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2026 Week 33: Multiples #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

My great grandmother, Helen Young (1843-1917).

My mother was born on the 27th of June 1915, second daughter to John Anderson and Margaret Adams. Following Scottish naming traditions, her elder sister had been named Margaret after her mother's mother and she was named after her father's mother, Helen Young. My mother's full name was therefore Helen Young Anderson.

My mum was not the only one of Helen's descendants to carry on her name. Helen Young's name was preserved down the generations - Helen Young Robertson, Helen (Nellie)Young Danks, Helen (Nellie) Young Hastie, Helen Young .... were all my mother's cousins and Helen's grandchildren. She also had great grandchildren who had 'Helen Young' as part of their  names and at least one great great grandchild whose middle name is Helen. Multiple descendants carrying her name. 

I do not know how much my mum knew about the grandmother she had been named after as Helen Young died when my mum was only two years old. However, I've tried to put together a picture of Helen's life from what I have been able to find out.

Helen was born around 1843 in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the daughter of John Young and Janet Baillie. The family at this point had four children under 5 years old! The 1851 census records her as an eight year old in a household of seven, her father and mother in their late forties. They were living south of the cross on Beltonfoot Road, around present day Alexander Street. 

Extract from historic map of Cambusnethan Parish Ordnance Survey, 1859

Source: National Library of Scotland

Helen's father had held a variety of jobs in an effort to support his family. In the 1830s when he was starting out with a young family, he was a weaver, but by the time Helen was born he was making the switch to jobs in heavier industries, first as a railway porter, then as a coalminer. Indeed if you look at the map, there were both railway lines and a coal pit at the bottom of Beltonfoot Road where he was living. Helen's older siblings too had been working from a young age - in 1841, her sister Janet was employed as a weaver at the age of 10. 
Helen appears in the 1861 census as an 18 year old, living with her sister Elizabeth and her husband, who were parents to four girls under the age of 5. On the census she is described as their housekeeper, but I am sure a lot of her duties would have included looking after her young nieces. The census was taken in the month of April and things were about to change for Helen. She herself gave birth to a son, Angus, in the December of that year. So we have Helen aged 18 and a single mum. I think she had no choice other than to move back to her parents, as that's where we find her and Angus in the next census in 1871. Things had changed again for Helen. She is described as a dressmaker! This is one job which she could do from home - which she had to - as she now has another baby. A girl this time, and again there is no father listed on the birth certificate. 
From our modern day perspective, we can be a bit 'judgy' - how could she end up as a single mother with two children years apart? We can also speculate as to the fathers. So many years apart it is unlikely that these children had the same father but it's not impossible. And descendants of those children don't appear to have had their DNA tested as yet.
A couple of years after the birth of her second child, still living with her parents, Helen does marry a man that will become a father to her two children - my great grandfather, David Anderson, by this time a widower.  David Anderson had been living very close to Helen's parents around the time Helen became pregnant for the first time, so it is likely they knew each other at the time, but he marries a girl from Renfrew six years later, (who was pregnant with his child at the time) and some time after the birth the couple move back to Cambusnethan where they have another daughter in 1870. Three months after giving birth to her second child David's wife dies, leaving him a widower with two children under 3 years old.
He marries Helen in the spring of 1873, bringing a motherless family and a fatherless family together and they go on to have five more children, all but one surviving to adulthood and living long lives. Helen, mother to seven children and step mother to two helped keep a roof over their heads with her dressmaking. She lived to the age of 74, outliving her husband David by almost a decade.





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