(Remember, you can click on the photos to see them a bit better or right click to open them in a new window if you really want to zoom in).
A little recap:
My father's mother was Helen Lydia Johnstone (married to Charles Henry Whelan).
Her father was Andrew Craig Johnstone (married to Lydia Regina Sandell).
His mother was Anna Craig (married to George B. Johnstone).
Her mother was Mary Howie Leggat (married to Andrew Craig).
And, this is where our current story begins. Each of these ancestors resided in and around Paisley in the county Renfrewshire just west of Glasgow.
While perusing our current Family Tree magazine, I noticed that a site was offering a view of the transcribed Scottish Census records from the 1800s. I was thrilled. Until now, the only way to really view the information was to pay for every page view on the ScotlandsPeople website. With my first search, I found records for Andrew Craig and his wife Mary Howie Leggat (or Ligget) Craig before they emigrated to the United States. I won't bore you with the details but, as a result, our family tree has grown. Some of what I've learned:
My great great great great grandparents who were born, married and died in Scotland have names! David Leggat married Mary Howie and, thus, my great great great grandmother Mary Howie Leggat was born.
Side note, you may notice a number of names in Scottish families are passed down. Our Scottish ancestors took great pride in following Scottish naming patterns. For example, the first daughter born usually was given the first and last name of her maternal grandmother and the first son given the name of the paternal grandfather. As they continue having children names are given that belonged to their parents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc... In Mary Howie's case, she actually had an older sister named Mary Howie who was likely named after her paternal grandmother because she was the second daughter born. However, the first Mary Howie passed away. Passing down names was so important, the name of the deceased sibling would be passed to the next born child of that gender. Thus, Mary Howie was the second child born in the family with that name.
You may also notice from that census record that my 4th great grandfather David Leggat was a bleacher. During the first phase of the industrial revolution, many Scots worked in the textile industry. Bleachfields were a common site in that part of Scotland. The fabric would be spread out and bleached by sun and chemicals over a period of days.
The 1851 census is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, take a look at little Ann. Her siblings are all working in the bleachfields. Why isn't she? Well, turns out, the Factory Act of 1833 did not allow children under the age of nine to take employment. Children who did work were not allowed to work more than twelve hours a day and, once completed, they were to be given two hours of schooling. Theirs was not an easy life. May just have to remind my own children of this next time they grumble about cleaning their rooms!
The second thing you might notice is that Janet is missing. Well, you might not have noticed, but I did. I routinely check neighbors in the census records because family often lived close by. Turns out Janet was working as a servant for the neighbors.
Moving on...finding David's and Mary's death records helped fill in some gaps and I was able to track down their parents. Here is David's death record
David's parents were Alexander Leggat (who worked as a mason) and Elizabeth Shedden. Mary's parents were James Howie (worked as a carter) and Margaret Lochead (other variations of the name are Lochhead and Lockheed). I've since found marriage and other records on these two couples.
and a picture of Colinslee Works where David was a Master Bleacher.
Oh, in case you are wondering, I use the spelling Leggat for the family name simply because that was the spelling passed down for several middle names.
I'll leave you with that for now.
