Family History

Michael was a chimney sweep and later a slater also, and the family lived at 17 Ferguson Street for over 30 years. Michael employed other sweeps and sometimes had them as boarders in his house. At the time of the 1871 census there was a sweep called William Brougham living with them. They also at this time had a servant called Mona Oniel. At the 1881 census they had a sweep called James McGurk living with them.

Like many families at that time Michael and Margaret had a family bible in which details of important family events, such as marriages and births, were recorded. Michael and Margaret’s family bible still exists – in New Zealand in the hands of the grand-daughter of their son Peter (born 1881).

The first child of Michael and Margaret was Agnes, born in 1864, and the last child was Mary, born in 1886. The family bible records that thy had 12 children in total, and it seems that Frances, William and Alexander died as infants. My grandmother, Janet, was born on 7 August 1872 – she was a twin, but her brother William died the next year.

Although Michael had his chimney sweeping business there is no record of any of his children going into the same line of work – Janet was a “Fancy Box Maker” and Samuel was a “Coachman – not domestic”.

I have no information about the size of their house in Ferguson Street – but it would have been quite small and cramped, with 11 of them in it at the time of the 1881 census.

Ferguson Street was a small street which went from Cowcaddens Street through to Cambridge Street. It was demolished in the 1960s. It was just north-east of where the Thistle Hotel now is. I regularly walked along it, in the 1940s, 1950s and early1960s, when going to Cambridge Street Baptist Church - off the tramcar in Cowcaddens, up Ferguson Street to Cambridge Street then turn left and along to the church. In my memory Ferguson Street is only a few yards long, and had a sharp bend to the right as you walked up from Cowcaddens. (Although I must have walked along it hundreds of times I don’t remember ever being told that my great grandparents had lived there.)

The McGunnigle family seems to have been a very close one. At the time of the 1901 census the people recorded as being in the house, as well as Michael and Margaret, were Samuel (23), Mary (15), Margaret Gray (11) who was a grandchild, Janet Campbell (27) and her two daughters Sarah (5) and Mary (3) – Mary was my mother!

Just why my grandmother and her two daughters were in her parents house on census night 1901 I don’t yet know – why was she not with her husband John Greenwood Campbell to whom she got married in (She later married James Watson.)

The family lived on a farm called Cairns of Drimmie. Stewart’s fathers earnings will have been about £12 a year, which according to the local minister at the time was the going rate for a farm labourer at that date in that parish. If Stewart went to school he will have had to pay school fees of 2 shillings and 6 pence a quarter to learn reading and writing (the equivalent of 13p a quarter in decimalisation currency – not a trivial amount for a family with lots of children and the breadwinner earning only £12 a year.).

When Stewart was in his early teens the family moved from Bendochy to Legerwood in the Scottish Borders, about 120 miles away. Legerwood is about 7 miles north of Galashiels.

Stewart left home to go to work sometime before he was 17. He moved about 10 miles east of Legerwood to the farm of Newtonlees in the parish of Edam just north of Kelso. He was employed as a mole-catcher. The farmer he worked for was James Ross and Newtonlees was a 606 acre farm employing 24 people. Stewart lived in the main farmhouse.

By spring of 1851 the family (minus Stewart) were living at Legerwood, but by this time James was a widower. The date of Emily’s death is not known. She may even have died before the family moved from Bendochy to Legerwood. Living with them was James’s 28-year-old unmarried niece Christian as a “House Servant”. So it would seem that the niece had been brought down from Perthshire to keep house for James and the family since Emily was dead. (Although John and Hugh were adults by this time the oldest girl, Isabel, was only 12 and could not be expected to keep house. Of course John and Hugh as males would not have been expected to do house keeping.)

The next we hear of Stewart is the calling of his marriage banns on the 26th November and the 3rd of December 1854. He was described as living in the parish of Legerwood – so he must have moved back there from Newtonlees sometime after April 1851 and before December 1854. He is also described in the banns as a “General labourer” – he may not have liked that since he seems to have taken pride in calling himself a “mole-catcher” all his life. He was marrying Helen Mason who lived at Pyetshaw in the Earlston parish. So the marriage will have taken place in late December or early January. (Helen was the daughter of Alexander Mason and Isabel Dodds.)

Stewart and Helen’s first child was Isabel who was born in 1856. (She was my grandmother’s mother. She married Robert Johnston a Berwick-upon-Tweed tailor and clothier.) Their second child, James, was born in 1859. At the 1861 census they were living at Standingstone, Earlston and with them at that time were Stewart’s unmarried older brother Hugh (also a mole-catcher) and Helen’s mother Isabel who was 63. (Isabel had been a widow for more than 20 years.)

Around 1870 Stewart built a home for himself, and a number of adjoining cottages at the part of Earlston’s main street which was known as East End. It is unclear whether he himself was involved in their building or if he employed others to do this work.

Between 1861 and 1871 three more children were born (Alexander in 1862, Emily in 1867, and John in 1869) and at the time of the 1871 census the family were living at 92 Main Street, Earlston presumably in the house which Stewart had built. Living with them was Stewart’s father James (71).

Helen’s mother Isabella died on the morning of 3rd September 1872 at the age of 73 Stewart registered the death the next day.

At the time of the 1881 census their address is recorded as High Street, East End, and of their children only Emily and John were living with them. They also had Janet Murray (16) living with them as a “General Servant Domestic”.

Helen died sometime after the 1881 census and before the 1891 census. Stewart remarried. His new wife was called Jane, and she was twenty years his junior. They had two children, David who was born in 1892 and Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) born in 1895 – who I remember as “Auntie Lizzie” and I remember visiting the family home, built by Stewart, in Earlston a number of times in the late 1940s or early 1950s, (in fact Auntie Lizzie was my grandmother’s mother’s half-sister, so I suppose that makes her my father’s aunt.)

In the 1901 census their address is given as “115 High” and as well as Stewart and Jane in the house were David and Lizzie, and also Helen Hunter who was Stewart’s grand-daughter.

Stewart Paterson died in 1908 at the age of 75. He seems to have died a comparatively rich man. My Uncle Arnold remembers his father, my grandfather, telling of being called to Earlston on Stewart’s death to collect £300 left to various family members. Presumably he left other sums to his more immediate family and there was also the houses he had built. So it would seem he left wealth equivalent to at least £200,000 today – not bad for someone who started his working life as a sixteen-year-old mole-catcher.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Afterword - What happened to some of the others mentioned? David Paterson – son of Stewart and Jane. Went to fight in World War I with the Royal Canadian Regiment and was killed in Flanders in on 3 August 1916 aged 25. He is buried in the Menin Road South Military Cemetery, Belgium. He is commemorated on the war memorial in the centre of Earlston.

Isabel Paterson – Stewart and Helen’s first child. Moved to Berwick around the age of 20 and married Robert Johnston. The extract below is from the 1881 census. Robert Johnston went on to run a very successful tailoring business.

The first census record I found of James Vannan is the 1861 Census when he was 18. He was living with his brother Robert Vannan (26) at 7 Bothwell Street, Glasgow. His occupation is listed as a Sailmaker. (Also in the household was Jane Vannan aged 47. She is listed as Robert Vannan's mother, and therefore presumably James Vannan's mother.)

I've now discovered James Vannan in the 1851 Census, but listed as Jas Vanan, at 24 York Lane in the household of Jane Vanan (37). Household members are - Robt Vanan (16), Jas Vanan (8) and Alex Vanan (1). It would seem to be the same family since in both '51 and '61 Robert's occupation is listed as a Coppersmith.

James Vannan was married twice. His first wife was Jane Wilson. They had 2 children - Mary Vannan, born 1866 and Jane B Vannan, born about 1868.

At the time of the 1881 Census James Vannan was living at 25 Richard Street, with his two daughters - Mary and Jane B.  Mary's occupation is described as a message girl. There is no mention of Jane Wilson in this Census record. 

The next we hear of James Vannan is his application for Poor Law Relief, an application put in on 9th August 1888. By this time he has married again - to Elizabeth Sharp who was born in 1857 in Kinnaird, Larbert. They were married in June 1882. (His application notes that his first wife had died about 1876.)

At the time of submitting the Poor Law Relief application James and Elizabeth had four children - Isabella Jane Vannan, who was my grandmother, James Sharp Vannan, and two others who died in infancy.

Although James Vannan was a sailmaker to trade he had been unemployed for 3 years at the time he applied for Poor Relief because he was "wholly disabled from disease of right lung". (This certified by a Dr Park.) He acted as a church officer and  received housing, coal and £1 monthly for doing that. His only other income was 2/4d a week from the Sailmakers' Society.

What drove him to apply for Poor Relief at the time he did so seems to have been that he had heard rumours that his services at the church "were to be dispensed with".  

The continuing Poor Relief records show that the next child Daniel Vannan was born in 1894. James Vannan eventually withdrew his Poor Relief application in 1909.

At the time of the 1891 Census the family were living at 30 Brown Street. Only the children from the second marriage (Bella Jane and James Sharp) were in the house. 

By this time Mary, the first child of James's first marriage, was married and had emigrated to the USA in 1889 - to Youngstown, Ohio. The second child of the first marriage, Jane B, I have not been able to trace.

I have not yet been able to trace the family in the 1901 Census. However James Vannan appears in the Glasgow Post Office Directory in the early years of the 1900s (05-06, 06-07, 08-09, but not after 09). He is listed at Wemyss Place and it says he is the Church Officer of Cambridge Street Baptist Church.

It would seem then that the Vannan family was connected to Cambridge Street Baptist Chuch before the Johnston family was. Bella Jane Vannan became a member of Cambridge Street Baptist Church as a fourteen-year-old in 1898, and was a member for over 50 years, until her death in 1948. (The Johnston family came from Hawick to Glasgow in the mid-1890s. They are in Hawick at the time of the 1891 census, and in Glasgow, 138 New City Road, at the time of the 1901 census.) The marriage of Andrew Johnston and Bella Jane Vannan took place in the church officer's house at 5 Wemyss Street in October 1906. My father was born in 5 Wemyss Street in July 1907.

James and Elizabeth's financial situation does not seem to have improved much after the withdrawal of their Poor Relief application. By 1917 they were living with their daughter Bella and son-in-law Andrew (my grandparents) in a basement house at 150 Berkeley Street.  It was there that James died in 1918 at the age of 76.  Elizabeth Sharp died in 1938.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What about some of the others mentioned?

James Sharp Vannan married Sarah Jane Phillips in 1906 in Cambridge Street Baptist Church and emigrated to the USA in 1910 going to Youngstown, Ohio. James Sharp Vannan (known as 'Scotty' Vannan to his workmates) worked in the Youngstown steel mills. He kept in regular touch with his siblings in Scotland - exchanging photographs etc with Isabella Jane and her husband Andrew, and with Dan. 

Their three children were Sarah Jane Vannan, James Vannan, and Elizabeth Sharp Vannan.

Daniel Vannan married Jessie McIntyre. He served as a church minister in Cairnryan and in Glen Lyon. In the 1940s they lived at Napiershall Street in Glasgow.

Bella Jane Vannan and Andrew Johnston, my grandparents, were married for about 50 years. Their children were:

Robert Johnston, my father

James Johnston

Arnold Johnston

Elizabeth Johnston (Bessie)

Isabella Johnston (Isa)

They lived at various addresses in Glasgow, latterly at 39 West End Park Street.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Some addresses mentioned.

Meuse Lane is at Stewart Street - there is a photo in the Virtual Mitchell website.

Bothwell Street runs west from Central Station

York Lane is 

Brown Street is

Wemyss Place is just off Cambridge Street, runs to Stow Street

Berkeley Street is in the Anderston area

Napiershall Street is in the Woodlands area

West End Park Street is in the Woodlands area

- - - - - - - - - - 

Sources

1851 Census

1861 Census

James Vannan's application for Poor Law Relief (Mitchell Library, Glasgow)

1891 Census

Glasgow Post Office Directory