My grandmother Christina Walker and her husband John McAra had twelve children together during their 59 years of married life. Her first three children did not survive childhood - her firstborn, John, died aged 8 in 1896, her two next born had preceded him, just infants, in 1890 and 1893. Another daughter, Christina, was to die aged only 6 months in 1900. Such a lot of grief for a couple to go through. Losing children was still all too common around this time, but that doesn't make it any the less traumatic. And yet she was to find the compassion to help a child who was not her own.
Christina Walker herself was the second youngest of eleven children. She had married John McAra at the age of 18 in 1887 and her first child was born nine months later. When the baby was just six months old, John was unwell and the young family had to apply for money from the Parish under the Poor Law. Her second child was born early in 1890 and died later on that same year. Meanwhile, her older sister Margaret, the sister she was closest to in age, had also given birth to a baby in 1887, a baby whom she named Jane (Jeannie). Unfortunately, Margaret was unmarried at the time and no father was named on Jeannie's birth certificate.
Margaret herself was a farm servant and no doubt she would have needed to resume work as soon as she could. But who would look after baby Jane? That task seems to have been taken on by Margaret's mother, Jane, as shown in the 1891 census, where we find Jane, a widow, Lamont her youngest son and two granddaughters, Jane (Jeannie) now aged 4 and Margaret, aged 1.
Who is Margaret? - a second (illegitimate) daughter of Margaret and thus Jane's younger sister! Meanwhile, Margaret herself is not mentioned on the census - maybe she was not at home when the census was taken? maybe she was living elsewhere? So far I haven't been able to find her.
So Jane and her young sister appear to have been taken care of by their grandmother. This was not in itself unusual in those times - and perhaps even now - but it certainly was a kind deed for a widowed woman in her 60s to take on two young children, even if it was just while the mother had to work.
So what of the mother, Margaret? She next appears in records in December 1892. a year after the census, when she marries a widower, Matthew Graham, an Irishman and a quarryman by trade, as was Margaret's brother Lamond. Lamond was one of the witnesses to their marriage, so maybe he was even instrumental in bringing them together. In any case, in the years which followed, they go on to have seven children. Interestingly in the 1901 census young Margaret is no longer living with her grandmother, (who had died tragically in a fire at home in 1898,) but has been taken into the Graham household and given the surname Graham. Could this be because Matthew Graham was her father? Quite possibly! Jane on the other hand is not there!
She is, however, living with another relative - her aunt Christina, my grandmother.
I have no idea when Jane (Jeannie) moved to live with my grandmother and her ever growing family. Had Jeannie been living with her own grandmother the night of her tragic death or had she moved to stay with my grandmother before then? I doubt I will ever know. However, she lives in my grandparents household until she gets married in 1908 to John Connor, a fireman at a colliery. What a big heart my grandmother, Christina, must have had to have taken Jeannie in! She herself had a growing family and had also lost children of her own. But from what I have heard from a living relative, Christina treated Jeannie as one of her own. Why had Jeannie's mother and new husband not taken her in when they married? Possibly because Matthew Graham was not her father. Still, I think Jeannie landed lucky with my grandparents.
I know for a fact that she maintained close links with the family after she married. My dad, John, who wasn't born until 1914 was very fond of Jeannie and was very close to her son James, who was three years older than him, even being the best man at his wedding. As a family, we regularly visited James (Jimmy) and his wife. Jeannie and her husband ended up living in the family cottage where my dad had been born. Jeannie herself died there in 1957. To this day, the cottage still belongs to one of her grandchildren.
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