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What Scottish Kirk Session Minutes can reveal!

Nowadays we are accustomed to see the scandals of the rich and famous played out before our eyes on social media. Those of our neighbours not so much. You would think that in the absence of X, Facebook and Instagram that the scandalous lives of our ancestors would have been conducted in private, but this was not necessarily the case. 

Take my 2 x great grandmother, Jane Gregory, for example. She was baptised in Carnwath, Lanarkshire in early September 1810, daughter of an English iron worker. Her family moved to New Monklands Parish (Airdrie) when she was young, where her father continued to work as a shingler in the ironworks. At the age of 15, young Jane falls pregnant. The father, a 25 year old iron worker named John McAra. The baby, when born, would go on to become my great grandfather.

It is hard to imagine what Jane felt at the time. She was certainly made to feel ashamed. Her scandal was made public at the Airdrie Kirk Session Council meeting on the 4th of December 1826 as this extract shows:

"...Jane Gregory from Moffat Forge confessing that she was with child in fornication and having been solemnly charged and interrogated she named the father John McAra finisher at Moffat Forge as the person guilty with her and the father of her child. Being further interrogated she stated that the child was begotten about seven months ago near Calder Water..."

This was a 15 year old girl, being 'interrogated' on her own in front of the churchmen. John McAra wasn't even present, though the excerpt states he had to come to the next session along with Jane.

The next session arrived on the 1st of January 1827 and only Jane appeared! John was again ordered to appear at the next session, which he duly did.

At this session, "being confronted together .. (John) had also been charged, interrogated and confessed his guilt and promised to provide for the child".

Jane had his baby son towards the end of February. John's name as the father was recorded in the Parish baptismal record and the baby was given his name ..John McAra.

Now, while all these Kirk Session interrogations had been going on, John had gone and got himself married to a young woman, six years his younger, called Elizabeth Gray. That event was in the November of 1826. However. Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter in the May of the following year - only three months after Jane's baby was born. This led to John and his wife Elizabeth being brought before the Kirk Session charged with 'antenuptial fornication'. They were 'rebuked and absolved of this scandal'.

 

Kirk Session records abound with entries of this kind. Jane and John (and Elizabeth) were not unusual cases. What is unusual is perhaps the fact that John had two women pregnant at the same time and then chose to marry one of them. Did he make that choice for himself or was it somehow forced upon him? Did he settle down after marrying Elizabeth? I'd like to think so. They went on to have eight children. His firstborn, my great grandfather, was brought up in the home of his maternal grandparents, even after his mum Jane got married when he was nine.

I'm sure John would never have thought that two hundred years later his great great granddaughter would broadcast his story over social media! Fame!

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