Field trips are essential for family history research. Where did our ancestors live and how did they arrive there? The Census, birth, marriage and death records can help us with the first part. Occupation and the search for work and accommodation are the probable reasons for the second part.
My wife’s family ancestors came from two parts of Scotland that are very far apart – Galloway and Aberdeenshire. When I started on her history, I created a heading of Stone, Steam and Dynamite to store all my research and the extraordinary stories that I found.
I’m starting the long story of the McKie/Nicol ancestry with a copy of an article that was published under my name in the November issue of the Dumfries and Galloway Family History Society newsletter.
Stone, Steam and Dynamite
The story behind a Galloway and Aberdeenshire ancestry (part one)
By David Carver
Port William is quite a large port, with a few working fishing vessels and lots of leisure boats at the rear, sheltering from the winds that blow in from Ireland. There was a fair old wind on the day of our visit. It was high tide. I had been told by a colleague of the ports nickname – Stinky Bay – due to the smells blown up from the exposed sand and silt at low tide. Like the ports of the Cumbrian coastline, the sea goes out a long way at low tide.
We were tracing the ancestry of my wife Liz McKie and had come to stay in Newton Stewart for a couple of nights to explore her Great Grandparents origins from the middle of the 19th century. I had been studying family history research at Strathclyde University and wanted to go on a field trip to see and experience some of the places that were familiar to her ancestors.
John McKie was the perfect learning curve for me, discovering that accidental or unexplained deaths had scribbled notes in the margin on the death certificate directing the reader to a Recorded Entry of Correction. But it wasn’t just his death that had me caught – it was where and how. When I read the details, it brought him alive.
At Port William we came across a local resident walking his dog on the foreshore as we approached the harbour wall. I told him that we were searching for anything we could find about John McKie. The name meant nothing to him. He asked me if he was a Fisherman. I said no, he was a Stonemason. A Master Stonemason.
John McKie was found in the harbour on the morning of 16 December 1879. He was thirty two years old. There is no account of how it happened. A report had to go to the Procurator Fiscal but there was no evidence other than drowning. No reports of how it might have happened or why, just bear facts, no reason. In the absence of any further information I can only invent a scenario.
John was born on 8 January 1847 at Chapman, just outside Kirkinner and close to Braehead. His father, Andrew, was a Stonemason and he would have been apprenticed to him and probably had been working in this trade since he left the parish school, probably when he was thirteen years old. His father taught him to cut stone, but only after months of watching and labouring. There was no room for error in masonry – mistakes were irreversible, unlike joinery, and at the stonemason’s cost which given their small income meant a lot. Stones had to be cut into blocks and squares for building. In his canvas bag John had acquired a square level, bevel, compass, hammer, chisel and mallet. He also had a saw, but it was toothless – the weight of the saw would cut through the stone. John worked with his father, until his early 20’s by which time he had married Agnes McKean at Gatehouse. He was now a Journeyman Stonemason – travelling by foot mostly to wherever he was asked to work. He was probably still under the supervision of his father but was sent out on jobs. The demand was mainly for repair work and occasionally being called into help with a house building contract. John was good at his work and by1879 he had a family of five children and Agnes was expecting another. John was now a Master Stonemason.
John was able to take contracts in his own right. In later certificates one of his children has described him as a Contractor. Port William was about seven miles from Kirkinner and it would not be surprising to find John working here. It was a relatively busy port with goods coming and going by small ship as well as fishing. Sea was always the best way to get goods in and out of this part of the country. The train network was beginning to be developed but did not reach Port William. Although stone might have been quarried locally a lot of building materials would have travelled faster by sea.
The winter of 1879 was fiercely cold across Europe and whatever John McKie was doing at Port William harbour, repairing, constructing or building, or receiving a ship’s supply of building material, it would have been a harsh environment. The reasons for why and how he drowned that night in December, at this point, I have not been able to discover.
Agnes McKie would have been devastated. She was left to bring up her family of six children. At the age of 29 she had Louisa aged 8, Andrew 7, Alexander 5, John 4, William 2, and she was carrying the unborn Robert. She was totally dependent on John’s income. Now Agnes had to turn to the parish for assistance. The meeting of the Kirkinner Parochial Board met in February 1880 and agreed to make a weekly allowance of 7/- shillings. As her six children grew old enough to leave or bring an income to the house this allowance was reduced to 2/6d by 1889, then to 1/- shilling the following year. In 1891 she was struck off the Poor Relief register.
In 1891 Agnes McKie was living at No 6, Braehead, where she is working as a Dressmaker. Andrew and John are at work as Agricultural Labourers while William and Robert are at school. Alexander has moved to Renfrewshire and works as a Gardener. Louisa has moved to Bournemouth in Dorset to work as a Domestic Servant.
In 1901 Agnes was now living at 29 Wigtown Road, Braehead and she is described as a Boarding House Keeper. Only one child, William, was living at home. He was 24 and a Carpenter.
By 1911 Agnes had moved to live with her sister and brother-in-law in Wigtown but in 1928 had gone to visit her daughter Louisa in Irvine, Ayrshire. She died there in 1928 aged 77.
We returned from Port William and stopped in Kirkinner. We walked up to Braehead but could find nothing to help us to identify where John and Agnes, and particularly Agnes after John’s death, brought up their family. It is modernised with a lot of new 20th Century housing. Our main focus was the churchyard at the parish church of Kirkinner. Anticipating a number of stones with the McKie name on them we split the church yard into two parts and began searching. It took less than fifteen minutes for my wife to call me and ask if a stone had any relevance. She had discovered the rock hard evidence of our story.
Erected by
Agnes McKean
in memory of her husband JOHN MCKIE
who was drowned at
PortWilliam 15 December 1879
aged 32 years
WILLIAM, her 4th son who died
at N. Stewart 16th December 1903
aged 26 years
Also her mother, MINA MARTIN
relick of the late JOHN MCKEAN
Gatehouse, who died
at Braehead 12th Jan 1892
aged 78 years
Also the above AGNES MCKIE
who died at Irvine, Ayrshire
10th January 1928 aged 77 years
This short introductory account of one generation of my wife’s family offers a snapshot of the challenges of living, working and bringing up a large family in the latter part of the 19th Century. The stories of John and Agnes, who were devoted to one another give an insight to the vulnerability and unexpected changes in life that can lead to poverty and hardship.