Drew, I think I’m now a bit confused about what is established and what is conjecture. Hopefully there will be other, more expert, people who can make suggestions so to summarise what we have so far:
Margaret Carrick, MS Brown or possibly Gillan, died in 1911 and on her death certificate her husband, John Carrick, gave her parents as John Brown and Margaret Ferguson.
You have tracked her in her marriage through the 1901 census back to her wedding, and she gives her place of birth variously as Holytown (1911) or Glasgow (1901, 1891)
On her wedding day in 1881 she gave her parents as John Brown and Jane Brown, MS Gillan, both deceased, and her age as 20 which would put her birth around 1861 +/- a year.
That is probably all that is confirmed.
- We’ve found possible candidates for her in the 1861 and 1871 census but we can’t prove which, if any, is her, and some of them have already been ruled out
- We haven’t managed to find a birth that fits what details we know, either as Margaret Brown or as Margaret Gillan, and neither have we been able to find deaths for John or Jane between Margaret’s birth and her marriage in 1881
- There is a marriage between a John Brown and a Margaret Ferguson in 1864, when John is listed as a Bachelor. If that is her father, it may be that Margaret is her stepmother and the young Margaret lived elsewhere, perhaps with her own mother Jane Gillan The information that her mother was Jane Brown MS Gillan came from Margaret herself and if her parents had not married she might not wish to publicise the fact in front of her new in-laws? That’s pure conjecture
I think I may have found Margaret on the 1881 census. She is a boarder, living with the Hainy family at 48 Douglas Street, Partick, working as a bleacher, which fits the information on her marriage certificate, though it is not the address she married from. So far, so good, but Margaret’s age, the month before her wedding, is given as 18. Her place of birth is given as Hamilton and there are no identifiable relatives in the household. Reference is Parish: Partick; ED: 5; Page: 30; Line: 13; Roll: cssct1881_257; Year: 1881.
That might mean her birth was nearer 1863 than 1861, but it can also mean that the enumerator was given the information by Mr or Mrs Hainy who may have guessed her birth date and place.
Trying the same search for Margaret Gillan yields nothing – there is a Margaret Gillan in Partick but she is a dressmaker, living with her parents who are co-incidentally John and Margaret but that’s John Gillan not John Brown. Plus the fact that a dressmaker was a better position than a bleach worker, so unlikely to have taken a downhill career trajectory in one month.
Not sure what to make of all this, but one possible theory might be that Margaret was born to John Brown and Jane Gillan in the early 1860s. John Brown then may have been the bachelor who married Margaret Ferguson in 1864. If Jane and John had both died by 1881 when Margaret married but her stepmother lived on that might explain why Margaret Ferguson was given as her mother on the death certificate - the information was given by her husband, not by Margaret herself.
I’m hoping that some of the Lanarkshire experts can come in here and see if that hypothesis bears water, or if I’ve missed something.
Everybody - help please!
