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Sunday 3 November 2024

The McConnachies were an early genealogical brick wall for me 12 years ago.

 

Finally found them in the 1911 census

The McConnachie's were an early genealogical brick wall for me. They were a Scottish family, much loved and somehow, we were related.

Working out the clues

I had the clues and a copy of a reply to a mystery inheritance letter. The McConnachie's surname  had come up in many conversations my dad, his father and uncle had had during my childhood. No names of the individual people. In fact, the mother was always referred to as “Mrs McConnachie.”  A 1970 letter from a solicitor in Scotland asked for details for the extended family.

They were duly provided by my great uncle Alf in elaborate detail. But the reply gives no detail about the individual family members of the McConnachie family. Solicitors were looking for the next line to inherit from an intestate John McConnachie who died in Glasgow in 1972. Who were these McConnachies and how did they fit in exactly and did we inherit?

John McConnachie

Annie McConnachie

When sifting through the papers my father left in the 2010s, there were other mentions. Letters my grandfather James had written during his return trip to his homeland Scotland after retirement in the 1960s. Some photos signed Annie and John were identified by a relative as Mc Connachies.  A wedding photo with William McConnachie from my great uncle's collection is soon cross referenced with my great Uncle Frank’s wedding documents – he was a groomsman.

Frank and Katies Wedding - William McConnachie seated

There certainly was a close relationship. My grandad had especially visited them when he went to Scotland to thank them for looking after his mother in her dying days. The belief was that Mary Ann Kerr was the first cousin of Mrs McConnachie. It seems the McConnachies were very close to our Kerr family though due to Mary Ann (nee Murphy) Kerr's closer age and the closer ages of the Kerr boys and the McConnachie children.

The mystery letter.

It is the greatest gift to someone tasked with doing the family history. My great uncle had written back in reply to the solicitors. He detailed my immediate family and other relatives who migrated to Australia in the 1920s and the family of Elizabeth McBride, still in Scotland, who it seemed were all involved in vaudeville in Scotland with stage names to boot. The solicitors would have had fun trying to unravel that.

They were all related to my great grandmother Mary Ann Murphy nee Kerr. However, these McBrides and the Kerrs were related to John McConnachie as well. I just needed to locate the family and the parents.

I struggled to piece it all together with modern technology of Ancestry Scotland's people and newspaper archives. How did the solicitors do it all in the 70s?

Building the family tree. The 1911 census sheds some light.

Firstly, I had to work out who the McConnachies were and where they actually fitted into the family.  There were a lot of combinations of Johns. Eventually I found that William was a groomsman to Francis Kerr and a photo in my Dad’s possession showed there was a sister Annie. Several attempts later I found the 1911 Scottish census which told me the names of the parents (Mary Ann’s cousin) were Annie and David. Through sourcing her marriage certificate Annie was nee Blackwood.  Then I worked out her parents. From there I could backtrack through the Murphys and the Blackwoods to my great great grandparents – the McNamaras.  At last, I could fill out the family trees and most importantly the individual members of the McConnachie clan.

                                James McNamara married Jane Henderson.

I

I

Children were Elizabeth McNamara     +             Anne McNamara      +    Alexander McNamara

Married:

Michael Murphy                             John Blackwood

Children:           Elizabeth + Mary Anne Murphy           Annie.  

(First cousins)

 Married :     C McBride              James C Kerr           David McConnachie

Children :    various                    James +Alfred+ Francis Kerr  William+Annie+ John McConnachie (second cousins)

 

In summary : The common ancestor was James and Jane McNamara, whose children were Elizabeth, Anne and Alexander. The McNamara family of James and Jane were nee Henderson. had a daughter, Elizabeth McNamara, born 1835 in Ireland. She had arrived with them in Scotland sometime before 1845, when Anne and Alexander McNamara were born. Of his children, Anne, 1845-1917, had married John Blackwood. Her daughter, Annie Blackwood, had married a sheet metal worker, David McConnachie, in 1899, resulting in three living children, John, Annie and William, the second cousins to our Mary Ann Kerr's children.

So, with the handy relationship calculator, it seems that Great Uncles Alf Kerr, and Francis and my grandfather James were second cousins to the McConnachie children. The McConnachie's had lived in several locations around Glasgow, namely 390 Argyle Street, Buchanan Street, Dalcross Street and Lincoln Avenue. The 1911 census tells us of the McConnachie children 5 in total had been born, two dying in childhood.

 

The next available information was the 1921 census.

1921 census

 

A recent update of the family came via the newly released 1921 Scottish census. David and Annie were in their mid-40s and the children were beginning their careers or about to. David was a tinsmith, sheet metal worker at D. Rowan & Co. Engineering Company in Glasgow and remained so until his retirement and death aged 78 years.

His son William was a sheet metal worker and daughter Annie was a sewing machinist. John was just completing his schooling eventually becoming a sheet metal worker.

The McConnachies were sad to see the Kerrs leave for Australia in the mid-1920s. Mary Anne and her cousin had kept in touch while in Australia. When Mary Anne decided to return from Australia to Scotland in 1927, she returned with her son Francis (Frank). They both stayed with the McConnachies back in Glasgow.

 The matriarch of the household, Annie, nursing cousin Mary Anne during her final days with lung cancer at 10 Buchanan Street where she died on the 11th of August 1927. Francis Kerr continued to live with his mother's cousin and his second cousins until his marriage to Catherine Tolland in 1930. William McConnachie was the witness to the marriage. By then they were living at 10 Dalcross Street.

While the senior Anne's children worked in traditional jobs such as sewing machinist and sheet metal working, her cousin's children had a much greater range of jobs. Alfed was a welder at the Singer factory. James, my grandfather, and Francis Kerr, worked for George Green Ltd (picture houses). Francis had dabbled in music hall comedy. Dad’s cousins Ann and Mary Kerr, own a theatre poster where great Uncle Frank was billed in a variety act (a Hebrew comedian) at the Palace Theatre in Lawn St Paisley in 1923. Frank went on to become a Cinema/ Theatre manager and sadly met an early death on Christmas Day 1953 because of an accident at the Cinema. Francis was a cinema manager entertaining famous movie people. Sadly, he died childless in 1953 from a fall at the Bedford Picture House. The McConnachie's were devastated when he died. 

Frank Kerr on stage with Herbert Wilcox (l) and Anton Walbrook (r)

Frank and Katie entertaining at an opening

The McConnachie's other second cousins, i.e. those children of Elizabeth Murphy who married Cornelius McBride, were mostly involved in Scottish Music Hall. They were much loved comedians, singers, dancers and performers. Scottish music hall was a great source of fun and entertainment. The cousins under stage names Jeannie, Neil Power, Jimmy Finch, Oliver and Mac, and Arthur McBride mostly performed comedy skits in variety shows and they toured around Scotland and UK.

The theatres of Glasgow were always filled with knockabout humour, Scottish songs, music, comic scenes and skits. They were a fun family to be around.

Access to the Scotland’s Peoples marriages confirmed none of the McConnachie children married or had families. They corresponded with the Kerrs in Australia and exchanged photos. They would have informed us here in Australia when William died aged 52 of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1956 and Annie after retiring had died of coronary artery disease aged 67 died in 1969. 

A later photo of Annie and John sent to the Kerrs

Alas, the last child standing, John died of lung cancer and intestate aged 65 in 1973.

At this time, it was my Great Uncle Alf in Bondi New South Wales Australia who was contacted by the solicitors to ascertain the remaining relatives who could potentially receive the inheritance.

  The second cousins reunite

In 1966 my grandfather, James, retired and took an ocean liner trip to his beloved Glasgow. On his list of things to do was a visit to the remaining McConnachies to thank them for looking after his mother. Although Mary Anne's cousin Annie Sr had died in 1952 and David in 1954, he still wanted to acknowledge that the McConnachies had cared for his mother and housed his brother until his marriage. It had been a long time since he had seen his three second cousins and he was a little taken back to see them aged and one of them bedridden. Even so, he fulfilled his wish to thank them.

When James visited and Alfred in following years, they saw the transformation of Glasgow. Some traditional industries had declined and tens of thousands of people were moving into new housing estates and on the city outskirts away from the slum areas of their youth. Glasgow had been one of the most important industrial areas in Britain.

The solicitors in search of succession to the estate.

So, when John McConnachie died intestate, the search was on for the nearest of kin. The solicitors wrote to the Kerrs in Australia to ascertain details. The solicitors would have been hard pushed to trace all the Music Hall artistes with their myriads of stage names without help from Uncle Alf.

However, for me a copy of Uncle Alf's reply has been most crucial to my family history research 40 years later. In the end, the confirmation that the McConnachies were second cousins to the remaining Kerr's and McBride's family members. The investigation brought me closer to identifying John and Annie whose signatures were in the unlabelled photos in my father's collection. I've enjoyed revisiting the McConnachie's for this story and their movements around Partick and comparing their lives with those of their second cousins.

And now to the bad news….. The letter my Great Uncle Alf wrote off to the Glasgow solicitor outlining the relationship of the McBride’s, the Murphy’s and the Kerrs to the late John McConnachie amounted to nothing.  A closer relative was found. I actually came to the same conclusion but I was overjoyed with my findings. I am guessing it was the Blackwoods who got the money as they were the closer relatives. Perhaps it was even some of David McConnachie’s family.

The research into Lizzy McBride and her tribe of performing McBrides continues….Thank God for the information in the letter.

Here is the letter that started it all off. 


 

 


 

Friday 25 October 2024

What hope have we got? Mistakes which will confound the family historian and others

Registering the death of my Great great great grandmother Ann Kerr nee Francis

 I can hear him saying it with a screwed up Scottish-Irish brawn.

I reckon he said “I dunna have a clue” and a version of that was written down by the Registrar.


 

At the Glasgow registry office on 3/6/1883, James Francis Kerr  (my great great grandfather) is in a spin. His mother Ann has just died of heart disease and bronchitis after years of suffering discomfort. He’s registering her death and they are asking all sorts of questions it standard to ask …..and it seems he is struggling with the info.

She has been a lifesaver to him after his first wife, Jessie, died in 1881, and his son died later that year. She'd helped with his two children whilst also caring for her daughter's only child, Annie Irvine.

Anne Francis was born in Tyrone, the daughter of Patrick Francis and Elizabeth Henderson. She had lost her husband, James Kerr, in… and reverted to her maiden name since her husband died as they do in Scottish lands.

If you only had the death certificate completed by James  to go on, you'd certainly put down Father Bernard and Mother Ann in your family tree and fail to get anywhere from there. Anne and her husband and children had left Ireland some time after the famine probably around 1855.

Irish records are so hard to find. With everyone's name, a saint's name, John, James, Elizabeth,  Ann etc you could imagine the possible combinations of marriages etc. Yes, James probably left Ireland as a wee boy. His grandfather had been in Glasgow with other uncles and aunts. Not sure if they connected often, or even if he connected with his sister and her estranged husband. 

Ann's Poor Law application - a godsend

For me, lucky, a relative once provided me with a poor law application, completed by Ann a couple of years before she died. On that application, she had detailed everything : her place of birth,  parents,  half sister’s details as well as  James' situation and the help he gave her, her daughter's whereabouts and estrangement from her husband, plus her little granddaughter's information as a little angel was living with her while her daughter Elizabeth worked as a wool winder and boarded elsewhere. A genealogist’s gift actually.

The real gift was that the Poor Law form with information given by Anne herself. Designed to collect possible assistance to a claimant  is as invasive as the modern day  Centrelink form. She gave her parents' names, place of birth and her half-sister's details. Her age on the Poor Law is 60, as at 29 January 1880 ie born 1820. This conflicts with the 1981 census where she is aged 64 makes her born 1817. James states her age as 59 on her death certificate in 1883.which makes her born 1824. James’ knowledge gets get worse with  his statement that  parents are Bernard - gardener and Ann Donoclue which is again contrary to Poor Law report.



Another funny thing about these records is that when my father first looked at Ann Kerr or Frances in the 1881 census records, which had just been released by the Latter-day Saints, people were getting into serious family history for the first time. Dad certainly didn't know about Scottish tenements and the close-up living people were expected to live with in Glasgow.

 Ann Frances had the little granddaughter six years old living with her and two male boarders. Since they were 25 and 23, they would more than likely have loved her as a mother figure land lady, washing, cleaning and cooking for them while they were out working. Many people boarded in the tenement apartments in those days, especially male labourers and Irish famine refugees like her daughter Elizabeth's husband who had lived with them in a previous census. He had boarded with them as a slater labourer newly arrived from Ireland.

My father interpreted the details on this newly released 1881 census as perhaps she was the lady of the night and that she had some young lovers!  He surely didn’t know about the life and times of these Irish refugees and other Scottish labourers. Years later we see the boarding situation in lots of census information. 

As I said at the beginning. I can hear him saying....

                                    “I dunna have a clue”

I've seen so many birth, deaths and marriages certificates which have been interpretations of the facts, real or made up names and details.


Was it a localised dialect problem, dealing with unknown and familiar names, a little bit of illiteracy on behalf of the officials and the informants or the officials saying just take a guess and we will leave it at that.Thank God he got her name right.

I can imagine James's problem just as easily with people who are asked to give information at short notice to a funeral home preparing the death certificate details.

When dealing with my aunt's recent death, the funeral home was most impressed when I pulled out an Ancestry app on my phone for the death certificate details. 

I can see that from dealing with her recent intestate will where we had to supply over 25 certificates that mistakes can be made by people in distress and on the spur of the moment without the relevant information at hand. No wonder the Registrar of the Supreme Court needed more and more information. Some husbands didn’t get their in-laws details correct,  forgot details in the excitement of registering a birth etc.  Sometimes it’s in-laws, uncles and aunts who are tasked with the job of providing the required data. They may not may not have known the wife's mother's maiden name, length of time in the country, details of past marriages and children etc!

The courts in administering this will cross checked these dodgy details by requiring over 25 certificates needed details of children, grandparents, siblings, dates of birth and death. Mind you it felt as though we had started a conspiracy to defraud my Aunt’s will 70-80 years ago. This all came about because her will was lost.

Anyhow here’s a few tips for dealing with the modern day Death Certificate in New South Wales

 Deceased Person's Details

1. Full name
2. Date of birth
3. Date of death
4. Place of death (hospital, home, etc.)
5. Usual residence
6. Occupation
7. Sex
8. Marital status
9. Spouse's name (if applicable)
10. Father's name
11. Mother's name (including maiden name)

12 Children of the deceased

13. Burial or Cremation details

14.informant details 

Additional information 

Citizenship, veteran status, name variations or aliases

Note: this information may  also be supplied to the Federal Government for Centrelink and Aged Care purposes.