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Messages - MrsGnomus

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Aberdeenshire / Re: Jessie Maitland Milne
« on: Monday 04 November 24 17:43 GMT (UK)  »
I am constantly amazed at how tough it seems to have been and the number of children who died at extremely young ages.

In respect of her being described as deceased when her daughter married I guess it’s possible that her daughter had no idea if she was alive or dead or didn’t want to admit that her mother had left her father to live with someone she wasn’t married to. However I have found other errors on marriage records for ancestors of my husband with at least two records having the wrong name for the mother of the bride and one other record that had someone listed as deceased when other records contradicted that but on the whole they have been accurate and the extra information included in the Scottish records makes researching much easier than the records for the rest of the U.K.

Now that I have an answer about what happened to Jessie I am moving on to try and find out where and when her husband’s father and paternal grandfather died. Similar situation I can trace them from birth, marriage, having children and appearing in census records but then they both vanish from the census records but aren’t recorded as deceased on other records until their wives died with both of them being described as widows at the date of their death. I can’t find any records for either of them dying in Scotland and I can’t find matches for them in the English and Welsh records. They were both masons/stonecutters so it’s possible that they went abroad for work - I will start a separate post about them if I am still stuck after looking at passenger lists and so on.

Elisabeth

2
Aberdeenshire / Re: Jessie Maitland Milne
« on: Monday 28 October 24 10:27 GMT (UK)  »
I have just looked at the digital image of his death on the GRO website.  He died as the result of a stroke while visiting a house in a village between Blackpool and Preston. The owner/occupier of the house was the person who registered the death. 

I have also found at least some of his service records on the National Archive website this morning - he seems to have spent a lot of time in the cells for various misdemeanours. I get the sense that she may well have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire when she became involved with him.

While I have been researching this morning I also came across some evidence of prison records for her mother - the newspaper access is still free this morning so cross checking that has come up with another record of her father assaulting her mother. I haven't told my husband about that one yet!

I don't know anything about the person who reported Jessie's death other than that they were resident at a different address on the same street but were also present when she died - whoever it was knew enough about her to tell the registrar that she was the widow of my husband's great grandfather. As another twist in the tale I used to drive along that street on a fairly regular basis not long after we got married as it was the route to where I would hold an outpatient clinic when I was a trainee Psychiatrist.

My father in law doesn't seem to know a great deal about his father's family history.  His mother divorced his father in 1956 - I am pretty sure that his drinking was also an issue from what I have been told. He knew that his father had an older sister and a younger brother but had no idea about him being in the Aberdeen Poorhouse at all - I suspect that this was something that would have been regarded as a great source of shame at the time.  His father's younger brother was married to his mother's younger sister (it took me a while to get my head around that one!) but died in 1937, not long after he got married, from TB.

I will definitely be putting in a heavy research session when the records are free to view in November - I did the same last year too. Since then I have found that Lincolnshire Libraries have free access to Find My Past as well as Ancestry.  Residents of Nottinghamshire (that's where we finally ended up with work) can sign up to the Lincolnshire Library service so I have done that too - I just need to find time to go and spend a lengthy session at our closest library.

Thanks for all your help

Elisabeth

3
Aberdeenshire / Re: Jessie Maitland Milne
« on: Sunday 27 October 24 20:11 GMT (UK)  »
Thanks for all of that.

I can see that he was sent to prison for 2 months in 1909 for threats to kill and assault. He was living in Grimsby then. It also looks like was he enlisted in the Royal Navy by 1896 and was serving in the Merchant Navy in WW1.

If he was working on trawlers in the 1920’s that would certainly explain how they met as she was working as a fish worker in Aberdeen in 1921.

I will see what else I can dig up tomorrow. If can find his service records from WW1 that might also be interesting.

Elisabeth

4
Aberdeenshire / Re: Jessie Maitland Milne
« on: Sunday 27 October 24 17:21 GMT (UK)  »
Thanks for suggesting that.  I had the death in Fleetwood previously but the search that I was using didn't give the middle name so I hadn't pursued it any further before today.

I think that it's almost certainly the person that I am looking for as the GRO digital record for her death states that she was the widow of a Charles Milne.  The cause of death was given as acute pulmonary tuberculosis. Two of her children also died of tuberculosis.

I also spent sometime trawling through various newspaper articles this afternoon as at least one of the archives that I don't normally have access to unless I go to the library is free this weekend. It seems that in 1915 she was found guilty of child neglect, as a result of her alcohol abuse, and her youngest child who was only 13 months old was very close to dying. The newspaper article mentions that three of the children had been admitted to the City Hospital with "consumption" (TB) and that she had also been admitted with the same condition but had refused to stay in hospital.

As you say there are a number of records of her being drunk and ending up in Court including the record from Fleetwood the year before her death so it looks like she never got in control of her drinking. I have no idea how she will have ended up living in Fleetwood after her husband died though.

I did check the deceased online and discovered that there are two individuals buried in the same plot with a John Binning Douglas who died in 1932 being in the same plot which adds to the mystery as with only 2 burials in the pot it seems unlikely that it was a paupers grave.

5
Aberdeenshire / Re: Jessie Maitland Milne
« on: Monday 07 October 24 18:24 BST (UK)  »
Thanks for the suggestions.

I have already checked the 1970 death record - that Jessie Maitland was the widow of a James Maitland with her maiden surname given as Smith.

I will have a look through the newspapers that are available on line again although I have already trawled through them once. I will also see if I can find out if she was admitted to the poorhouse after 1921. Admission to a psychiatric hospital or a fever hospital would also be a possibility (the daughter who did in 1919 died of TB) but I would still have expected her death to be registered somewhere if she was an inpatient in an institution.

Since my original post I have discovered that her husband was conscripted in WW1 and was an “Engine man” on a “Hired Trawler” (minesweeper). After the end of the war he was demobilised from the Navy in 1919 and almost immediately re-enlisted into the Land Corps (after the death of the daughter who died in 1919) so he didn’t return to Aberdeen permanently until the second half of 1920. The records imply that the re-enlistment was his choice.

His recorded address when he was conscripted was his brother’s address but that’s not where the family were living in 1911 and it’s also not the address where his son George was born in October 1914 (2 months after he was conscripted). It is the address that the family were apparently living in 1919 when their daughter died as that’s what’s on her death record. His address when he was demobilised in 1920 was given as Raggs Lane. I don’t know when their 2 sons were admitted to the Poorhouse - I just know that it was before the 1921 census date (my father in law didn’t know that his father had been there until I told him last year). I guess it’s possible that the sons were placed there during the war so that Jessie could work but that doesn't explain why they were still there in 1921. I think it’s probably more likely that the family were always struggling financially and periodically ended up living at his brothers address. The new information doesn’t really get me any closer to finding out what happened to Jessie after 1921 though.
 

6
Aberdeenshire / Jessie Maitland Milne
« on: Thursday 26 September 24 12:07 BST (UK)  »
I am looking for advice about where else I can look to try and find when and where my husband's great grandmother died.

She was born Jessie Birnie Maitland Leith on 20 July 1888 at 20 Park Street Aberdeen. Her mother was Agnes Leith and she married Jessie's reputed father James Maitland in 1890.

Jessie married Charles Milne on 19 January 1907. They had a total of 5 children, 3 daughters and 2 sons. Their first daughter Robina was born in December 1905 and died in May 1906. Their third daughter Rosehannah was born in 1908 and died in 1919. Their other children were:-

Margaret, born 1907, died 1980
Charles, born 1910, died 1973 (my husband's grandfather)
George, born 1914, died 1937

I have found the family in the 1911 Census when they were living at 115 Gallowgate in Aberdeen. Charles (senior) was described as a Dock Labourer - Coal.

By the date of the 1921 Census things seem to have got significantly worse for the family, Jessie, her husband and Margaret were living at 3 Raggs Lane in Aberdeen (Jessie is listed as the tenant in the valuation rolls for 1920) and the two sons were living in the Aberdeen Poorhouse. Jessie was described as a fish worker and seems to have been in regular employment but her husband was described as a casual labourer.

I can't find Jessie listed as a tenant in the 1925 Valuation Rolls at that address. There are 3 other Jessie Milne's listed in 1925 but they all have matching addresses to some of the Jessie Milne's that are in the 1920 records so I am pretty sure that i can exclude them.

Her husband died on 19 January 1930 at Woodend Hospital. His usual address was listed as the home of his oldest brother George and the informant was listed as George's wife Helen. I have no idea when he went to live with his brother or what the circumstances for that move were. The record of his death says that he was married to Jessie Maitland - it doesn't say that he was a widower. I presume that means that she was still alive at that point.

The next pieces of information are the marriage records of the three children who survived into adulthood. Margaret married on 4 December 1931 - both her parents were described as deceased.
George married on 2 November 1935 - both parents were again described as deceased. Charles married on 14 November 1936 and again both parents were described as deceased.

I can't find a record of when Jessie died - even when I search from 1921 onwards (the census record being the last definite evidence that she was still alive) and searching using Milne, Maitland and Leith as possible surnames and not limiting the search to Aberdeenshire. I also can't find any evidence that she remarried after her husband died.

Any suggestions for where to look next would be great.  Am I missing something obvious?

7
Aberdeenshire / Re: Jane Ann Thomson born 1879 Longside
« on: Sunday 25 August 24 13:04 BST (UK)  »
I found this thread by chance when I was looking online for information on Burnhaven.

Izzy already knows this information as we have been in contact for the last couple of months. I don’t know if the people who were originally posting on this thread are interested but between us we have solved the mystery of what happened to Helen.

After Helen’s mother and younger sister died her father returned temporarily to Burnhaven and she was then placed in the Children’s Home in Aberlour along with her brother Joseph. This information only became available after the 1921 Census was published. It was supposed to be a temporary placement until her father got himself a job and a new home. WW1 and his death in service then intervened.

Izzy and I both independently contacted the Aberlour Children’s Charity for information about her. In my case I was still trying to establish exactly what had happened to her mother as I had also come up with the conundrum of whether the Jane Skelton who died in Glasgow was her mother. When I contacted them in June this year they very quickly came back to me to say that another family member had been looking for the same information and we were put in touch with each other and provided with copies of the records that they had.

Since then between the two of us we have filled in a few more gaps in the family tree. The admission and discharge records from Aberlour also made it clear that the Jane Skelton/Thomson who died in Plantation was Izzy’s grandmother and that the Joseph Skelton who died in WW1 was her grandfather.

Essentially after leaving the Children’s Home Helen eventually ended up in Aberdeen where she married my husband’s maternal grandfather. I don’t know why she lost contact with her siblings.

On the Scotland’s People website her surname was misspelled as Shelton when her marriage record was computerised. Additionally although the correct name was given for her father the first name of her mother wasn’t correctly recorded. That meant that although Izzy had found the marriage in question she didn’t know for sure that it was the right Helen. As I was effectively approaching the puzzle from the opposite direction I knew that the marriage record was definitely for my husband’s grandparents but I did spend a bit of time looking for the birth records of a Helen Shelton with the wrong mother! My father in law helped out when he told me that she was always referred to as Helen Skelton which put me back on the right track.

Helen had four children, two boys and two girls. One of the boys died in infancy but the others all survived until adulthood. My husband is the eldest child of Helen’s second daughter.

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