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Week 31: Flew the Coop #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 My direct ancestors didn't move around that much. None of them emigrated. The same cannot be said about some of their siblings. Various brothers and sisters left Scotland for the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and that is why I find many of my DNA matches living in those countries today.

One of my paternal great aunts, Elizabeth Walker and her brother William both emigrated with their spouses. Elizabeth headed for Australia in 1886 and settled in Wollongong, just outside Sydney. Her husband, James Allan, a coalminer, was already there and he sponsored her immigration. She travelled with three children under 3 years of age! James paid £2 towards her passage on the Abyssinia and £1 towards their 3 year old daughter Jane's. The two babies went free of charge.


                                Source: NSW State Archives, Immigration Deposit Journals, via Ancestry.

Meanwhile, William Walker, my great uncle, headed for America. He was a blacksmith to trade and would easily have found work in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where local deposits of iron ore and coal led to an industrial boom there in the late 19th century. Both siblings had left Scotland with their respective spouses, drawn by the opportunities for work which their new country offered. Neither returned to Scotland. That was the story for many people in my family tree. Many of those who left reaped the benefit of their choice, although it can't have been easy leaving family behind. Passenger lists do show, however, that some did go back and forth from the USA and Canada much more frequently that we would imagine.

One emigrant who did return to Scotland once on a visit was James Jack, born in Airdrie, Lanarkshire,  in 1851, to a sibling of one of my maternal  2 x great grandfathers. James had left for the USA at some point in the late 1800s with his wife and children and settled in Bristol County in Massachusetts. Like his father and grandfather before him, he worked in the textile industry and that area was already renowned for textile manufacturing. However, he ended up suffering from painful rheumatism and decided to go back to Scotland in 1900 on a visit in the hope that Scottish cooler temperatures might help his condition. In hindsight, he might have been better off remaining in Scotland, but he did return to his family in America. A few months later, the pain, family problems, the fear of him not being able to work to support his family became too much for him. He shot himself in the stomach. His suicide was graphically reported in many newspapers at that time. Here are the headlines from the Boston Globe, Aug 10 1900. 

Some who flew the coop obviously were more successful than others, but no one can deny that they were all brave.


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