Ann Kerr nee Francis 1824 to 1883. Great Great Great Grandmother on the Kerr side

 

Ann Kerr nee Francis  stood proudly at the Church of Scotland in 14 Abbotsford Place, Glasgow. On the day her son James, a van man, married a local silk warper, Jessie Cross. Her daughter Elizabeth was a witness alongside Jessie's brother, David Cross. It was the 4th of March, 1873.

James Jnr and Jessie Kerr marriage certificate (copy)

Beside her was her husband, James, who had taken a break from his hackney carriage driving to see his only son wed.

 She thought back to the day when she took young James to be baptised, the 6th of August, 1851. This was in Antrim Ireland, in Loughguile village  in  the St. Patrick's Catholic Church. 

Baptism of James Kerr son of James and Ann

Ann Francis my great great great grandmother  had been born in 1824 in Tyrone Ireland. Her parents were Patrick Francis and Elizabeth Henderson. Patrick was a land steward. Irish land stewards were estate managers who oversaw the daily agricultural operations on large Irish estates, managing labour, crops and livestock. I'd love to find more out about Ann's background, but haven't been that lucky as yet. I suspect her father had two marriages, as there is a document that says that she had a half-sister, Catherine, who was a dressmaker and still living in Ireland in 1880.

Ann had moved to Scotland with her husband, James, in the mid-1850s. All of her relatives had remained in Ireland from what I can see.

I haven't found out much about the Kerrs, but they seemed to have been lucky enough to survive the battering of the potato famine. James's brother and father had left Ireland earlier and paved the way for them. James had taken work as a hackney cab driver, driving a horse and cart variety of transport.

From Northern Ireland to Glasgow

Times had been a bit tough for the Irish families in Glasgow since the famine saw mass emigration from Ireland. The tight-knit community of ex-Irish settled in overcrowded and often impoverished tenements. Their search for better lives had met with discrimination from Scottish inhabitants who were worried about overcrowding, disease, and job losses.

James Jr. was marrying a young Scottish girl Jessie Cross  who had hailed from Edinburgh; her family weren't tied to the land. Many immigrants chose to hide their religion to avoid discrimination. Hence, James and Elizabeth married in the Church of Scotland. There was lots of anti catholic thinking, and many of the refugees chose to be Protestant which explains the wedding in the Church of Scotland.

The Kerrs lived in a typical Glasgow tenement where Ann oversaw keeping the household in order. Tenements were typically 3 to 5 stories high, constructed from distinct red or blonde sandstone with all flats accessed via a common communal entrance and stairwell known as the close. Each flat within the tenement was referred to as a house, and there could be 1 or more of these residences on each floor.

A Shuttle St Tenement

The working class tenements often consisted of a single room. These cramped spaces shared as many as 8 family or household members- a perfect environment for overcrowding and poor sanitation. Often residents and families shared a toilet with their neighbours.

The women shared the wash house for washing their clothes on a roster basis. They hung their clothes in the shared back courtyard and beat their rugs in that area, possibly fighting for space with the local children playing there.

Ann’s kitchen had a open coal fire and oven space for her to cook a big simmering pot of stew or soup to cook and it also heated the room and warmed the water.

Cupboards contained beds and often the double bed was recessed into the wall with a trundle bed below. Sometimes residents slept in the kitchen.

Ann’s daily jobs were to clean the residence, air the beds, blacken the stoves, cook the stew, wash the clothes endlessly. It was a matter of pride to keep the open common spaces and stairs immaculate.

Her husband James Snr passed away in 1877.  These records plus two more two documents from the 1880s paint more of a picture of her life.

One is the poor law application, completed in 1880, three years after the death of her husband. She described herself as Roman Catholic with a varicose vein disability, which is not surprising.

Her poor law application paints a picture of her dire financial straits. Her rental was two pounds seven shillings per quarter, which was about three shillings seven pence per week. James had helped to contribute to her rent . At the time, her son James was helping her to pay her rent, and her daughter Elizabeth, who was living apart from her husband, paid her about two shillings a week for keeping her child Ann Revington.  She also earned three shillings a week from her two boarders. The poor law interviewer, George W. Allen, noted that she kept her apartment clean. This would have pleased Ann. Her application for poor law relief is a mine of information. While it seems she may have never received help, her need for assistance was real at the time.

1881 Census

The next document we see is the 1881 census shows Ann living at the same address  37 Shuttle St at age 64 with a six-year-old granddaughter, Annie, living with her. She took in lodgers and had two men, a stamp man from Edinburgh and a shipping clerk from Ireland.  My Dad thought this was very unusual and thought she may have been a lady of ill repute.  DAD!!  Isn’t this the perfect little glimpse of a modern family sitting along side a 140 year old census!

It was common in Glasgow for older widows to make a living by taking in boarders the census lists her as making a living by taking in boarders. Industrial Glasgow was crowded and fast growing and it was densely populated. Often families took in a boarder, squeezing out some of the family space for a rental spot in the house. Previously in the 1871 census Ann had been at the same address with her husband, daughter and James, senior, along with a boarder from Ireland, who worked by day as a slater. At the time Dad did not have access to this census.

The 1871 boarder Charles Revington had ended up marrying Elizabeth in 1874 and was the father of Annie mentioned above. Refer to Elizabeth's story. https://robynandthegenies.blogspot.com/2020/10/elizabeth-lizzy-kerr-revington-tinman.html

The 1881 census for James and his wife Jesse had listed them living in Bellgrove Street. Not long after that, James lost his wife, Jessie.  Ann, no doubt began helping with his three younger children, who were four, two, and 11 months when Jesse died.

Meanwhile he adjusted to his new life as a widower and setting up his new cab driving business. Later in 1881, the little baby John died. Ann moved in with her son and grandchildren at Bellgrove St. So Ann was now looking after James Cross Kerr, age five, and Jesse Smart Kerr, age three.

The Scottish culture was Anglo-Saxon versus Celtic, and the commentary of the time was that the Irish were an inferior race. There was anti-Irish racism, which regarded the Irish as alien. So interestingly, Ann's grandchildren were brought up as Protestants. Her grandson James Cross Kerr, however, married an Irish Catholic, and his children and future generations were brought up as Catholic.

Celtic Football team for the Catholic followers

The Celtic football team was set up for the Catholic Irish and was founded by Irish immigrants in Carlton. The Catholic Kerr boys were brought up supporting Celtic; that was our team. On reflection, the situation was not unlike the rising sentiment here in Australia. People coming here are regarded as stealing opportunities for jobs and homes. Refugees are regarded as inferior races or alien.

Upon her death in June 1883 from heart disease and bronchitis, her household help was sadly missed. However, only three months after his mother's death, James ended up marrying Agnes Yuill, who lived up the road. Ann had a further tribe of Grandchildren from this marriage. 

Some members of the family bear her surname within their name as a nod to the Francis heritage as opposed to following the Scottish naming pattern I think.- Great uncle Frank -Francis Kerr, my uncle William (Bill) Francis Kerr and his cousin  Anne  Frances Kerr. These names were a small way of remembering where the family came from. The part of the story for the current generations that becomes ours.

Ann left few possessions behind- fragments of information in her records. They tell the story of a woman who crossed the Irish Sea and survived difficult times living through poverty and discrimination. She supported her children and grandchildren through their own struggles and tragedies.

She was a Catholic living in a world where being Catholic and Irish made life harder. And apparently according to Dad a lady of questionable morals. The evidence gives the last word on that one.

I think she is very much worth remembering. Missing is the information about her father, mother, his marriages, his job and her sister Catherine. Irish records are problematic due to destruction- how much richer the family history could be if they still existed. Nevertheless brickwalls are always there to be broken down. Watch this space.