The Weaver Who Wouldn’t Back Down

For this next story, I turned my attention to a branch of the family which I haven’t written about before. It is centred on my 3x great grandfather George Cuthbertson and was inspired by a set of photos sent to me by my Dad in October last year which included the first one I had ever seen of George. It was a photo of a photo of a photo that he had got from my Granny (born a Cuthbertson) some years ago.

I have gradually accumulated photos of all but 4 of my 16 2x great grandparents, but this one of George was only the 5th of my 32 3x great grandparents that I have found and is therefore very precious.

The research was hugely helped by some fantastic resources about Stonehouse, the village in Scotland where George lived all of his life. In particular, the Stonehouse Heritage Group website, the Sorbie family website, and especially the website and Facebook group run by John Young. His Stonehouse Weavers research was invaluable for learning about George and his wife Jessie’s day-to-day life.

But the icing on the cake was finding an absolute goldmine of oral histories from residents of the village, collated by John. This collection just so happened to include ‘Tales around the fireside’, recounted by James Cuthbertson (George’s nephew) around 1944. James was born in 1885 and was living with George’s 84-year-old father John Cuthbertson at the time of the 1891 census. I’ll draw on James’s memories again when I write more about the Cuthbertsons.

What strikes me with George is the contrast of him being “quiet and unassuming” while also being there for his community when it mattered and standing up strongly for what he believed in. Honourable traits which I hope in some way have been passed down through the generations.

Read George and Jessie’s story here:

The Weaver Who Wouldn’t Back Down

A Sparkle in His Eyes

I turn again to my maternal side this time and back to researching life in the 19th century. The subject is my 5x great grandfather Thomas Thorpe, ancestor of my mother’s grandmother Gladys, and not someone whose memory lasted in our family despite a long and notable story. I became interested in Thomas thanks to a census entry which listed him not only as a glove manufacturer but also a Primitive Methodist Vocal Preacher. Finding a photograph of him shared online really helped to bring him to life.

It can be more difficult to feel connected to ancestors from further back in time, but Thomas lived his life less than 10 miles from where I live now and there are echoes of his endeavour and liberalism that still remain. The skill in textiles was certainly passed down through the generations – I’m told Gladys was an accomplished seamstress.

This is another quite lengthy piece, partly because there was a lot to cover, but also because I enjoyed exploring the wider context of Thomas’ life in Bulwell throughout the 1800s.

A Sparkle In His Eyes

A Mother Who Sailed Away

My next piece is a long one and a little closer to home (metaphorically, if not literally). It is about my granny Dina’s grandmother, Jeanie McLean and is the story of how (and perhaps why) she took all of her family from Scotland to New Zealand, except for her eldest daughter Mary (Dina’s mum). We are very lucky to have an audio recording of Mary talking with Dina and her son Martin about her life – something which inspired me to record my granny in a similar way. I have drawn on both of these recordings, amongst many other family and documentary sources, for this biography of Jeanie and there is a short extract from the recording of Mary included within the story. I have tried to remain relatively objective when describing what happened, but with only a first-hand account of one side of the story there may well be an element of bias. Although I got some information from Jeanie’s grandson Lyall years ago, I now regret not speaking more to him before his death in 2013. Perhaps one day I’ll unearth more details from my remaining distant cousins in New Zealand.

(From now on I will include a short intro like this in these blog posts and link to the full story on a separate page. Hopefully that will make the site a little less cluttered going forwards)

A Mother Who Sailed Away: The Story of Jeanie McLean