Mum and dad's wedding in 1942

We got a box of dad's memorabilia down from the loft one wet afternoon recently. They had kept all their wedding souvenirs; cards, telegrams, invitations, compliments cards.  Lovely!

My parents Lena and Cliff were married during the war. No elaborate outfits as there was rationing on clothes. The ceremony and reception took place in the Gordon Restaurant, at 19 Gordon Street, Glasgow near Central Station on 27 August 1942. My father was stationed at Fort George at the time and they had a brief honeymoon in Nairn. I expect mum returned to Glasgow alone. They lived with my grandparents until 1949.

Bridesmaid was Ethel Sievwright  and best man was David F Graham, a neighbour

I think my mother was in lilac from what I can remember her telling me.
Her bridesmaid was her cousin Ethel Sievwright so I presume that is her seated on the left. I didn't know her very well as she was living in Kent when I was growing up. The lady in the photo looks very like Ethel's sister Amelia (Millie) but I think it must be Ethel. Dad's uniform is far from smart. He should have worn his kilt!

in Lovat Scouts, taken in Inverness ca 1942

m

telegram from Colin Clark, mum's uncle

from mum's aunt Aggie Walker

Hymns were "O God of Bethel" and "O Perfect Love, All Human Thought Transcending"

70 years ago today

My parents were married in Glasgow on 27 August 1942.  My father was on leave from the forces,  I think he was based at Fort George at the time.

They were married in the Ca' d'Oro in Gordon Street in Glasgow. Mum had sweet peas for a bouquet and her cousin Ethel Sievwright was the bridesmaid. I still have the daisy brooch she is wearing. I don't think this is the wedding photo - it must be in the attic. She wore a mauve two piece and he wore a smart uniform.

They had a brief honeymoon in Nairn.

They lived at my grandparents' house in Knightswood until 1949. It must have been a full house as my uncle Colin lived there too with his family; so 6 adults and 4 children in a council semi!

What's in a name?

I had an uncle Colin, my mother's brother and as a child I was tickled to find that she had an uncle Colin too. However family history research reveals (so far) 11 Colins and a Colina in the same line in New Zealand, Canada and Denmark. The first was Colin Sievwright born 1792 a surgeon who served in the Peninsular wars. I thought at first he was my great great grandfather, the poet, but turns out he was his uncle. I think Colin was an unusual name at that time. Colin the poet didn't name any of his sons Colin but his children did. They are all Colin Sievwrights with the exception of 2 Colin Shearers and 2 Colin Clarks. Colina Charlotte seems to have preferred her Charlotte middle name which made her difficult to track down but now think she married George Dixon as Charlotte C Sievwright.

I wondered where my uncle George (father's brother) got his middle name Herbert. It was after a younger brother of his father who died in infancy. And uncle Ted's names were Edward Colbourne. Turns out Edward Colbourne was the husband of his granny's sister Delilah Ball who lived in Dudley. One of her children was James Clifford Colbourne b 1896 which are also the first names of my father, though I think it more likely he is named after his uncle Clifford b 1894.

I think this is one of the most interesting things in doing family history - seeing names occuring in different generations. I've mentioned traditional Scottish naming patterns before. It helps confirm you have the right family in a census. It is particularly useful when there are unusual first names, however my Muirkirk Murdochs are all unhelpfully called Andrew, Alexander, George, John, James, Robert and William.

The English forbears have many biblical names Moses, Abraham, Hezekiah, Zachariah, Delilah, Samson, Emanual, Mark and Samuel.

But my all-time favourite is a distant ancestor of my Cumnock born husband - Marmaduke! Marmaduke McCrae b 1776 in Cumnock. I'm so glad he wasn't named after him.

Jas B Rolinson Ltd

ca. 1975 by Andrew Gaylor

Grandfather founded the garage business at 400 Gallowgate in the east end of Glasgow in 1935. He was joined by his three sons. They were Rootes dealers (latterly Chrysler) and sold new and used cars, petrol, had a spares department and a workshop. They also had a filling station at Muiryfaulds in Shettleston, at the junction of Westmuir Street and Shettleston Road.  For a while in the sixties they hired cars and dormobiles (motor homes, see photos below). My cousins and I used to clean them out on Saturdays. From the age of 13, I worked in the office on Saturdays and in the holidays. I did filing, answering the phone and calling for my father or uncles over the tannoy system. I balanced the ledgers using an enormous adding machine. When they didn't balance I did them mentally and we're talking big columns of pounds, shillings and pence. I was allowed to take money to the bank along the Gallowgate in leather pouches. I can remember the occasional £100 note. I wouldn't dream of doing this now.
In 1960 to celebrate 25 years in business they had a big event in the McLellan Galleries in Sauchiehall street. They invited customers and prospective customers to a Silver Jubilee on the 5th and 6th of April. I have the guest list, the invitations, the thank you letters and publicity photos and I recently came across the following slides.

Add caption

think this is Margaret Baird later Mrs James Colquhoun who worked in the office

hire a dormobile for £25 a week
Miss Baird and Mrs McIntosh

Humber Super Snipe Touring Limousine

 L-R Fay & George, Lena & Cliff, Margaret & Jim, Helen & Ted

They opened Muiryfaulds filling station in 1962 at the junction of Westmuir St and Shettleston Road in Parkhead with Uncle George in charge. I don't recognise anyone in the photo from the Evening Times of 22 Nov 1962.

The premises at 400-420 Gallowgate in 1975 and after regeneration in the eighties. The only part to be retained (and restored) was an 18th century building seen on the right of the top photo. 

1944

Link to document about the restoration of the old building

Happy Anniversary!

My grandparents James Ball Rolinson and Margaret Mayes Haig were married on this day, 2nd January, in 1913 at Dollarbeg, Clackmannanshire where they were in service.
I don't have a photo of the wedding but found this photo of their Golden Wedding party in 1963.
The family gave them a gold (coloured) tray. Granny looks suitably unimpressed!

Merry Christmas in days gone by.

As an only child I was undoubtedly very privileged at Christmas.

Christmas Day would start with the discovery of Santa's goodies laid out in front of the fire. The postman would bring cards and parcels even on Christmas morning.

We would go to the Christmas Day Service and we would have the grandparents for Christmas dinner.

My mother would make a capon for most of us and a steak for dad who wouldn't eat poultry after he saw an aunt kill a chicken when he was small. This aunt may have been Jessie Rolinson as I remember seeing baby chicks when we visited Uncle Andrew Duncan.

We would all listen reverentially to the Queen's speech on telly at 3pm and watch telly in the evening.

The only difference nowadays is the church visit and the queen's speech are neglected. I cook beef as the head of the family doesn't like turkey and chicken nowadays isn't a special treat.

Here are some photos from past Christmasses.



Christmas Day 1956 at our house in Thornliebank



Left to right, mum, granny Shearer, grandad Shearer, me, Papa Rolinson, Dad (and a bit of granny R)

New Year's Day 1957 with the Rolinsons, possibly at the grandparents' flat in Dennistoun.

mum, Fay, George, back of Papa's head, granny, Ted


Uncle George and Auntie Fay whooping it up watched by Jim and me.


Christmas 1958. Dad would have liked a son!


Christmas 1959 in our new house in Giffnock




Going to my first dinner dance in 1969. I still have the red glass vase that's on the mantelpiece and the pearl bracelet from Majorca. The dress cost 21 guineas from a shop in Renfield Street and ended up in my daughter's dressing up box.

Charline Clark Shearer, born 100 years ago today!

My mother would be 100 today, if she were still alive. Thought it would be nice to remember her today with a piece about her.
She was the first child of Willie Shearer and Charline Amelia Annie McKenzie Clark. She was born in the Lodge House of Kincaid House in Milton of Campsie where Willie was the chauffeur. After the war Willie was chauffeur at Millburn House near Dalserf. I have piano music with her name Lena Shearer, Millburn Lodge. She was a good pianist, had passed exams and gave lessons. She played country dance music for the women's guild. I still have her piano which is sadly seldom played.
She worked as a typist in the Labour Exchange. She was an ARP warden during the war.
She met my dad at dancing lessons. He was not a great dancer. Her petname for him was QQS - quick, quick, slow.
They married in 1942. After the war they lived with her parents and her brother Colin and his family all in a council house in Knightswood. They got their own house in 1949. She had many miscarriages before I finally came along in 1950.
She was an intelligent woman but wasn't allowed to go out to work after marriage. The husband would provide. She knitted and made my clothes. She flung herself into church work, making crafts to sell and organising events like fashion shows. She liked crosswords. She passed her driving test but was too nervous to drive.
She was funny, had a wicked sense of humour and a fine turn of phrase including Scots words and phrases.
In the late sixties my parents discovered foreign holidays and went to Majorca, Tenerife, Sorrento, Lake Garda and went on a Rhine Cruise.
She had a stroke in 1973 and life changed dramatically. My father looked after her well, having to learn to cook and work a washing machine.
She died in 1985 sadly never knowing her son-in-law or her grandchildren.

Mary Ann Price

I have an admiration for Mary Ann who seems to have flown in the face of convention! She had 11 children, only 3 of whom were born legitimate. We shouldn't judge the lives of our ancestors whose circumstances were very different to ours.

Mary Ann's mother Mary Ann Holmes is the sister of my GG grandmother Jane Holmes.

Mary Ann Holmes married Joseph Price in 1843 in St Peter's, Wolverhampton and by 1850 they were living in Dalry in Ayrshire. They were, as far as I can see, the first of the Black Country miners in my family to move to Scotland.

In 1851 Joseph is an ironstone miner in Dalry. In 1861 he is an ironstone miner in Beith and they have 3 children Joseph Price junior, Mary (Ann) and Margaret Price. Sometime in the next decade Jane Holmes Rolinson's family and Joseph and Mary Ann Price all move to Cumnock.

In February 1871 Mary Ann aged 16 is married to her cousin Matthew Rolinson age 24. They have 3 children Jean/Jane Rolinson, Margaret Rolinson and John Dudley Rolinson. Neither Matthew nor Mary Ann can write so their surname is spelt various ways according to how it is interpreted by others. Mary Ann has a fourth child in 1876 recorded as Aaron Price or Rollison. On his birth certificate she states that her husband is not the father and that they have been apart since 1875. This must have been pretty scandalous and no doubt caused some family strife since their mothers were sisters.

In 1881 Mary Ann is with her parents in Auchinleck and the children with her are Jean, 9, John, 4 and Aron Robinson, 3. She is 26 and working in a woollen factory. I don't know where daughter Margaret is. She dies in 1883 but I can't find her in the 1881 census. Husband Matthew is living with his parents.

I find a birth for an Agnes Rollison in 1881 born in Crookedholm near Kilmarnock (as Rorison!). Payment of about £1 to scotlandspeople shows the mother to be Mary Ann Price and Matthew Rolinson the father. But there is a note in the margin. Matthew is not the father and Mary Ann is brought to the Sheriff Court in Kilmarnock to explain herself. (I wonder who told on her!) She claims ignorance, which can hardly be the case after Aaron's birth certificate. However the Sheriff takes pity on her and she is admonished. I found the report in the Cumnock Chronicle. Sadly baby Agnes dies a few months later as does daughter Margaret. Another fatherless child James is born and dies at 8 months in 1885. Her parents die in 1884 and 1885 so she is alone with the children. Or is she?

Later in December 1885 Catherine Ross is born in Cronberry to Mary Ann and James Ross, a coal miner. The family move to Kirkintilloch and have 3 more children Hugh Ross 1887, Mary Ann Ross 1889 and Elizabeth Ross 1895.

In 1904 James Ross and Mary Ann Price undergo an irregular marriage in Glasgow witnessed by her sister Fanny Price and husband Charles Dickens. An irregular marriage is one sworn in front of witnesses usually after the couple has been living together for some time rather than being married by a minister. In it Mary Ann states that she is a widow.

However I checked up on her husband/cousin Matthew. He does not die until 1923. So she has lied again. It's hard to believe that she did not know he was alive but maybe there was no contact between the the Price and Rolinson families after the parents died.

When son Aaron Price marries, he gives his father as Joseph Price (his grandfather) and his mother's maiden name as Rolinson, which is no doubt what he has been told!

Link to Mary Ann here

Abraham Yates and Ann Rolinson

I first saw the names Abraham Yates and Ann Rolinson as witnesses on the marriage certificate of my great great grandparents John Rolinson and Jane Holmes in 1839 in Rushall, Staffordshire. Ann, I assumed, was John's sister. She is in the 1841 census with her parents aged 18. I thought no more of it, but the name Abraham Yates stuck in my mind.

While investigating the censuses of my great grandparents John and Emma who were in Cumnock, Ayrshire in 1871 and 1881 and in Calderbank, Lanarkshire I moticed that the lodger in 1871 Joseph Hunt pops up again in 1881 and in 1891 living very close by with a wife Louisa. I had to look for a marriage. He married Louisa Yates in 1874 in Glengyron Row, Cumnock. Her parents were "Abel Yates" and "Hannah Rolleston". Could this be Abraham and Ann? Versions of Rolinson I have seen include Rolieson, Rollason, Rowlinson, Robinson even Roberston, so it was quite possible. The marriage certificate was well worth the £1.20 fee. Normally you get the bride and groom's age, status, occupation, address, parents and whether deceased or not, father's occupation and 2 witnesses. On this certificate because Joseph was illiterate his x mark was witnessed by Benjamin Yates and Ann Maria Yates. They turn out to be a son and a daughter-in-law of Abraham and Ann and proof I was on the right lines. When I got Ann Rolinson Yates' death certificate it gave different parents to John's so I thought they were maybe cousins instead. Since the informant of the death of a person is quite often a child or son-in-law and may only know the deceased as "gran" they may be mistaken in the information they give. The only thing for it was to send for the marriage certificate from 1842 in England at a cost of £9.25 to get more accurate information. Statutory records in England start in 1837, earlier than Scotland which 1855. But you need to send for the certificate, you can't just download an image. When it arrived it confirmed her father was John, a miner, which fitted perfectly. Mother's names were not registered on English certificates, at that time anyway.

Abraham and Ann followed her brother John Rolinson to Cumnock. They had 9 children born in England and they all stayed in Scotland apart from Eli Yates and wife Ann Maria Colbourn, the aforementioned Ann Maria Yates on the marriage certificate. Many of the Yates were in Auchinleck and Dalmellington (Benwhat) and I have been talking to one of their descendants, now in Northamptonshire not so far from where they started out.

The strangest thing of all is that in the 1901 census my great great aunt Ann Rolinson Yates, a widow of 78, is still living in Glengyron Row next door to my father-in-law, David McMeekin, a boy of 8!

You can see Abraham Yates on my tree here

1901 Cumnock

Rolinson - Miners from the Black Country

All I knew about my grandfather James Ball Rolinson's origins was that he was born in Yorkshire that his mother was Emma and that they lived in Calderbank in Lanarkshire.

I found the family very quickly in the 1881 census. Good gracious, they are in Cumnock in the same miners' row that my husband's family lived in, Glengyron Row. I think that is what got me hooked on this genealogy.

Three generations of Rolinsons are there in Glengyron Row in 2 houses next door to each other. My great grandparents James Rolinson and Emma Ball and 3 daughters (my grandfather is still to come), the gg grandparents John Rolinson and Jane (Holmes), their son Matthew Rolinson who is married but with no wife present and a lodger. Next door is son Emmanuel Rolinson and wife  Hannah (Jones) 4 sons and 3 adult male lodgers. So 8 in one house and 9 in the other. These houses had 2 rooms! All of them are born in England except for 2 of the children who were born in Cumnock. They are all from Walsall or Tipton in Staffordshire.

Of course, I had to investigate the lodgers too. With Emmanuel and Hannah are Zachariah Jones and James Jones who turn out to be Hannah's brothers and one Charles Dickens (no, not that one) who later marries into the family, Fanny Price a cousin.

The other lodger Joseph Hunt also later marries into the family, Louisa Yates a cousin. They certainly stuck together.

10 years earlier they are in Cumnock too, at another address. I reckon Glengyron Row was built about 1873 to house the influx of miners, so it probably was the height of luxury, as it was at the time and a way of attracting miners to the area!

I find Matthew Rolinson with his wife Mary Ann Price who also turns out to be his cousin. More of her another time.

Although they are in Cumnock in these 2 census it seems they have gone back to England between censuses judging by the birthplaces of the children. I can only suppose they went where there was work.

In 1891 I find James and Emma in Calderbank, as expected, with widowed mother Jane and Matthew nearby. But between 1881 and 1891 they were in Yorkshire where indeed my grandfather was born. They stayed put in Calderbank and there are still some Rolinsons there.

Although my direct line is no longer in Cumnock others, Yates and Price, stayed on in Cumnock, Auchinleck and Dalmellington. I had no idea I had any connection to Ayrshire where I have lived since 1973.

My grandfather was a miner in the 1901 census but by 1906 he was driving the first public transport bus service in Edinburgh. In 1913 he was a chauffeur in Dollar. He worked for Anderson's in Newton Mearns and also Rosslea Motors and in 1935 he opened his own garage business in the Gallowgate in Glasgow. My father and his brothers also joined the firm and it went on until about 1980.

Papa at the wheel of a Maudsley bus of the Scottish Motor Transport Group, Edinburgh 1906

Link to the Rolinsons on my tree