Always start with something you know – Kay’s golden rule of family research, and in this case we knew only little snippets. My great grandmother Mary Smith (on the tree) was from Islay, had a brother called Robert, and lived at Laggan farm.
There they were in the 1911 census at Laggan on the island of Islay but it was only when I bought the credits and had a look at the detail that we found she was an Ayrshire lass! Not only that, she was living with her aunt and uncle. Tracing back revealed more and more of her life. Born at Drongan House, Stair, in 1875 where her father was well established as proprietor of the farm there, she had a very promising start. Her mother was also from a farming family, the Osbornes of Drumjohn, and she was quite a bit younger than her new husband. Brother Robert soon followed, and then the first tragedy struck. After only four years of marriage David Smith, her father died suddenly at Drongan House.
The 1881 census finds them resettled in a house in Kilmarnock; widow Mary, Mary Jane, Robert, and two lodgers, Matthew Osborne and Harold McNicol both apprentices. Matthew Osborne was Mary’s younger brother who would later become proprietor of the Kilmarnock Standard.
The same year as the census, another tragedy hit as diphtheria swept through Ayrshire and claimed the life of Harold McNicol, just seventeen, and then the following year Mary’s mother died as well. After these traumatic events, widow Mary’s mental and physical health must have deteriorated as the next tragedy is her death in Ayr asylum leaving Matthew Osborne to deal with her estate and see that the two children are cared for. It is with some relief that the census of 1891 shows them settled with Aunt Agnes Osborne and her husband Robert Wallace at Townhead of Drumley, Tarbolton.
All seems well and the 1901 census shows them still there. Robert has a job as a clerk, and Mary Jane is ‘farmer’s niece’. All is not as it seems, however, because I am looking now at my grandfather’s birth certificate.
In midsummer 1896 Mary Jane stepped off the train at Keswick station in the Lake District, rented an apartment just off the main street, and gave birth to Robert. She registered his birth in Cockermouth and handed him over to a miner and his wife from Stainburn near Workington.
The following year she did the same thing again with Victor James, leaving the two little boys together.
Two years later she left her next child with the MacMaster family in Cockermouth. This couple already had a few children of their own, so when Mary Jane called back again in January of 1901 it was Sarah Briscoe who stepped in to take the new child. Two months after his birth there is Mary Jane back in Tarbolton with glaring blank spaces where her children should be. Second golden rule of family research – People Lie.
By about 1905 and a total of five children secreted away, Robert Wallace decided to move to Islay. That may have been a reaction to his niece’s inappropriate behaviour but we cannot know. If it was an attempt to stop the babies arriving it didn’t work, because Sarah Briscoe took in another four babies from Mary Jane over the years up until 1912. They called her Granny Briscoe.
When living in Islay, transport must have been more difficult for her. Rather than taking the train, Mary Jane would have to rely on the numerous passenger ferries that shuttled across between Islay, Workington and Whitehaven on the west coast of Cumberland, and sometimes Silloth and Belfast. During her frequent visits to check on the children, Mary Jane became unsettled with the treatment her first two were having. She brought with her money for their keep, sewn into her petticoats and Islay cheeses in her luggage, but the miner and his wife spent the windfall cash on themselves. Granny Briscoe couldn’t take them until she had moved to a bigger farmhouse in the beautiful vale of Lorton, which she did and kept all eight together in the end.
Then another change. Aunt Agnes died in 1918, and shortly afterwards the lease on Laggan farm ran out. Here is supposition, but family lore had it that Mary Jane was done out of her legacy, so I assume Robert Wallace remarried taking her inheritance to his new wife. Whatever happened, Mary Jane is next seen getting married to David Knox, a bachelor farmer from Ochiltree where she had been housekeeper – she had to find employment. They married at Schaw Manse and lived in Woodland Cottage, Drongan. The marriage lasted six years until David Knox died. After that, I believe she got the family in Cumberland together and asked if they would like her to move to live nearer them. Granny Briscoe was still living with them at the time, and they collectively thought it would be unfair on her, she being their carer for so many years. So Twynholm was her next stop, where there were Smith cousins.
She died there in 1947 with her cousin James’ daughter Jane Fergusson present.
I thought this was all I could find out about Mary Jane and then my cousin Raymond came up with something new – he says 13 children! So my job isn’t complete yet. Somewhere along the Kilmarnock to Carlisle line, or near a port of call of those Islay ferries, there may be some more of our relations with Cumnock Connections. Looking at the names of my great aunt and uncles, I am short a David – after her father, and a Jane – after a grandmother. If anybody knows of them I would be delighted to hear! (leave a comment)
Many thanks to Kay and her team at Cumnock History Group for providing so much additional information through the Cumnock Connections tree, and showing us just how many Ayrshire links we have.
Posted on behalf of the Cumbrian Smiths, the sons and daughter of Mary Jane.
