Grace AITKEN, nee Tennant, Edinburgh

[Danchaslyn]

 

Hello Robert

Ok, I've sent you a Personal Message in RootsChat, so let's hope you receive it alright?

I'm so curious, please tell me, when your parents finally returned to the UK, from India, to settle permanently, did they head for Scotland, as one of the shipping records depicted?

Or settle, possibly near your mother's family home in St Ives?

Or elsewhere perhaps?

Cheers

Danchaslyn

 

[weech]

Bob
Thanks so much for the photo's. They've come out very well. I haven't yet worked out how to post photo's but my wife tells me she thinks she knows how to do it so hopefully will post some shortly. I will try to leave a personal message for you.

Weech

[Danchaslyn]

 

Hello

Robert, I do hope you will get a chance to post very soon some of the answers to my desperately curious questions?   

Wonder which is the oldest photo you have in your collection?  Would it be to much to hope that you may have a pic of Grace Aitken, nee Tennant, which you could post here?!   

Thank you so much for your PM and email.   

Weech, looking forward to your posted pics soon............. 

Cheers

Danchaslyn

 

[Huntersjoy]

Hello Baitken / Robert,
Would you have an Elisabeth Aitken who married, John Davie, Bookbinder, 10th September 1797, Glasgow Lanark, Scotland. I have found her name is spelt with a "z" (Elizabeth) by other researchers. On their marraige records its spelt  with an "S" It would be lovely to find who my Elisabeth Aitken belongs to.
John & Elisabeth are my first Davie Grandparents in my Ancestry. Heres hoping we are linked.
I wish you all the very best for your up & comming operation.
Phyllis     

[Danchaslyn]

 

Hello Huntersjoy

Wishing you the very best of luck in that "Baitken" hopefully will know who you are looking for........................   

Cheers   

Danchaslyn

 

[Huntersjoy]

Hello again, Baitken & Danshaslyn,
What lovely photos, two beautiful people. You have been lucky Danshalyn.I can just imagine you jumping up & down with excitement. Welcome Baitken, Good luck to both of you with your research. Heres hoping I may get some help with my Elisabeth, She is out there some where.
Cheers Phyllis.      

[baitken]

Hi Huntersjoy & Danchaslyn,

Sorry I have been out of touch for a while, but I've had a couple of bad days.  Happens every so often, and all I can do is lie down till I get my breath back!!  Hope to have it all sorted in about a month or so, fingers crossed.

I'm still trying to get my head round all this new info, and I think I'll start by setting out our Aitken tree as I know it.  This at least will be a basis from which to work. 

Answers.  Sorry Huntersjoy, your Elizabeth doesn't come into my lot.  Keep looking.
Danchaslyn.  Photos, the oldest you have seen, at least of the Aitkens.  I have older ones of the Kiddles, but thay are not appropriate at the moment.  I have one sister, 5 years younger than me.

I see a lot of comment on GRACE TENNANT.  Let me tell you what I know.  Her father was ROBERT TENNANT and her mother MARGARET RIDDELL, although they were never married. Confimation details if you want them.  Robert's mother was GRACE SANDERSON, which also fits well.

In the 1841 census of West Linton there is also a record of a GRACE TENNANT, b.1811, aged 30 years of independant means,, which fits in very well with known info.  She also has three children, John (9), Elizabeth (7), and Margaret (5),  but I don't know where they came from!!

Lastly for the moment, some info about ELIZABETH AITKEN, sister to SIR ROBERT.  She lived with John & Grace as their draper's assistant in West Linton.  Young JOHN AITKEN, b 1896, was left with them to go to school at West Linton.  When young John left school there in 1906 he went to Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh.  The family also moved up there, 13 Merchiston Crescent, until Grace died on 16 Oct 1910, when Old John and Elizabeth moved to 23 Findhorn Place where she was the dutiful daughter.

Old John died 13 March 1913 and Elizabeth moved to 3 Falcon Gardens.  John joined the army in 1914 (Sappers & Miners) and always went home on leave to Aunt Liz.  He was demobbed in 1920 and went out to India to start his career in the Bank.

Elizabeth was now free for the first time in her life!  On 10 Sept 1920, at the age of 55, she set sail for Canada on the Corsican to be a Housekeeper.  No further details yet.  She came home on holiday to St.Ives (no other family) in 1927, and returned 0n 1 June 1927 to Canada on the Athenia to Owen Sound, Ontario.

She returned again in the Summer of 1932, and I remember her visit well.  My impression is of a rather tall and dour Scottish lady who had a liking for tweeds and a penchant for cloche hats, which didn't do much for her!!  Heart of gold.

She went back on 24 Sept 1932 to live at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and died 19 Dec 1943 at Medicine Hat, Alberta, and was interred in Maple Leaf Cemetry.

Hope this is of interest and not too much at one go.  I do have some photos when I can look them out.  More later. 

All the best,  Bob

[Danchaslyn]

 

Well, Bob, thank you, all that you have posted to-day is so interesting!   

I'm so sorry that you have not been well again, hang in there, you'll soon be better after your 'procedure', then "weech" and ourselves and any other RC's Aitken connections can all get together and celebrate!   

Firstly, so glad you told so much of "Aunt Izzy", as my late mother used to call Elizabeth Aitken!   

She to, said that she was a very prim and proper, dour, Scottish lady and that the poor woman had been used her whole life, by her family as the archtypical spinster daughter in the household, to take care of the parents etc etc.   

So, it would seem, that even when she went to Canada, she still worked in the same capacity!   

I've been trying to remember, do you know if she ever went out to South Africa to visit her brother Thomas and her nieces and nephews there, or are my mother's impression of her, gained during my mother's many visits during the years to the UK?   

Cheers

Danchaslyn

 

[Danchaslyn]

Richard Aitken is on the  Ethiopia leaving Glasgow on the 8th April 1891 for New York more to follow.

Hello SaxonW

I've  'lost'  my Richard Aitken, born 12 May, 1874 at West Linton, Peebleshire, Scotland  (youngest son of Grace Aitken, nee Tennant).

Please will you confirm for me, that the Richard Aitken you mentioned above, is the Richard Aitken of West Linton?   

That is, he obviously would have been almost 20 years old, on this trip of the Ethiopia?

Cheers

Danchaslyn