living with wife Matilda McIntosh and one year old daughter Isabella at 55 Longacre.  Second son William is married and living with wife Margaret Grassick and sons Hugh, 2 years and Frederick, 1 year, at 19 Chronicle Lane.

How did Agnes come to be in the poorhouse, and how long was she there?  It may be difficult to find out.  According to the City of Aberdeen website http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/education_learning/local_history/archives/loc_poorreliefrecords.asp:

 Most of the records relating to the poor law for Aberdeen city have not survived – no records relating to individuals, such as the Records of Application, General Registers of the Poor or Children’s Separate Registers survive for St Nicholas parish …  

The reasons for admission to such an institution were not always straightforward:

Before 1921 there was no relief for people who were unemployed – the Poor Law Emergency Powers (Scotland) Act 1921 was introduced as a result of the depression following World War One and allowed relief to be granted to people who were considered paupers but were not disabled.

Records before 1921 will show reasons for disablement that can sometimes seem unusual. Disablement because of children or pregnancy sometimes appears where widows claim relief, for example. It can be useful to bear in mind that the Inspector of the Poor and the parochial board or parish council could not legally grant relief unless some form of disablement could be shown to apply.

Doctors were expensive, so people may have needed to apply for relief just to be able to get medical assistance …

Further tragedy struck the family in 1887 when daughter Agnes died at the age of 21 from typhoid fever.  The family address at the time of her death was 55 Longacre, Aberdeen (a tenement building containing many families).  According to the website The Doric Columns http://mcjazz.f2s.com/index.htm:

The typical Aberdeen tenement is granite-built, three or four storeys high, with an attic storey expressed as a mansard, where the roof pitch is very steep; in fact, the slates are hung almost on the vertical, and there is a stair at the back, which a passage connects to a door on the street. Otherwise, it is similar to tenements in other Scottish cities, with back greens and shared WC’s giving onto open plots.

Because of congestion and poor public health facilities, there were regular outbreaks of contagious diseases.

At the time of the 1891 census, Archibald, Agnes and family were still living at 55 Longacre. Archibald now aged 62 lists his occupation as general labourer and also states that he is a Gaelic and English speaker. The other members of the household at this time are sons George 20 and John 16, both general labourers, and Agnes Malcolm, grand-daughter, aged 8, the daughter of Isabella.  Isabella and her husband David Malcolm were living in a separate household at 55 Longacre with their sons David aged 7 and Robert aged 4.

In 1901, Archibald and Agnes are living at the same location, 55 Longacre; Archibald is now a nightwatchman, and grand-daughter Agnes is 18 and working as a wool worker.

Archibald’s wife Agnes died in 1904, aged 73, and when Archibald died in 1908 aged 79, he was living at 38 Shiprow, Aberdeen.  According to family notes, “he worked until he was 79 and half years old. It was only as a result of an accident that he gave up working. A heavy metal bar had fallen on his leg and the wound turned gangrenous; he was dead within a month“.  His death certificate supports this to some extent, since it gives the cause of death as “gangrene of leg 16 days, general septicaemia”.  The  informant was son, Hugh Black.

38 Shiprow (approx.), Aberdeen. September 2010

Shiprow, Aberdeen at the corner with Union St. September 2010

The street Longacre no longer exists; it was demolished around 1900 to make way for extensions to Marischal College, now part of the University of Aberdeen. Nor does Chemical Works Road, Chronicle Lane or Yeats Lane, but Shiprow and Gallowgate continue as road ways in the centre of Aberdeen.

The family of Archibald Black (1828 – 1908). Details as of October 2014. Click to open in separate window.

Mareeba memoirs – the Egans & two lost sons

The Historical Society of Mareeba publishes a quarterly newsletter on their website (at http://www.mbahistsoc.org.au/index.html) highlighting memorable events and people of the town in times past.  The No. 62 May 2014 Newsletter carried the following item, reproducing a news article from the Cairns Post published on 28 August 1942.  This is extracted below courtesy of the Trove website.

A Tribute

Two worthy citizens who had known Mareeba over a long period of years passed away recently within a few hours of each other. They were Mrs. Mary Egan, at Mareeba, on Saturday August 22, and Mrs. Minnie Wallace, at Coogee, Sydney, on August 23. By a coincidence the paths of each had much in common. Both were possessed of those sterling traits that are features of exemplary character.  Into the life of each had long ago come a great sorrow brought about by the loss of a loved husband. Mrs. Egan’s son, Jim, soldiered through the horror of 1914-18 until peace came. Returning to Australia, he met with an accident at the Granite Sawmills, Mareeba, and from its effects he died an hour or two later. Jim Wallace, also of the First A.I.F., was killed in action at Mont St Quentin in September, 1918. His battalion was the 26th. Jim Egan and Jim Wallace had been mates in Mareeba. 

Mrs. Egan was born in Ireland 84 years ago. With her husband she went across to the United States, living there for a while. But as Australia seemed to offer better opportunities the Egan family came to Queensland, where Patrick Egan took up railway work and made his home on the Barron at Mareeba.

Mrs. Wallace was bom near Glasgow 79 years back, and, in time, sailed to Queensland, residing in various centres. About 1905 the Wallace family went to live in Mareeba, which town Mr. Charlie Wallace, an inspector serving the old Chillagoe Railway Company, made his headquarters.

Mrs. Egan’s loss is mourned by three daughters, Mary, Agnes and Mrs. Molloy, and three sons, Jack, Tom and Joe. All members are well-known in the district and made frequent visits to the home in Mareeba. Their father has been dead many years.

The death of Charlie Wallace in 1916 broke up the Mareeba home of the Wallaces, as Mrs. Wallace decided to live in Sydney, taking up residence near her daughter, Mrs. M. Gaughan, at Coogee. There were six sons left, some of whom took up railway work. Bob is at present in Gladstone high up in the service. Charlie is a guard on the Cairns district railways. He is also Councillor Wallace, of the Wookathata Shire Council. Tom Wallace, in the Postal Department, lived in Sydney with his mother until his death in recent years. William is somewhere in the West, Jack is at Mackay, and Watty is an energetic personality in industrial matters in Cairns.

The writer of this has known the Egan and Wallace families for a long time and has herein endeavoured to pay a deserved tribute to the memory of two warm-hearted, loyal-natured citizens. For them the long day of toil is through. May they rest in peace. H.A.B.

Jim (James Vincent) Egan was my grand uncle, and Mrs Mary Egan, my great-grandmother. While the Egan family did live in the United States – Patrick Egan and Mary (Maria) Coyne were married in Philadelphia in 1883 – they also spent time in South America before returning to Ireland briefly and then migrating to North Queensland.

James Vincent Egan was one of the five children born in South America in the ten years between 1886 and 1896. He was born in Rojas, now a suburban area of Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1892. He was one year older than my grandmother, Margaret (“Mrs Molloy”).  Other children were born in the USA, Ireland and Australia, bringing the total of children born to Patrick and Mary to eight (in addition to the children of the Cavanaugh cousins, Honoria and William, who they cared for after their parents Thomas and Anna Cavanaugh died in Philadelphia).

Children of Patrick Egan & Mary Coyne (click to view in another window)

Jim or James was 7 when the family arrived in Townsville, Queensland as remittance passengers on the ship Duke of Portland, which left London on December 15th, 1899, arriving on 5th February 1900.  Jim was working as a railway porter when he enlisted in the army in July 1916.

He embarked from Melbourne as part of the 10 Machine Gun Company on 25 October 1916, and after time in England was transferred to Camiers in France in April 1917.  He was wounded in France in September 1917, receiving gunshot wounds to head, shoulders and arms while his then company, 4th Machine Gun Co., participated in an attack at West Lock Ridge, near Ypres.  The unit war diary for the day he was wounded notes at 5.57 am: Artillery fire deafening.  One continuous thunder.  The day was September 26th, the first day of the battle of Polygon Wood.

James was evacuated to hospital in England, and recovered sufficiently to return to France in May 1918.  After the war ended, he was shipped back to Australia and discharged in September 1919.  Less than a year later he was killed in the sawmill accident in Mareeba, as detailed in the following news reports.

Cairns Post  (Qld) Thursday 22  July 1920

MAREEBA FATALITY. PINNED BY A LOG. A TERRIBLE DEATH.

A sad accident, with fatal consequences, occurred at the Jamieson Estate Sawmills, (wires our Mareeba correspondent) on Wednesday afternoon, resulting in the death of James Egan, a highly respectable member of a well-known Mareeba family. At the time the accident occurred Egan was unloading a truck-load of logs at the mill siding, and by some misadventure, one of the logs on the truck suddenly rolled and pinned the unfortunate man against a log that had previously been removed. Various mill employees were present at the time, and quick action was taken to remove the unfortunate young man from his serious position. Dr. Perkins was quickly in attendance, and the injured man was conveyed to the Mareeba district hospital, where every effort was made by the doctor and the nursing staff to alleviate his sufferings, but death took place within a short time of the disaster.

Deceased was an employee of Jamieson’s mill of long standing, and during the late European war served for a considerable time with the forces. He was wounded in action, and subsequently returned to his old employment where he met his untimely death.  The remains will, to-day, be accorded a military funeral by the Mareeba branch of the Returned Soldiers’ League.

The Brisbane Courier (Qld.) Friday 23 July 1920

KILLED BY A FALLING LOG. CAIRNS, July 22.

James Egan, a returned soldier, was killed whilst working at the sawmills at Mareeba owing to a log suddenly falling on him. He was well known throughout the district, and his funeral, which took place this afternoon, was one of the biggest military funerals witnessed in Mareeba.

Cairns Post (Qld.) 21 July 1924

EGAN.  – ln loving memory of  James Vincent, who was accidentally killed at Jamieson’s Estate Mill, Mareeba, July 21st, 1920.

I who love  you  sadly miss you as it dawns this fourth sad year.

In the lonely hours of thinking of you are ever near.

Never can my heart forget the sorrow and  grief.

The pain must always last

(Inserted by  his mother)

He is buried in the Mareeba cemetery, with a headstone commemorating his life.

As for his mate, Jim Wallace, who died in France in September 1918, he is buried in Peronne Communal Cemetery, Peronne, Picardie, France, a Commonwealth War Graves site, a long way from home.

More on Mary Coyne Egan in a later post …

The Blacks of Port Appin … postscript

Having published the previous post, I started to wonder what happened to Duncan and Mary Black’s other children, besides Archibald.  I went back to the records in Scotlands People to try to discover more.

The informant for Duncan’s death registration was his eldest son John.  John married Rachel / Rachael Crichton (or Crighton) who came from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.  They appear not to have had any children, but were living with Duncan at Port Appin Crofts at the time of the 1871 census, two years after Mary Black (nee MacKay) had died.  After Duncan died in 1873, they continued to live at Port Appin, with John working as a crofter and labourer until the 1901 census when his occupation is listed as ‘estate carter’, and in the 1911 census he is a retired carter.  Rachael died in 1901 and when John passed away in 1914, the informant for his death registration was his neighbour, Alexander Matheson.  There appear to have been no close Black relatives living locally.

The second son Archibald, LIam’s 4 x g grandfather, moved to Aberdeen as a young man – his story will be in a later post.  But of note in relation to Archibald, his birth registration in 1828 indicates that the family was then living at “Loch(?) Inverfolla”.  Inverfolla is a village three miles east of Port Appin, close to Loch Creran, so I assume that this is what is meant by this location.

Birth registration for Archibald Black 1828

The two youngest children, Duncan and Mary, both died as young adults of consumption (tuberculosis).  Duncan was aged 24 and had consumption “of one year’s duration”; Mary also had the disease for one year; she had worked as a housemaid at the age of 14 and was 19 when she died.  Duncan had been employed on his father’s farm as a labourer.  Both were single.  Both were buried in the churchyard at Appin.

George Black, the third son, was born about 1832 but to date I have been unable to trace him beyond his listing as an 8 year old in the 1841 census, living with the family at Port Appin.  He is not living with the family at the 1851 census, and being a common name, there are a multitude of George Blacks elsewhere in Scotland at that time, but the census indexes provide no information which can specifically identify a George Black born at Port Appin, Argyll (that is, without purchasing all the records to find out!).  I have also been unable to locate a death record for him.

So at this stage it appears that the only one of Duncan and Mary’s children to continue the Black family into a further generation was Archibald.

Updated chart for Duncan and Mary Black’s family

The loss of two children to tuberculosis was probably not unusual.  According to Wikipedia: “Tuberculosis caused the most widespread public concern in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an endemic disease of the urban poor. In 1815, one in four deaths in England was due to ‘consumption’.”  TB was not determined to be contagious until the 1880s, and it was not until 1946, that “the development of the antibiotic streptomycin made effective treatment and cure of TB a reality”.

The Blacks of Port Appin

Duncan Black, born 1797, is Liam’s great, great, great, great, great grandfather, or for easier reference, his 5 x great grandfather. He was born and died in Port Appin, Argyll (or Argyleshire), just north of Oban on the western coast of Scotland.  He was a crofter, a term for a farmer in a small landholding and also worked as an agricultural labourer.

Castle Stalker at Port Appin; James at Port Appin, September 2010.

Not much is yet known about his parents apart from their names – father John Black, a wood cutter and mother, Euphemia Black, whose maiden surname was Colquhoun. She must have been known as ‘Euphie’, as that is how she was named on son Duncan’s baptismal record. Duncan married Mary McKay on the 19th December 1824 at the age of 27 in the Parish of Lismore, Appin & Duror, Argyll.

They had at least five children including John, Archibald (Liam’s 4 x g grandfather), George, Duncan, and Mary Black.  Duncan was the last of the ancestral line of Blacks to have lived his life out in Port Appin.   Archibald moved to Aberdeen as a young man to work in a chemical works and married there, without returning to Port Appin to live.

Duncan lived to the age of 76, dying on 21 March 1873.  His wife Mary had died in 1869, aged 70. In Duncan’s lifetime, from the early 19th century, Scotland experienced the “clearing” of the highlands, the removal of tenanted farmers in preference for the widespread grazing of sheep.  Lismore was particularly badly affected by this.  But in Port Appin, Duncan seems to have been able to maintain his occupation of crofter and labourer, at least from the census of 1841 where he is the head of the household working as a labourer, to the census of 1871 where he is still the head of the household working as labourer and crofter.

Nowadays, Port Appin relies on tourism, fish farming, quarrying and forestry.  On the day we visited Port Appin it was a bright sunny day, made even better by a very pleasant lunch at the PierHouse Hotel, before moving on to Oban.  A ferry was leaving regularly to take the occasional passenger the short distance across the water to the island of Lismore.  Lismore, according to the gift shop assistant, had plenty of Blacks.  We’ll have to include it in a return visit.

Of course, Duncan is only one of Liam’s 64 great, great, great, great, great grandparents!  More about some of the others in the Black family later …

PS Castle Stalker – the current structure was built circa 1440 but it’s famous for being in the final scenes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

PierHouse Hotel and view from its restaurant at Port Appin; view to the island of Lismore from Port Appin

Duncan Black and family – two generations down, and one up. Family details current as of September 2014.