The topic 'Overlooked' is a strange one. How do you know who you have overlooked??? There will certainly be occasions when I have overlooked a certain record, maybe because I was looking for the wrong name or in the wrong place or even made a typo in the search parameters, but how do you know if you have overlooked a person? So I am going to treat this topic by looking at a set of great grandparents that I have largely ignored - yes, I have their relevant dates and family, but do I have their 'story'? Have I stopped to think at all about the life they led? I don't think I have. So here's what I can put together.
My mum's maternal grandparents were James Adams and Margaret Keir. James was born in 1850 in Carfin, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the only surviving son of a coalminer, though he had two elder sisters. At age 11 he was following in his father's footsteps down the mine as can be seen in the 1861 census.
By the time he was 21 and still living at home, the family had already put in an application for poor relief funding due to James's father, at the age of 56, being described as 'wholly disabled' from lumbago (lower back pain) caused no doubt by his job as a coalminer. At this time young James' wage was the sole wage going into the household.
Four years later, James' sister Elizabeth, died at the age of 29, leaving behind a husband and three children under seven years old. The following year, in 1875, James himself got married to Margaret Keir, who at 18, was seven years younger than him. Margaret was a handloom weaver, as was her father, and had been so for a few years as that is the occupation listed for her in the 1871 census, four years previous to her marriage. After she had children, James was the sole earner.
Over the next 22 years, Margaret went on to have nine children, her sixth being my grandmother Margaret Keir Adams.
My great grandparents lived in or just off Wishaw Main Street all their married life. My grandmother was still living with her parents until her marriage at the age of 29, by which time she also had a six year old daughter by the man she was going to marry, John Anderson, my grandfather.
My great grandparents did a good thing in helping raise my grandmother's first child. Why Margaret didn't marry John Anderson earlier is unknown ( or at least only suspected). Margaret didn't marry John until her father died. Her mother continued to live on in the house in Park Street, with her daughter Annie and her son James and his wife, as can be seen in the 1921 census.
She died in 1939 at the age of 83 and was buried beside her husband in Cambusnethan Cemetery.
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