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You are looking for information on the descendants of Thomas George St Johnstone and Alice Marie St Johnston and I am looking for information on their parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on, back in time as I believe that there may possibly be a long and colourful family history to unearth here.

Thomas George and Alice Marie St Johnstone are my great grandparents. Their daughter Daisy is my grandmother. She married Arthur Edward Haydon and they had 4 children (Adrian, Marjorie, Cicely, Thomas) and Cicely is my mother.  Thomas is still alive and is 93 years old I believe and recently asked me for a photograph of his mother which I was able to provide.  There was a very sad St Johnstone family tragedy when Daisy died ten days after giving birth to her youngest child, Thomas. By all accounts she died of an infection because the mid-wife who delivered Thomas had an infected hand wound.  The four children were brought up therefore by an aunt.  To complete this particular family line and bring it right up to date, my wife and I have two daughters and they have six children all under ten years of age.

It is correct that the St Johnstone family was large and the census information given for them by one of your correspondents is the same as that which I have found. I have a photograph of the entire family with Thomas George and Alice Marie, their children and what is most likely to be some of their grandchildren, taken in what would appear to be their garden. I imagine the photograph was taken around 1910.  Yes, Thomas George was a wine merchant.  My grandfather, Arthur Haydon, was a master printer with a small printing works in Kings Heath, Birmingham, latterly run by his son Martin (my cousin) until he sold it some years ago. The Haydons are a tennis family.  I believe that Adrian either captained or played for England's table tennis team and his daughter and my cousin, Anne Haydon (-Jones), won the women's championship at Wimbledon in 1970.

If anyone can shed any light on the other children of Thomas George and Alice Marie, that would be very interesting.  However, it would also be very interesting to trace their ancestors.  There was an oral history passed on by my mother and her brothers and sister, that the St Johnstone's go back to the Border Reivers on the border either side of the the boundary between Scotland and England.  This oral history - almost certainly garbled by time and quite possibly affected by various imaginations rather than realities - also has it that the family motto is 'Redy, aye, redy' and is accompanied by a family crest which is a Winged Spur. One of the main areas of the country where one finds Johnstone surnames is indeed in Southern Scotland and if one visits the town of Moffat you can find the Winged Spur on a sign at the entry to the town.  The history of the Johnstones is that they were a 'clan' at war with the Moffats and at one point they ransacked the town of Moffat and took it over.  If one delves further into this murky history, then one finds that a man called Johnstone worked alongside Robert the Bruce and was his messenger and it is he who is supposed to have said 'Redy, aye, redy'. Now, how much of all this one can believe is connected to Thomas George and Alice Marie St Johnstone - and how the family got the 'St' prefix for their surname - is very debatable. Again, the oral history in the family had it that the Johnstones of Southern Scotland split into two groups - one followed the Border Reivers occupation of cattle theft and robbery, and the other (the 'Saints') gave up this occupation.

Does anyone have anything to add ?