By Kay McMeekin
Several members of the Marrs family from County Derry in Ireland moved to Ayrshire.
Thomas Marrs married Esther McWhinnie (various spellings) in 1877 in Castle Dawson, Londonderry and in 1878 they were in Cumnock for the birth of their first child Mary, 11 months later. Thomas was an iron miner.
In 1889 Esther McWhinnie was left with 5 young children and pregnant with Daniel when husband Thomas Marrs died in a mining accident in Fife. (This is quite some way from Cumnock.)
2 years later in the 1891 census Esther is living with a George Phillips, 7 years her junior, in Riccarton near Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and her oldest child Mary Marrs and the two youngest boys William and Daniel. I can't find John in 1891 but in 1901 he is is New Cumnock, the adopted son of David and Lizzie Brown. Adoptions were informal affairs at this time.
Esther married George Phillips in 1892 in Cumnock. She is running a lodging house in Elbow Lane so hardly sounds destitute. Maybe the 3 boys were already with Quarriers. Quarriers was a respectable institution known for taking in orphans. They would get clothed, fed and an education.
In May 1895 Daniel age 6 and William age 8 are shipped to Canada on the Sarmatia along with many other children. Thomas went out a couple of months earlier on a different ship, the Siberian. The Home Children scheme of sending orphaned children to Canada was later discredited as many youngsters were treated as unpaid workers by their new families. But their mother is still alive. She is named as next of kin on Thomas and Daniel's army records, so they clearly kept in touch. With so little information we should not judge.
More about Quarriers here
More about Daniel Marrs DCM here
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