Every family history is different, and I am a firm believer that there is always something of interest to uncover. Having said that, researching family histories in the west of Scotland regularly throws up similar themes – shipbuilding, the rural to urban migrations of the mid-19th century, immigration from Ireland, and emigration to North America, Australia or New Zealand.
Recently though, I worked on a family which was so drama-filled that if you read the story in a novel, you’d think it was too far-fetched. It all started with a client asking about a distant ancestor, Alexander Watson, who had been lost at sea when his ship sank in the 1860s. Alexander was the owner of the ship rather than just a crew member – so what had happened to the money he had left?
“The Watson Marriage Case”
Newspapers came into their own on this research, and it didn’t take long to uncover what had happened to the money. Now, this is a complicated story worthy of any 21st-century soap opera but the facts were as follows. Alexander Watson had been married twice. His first wife, Margaret, was a widow with children when he married her. Margaret and Alexander went on to have a daughter together, but when their daughter was very small, Margaret died. Alexander was left with her four children from her first marriage, and the daughter they had had together.
About seven years later, Alexander decided to marry again, and this is where the problems start. Alexander’s choice of wife was one of Margaret’s daughters from her first marriage. Alexander and his new wife Isabella - who was just 16 when he married her, and already 8 months pregnant – went on to have four children together over the next decade.
Things came to a head when Alexander died at sea and left no will. His daughter who he had had with Margaret went to court, saying she was the sole heir to his estate because the children that he had with his second wife were illegitimate as in effect, he had married his step daughter.
The court agreed, and after a great deal of legal discussion and mud-slinging about the character of both Alexander and his teenage, pregnant bride, the entire estate was awarded to Elizabeth, daughter from his first marriage.
Happily Ever After For Elizabeth?
Unfortunately not. Elizabeth was about 23 when she took her half-sister, Alexander’s second wife, to court over the inheritance. She had been married two years previously, to a Glasgow law clerk called William. Just a few months after winning her inheritance case, William abandoned his wife and went to Australia, leaving Elizabeth in Glasgow. Around 8 years later, Elizabeth petitioned the court for a divorce, saying that she had had no contact with William, who sent letters once or twice through his brothers, but who had no intention of returning to Glasgow. Divorce in this period was highly unusual, but was granted on appeal.
Elizabeth moved on with her life and married again, the year after her divorce, to an Edinburgh grocer called Robert. They had four children together, and moved to the capital from Glasgow. The drama in Elizabeth’s life was not over though, as just five years after their marriage, Robert was declared bankrupt, owing a significant amount over a failed business venture. The couple and their children were forced to give up their home in Edinburgh, and move to Lanarkshire. As Elizabeth was legally not allowed to own property in her own right as a married woman, on marriage her assets became her husband’s so she was unable to ring-fence her own money or property from Robert’s financial woes.
After around 16 years of marriage, I found the final dramatic chapter in Elizabeth’s life when she was admitted to Gartnavel Lunatic Asylum in Glasgow, where she lived until her death 13 years later of pneumonia and chronic kidney disease.
You might not suspect that your family has this sort of dramatic story lurking in the past, but until you start digging, you never know. If you’d like me to investigate your roots, get in touch.
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