The Black family migration from Port Appin to Aberdeen

In my earlier post on the family of Duncan Black and Mary McKay, I was unable to provide a complete description of their family as I was not able to identify the whereabouts of their son, George Black. I have since found George and now have the details of his family and descendants for two further generations. George also migrated to Aberdeen from Port Appin, following his brother Archibald.

I located George in the 1861 census, living in Archibald’s home in Aberdeen at 12 Yeats Lane, working as a labourer at a chemical works, possibly the same workplace as Archibald.  1861 was also the year George married, on 5th July, to Christina (her name is also given as Christian) Thomson, a native of Aberdeen and a woollen mill worker.

Christina’s father John Thomson was a farmer and the family appear to have lived for a while in Banchory, about 18 miles west of Aberdeen.  Two of Christina’s elder siblings, John and Isabella, were born in Banchory, although her parents were married in Aberdeen.  By the time of Christina’s birth in 1836, the family was living in Aberdeen.  Christina’s mother was Elspet or Elsie Falconer, born about 1800.   She supported the family for many years after the death of her husband and was living with Christina and son-in-law George when she died in 1875.

George Black and Christina Thomson lived initially at 2 Windy Wynd and later at 184 Gallowgate, Aberdeen. They had eight children at these addresses:

• George, born 10th January 1862
• Isabella, born 13th October 1863
• Christina, born 22nd June 1865, died 26th April 1870
• Mary, born 10th September 1867
• John, born 27th September 1869, died 6th December 1870
• Elsie Falconer, born 16th March 1872 (named after her maternal grandmother)
• Margaret (Maggie), born 6th January 1874
• John, born 18th May 1876.

Christina lived to the age of 70 in 1906.  The information on her death certificate was provided by her daughter Elsie Rippon, nee Black.

George died in 1918, at the age of 85, at his daughter Margaret Ingram’s house in Ashvale Place, Aberdeen.  He died on 13th April.  The day before on the 12th, one of his grandsons, Lawrence Rippon, was killed in action in France, fighting with the Royal Scots 2nd Battalion.

Of George and Christina’s children, all married and had families, except for Christina and the first John who both died young.

• George, a plumber,  married Catherine Skakle Mitchell from Cullen in Banffshire in 1887 and they had four children, all living in Aberdeen.

Family of George Black (1862 – 1937) and Catherine Mitchell (1860 – 1943)

• Isabella, a flax mill worker,  married William Beattie Duncan, a gardener, in 1882.  They moved to Ayr in Ayrshire where the youngest of their three sons, John, was born.
  • John, a telegraph messenger in the post office, joined up as a rifleman in the London Regiment (Post Office Rifles) 1st/8th Battalion in World War 1.  He was killed in action on 15 September 1916 in France.  He has no known grave but his name is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, the memorial to the Missing of the Somme, near the French village of Thiepval.

Family of Isabella Black (1863 – 1938) and William Duncan (1860 – 1935)

• Mary, a cotton mill worker, married Edward Masson, a stone polisher at the granite works, in 1889.  At the 1911 census she reported that she had had 10 children born alive, of which four were still living.  She and her husband migrated to Canada in 1921, following her eldest surviving daughter Margaret there, and settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Family of Mary Black (1867 – 1934 and Edward Masson (1863 – 1936): four surviving children

• Elsie, a cotton spinner, married Ernest John Rippon, a French polisher from Callington in Cornwall, England,  in 1892.  They were living in Beith, Ayrshire at the time of their third child’s birth in 1896, but when Ernest died in 1904, the family returned to Aberdeen.  Elsie remarried in 1906 to John Jeffrey, a widower with six children, and continued to live in Aberdeen.
  • Elsie and Ernest’s second child, Lawrence, initially enlisted on 30th November 1914 in the Cheshire Regiment 16th Service Battalion but was discharged in February 1915 because of flat feet. However he re-enlisted in May 1915 in the 17th Royal Scots. He was killed in action in France/Flanders on 12 April 1918.  He has no known grave but is memorialised on the Ploegsteert memorial, south of Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium.

Family of Elsie Falconer Black (1872 – 1959) and Ernest Lawrence Rippon (1857 – 1904)

• Margaret (Maggie) married Charles Ingram, a coach finisher in the coach building industry and tramway car repairer  (once also described as a  blacksmith’s viceman) in 1897.  Maggie also worked as a cotton spinner. They had a family of three sons and one daughter, another Maggie, all  born in Aberdeen.  Charles Ingram’s mother was a Rippon from Callington in Cornwall and appears to have been a cousin of the father of Elsie’s husband, Ernest Rippon.

Family of Maggie Black (1874 – 1932) and Charles Ingram (1870 – 1940)

• John, an iron moulder, married Isabella Cochrane from Aberdeen in Beith, Ayrshire in 1900.  They had a family of five children, born in Scotland and England.  They were living in Aberdeen at the birth of their last children in 1910 who were twins, but one child lived only nine days.  They migrated to Toronto in Canada in 1921, where their eldest son George also lived.

Family of John Black (1876 – 1946) and Isabella Cochrane (1877 – 1959)

So George’s branch of the Black family became fairly firmly established in Aberdeen, with some later generations attracted to migration to Canada.

Between them, Archibald and George Black had 19 children and 59 grandchildren.  It’s just as well they left Port Appin for the larger metropolis.

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.

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.