To Salt Lake City and back

By Kay McMeekin

If you look at the record for Agnes McLean - born in Skares, died in Skares you'd be forgiven for thinking she didn't get far. But you'd be wrong. She and her sister Mary and mother Jessie travelled to Salt Lake City and back a distance of over 10,000 miles!

Janet or Jessie Riggans was born on the 22 February 1854 in Cumnock to John Riggans and Margaret Bryden. She married miner William Frew McLean on 31 Dec 1872  at the age of 19 and they had 3 children in Ayrshire: Margaret, Mary and the aforementioned Agnes.  It seems he was converted to Mormonism.  He left for Salt Lake City in Utah in April 1883 on the SS Nevada. Accounts of the journey can be found here. It seems they travelled to Liverpool by train and Got a train in New York though it doesn't say how far the train went.

Jessie and the 3 children aged 9, 2 and 1, followed later that  year on the same ship, leaving Liverpool on 29th August and arriving on 10 September 1883 in New York. Their fare was paid for by the Glasgow mission of the Mormon Church. The adult fare was £4.5s children half of that and the baby £1. Total £9.10s (£9.50)

It was a horrendously long journey.  After the journey to Liverpool and the sail to New York, there was another journey by train of almost 2,000 miles. By 1870 Salt Lake had been linked to rail network via the Utah Central Rail Road. People began to pour into Salt Lake seeking opportunities in mining and other industries. Accounts of this journey can be read here. They had another 4 children in Utah. One died in infancy. 

Here is the record of the return trip in April 1890. 

For some reason, Jessie and 4 of the children returned to Cumnock in 1890 without William or the oldest child Margaret who was by then 15. 

Jessie took a job as a housekeeper at Grimgrew Farm in Cumnock.  She died in 1916.

Her son Robert enlisted in the army on 8th February 1901 and lied about his age as he wasn’t old enough. He was 16 years 2 months and at that time the minimum age was 18. He also lied about his place of birth which he said was Cumnock, but it was Utah. Jessie got local solicitor Archibald Brakenridge to get him out of the army by showing her family bible with the dates of birth of her children. People recorded the births of children at the time in a family bible. There were blank pages for this purpose. You can imagine her in Archibald's office having a rant and thumping the bible down with the evidence. The document he produced was saved in Robert's military record. He was discharged on the 23rd April after 75 days.  

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Robert married Susan Dunsmuir in 1908 and lived in Skares Rows in Cumnock. He died in 1958.

Mary married miner William Simpson in 1900 and had 11 children in Skares,

Agnes married John Shirkie and died in childbirth aged only 28.

Jessie married John Sharp of Thornhill and died in Cumnock in 1967.

On their marriage certificates they state their father William is deceased. So it seems they didn't keep in touch, since he wasn't.

Meanwhile back in the USA -

In 1890, the same year as Jessie returned home, William McLean's parents Robert W McLean and Mary Frew and two brothers also left Ayrshire for Utah sailing on the Wisconsin.

Jessie's oldest daughter Margaret married a farmer Jeremiah Hagerty and lived in Polson, Montana. She died there in 1926.

And William Frew McLean married Mary Bird Hummer in 1918 and died in 1927 in Salt Lake City.  His wife Jessie was still alive in Scotland. In later life he was a carpenter.

Wm F McLean and Mary Bird Hummer c1918