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2024 Week 32: Free Space : Down the rabbit hole! #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 The topic of  'Free Space' allowed me to write about anything or anyone I wanted. Where to start? I thought. After reading a previous blog, a friend asked me what happened to the descendants of  my 2 x ggf John McAra and his wife Elizabeth, (who was not my 2 x ggm). So I decided to look back over my research into John and the brothers of his, who had all moved through from Cramond in Midlothian to find work in the coal pits of Lanarkshire in the first half of the 19th century.

I was only about halfway through my planned research on his children, when I came across another John McAra, coalminer, in the same town, Coatbridge. Who was he? So I entered the rabbit hole ...

Turns out he was my John McAra's nephew, the son of his brother Thomas. I already had him on my tree, but I took another look to see if I could add in anymore information - shouldn't take me too long I thought. Of course, once you go down the rabbit hole there's no turning back. Before I knew where I was, I was researching his son, also called John McAra and that's where I found my story.

This John McAra was born in 1877 in Coatbridge and at the age of 20 he married Margaret Fyfe, also from that town. By then though they had had a daughter whom they named Jane Angus McAra. Jane was the first of many children they had and, sadly, the only one who survived past infanthood/childhood. This screenshot from her fact page on Ancestry tells the sad tale:

Source:https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/32286402/person/122237239247/facts
Four of her siblings didn't even reach their first birthday. Their death certificates stated causes of death such as whooping cough (3 of them), pneumonia and diarrhea.
It is impossible to imagine how her parents John and Margaret would have been coping throughout these years. In fact, they didn't.  By 1901, young Jane who would by this time have been around 5 years old was no longer living with her parents. She is in the 1901 census, living with a John Steel and his wife, in a neighbouring town and is described as 'adopted child'.
 

So now I wondered, who were these people? More research was required. Luckily some other Ancestry user's research pointed me in the right direction and I only had to confirm it for myself. John Steel turned out to be her great-uncle, having married her maternal grandmother's sister!

I have no way of knowing how long Jane lived with the Steels. By the time she marries at age 18, she is living in Glasgow. Did Jane get a happy ending? Well, it appears she emigrated to Canada with her husband in her 20s and had six children, before she died at only age 40.

I guess I could go on down the rabbit hole and find out what happened to them, but no. I'll end this branch of the McAra family with Jane.

Jane Angus McAra 1896-1934), my third cousin, once removed.

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