From Cumnock to Cumberland

By Elaine Corbett

Mary Smith, Still an Enigma.

My great grandmother Mary Smith was born from a union of two farming families; the Smiths of Whitehill, Ochiltree, and the Osbornes of Killoch. Her parents were farming at Drongan House when Mary, then her brother Robert were born. When Mary was five, her father died suddenly and the little family moved to Kilmarnock where their mother rented out rooms to her brother, Matthew Mair Osborne - later to become the editor and owner of the Kilmarnock Standard.  

When Mary was eleven years old tragedy struck when her mother died leaving the two orphaned children in the care of their aunt Agnes Osborne, now married to farm overseer Robert Wallace of Piperhill. They brought them to Townhead of Drumley, near Mauchline.

All seemed normal until my story really begins. In 1896 Mary, aged twenty and unmarried, stepped off the train in Keswick, and went to a boarding house to give birth to my grandfather, Robert Smith.

birth  certificate

    She had him adopted by a family in Workington, a thriving port on the west coast rich from mineral mining. The man of the house was a coal miner. A year later, she placed her second child, Victor James, with the same family. 

    With her third child, she found that her lodging house in Keswick had closed, and her landlady/midwife had retired to Toxteth in Lancashire so she was forced to make other arrangements, finding a family in Cockermouth to adopt little Kenneth.

    Child number four was left with the sister of Kenneth’s adoptive mother, Sarah Briscoe. This lady was to be the saviour of all Mary’s children, for she made a home for all eight of them, apart from Kenneth who remained with her sister in Cockermouth. Mary had removed Robert and Victor from the care of the Workington family and placed them all together with Sarah. Far from an absentee parent, Mary visited often, bringing cheeses and money to pay for their upkeep. She would arrive in a buggy laden with goodies, and cash secreted in her petticoats to prevent thieves taking it on her journey. None of the children really knew where she came from, but they knew she was Scottish from her accent, and she spoke a lot about Islay, where her aunt and uncle had taken them to live when Robert Wallace found a new job overseeing farms on the Laggan estate. Islay would have been a rare and exotic place to those children, and it wasn’t until his eighties that my great uncle Fred made the journey to see Laggan Farm - the only one to do so - and greatly thrilled he was!

    Life for the extended family Briscoe had its ups and downs. John Briscoe was a farmer when Sarah and he were married, and two of Mary’s children were born at their farm in Edderside. John then left farming and went to work at the steel works in Workington. That is when the children went to St Michael’s school where we researched their records. The school was overcrowded and conditions were poor, so poor in fact that my grandfather never did learn to read or write until he married at the age of twentyfour.

    They finally settled back into farming in Lorton Vale and raised the children in healthy country air. Workington was heavily industrialised at the time and childhood diseases were commonplace.

But what of Mary?

    Census records show her living with Robert and Agnes Wallace along with her brother. Robert and Agnes had no children of their own. Robert Smith was a bookeeper for the farms under Robert Wallace’s stewardship. Of course, there was no indication of who the father of the children was, or how keeping the secret of her pregnancies had been accomplished.

After the deaths of Robert Wallace, Agnes, and her brother Robert, Mary came back to Drongan as a housekeeper at Lane Farm and at the age of 56, married David Knox, finally moving to live with Smith relations in Twynholm after she was widowed. She died in 1947.

    It wasn’t until I did a DNA test with Ancestry that the potential father - at least in my line of descent - became clear, when lots of DNA links to Wallaces popped up. So the question now arose, did she do this of her own volition?

    What we knew of her personality from what her children and grandchildren saw, she was a very self assured and confident character. It seems likely that she was hiding her relationship with Robert Wallace, but how they did that in a house of servants seems impossible. Whether aunt Agnes was accepting of that situation we can’t know, but when she died in Islay in 1918, the monument on her grave placed by Robert Wallace was flamboyant and expensive.

    This is it, taken from the back. There is inlaid brass lettering ‘Wallace’ on the plinth, and a memorial inscribed in the column to Agnes. It is noteworthy to observe that the houses in the middle distance would not have been built at the time of her death (1918), and there would be a commanding view of the sound.

    Her sons and daughter made their lives in Cumberland, with farming at the core, and Granny Briscoe lived out her life as a treasured matriarch, Mary never playing a role for them apart from an occasional mention of the enigma that was their mother. She never did tell them who their father was.

Hadden family from Ireland to Ayrshire to USA

By Joanne Ferguson

A family history of 200 years from Ireland to Ayrshire to USA.

Track them on the Cumnock Connections tree Mary Jane Bruce later Hadden then Coulter

Bruces from Country Antrim in Ireland. They moved to Kilwinning in Ayrshire about 1840

Alexander Bruce was born in County Antrim, Ireland, about 1790.  He married Catherine Pollock.  They had five children: Alexander Bruce (1812-1860); Samuel Bruce (1816-1858); Martha Bruce (1820-??); Stewart Bruce (1820 -1893); and Hugh Bruce (1829-1870).

Alexander Bruce married Mary Dougherty.  They had three children: Mary Jane Bruce (1837-1918); John Bruce (1839-??); Martha Bruce (1842-1930); and Alexander Bruce (1849-1925).  After Mary Dougherty’s death (about 1850), Alexander married Janet Grier in 1851 in Kilwinning.  

Haddens in Cumnock, Ayrshire

John Hadden was also born in Ireland in 1839.  He was the son of John Hadden and Janet Jenkins. Little else is known about him in Ireland. He is listed as a miner and as a boarder at High Row in Lugar in 1861.  On June 12, 1863, he married Mary Jane Bruce in Auchinleck.  They had seven children: James Hadden (1864-1916); John Bruce Hadden (1865-1925); Mary Bruce Hadden (1866-1947); Jane (Jeannette) Hadden (1868-1958); Alexander Hadden (1870-1907); Samuel Hadden (1872-1913); and Martha Hadden (1874-1953).

On December 7, 1873, John Hadden died, leaving Mary with six children and nine months pregnant with their seventh child, Martha.

Coulters in Cumnock

Widowed Mary married William J. Coulter about 1875 in Cumnock, although no marriage certificate can be found.  They had four children: William Coulter (1876-1929); Andrew Coulter (1877-1939); Esther Black Coulter (1879-1930); and Bruce Lee Coulter (1882-1921).

Mills from Kilwinning to Scranton

Mary also had another son prior to her first marriage by an unknown partner. That son was Hugh Bruce (1860-??).  Hugh left Scotland with David and Margaret Mills, who had adopted him.  In the 1870 US census, Hugh is listed as Hugh Mills, living with Margaret and David in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and attending school.  Margaret Mills died in 1877 and David Mills died in 1884, both in Scranton.  There were no more traces of Hugh Bruce.

Her sons James, John, and Alexander Hadden had already left for Pennsylvania around 1888, although no immigration records can be found.

The Scots did not appear to be leaving the British Isles for religious reasons.  The Scots were the first group to immigrate to America primarily for economic opportunity.

Mary Jane Bruce Hadden Coulter boarded the Spain in Edinburgh and arrived in New York on February 17, 1887.  She was accompanied by the following children:  Jennette Hadden, Samuel Hadden, Martha Hadden, William Coulter, Andrew Coulter, Alice Coulter (Esther), and Bruce Coulter.  

Quarriers children shipped to Canada

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 Sarmatian 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.

 John married Lugar born Isabella Anderson 31/12/1908 at Mossmark Cottages, New Cumnock. They sailed from Glasgow on the Ionian 24/4/1909 heading for Montreal, Canada and settled in Nova Scotia before making their home in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. John died there in 1959 and Isabella in 1973.

Daughter Esther (Essie) sailed on the Sarmatian along with 120 other girls  from Quarriers, arriving in Quebec 6/6/1892. She was 9 years old and her final destination was Fairknowe Home, Brockville, Ontario. She was adopted by the Hodgins family in North Ontario. On 5/6/1907 she married John Gourlay Kirk McCartney in Fernie, British Columbia. John was born at the Haugh, Mauchline and had emigrated to Canada to escape a childhood of abuse. He was illegitimate, his birth mother being Agnes Kirk (sometimes Kirkland), a serving maid,  and he had been adopted by Cumnock born Jessie McMillan Moffat and her husband William McCartney, a Lanarkshire-born coalminer,  who had  married at the Townfoot, Cumnock 1/6/1877. By 1891 they had moved to Beath, Fife. The couple adopted  four children, Alex, John, Annie and George. According to a letter written by John G K McCartney to his son John, these adoptions involved ‘quite a sum of money’ passing hands. John was unaware that he was adopted until his mother spitefully told his new wife. He did not know who his birth mother was, or what his two middle initials stood for,  until he was 70 years old and had to apply for his birth certificate to get his old age pension. He also found out at that time that his biological father was a well-to-do cattleman who ‘presumably paid his adoptive mother a certain sum to adopt him’.

Essie and John went back to Scotland, to East Wemyss, Fife six months after their marriage where two babies, Jessie and Esther, were born and died between 1908 and 1909. Son John was born there in 1910 and they returned to Nanaimo in 1912 where Ellen and Donald were born. They then returned to Fife where Mary and Annie were born and they were back in Canada by 1921. Both Essie and John died in Vancouver, BC - Essie in 1952 and John in 1964.

More about Quarriers here

More about Daniel Marrs DCM here