Peddies, Reids, Curries, McIntoshes

PEDDIES, REIDS, CURRIES, MCINTOSHES,
MEET STIVENS, WATSONS, DEADRICKS, AND SIMES
with particular emphasis on Margaret Peddie Stiven (1897 - 1985)
(Comox 2009)
I’m not sure about what we’re all believing these days but words from Iona may still tug at us. George MacLeod in “The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory” crafted a prayer with the title “A Veil as thin as Gossamer.”

“.... we give thanks for those who have gone from the sight of earthly eyes...
......still with us in the mystery of one family in heaven and on earth...
... those who bore the agony great decisions
.... those who, little recognized ... bore the heat and burden of the unrecorded day
... if it be Thy holy will, tell them how we love them....
..... there is no death and only a veil divides, thin as gossamer.”

And my Dad could pray, as somebody said to Mum, “... as if SOMEBODY was listening.”:

“.... and now Lord of Life who by Christ dost promise to all thy faithful servants rest after weariness, we bless Thee for all who have accomplished their life’s task.... Grant unto us so to remember them, that we may ever be faithful to their memory, and following Christ with humility till our earthly days are done, enter at the last, by Thy grace, Thy joy and glory eternal...

And now we bless Thee for all the souls of the faithful who have gone into Everlasting Peace. Do thou O Lord we beseech Thee direct our life in faith and good works and, after our passage through this world, grant us rest with the righteous.

..... make our hearts brim with Thy heavenly love as we remember before Thee pleasant comrades now at rest with thee whose love was wonderful. Lord keep our memory green that neither lapse of time and nor absence may make us forget [them].

We thank Thee for our earthly homes and for the welcome that awaits us in our heavenly home. We thank Thee for dear ones that are with us here on Earth and for the dear ones who are now with Thee...” [end prayers]
There are long daisy chains of wombs in family trees.

One can talk of a horse being “a son of Igolo out of Greenwell Fiona” and in a sense are we not all sons and daughters out of our dams, bred by our sires, the division of labour being, initially, child bearer and sperm donor?

Thereafter in our clan story, up to and including my parents David and Peggy Stiven, the division of labour might be described in the way my father described, Church and Parish.

Church: “The name Congregation (Church) is given to a band of men and women and children gathered together in one place by God’s hand to be watched over and guarded and fed.” Most of the mothers in the family tree were good watchers and guarders and feeders within the household.

Parish: “The area in which the Church is planted [.....] is called the Parish (from Greek para = "near", oikos = "house").” Many of the fathers in the family tree lived and worked competently in the Parish and managed the economy of the household.

In a manner of speaking roles were divided between in-house and out-house.

My father asked,“What is the eternal principle which has preserved the race?” And he supplied his answer, “Time was, and that not so very long ago, when of ourselves we were unable fully to use the blessings of self preservation.

When we were weak and helpless God had to raise up helpers for us; fathers and mothers in whose breasts burned ardently the flower of love kindled from heavenly fires. When wounds and fevers and sicknesses took strength from body and from brain, other hands ministered to us in love and preserved us. Physicians and nurses taught by Him who slumbers not nor sleeps watched over us by day and night.

This generation is the result and outcome of thousands of generations of unknown men and women who have loved and cared for little children, who have had the courage to contend with plague and pestilence, proving in their weary bodies that love is stronger than death.”

While it was both men and women “in whose breasts burned ardently the flower of love kindled from heavenly fires” and who “proved in their weary bodies.....” I think that often in genealogical stories the women are pretty nearly invisible. So I hope in this article to remedy that and laud the women as much as the men even though the woman’s story is often hard to find.

I’m also going to attempt to stick to the line of pedigree, progenitors only, and avoid talking about extraneous relatives of whom there are rather a lot.

A word about the Stiven name. It’s amazing how someone can craft a statement about where the Stiven name came from and that statement can become THE story.

William Stiven, in “Meet Watsons, Smiths and Others” going by nom de plume W. St. Iven (1928) wrote: “....there is no doubt our original name was Stephen. I remember my Grandfather’s brother [that would be John 1791-1831] called himself Stephen. A ‘thrawn’ old man he was, and perhaps it was to disassociate himself from his surly brother that my grandfather [William St.... b 1796] called himself Stiven. Then it must have been because an ‘i’ was more to his mind, after ‘St.’ than ‘e’ that my father adopted Stiven as his name. The remarkable thing is that his many brothers followed his spelling, and the clan Stiven, so far as we are concerned, is now fixed at that.” [The OPR Index of Marriages 1553 - 1854 records the elder William Stiven’s marriage to Elizabeth Ferguson on 18Jun1826. So he must have decided to be a Stiven before he wed.]”

I quoted the above in “Genealogy to 2005” as ‘gospel’. But one day, fed-up with Scotlandspeople and that site’s inability to furnish me with proper answers in a decent time, I simply asked it to display all ‘Stiven’ entries for ‘Banns and Marriages’ from 1553 to 1854. There were 639 Stivens. For ‘Births and Baptisms’ there were 1094.

There were ever Stivens galore! William St. Iven’s grandpa did not invent the name but early registrars probably heard and wrote Stephen, or Steven or Stiven.

These sort of ‘genealogical stories’ generally start with the most antiquated and work up to contemporary people. But, this time, I’m going to start with the nearly contemporary and go back for a generation or two. So we’ll begin with our father and mother, the ‘our’ being myself and my siblings: Jean 1924, David Russell 1926, James Frostilie (Jimmie) 1928, Iain Kay (Kay) 1931, Margaret Elizabeth (Meg)1932, Robert (Bobbie) and Katharine (Linty) 1935, but I won’t tell much about my siblings. They or their descendants can do their own telling.

What am I going to call our parents in this document? Our father called his parents Papa and Mama. In other documents I have called them DSS and MPS or used the collective “the Auld Yins”. In my letters to them from 1957 - 1986 I began with “Dear Mum and Dad”, so Mum and Dad they will be, even though my first letter home used “Daddy” begging simply, “Dear Daddy Darling, Please come and take me home. Love, Bobby.” It was from Doonan’s Camp, Aberfoyle, where Linty and I had gone, aged 11, with our school class for a month after the war.

I seem to have spent a great deal of time in the last ten years making available bits of letters and papers that have allowed our Dad to tell his story from his letters and in extracts from documents. My relationship with Dad is revealed not only in his letters to us in Canada but also in the document “Bob 1935 -2000”.

Dad wrote copiously and reveals himself in:

The Inveresk Parish Magazine (available in three volumes 1930s, 1940s, 1950s). Not in a data base, but hard copy can be easily furnished.

The Iona Parish Supplements. (1959 - 1966) I have a set for copying

“Extracts from the papers of D.S. Stiven (1896-1986)” (2008) A few unedited copies are in circulation. (Kay, Meg, Lint) I will bring edited copies with me in July (2009) and trade nasty for good copy.

There is a whole chunk about DSS in “Bobby’s Behoof” (2001) after ‘Uncle Jimmy’ and before ‘Iona’. It is still googleable at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/fred_tingey/
Hard copies supplied on demand. Each of ‘the 7’ have a zippered copy

Stivens 1981 - A Slice of life from 25 Years Ago (2006) is not a bad read though I say it myself.

I’m quite happy to assist the digging by supplying already existing (this is the very last production) documents as long as I’m spared. I jaloos that as the next generation grows older they may become more interested.

Our Dad
Because I have written so much about him already, I’m now simply going to repeat the C.V. of this amazing Dad who may have been for brother David “one who did not beat worms” but never made me feel like one. I have inherited his abhorrence of lying (his only reason for thrashing) and he taught me to do the routine jobbies right away. He placed his boys at The Edinburgh Academy and his girls at St. Leonards but did not micromanage our homework or our extracurricular pursuits. Though he failed to rescue me from Doonan’s Camp, Aberfoyle, he took us on brilliant summer holidays, only interfered with our Youth Hosteling tours when girls became involved, permitted me to to-and-fro by bicycle the sixty miles to the Rigg (Teviothead) from an early age whenever I wanted, sought remedial help for me when I was finding Higher Leaving Certificate a hurdle, secured me a place at Uncle Willie’s farms for practical agriculture, helped me buy a motor bike and when I was hunkering down as a 22 year old post-national-service pre 1960’s beatnik he secured passage for me to Canada on a one-way ticket as a landed immigrant in 1957 and came to visit us in Winnipeg (‘60, ‘67), in Sandy Lake (‘70) and in Thunder Bay (‘72). While Mum cared for what went on in the Manse he was good at managing its economy and what went on round about it.

That said, I’d be daft not to confess that our relationship in my teen years was fraught with hazards. We matched temper for temper and got into some pretty loud shouting and swearing (me only) matches. But when my dog, Jock, was run over and had a leg broken he paid a substantial vet bill. He let me learn to drive with my friend James Aitken in the old Ford Prefect JHX 35 and when I got my licence (in spite of my having burst the big end while popping the clutch to avoid crushing a box of matches behind the rear wheels on a steep hill while practicing for my test) he let me drive the new car. With me at any rate his anger was thunderous but soon spent. Nothing smoldered for long and our mother was an expert arbitrator, mediator, dispute resolver. Dad wasn’t bad at settling altercations between siblings. He’d simply send the nastiest disputee on a walk ‘to the holly bush’ halfway up the drive to cool off. Once when Kay and I went at it he ordered me to walk to Inveresk and Kay to walk to Levenhall. Both goodly distances. Certainly kept us apart.

Once while pacing about the front hall waiting for an errant daughter to return home very late from a date he proclaimed, “My sons can be the greatest rakes in Edinburgh but oh, my daughters! Oh, my daughters!”

DAD’S C. V.:
Son of David Russell Stiven (1859-1924), consulting engineer, and Jane (Jeannie) Sime (1855-1938) of Fir Neuk, Blackness Road, Dundee.

Born in Dundee in 1896, he was dux of Harris Academy. During W.W.I he served in Egypt and Europe with the 5th Battalion, The Royal Scots Regiment as a T/Lieut. and was awarded the Military Cross.

His only sibling, brother ALBERT (b. 7 Sep 1897), was killed while serving as a Lieutenant in W.W.I with the Royal Scots Fusiliers and is buried in Peake Wood Cemetery, Fricourt, (5 km East of Albert), Contalmaison, Somme, France.

David graduated M.A. at St. Andrew's University in 1919 and B.D. in 1922 gaining the Berry Scholarship (St. Andrew's University) and the McLean Scholarship (open to the Divinity Halls of the Church of Scotland). He visited Spain in 1921. In 1922 he traveled extensively in the Middle East and attended the British School of Archaeology at Jerusalem and apparently [MPS insisted] was present on November 4, 1922, when Howard Carter opened King Tut’s tomb.

The honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by St. Andrew’s University in 1954.

He was a student assistant in the Parish Church of St. Stephen, Broughty Ferry, and afterwards was assistant to The Very Rev. Dr Norman McLean, St. Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh.

In 1925 he was elected to Teviothead Church near Hawick and in 1929 to Gilcomston (St. Colm’s), Aberdeen. He was called to The Parish Church of St. Michael, Inveresk, Musselburgh (embracing the mission churches of Smeaton, Wallyford and Deantown (Whitecraig) in 1937. After twenty-one years there, at the age of 62, he was elected to Iona and Ross of Mull in 1958.

From April to September 1945 he served for six months on service with the Church of Scotland Canteens in N.W. Europe witnessing V. E. Day in Brussels on 8May45.

In 1971 he wrote, “It was very hard for me to say goodbye in every one of the Parishes when I laid down my charge there. It was like pulling up roots and I ached.”

In 1923 he married Margaret (Peg) Peddie McIntosh, daughter of James McIntosh and Marjorie (Currie) who resided at Laurel Villa, Darkfaulds, Perth Road, Blairgowrie. They raised seven children, four boys and three girls, Jean, David, Jimmy, Kay, Meg, and twins Bobby and Linty. At the time of his death he had 27 grandchildren (Hannah #28 was to come later), one adopted grandchild (David’s Joan) and 20 great grandchildren.

He retired to Iona Cottage, Barry, Angus in 1966 and to The Butts, Haddington in 1981. He died in 1986 aged 90. His ashes, commingled with the ashes of his wife, Peg, who died a year before him, were scattered in the garden of the Iona Manse.

The Rev. Duncan Finlayson described him as “one of the great men of The Church in his time. He had a great natural distinction and never-failing courtesy. He had a very fine mind and was a lifelong biblical scholar. His preaching was powerful and his pastoral ministry marked by great caring and infinite compassion. He was one of God’s most valiant yet ever gentle warriors.” Others might have added that he had a colossal sense of DUTY.

“DSS + MPS Letters 1964 the 1986” have within them our Mum’s letters over a twenty year period and these bits of her own vivid writing tell her story well. What follows simply fills her story in a bit, for Mum was a woman of many parts, fulfilling many roles, creating and acting in a thousand dramas, while being in the years I knew her best, 1937 - 1957, Lady of the Manse without equal and materfamilas. (She once asked, “If I should die, who would rule the clan?”)


OUR MUM
Mum’s tale

On the 20th of January 1897 at 2 a.m. Margaret Peddie McIntosh was born in Blairgowrie to Marjory Peddie/Reid/Currie who had been born in Ballintuim on 30Oct1858, and so aged 39 when Mum was born,
and to James McIntosh b Dundee1844 (age 53)
When she was born her dad’s ‘employment’ on the birth certificate says ‘scavenger’: her mother’s ‘jute spinner’. But 4 years after Peg was born, in 1891, they moved to Laurel Villa, with its 10 acre market garden.

Her brother Jimmie McIntosh recalls his sister when young:
“Once we took a big bag of potatoes in front half of pram with your ma (MPS) in the back half. That was to Rosemount Station. Noise of the train scared your mother stiff, but when they [Aunt Annie McLeish and family from Dundee] and potatoes and train had left, your mother with that versatility of hers started laughing and shouting ‘PUFF PUFF AWAY TO LONDON’ which she kept up for days afterwards.”

Barry :17Jan80
“When I was a wee girl, MAC came into the house shouting, ‘Peg, Peg come quick to the front gate and you’ll see a motor car!’ [Her first] Unbelievable. Too many going round this corner and too big they are. So what.”

Blairgowrie school where she earned the credentials to go to Teachers’ College.

Bonniest girl in Blair.

Best berry picker in Blair midst rapacious migrant berry pickers.

21Jan1984 MPS: “[I remember] ... Uncle Bob [Robert the Mason] and Auntie Jane and the two Fleming boys and Dad (James McIntosh) on the the old croft at Dalvattan... the Flemings were so kind to us. They kept me at college and brother Jimmy at University and eased my mother’s old age.”
[‘somebody’ stumped up for Atholl Crescent too]
“In 1891 the School of Cookery moved to Atholl Crescent, developed extended courses and offered places to residential students. The fees paid by middle class students training to be schoolteachers and housekeepers were used to subsidize classes for hundreds of working class teenagers and adults.”
Not sure exactly which year Mum attended there but she certainly learned a lot about how to feed wonderful food to the multitudes.

To Kay from Butts. Re: MORAY HOUSE
“Before the lovely new hostels were finished in Newington I lived in Moray House Hostel (slums) for a year and what a joy to escape to King’s Park and up Arthur’s Seat. When we were out on a Saturday night we had to jolly up a kind policeman to escort us home to the hostel. They were always so kind and caring and the Cannongate was not a good place at night. I hope it has changed now-a-days.”

Oct 29 1916 Mum’s father died aged 72 while his son, her only sibling, Capt. J. C. McIntosh, was at war, and severely wounded. Mum was 19.

18Dec1923 Mum married our ‘probationer’ Dad [her bridesmaid Margaret Lamond of Alyth is reputed to have said upon hearing about the engagement “Not to that bookworm!” ] Mum and Dad met in 1913 [16 &17]
Blairgowrie Advertizer reported: “The bride was a radiant winsome figure in a gown of ivory crepe de chine and carried a bouquet of Madonna Lilies.”

July 1924 Dad’s father died, a relatively young 65 year old during a prostate operation. Dad was 28.

Nov 1924 Mum was delivered of Jean In Edinburgh

Jan 1925 Dad was ordained in at Teviothead

1925 Mum and Dad moved to Teviothead

1925 Mum nursed her mother, our grandmother, Marjory Currie, in T’head manse as she wasted, during a ten month siege with a cerebral tumour, until her death in Sept 1925, aged 67. Our Mum was worried about how to keep up Atholl Crescent standards and shiny floors.

Jan 1926 she gave birth to David Russell in the Borders.

Feb 1928 birthed James Frostilie in the Borders.

In1927 Mum was seriously ill. Mum wrote on 15July71: “I had pyelites [inflammation of the mucous membrane of the pelvis of the kidney] which I had before Jimmy was born (1928). It was a bad illness and I had to go to a nursing home in Edinburgh from Teviothead.”
On that journey she got Dad to promise that, should death ensue, he would not bury her in the sodden graveyard at Teviothead. The splash when the coffins were lowered into the ground quite unnerved her.

AND AGAIN:
Mum : Tarves : St. Swithin’s Day : 15 July 1971 : “Darlings,
So hoping to get good news of our darling LOIS MARIE. Funny I was being questioned by a specialist here about my rheumatism and he was asking if I’d ever had any serious illness. The ‘1918’ flu. You’ll never have heard of it but it killed more than the war and nearly killed me -
and pyelites [inflammation of the mucous membrane of the pelvis of the kidney] which I had before JIMMY was born. It was a bad illness and I had to go to a nursing home in Edinburgh from Teviothead.
I am so frustrated with my knees and so depressed and weep for nothing.”

A story Mum used to tell about T’head was that Jake Martin, born 1860, and so in his mid sixties when Dad was in his early 30s, was hauled into the Manse study to endure a lecture on how parishioners should respect their minister. As Mum was showing him to the door she said, “Isn’t it a lovely moonlight night.” Jake just said, “Lassie I dinae ken if there’s a moon the nicht or no.”

But Mum’s brother, the mister’s brother in law, enjoyed Jake (from “Uncle Jimmie” in the ‘Behoof”)
“The bachelor adventurer must have cheered the long dark evenings of The Borders. In a letter MAUD MARTIN sent me in 1986 (sixty years after the fact) she was still talking about him. ‘It seems a long time since the days of Jimmie and Dad [JAKE MARTIN] enjoying the drive to Merrylaw and singing the Auld Scottish Songs on the journeys with the pony and trap. It didn’t matter about the gap in their ages [Jake b. 1860 Jimmie b. 1894], they had the same outlook and got on so well together.’ I’m not sure how the young minister felt about his hearty brother-in-law’s ingratiation of himself into the favour of the father of these eligible parishioner sisters.”

It is in ‘the lore’ that Mum asked Dad for an appointment in his study during which she declared that she would not milk the cow nor play the organ. She was embarrassed when the young maid they had brought with them from the city cried out from the back door of the manse in a voice that carried all over Teviot, “Sandeee, ye dinnae hae tae milk the co’ the nicht. We’ve got plenty milk.”

1929 - 1937 Aberdeen

March 1929 : Mum went to Aberdeen : wife of very disappointed man who aspired to the chair of Hebrew at Aberdeen University and did not achieve it.

On 25Feb1965: While Marlene was in Sandy Lake 7 months pregnant with Lois Mum wrote about a miscarriage: “Do take care of yourself Marlene. My seven were all easier than the one miscarriage I had. Ripe fruit falling off the tree is one thing but a green apple being plucked from a tree is another. Not good.” Linty reports (2009) that this happened in Aberdeen between Jimmie and Kay after a really nasty Woman’s Guild meeting. [Was the meeting awful because she was beginning a miscarriage? Or did the awful meeting bring it on?]

5Dec1931 Kay born

And what ever happened when the doctor opened his arms to our Mum and she says “I fell”?
M.P.S. : Barry : 24 February 1980 : “Darlings Bob and Marlene I want to tell you how much your love and remembering mean to us. How kind you are. DAVID [54] thought Dad [84] was to die and wrote the saddest letter I have ever read and told how he had come out of the Church - Not solar heat - but Sex heat (God help us! Her name was ‘Lois’) and how he had longed to know his Father but never did and then the Navy and Canada and not long enough at home.

Alas. I feel responsible for his weakness. I had it myself. After a sleepless, worrying night with my baby Kay, my doctor came in and sat on the bed beside me and put his arm round me and I fell! But God was kind. HE removed me to Inveresk. But DAVID must have inherited my weakness.

Why I’m telling you is because I want you to pray for DAVID.”

Less things are wrought by prayer than Mum hoped for.
The poor souls must have been happy to get away from Gilcomston

10Dec1932 Meg born

4Jun1935 Twins born. Mum was 38. That makes 7 children in 11 years.
In 1935 there were 4 children 4 and under.

M.P.S. : Barry : 12 June 1979 :
“Yes darling. Do I remember? [4 June 1935] I had got my son. There were now six children. Three at each side of the table. Cheers. I had read that the more births the worse afterbirths and as the nurse went out I shouted, ‘ Oh, nurse, come quick. It’s going to be a terrible afterbirth.’ She was just in time to take the wee thing in her hand. ‘No afterbirth Mrs. Stiven - a lovely wee girl.’ Horrors I thought - spoiled my table. But you have BOTH been a JOY . Much success in your new sphere. Love to you ALL. M. S.”


1937 - 1958 INVERESK

Dad is the captain of the ship, Mum is first mate.

how many Women’s guild meetings chaired
how many overseas guests to The General Assembly of the C. of S. hosted
how many sox knitted
how many sweaters knitted
how many apple dumplings made
how many jars of fruit bottled
how many bushels of apples peeled and cored
how many washings for 9 people hung upon the line after being washed in tubs with scrub board and hand wringer.... then all the ironing
how many times “Always respect and be polite to the scaffie!’
how many eggs in cocoa cans to sick people like Mr. Naysmith
how many solicitations of food from Matron at the fever hospital
how many doses of rose hip syrup and cod-liver oil and worm powders
how much ‘Balancer’ meal from Sykes for the hens
how many pounds of butter cadged for Skilmaphilly Auchnagat
how often did the dog Jock run away and Mum took it personally
how many calls “Betty here’s your tea” [to Dad’s secretary upstairs]
how many meals to Mitcheena and Tattiebogle [the tramps]
and table set in the kitchen for Mr. Grant the gardener
Lady Mears, Wendy Roberts, Auntie Margaret, Matron, Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Maxwell and The Stirtons, Mrs. Simpson of “watch the races from her window”, the “Beetle Drive” lady in Edinburgh (Walker?) who gave us family passes to the Zoo
ration cards and 9 butter plates and 9 jam jars set out at mealtimes
Mr. Niven the grocer, “I could give you half a pound of lard if you would like it.”
Coustons, another grocer and Cossars the cafe, Co-op No 8608 (brown scones), Maxwell the Chemist, McCalls the sweetie shop. Jeanie Ford’s bakery, Bonthron’s dairy, Henry Harry Hunter’s bakery.
herring roll-ups by the binful
her early morning prayers
and Oxford Group (absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love). Changing the world starts with seeking change in oneself.
and Shakespeare and quoting screeds of poetry like “Young Lochinvar”
Ending a ‘pep talk’ at a congregational bun fight with “and St. Michael and all his Angels will be waiting for you there!” [there = heaven].

From ‘The Scotsman’
5 July 1937: Mrs. Stiven formally opened a garden fete held at Inveresk Church Manse on Sat 3 July. It brought in the sum of 60 pounds. [Lady Hope and Lady Elphinstone are her successors in the opening business.]

From ‘The Scotsman’
May 1939: “A large audience including many members of Assembly with their wives saw the film ‘Youth Marches On’ in the Dominion Cinema and news was given on the progress of Moral Rearmament. Mrs. Stiven, wife of the minister of Inveresk spoke.” [as did several other worthy members of the great and good]

27Sept1947 Jean married and home during her pregnancy with Alison who was born on 23Oct1948. Great dramas around thumb sucking.

7Sep1949 David married in Oxford

This will give a wee flavour of the pace of Mums life.... she was 53.
Extracts from the diary of Alastair E. B(urnley) Jones when he was billeted with the Stiven Family in 1950 during The general Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Now imagine her annual billeting of an overseas visitor to the Assembly, annually every May, over 20 years from age 40 to 61. They included the Head of the Salvation Army, a couple from Holland, soon after the war, whom Dad helped pack bicycle tires and tubes among books they were shipping to Holland, and a Canadian Moderator.

The Stivens had volunteered to make their home and family my refuge during Assembly week. [Jimmie is 22, Kay 18, Meg 17, Bobby and Linty 15.]

Wed 24 May : Rose at 7 am Mrs. Stiven brought me up a tray of tea to tide me over until 8:30 when we (2 Stivens and Assistant Arthur Gunn) traveled into city by car for Assembly breakfast. Back to drawing room... Jimmy brought me a cup of tea. Supper at 6 then DSS and I to Overseas Visitors’ night. Home and yarned over cups of tea till 11pm.

Thurs 25 May : Drove into Assembly with DSS.... Mrs. Stiven at overseas afternoon tea. NINE speakers. Then Mrs. Stiven and I to King Lear at The Academy. Trammed home; coffee and biscuits....

Fri. 26 May : Splitting head. Mrs. S made me tea and we yarned till supper time. Home 10:15 Jimmy and Bobbie fed me.

Sat 27th : Went to St. Andrews (DSS at Hawick) Mrs. Stiven Jimmy and Bobby. Peter Bartholomew rode shotgun on his motor cycle. Picked up Meg and Linty. Home 8:30. Supply minister Donald Beattie already there.

28 May : First Sabbath in Scotland
Bobby, Jimmy and I in manse pew. Bobby Jimmy and I took dog for long walk.
Tea served in drawing room then Bobbie and I to Palmerston Place to hear J.S.Stewart. Packed out.

Mon. 29th May : Beattie off at 9. DSS home in a.m. with chill but put his flock coat on after lunch and he and MPS and I to Holyrood Palace garden party. DSS worse off for outing and so off to bed. Bobbie and I played tenniquoitt then Bobby and I and MPS walked up to see Wendy Roberts. Good chat.

Tues 30 May : DSS has chill. I to Edinburgh by train.

Wed 31 May : 2nd last day : B’fast in kitchen with boys. DSS (chill gone) drove me to city.

Thurs 1 Jun : Last day at Inveresk. Up and had b’fast with boys .... away but they insisted that I return.

So he is back on
Tues 24 Aug. : Bell rang at 8:30 and soon there was a full muster at the table of TEN... did tourist stuff all day. Home 11:30 supper.

Sat 26 Aug. Meg Linty and I to see Mrs. Jackson at the seaweed research house.

Sun 27 Aug. : Call to b’fast at 9. Kay off to a retreat. 7 of us to church... Tried to do letters in drawing room but family noise too much so joined round piano and sing hymns. 5 pm DSS and MPS to Longnidry where Kay on retreat, Mrs. Stiven conducted a ‘hymn sing’ and gave resume of hymn authors. Jimmie and Alison back to London but another guest enters.

Mon. 28th Aug. : Meg, Kay and I to “Bartholomew Fair”.

Tues 29 : Did chores inc. dusting. Alison gone but “Pam” has taken her place.
Two Canadians turned up to stay the night... another general shuffle round of beds. 11pm Canadians et al have great blether till midnight.

Wed 30 Aug. : Fancy tie b’fast.... Canadians stayed for lunch.... tea on back lawn... supper with MPS, Meg and Bobby in Kitchen.

Thurs 31 Aug. : MPS ‘greetin’ because I’d accidentally burnt her tartan cloutie but I tidied up drawing room.

Fri. 2 Sep. : New assistant coming to flat in manse .... Kay, Meg and I did some quick ‘homely touches’.. to drawing room and piano and song.

Sun 3rd Sep. : Help with food prep and arranging sufficient seating then Meg, Jeanie, Paul, Gilbert and I to morning service. Prolonged lunch with various odds and sods coming and leaving. I served the plum duff (where was the head of the hoose?) Bread and butter and ginger bread.... set trolley for tea. Kay in with 3 friends. MPS, Meg and I to church. New Australian Student [McGregor?] spoke. Home at 9:30 p. m. supper and cold herring and Cocoa.

Mon. 4th Sept. : Bad cold. Persuaded to stay in bed. Was way up in the attic. MPS came to see if there were any complaints. .... “chimney pots and too much fluff under the beds.” Meg got me Vicks. Then musical session round piano.

Tues 5 Sep : Better. Up at 8. Got wee reception room ready for another guest.... set drawing room fire and Hoovered.... helped Meg bottle pears... then to concert in Edinb. Home 11:30 p. m. Meg made me some tea.

Wed 6 Sep Up at 8. Spent hours washing dishes then vegetables, then clothes. Unexpected visitor breezes in for coffee.... all work stopped for coffee in drawing room. Evening to John Home's (1722-1808) tragic play, “Douglas” in Edin with Miss (auntie Margaret) Lamond.
Home 10 pm Stormy night. Whirlwind in attic.

Thursday 7 Sept. :To Melrose with Pa Nesbitt and Jean.

Friday 8 Sept1950 : DSS “raising Cain” on account of Linty going Youth hosteling. I’m off again.

MY LAST VISIT
Friday 5th Jan 1951 : Sat by fire and yarned and laughed. Visitors called and family drifted in by bedtime. Had bed on first floor for Attic too arctic [freezing]... to organ recital at St. Giles with Meg, Kay and Linty.

Sunday 7 Jan1951 : Up betimes (Usual panic for the bathroom).... church... oatcakes in evening.

Monday 8 Jan 1951 : Sat over kitchen fire. Cold outside. Meeting of ministers in dining room so in kitchen /// and off Burnley Jones goes.

I’m sure if other guests had kept diaries, and subsequently shared them, there would be hundreds, nay thousands, of similar tales to tell.

19Feb1955 Jimmie married

27Aug 1955 Meg married

MUM AS THEOLOGIAN
Mum to Kay from Butts.
“When I was keen on a boy, I went with his 3 older sisters to a Plymouth Brethren meeting every Sunday night in a dingy wee side hall off the Public Hall. Ghastly it was and how happy I was to escape to the joy and brightness of the Free Church. My own Church.”

Mum to Bob from Iona : 25 March 1966 :
“Robert darling, give up Kierkegaard or whatever his name is. Anyway he died at forty two and one can learn an awful lot about God after forty two. All very well for Keats to die at thirty two having produced the goods -- but Theology takes longer to ripen. Our minister across the road was so so good and so SIMPLE (Dad says get Bob back to the SIMPLE Gospel.)

Sheep----------------------Goats
Go Heaven-----------------Go Hell
and the only standard of judgment was KINDNESS --- sick and ye visited me, in prison - etc. etc. hungry fed me etc. etc.

Dad had quote in a Sermon and so many people wrote to get it:
‘In this world of froth and bubble
Two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.’”

Mum to Bob from Barry : 16 September 1966
“Meg, sitting beside the priest at Reception, said her mother had great sympathy with St. Columba who was an exile and so home sick for the streams and meadows of Ireland all the time he lived on Iona. ‘Yes’ said the priest, ‘I’m sure your mother must often have prayed to St. Columba for help.’ ‘No!’ said Meg, ‘She went straight to the Almighty.’ That was the mildest of the things she said. He must have been a bit shaken by the time the meal was over.”

Mum to Marlene from Barry : 4 August 1973 : “Darling Marlene,
Don’t let that horrid woman get my Benjamin down. I know what it can be like. I had one in Gilcomston and I was having babies and I couldn’t cope and had to hand over to Dad who for years was then known as, ‘The bad tempered minister.’ (my fault). Anyway its an impossible situation ‘three in one.’ Just for the Trinity; not for Bob.

I said to Dad he should be writing to help Bob but he just said tell him about Tom McGregor of the Tron who was called to the Glorious Collegiate Charge of St. Cuthberts.
Some of his friends said it would be Heaven.
Some said it would be Hell.
But after many years he said it was Purgatory (I think an in between state where one suffers for and works off ones sins and prepares oneself for glory) but his R. C. friend will enlighten him exactly what it is.

That dignified, compassionate little speech you told us about wouldn’t cure MRS. BITCHY. Dear SAINT TERESA says,
‘Look at her.
Magnify the Good.
Multiply the Good.
Ignore the Evil in her and Pray for her.’
Anyway don’t let the buggers get you down, Bob.”

Mum to Bob from Barry : 22 September 1974 :
“As GEORGE McLEOD says, ‘The 39 Articles are up the Pole - the Westminster Confession is down the drain and the Pope is on the skids.’ So what is left? Just Edward Irving and Mary Baker Eddy.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Barry : 23 February 1975 : “Darlings,
The plum pudding arrived y’day. It is to be eaten by us and his Golden-God- Daughter [Mrs. Stewart, Green bank] tomorrow. How very kind of you to send it. Meg on her back again with a disc but when I phoned this a.m. she was up and all those gorgeous young ladies abed. Oh well. I suppose we mothers are all soft on our children.”

Mum to Bob from Barry : 25Feb75
“Maud Martin and Bob [Stiven] were the only two who commented on the support of the woman at the manse during the husband’s fifty active years.”

Mum to Bob from Barry : 5Dec74
“Meg and Ali picked me up to go to Tessa’s Dad’s funeral. Dad wanted to go but has difficulty ‘keeping his water’ these cold days so didn’t. Torfrida marvelous. She said, ‘I didn’t want to put him away anyhow. He did these things so well himself. I wanted to have it as he would have wished.’ A deluxe funeral and lots of people at the chapel. He was once Plymouth Brethren
What a performance with the R. C. undertakers bobbing and flopping and the wee boys with their red cassocks and white stoles running round with plates of wafers and goblets of wine and kneeling and bobbing everywhere.

How come (as you Canadians say) that the so simple gospel,
green fields and Jesus in a boat speaking to people on the shore
and after supper taking the bread and wine (presumably from on the table)
and founding The Sacrament,
has accumulated ALL that CEREMONY? No wonder Tessa is a Quaker.”
Mum from Butts to Kay - date unknown
“Fancy a Jewish poet. I’m all for the Jews. Heavens what have they suffered. My mother (poor though she was) gave to the Jewish Mission. She always said, ‘The Jews will come into their own yet.’ Alas she didn’t live to see the Holocaust.”

Mum to Bob from Barry : 25Sep77 : On “Priests”
“Lint has no television but willing to take me to theatre to see ‘Hamlet’. Nobody like Shakespeare. I’m reading it like mad. Leartes to the priest at Ophelia’s grave:-
‘Lay her in the earth
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring-
I tell thee churlish priest
A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling!’
The priest has refused her proper burial because she had taken her own life.”

Almost monthly towards the end: “It’s a dreadful thing old age. ‘Rejoice in your youth before the evil days come when you shall say I have no pleasure in them.’
[End Mum as Theologian]

1958 - 1966 Iona

28Aug 1959 Kay married

17Dec 1960 Lint married

Mum to Bob from Iona : 21 Nov 1964 : “Darling, So delighted to get your news. I have just written to Marlene c/o you. Don’t even know her name. Hope it is Dunn. Not even a photo, darling, to help us.

I phoned Dad who was in Oban at a Conference and he was delighted - said you were ‘getting on’ - so true. Did you know Linty [twin] was married on 19th Dec.? [actually not - 17th].

So glad you’re enjoying your books. YOU MUST have it somewhere. Your father is the best informed man I know - the people who come here interested in all kinds of things and he can talk intelligently to them all.
We shall be looking forward to coming someday to see you in your home and you will send a wedding photo.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 11 May 1965 : “Darlings,
... Can’t remember when I wrote but bogged under now. Have Mrs. Murray and Cathy for a week and they CLEAN and had a missionary and his wife from Jamaica -- wonderful slides - a wonderful island - no colour bar or consciousness at all - such a mixture of blacks and browns and whites and Arabs and everything. They’ve been 25 years there and mean to retire there.
Mrs. Stewart, 86, and friend, 84, arrive tomorrow for a week! But they are better on their legs than I am. We have now had the formal announcement of Mac’s [her brother J. C. McIntosh in Canada] wedding. Wonders never cease. It’s a great relief to know he will be well cared for.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Edinburgh : 25th May 1965 : “Darlings,
Can’t stand the pace of life here and will be glad to be back to the peace of Iona. Much Love to you Both. Bless you. M. S.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 13 June 1965 :
“I had Mabs Angus for a week and now Mamie Bruce for a week and then Jean Scotter and Katie [5] and then the Macdonell crowd[Ruth,9: Jen,8: Hilly,5 :Dave,2] as well as two farmer’s daughters.
Tomorrow Kay comes to Abbey for a week at the Community and Tess [Ransford] and children[Meg,5: Hilda,3] and a Pakistani woman and a child of 12 come here. The Pakistani lady is wife of the Principal of Murray College.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 10 August 1965 : “Darlings,
Do know I’ve been lazy about writing but so many people every day. Took in a lady from Melbourne for 2 nights. Matron of Hospital there and on tour by way of a Nursing Conference in Germany. Sandra, who was a helping student 2 years ago, coming for a holiday today and on Monday Rev. J.G.S.S. Thomson(Wallyford)[Inveresk Assistant 1946] of old, coming with wife for a week. Olive[Auntie Olive widow of Jimmie Spark Stiven the banker] and friend coming 1st Sept. and so sad can’t go with Dad to TEVIOTHEAD where he is asked to preach his 40th anniversary sermon. But we can go to RIGG after we retire.
Yesterday your friend and his wife Macdonald from Neepawa came at coffee time and Dad took them round the Abbey and climbed Dun I. (How she did it with high heeled shoes I don’t know) and then came for lunch and we waved them off at the 3 ferry.
Had Helen Wilson (a missionary from Manchuria --Aberdeen) and a missionary from India for the day. It’s all lovely but the summer is hectic -- but we hibernate in winter.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 19 September 1965 : “Darlings,
Been so neglectful but what a season. I’m getting confused with all the people and couldn’t go through with another summer. So many bus loads from car ferries disgorge at Fionnphort and always somebody popping in as well as King George -- gave its final hoot y’day. Only Auntie Maggie (bridesmaid, Blairgowrie) here now.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 7 November 1965 : “Darlings,
Jimmy and Alison and family[Elspeth,8 - William, 6 - Rosemary,4] are on the Island. They go for Myra[10] on 15th Dec and bring her for Christmas. 3 fine children. Don’t have them to lunch -- not able now--[68]-- but they come for tea and devour my scones and cakes.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 13 December 1965 : “Darlings - been neglecting you but submerged by the family here at the moment. I hope we shall have you someday too. Dad and Alison away to Edinburgh and I’m feeding Jimmy and his orphans. I said to Elspeth , ‘What will you do when Mummy goes away?’ She replies sadly, ‘I suppose we’ll have to make do with Daddy.’”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 29 December 1965 :
“I have a party for twelve children tonight who go to school in Oban so we see very little of them. I’ve just been putting out some of your lovely nuts in small plates on the table. Been quite submerged by ‘Stivens on the spot’ so often to lunch and always ‘tea and telly’ and a molehill of work is now a mountain to me.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 30 March 1966
“I have a Swiss girl Anne Marie staying for a week. She speaks German and French and teaches in Edinburgh. Husband Theol. at Abbey. She’s sweet and as friendly as my own daughters.”

Mum to Bob and Marlene from Iona : 25 March 1966 :
“Tonight I shall be in a Women’s Guild chair for the last time ever. Done it for 41 years. Will be glad to be looking at somebody else from now on.”

BARRY 1966 -Oct 1981 (15years)

Mum to Marlene from Barry : Sunday 1 February 1981 :
“Dad been agitating to have his Dura Den plum pudding but I said, ‘No! Wait till your birthday.’ (Annual theme)

5Feb1981 Bill Scotter died

Mrs. Stewart - a mixed blessing
Mrs. Hosie got away
Mrs. Ramsay didn’t
Shells shells shells in the solarium
potted heid
elderberry and elderflower wine
Clan coming and going
Golden wedding
Coping with Dad’s stroke (“I could lose my husband but not my chauffeur”), Dad’s prostate episodes and her own sore knees.

BUTTS Oct 81 till death In 1985.
From Dad to Bob and Marlene from The Butts : 23 October 1981 :
“We obtained access to this house on 19 October: got furniture in on 20 October and started living in it on 21 October, thanks to immense effort by JEAN (expert in twenty eight removals) and MEG and Co. and KAY who has a day or two off school.

Hardly room to swing a cat.

We are in a living room which takes our drawingroom arm chairs (but not the chesterfield nor the ancestral table), M.P.S.’s escritoire and the ‘pub’ table, the sofa-bed and one chair and waste paper basket, two small bookcases and a small tele:

Before we left we gave the ‘Salmon Fishers’ picture [painting] to the Stewarts at Greenbank. Allan Ramsey hangs here:

a bedroom, 2 beds and a small dressing chest and ‘chaise perch’ (as Mary Queen of Scots used to call it) and commode;

kitchen with just enough room after the usual appointments to take a small table where we twa may eat;

a small bathroom (no shower yet!) and large cupboard (which JEAN having inserted a chest of drawers calls my ‘dressing room’);

in the small hall stands the 8-day clock and hangs your St. Luke [Sandy Lake bead work] and my Father’s illuminated Rev. 3.
What a lot we had to shed.”

The grandchildren remember our Mum, their Granny
I’m taking the easy way out here. I wrote to my siblings requesting their lifelong rememberings and to all Mum’s grandchildren soliciting their rememberings about Barry and the Butts. Some sent what follows and I’m just going to add it in, as a sort of unedited ‘letters to the (non) editor’, in birth rank order. Some sent a nice ‘I have nothing to say’ note. Others totally ignored the exercise which rather surprised me but knowing that King Lear got it all wrong with Cordelia and Goneril I’ll refrain from judgment. Kay sent letters, extracts of which nicely wrap up this piece on Mum.

From first g’child Bead Samuel (Jean)
“Dear Bob
One of my favourite memories of MPS has her shelling broad beans (freshly
picked from the garden at the back) at the kitchen table of the manse in
Iona, looking thoughtfully at the soft, velvety insides of the pods where
the beans were resting snugly, and saying that she wanted to come back as a
broad bean. I often think the same myself now when I'm shelling broad
beans - my favourite vegetable.

And a sadder but familial memory. When I went to see MPS in hospital not
long before she died, when she'd pretty much lost her marbles and didn't
know who her daughters were, (who were these middle-aged women claiming
ridiculously to be her daughters!?), she seemed to have no trouble
recognizing me... because I clearly was one of her daughters.
Love Bead.” [end Bead]

From second g’child Moira McIlwain (David)
“Hi Bobby, 
Long ago, when Ken was only 4 months old[1976], Ray and I took him to visit his great grandmother. He was our first born and we were VERY proud of him.  In the afternoon Granny Stiven led me, along with the baby, down the garden path, through a gate and on to a little cottage to visit her neighbour, a very very old woman, quite a lot older than granny at that time. She must have been very wise but I was most surprised when, after admiring the baby, she looked me straight in the eye and said "Now you make sure that you don't drop the baby!” What kind of mother, I wondered, would drop her baby?

Later that night Ray, the baby and I settled down in the guest room. It was just across the landing from Granny and Grampa's room. Uncle Kay was visiting with some of our cousins and they headed outside to a tent in the yard. We could see them below from our open window in the guest room. The old fashioned bed in our room had a most interesting mattress. It was filled with horsehair and it was considerable thicker in the middle than on the edges. Ray and I had no difficulty both fitting on it (I was a lot thinner then) but we did have to concentrate on staying on it. We made Ken a bed on the floor beside us.

In the middle of the night Ken started to cry. He did not want to settle down on the floor again, even after being fed, burped and changed. He wanted to sleep with his Mom or Dad. So, afraid that his increasing fussing would wake Granny and Grandpa or the tenters below, I decided to bring him to bed beside me and try to stay awake. BIG MISTAKE. WISE OLD LADY.  Sleep was irresistible. No sooner had I dosed off than Ken crashed to the floor with the most awful thud followed by inevitable SCREAMING. 

OH DEAR!!! I felt TERRIBLE. I walked him around and around the room many times before the deafening noise decreased a little and then finally subsided. I knew for sure the whole household inside and out were wide awake, and I knew that Granny would know that I had dropped the baby. In the morning I appeared very contritely at the breakfast table. I tried to apologize for waking everyone during the night, and I was going to make reference to Ken having fallen out of bed, but Granny intercepted me.  "What noise?" she asked, an honest question on her face. My, what a blessing she gave to me that moment. She was wiser even than her neighbour, and so kind, and what an actress!
Love, Moira.” [end Moira]

From 7th g’child Ruth Ruck (Meg)
“Dear Bob  
Not a lot to add to Lucy’s fab memories. I was nursing in Leeds when they lived in Haddington. Granny felt I was safe to cut her toenails which I happily did when home on hols. She would sit in her chair puffing on a silk cut (I don't smoke) knocking back a brandy (top shelf quick before Gramps gets back!). ‘Rejoice in your knees.’ ‘Rejoice in your youth.’ She would slip me a tenner  brilliant pay in those days. Of course I would have done them for nothing.’

Has anyone mentioned how she would always give the visitor something to take away even if it was what the previous visitor had just given her? It was a good system except when visitor 2 left before number one (‘oh please take it I’ve no need for it’).  
I remember her saying once when she was particularly tired "I could sleep on the edge of a biscuit!"  
- great idea Bob!   lots of love Roo.” [end Ruth]
 
From 10th g’child Fiona Anderson (David)  
“Hi Bob,
Here's a bit of input for the MPS pages. Use what you wish. It's been nice finding some old correspondences and re-storing memories.
Thanks for gathering the pieces.
Fiona, grateful descendant of scavenger and jute spinner... 

Margaret Peddie (McIntosh) Stiven...
Granny...
A soft presence in my life...
Usually very far away.
I only had 6 or 7 visits with her.
How did I learn to love her so?
We had letters (and stories) that allowed me to know her a little.
And I had a few letters... of my own... from her... to me... I've kept them.
She told me about my family. Made me feel part of something that was important to her.
We didn't get much time together, but somehow I must have known early on that the time spent writing, was time spent together.
 
This is one of the letters I kept, addressed to me at 1029 Northpark, Victoria, BC; while I was living in one of the L'Arche communities.
 
13 March 1976...  Barry.
‘Dear Fiona,
G'children are wonderful. They suddenly come to life to cheer the old G'Parents. Such a delightful letter you write. I'm glad you are doing a year ‘in the world’ before beginning a University life. In our day we all went straight from school to University. Better now. I remember you were beautiful and you used to stand on your head with great frequency. Do you still indulge in that form of exercise? Shall I tell you something? I have 27 of the most beautiful wonderful g'children in the world - all so clever & caring. Elspeth has done 6 months in a Cyrenean Home for down & outs (Simon of Cyrene was the man who carried Jesus' Cross - in case you don't know) & she had a hectic time cooking & caring & picking people off the streets at 2 am!!! Ruth MacD works in a Home for retarded young but after 2 years goes to train as a nurse. Hillary going to be a nurse too. Jennifer now doin "au pair" in Paris is beginning at Edinburgh University in Oct. Myra is doing Chinese Studies at Leeds University & hoping to go to China. Fergus in Cambridge is mad on Food. ‘You are what You eat’. A lot of sense in it but not quite. Heredity is a very real thing. G'Pa thinks you are a ‘Stiven Woman’. They were very clever but formidable & the Stiven element has been well watered down anyway. He gets ideas in his head. Beady Scotter is getting married on April 26 or 27, she is. She has taken a long time to find ‘Richard.’ His Dad was a Jew who fled from Hitler & landed in London. His second name is Samuel. The great thing about 27 g'children is the interests it brings into one’s life. Life can be very lonely in old age. You don't mention your nephew!! When will you see him? Have you got a boy friend? Has he got nice ‘hands’? I had an artist friend: She wasn't interested in faces - just looked at hands. She was a famous portrait painter & only did people who had beautiful hands. Not quite clear but have asked your Mum. Do you work in that home or just stay in it?
Much love & thank you for writing. MS’” [end Fiona]

From 11th g’child Bill Stiven (Jimmy)
“Hi Bob,
Granny:
Warmth - overriding memory. Both of house and her smile.
Making shell things. Either boxes or candle snuffers or other whimsies.
Her never ending enthusiasm for all round her, and her interest in what they did or said. Whenever someone presented a complete shell creation or told a story or did something, her standard response was ‘that's wonderful’ accompanied by her peaceful smile which made this recipient always feel wanted/worth something.
 
Her mole catcher! That big urn mostly buried in the garden and filled with water. Half term was for ever smelly! We were paid for doing the dirty work but only after she had checked that it had been done correctly and to her standard. The 50p coin is still my favorite.
 
Going back to her conservatory in Barry and the warmth. Whilst doing things she talked of others who had come and gone from the house that we may or may not know. She never had a bad word to say of anyone and always seemed overwhelmed by the kindnesses and help that others gave her and DSS.
 
One of her stories I remember was of a visit to a fish monger (location unknown to my memory). As she reached the front of the queue she asked for a quantity of Coley, a very cheap fish at the time, to which the fish monger said 'You must have a lot of cats'. Granny calmly informed a shocked audience that she had none, but the family were coming round for lunch! In fact her fish in milk sauce with mashed tatties and peas - can still taste it and no one has ever cooked it so well.
 
Hope that some of this is of use. Oh yes the little mantra that she used to over ride the aches of arthritis, getting up the stairs in Barry, 'Och its just not fair', followed by a monolog to whom ever was listening that their limbs were good but she had to crawl up the steps rather than bound up them, and the amount of time it took to accomplish this feat. But it wasn't a gripe or a moan, just a pain management tool, 'cos she would be smiling as she went. 
Regards,
Bill” [end Bill]

From 12th g’child Kate Guyonvarch (Jean)
“I don't have many memories of granny Stiven apart from sitting in the glass verandah doing shell matchboxes in Carnoustie which I loved, also long walks along the windswept beach looking for cowries.

In retrospect I think she liked being with my mum, and managed to put up with me in order to see her.

My best memory is lying in bed in Cobham one evening, where my bedroom was off the landing at the top of the stairs. My dog Tammy Scotter used to sit at the top of the stairs and survey what went on below.  After dinner discussion had been going on about somebody's stamp collection and who would get it. (Whose? Grandpa's? no idea.) Anyway, as I lay in bed half asleep I heard Granny coming very slowly up the stairs, presumably fed up with the conversation, and talking to Tammy - ‘Do you collect stamps Tammy? Because if you do, you shall have them.’
love to all
K” [end Kate]

From 13th g’child Hilary Tulloch (Meg)
“Dear Bob
Granny- please accept memories- in an unformed presentation.
Barry days- while a preteen /teenager
shell collection at Carnoustie, sunroom full of glue smell and cowries, parkin biscuits with a nut in the middle, gingerbread, settle of games, stones covered with water by electric heater, terrible stairs, siphoning elderflower wine into bottles - had to suck to get suction going - tipsy!. Taking and collecting mending from next door Mrs. Ramsay - often AWM's black gear beautifully stitched. Petrol money for Mum - brown leaflet - to get home in morris minor. Outside loo. hopeless exit /entrance for Gramp's mini. Handed on 'banana finger' gloves pattern - easy, special knitting pattern. 
 
Who let them buy that mad house?  but they enjoyed lots of visitors and got out and about tho more diff after Grandpa's stroke and had the amazing Nyuch Nyuch- Jane Stewart.
 
Butts-
Lucy and Dave must be the main ones for there.
I remember:-
coke at 11 - with  a tot of brandy disguised in it
wheelchair to church /manse - possibly (nearly) couped out by Lucy one time.
zimmer alley - path along front of house
'no friends - they are all dead'-  their calendar was full.
sometimes - 'do I know you?' when being a little mischievous.
'26 of the most beautiful grandchildren in the world'
'take your hair off your face so I can see you.'
when going for a hurl in the car- 'this is not the right way'
slow walks to kitchen and loo.  'rejoice in your youth'
Jean's regular visits staying in manse - to do 'boards' - civil service- and ?also set times to do the auld yins
letter and blue leaflet every birthday
Stick In.
 
I was busy being self absorbed  early - mid twenties away from home and missed taking in her illness at the end. A bad daughter while Mum coped.
 
Grandpa- always ready to take you on and talk while a widower. Don't remember his grief.
After lunch on Christmas day he was ready for bed then not hungry for supper. G.P. called as not feeling at all well.
Drug given to ease breathing /symptoms. I stayed with him.
Just into Boxing Day he gave a sort of salute, victory signal as he raised damaged arm and took last breath.
It was time to go.” [end Hilly]

From 14th g’child Meg Stiven (Kay)
“Dear Uncle Bobby,
I am just writing to tell you that although I didn't make a very strong relationship with Granny Stiven (and don't have anecdotes to offer), I can still see her face absolutely clearly in my mind, and her beautiful smile. I must have looked at her very carefully; because for example I do not ‘see’ Grandpa in this way. My main memories are helping to sort through the shells for the shell boxes she used to make at Iona Cottage. And her saying that the little yellow ones were from Iona and if we ever went to Iona we were to fetch some back for her. Whenever I see one of those little yellow shells I hear her voice and see her. Love, peace, joy! Meg.” [end Meg]


From 15th g’child Bud Siemon (Jimmy)
“Dear Uncle Bob
Sorry - no story forthcoming from this corner of the globe.
However, often fond memories of Granny: rosy cheeks, kind smily eyes, gingerbread and bowls FULL of whipped cream on the table at their house in Barry; walks along Carnoustie beach looking for shells esp. wee pinks, Granny wrapped in tweed coat and wool scarf; sticking shells onto cigar boxes in the warm sunshine of the porch out back.

Also our Duty, whenever we visited as kids, was to empty the mole hole, yuck, which was a tub let into the earth of the veg patch, in which the moles found their watery grave. With buckets we emptied the slimy slop with floating dead mole bodies and scrubbed the tub before refilling it for the next unsuspecting creatures.
Hence methinks the bowl of whipped cream on the supper table!!
with love,
Bud” [End Bud Siemon]

From 20th g’child Dave Macdonell (Meg)
5 vv 14 lines per v
The sonnets are almost all constructed from three four-line stanzas (called quatrains) and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter (a meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays) with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg (this form is now known as the Shakespearean sonnet).

A note from Dave accompanying the sonnets stated : “It could probably do with a redd-up - would Keith or you like to tidy it up? I did not find it easy, as I am a rhyming couplet sort of poe-yet. I haven’t even given it a title. How about ‘Granny at the Butts’? As predicted, more W. MacGonagall than W.S.”
So I emailed Keith and his reply was: “It’s vintage Davey lad, and doesn’t need my interference. Take it as a stream of thought!” Advice well taken.

“Granny at the Butts”
“Granny sat and penned her airmail letters
A reply to a postcard from afar
We grandchildren looked up to our betters
Then we would take her a hurl in the car
Lucy pushed her along Zimmer Alley
'Rejoice in thy youth', the oft-quoted refrain
And their guests munched on tasty Billallies
Then to Dunbar to meet Jean off the train
Mum had stocked up at Lows with the soda
Fizz for Jean's whisky for after a shift
Sisters discussed their ma getting older
How out the window had flown all her thrift
Gramps' crossword read D-V-R- for 'DIVERS'
Granny paid us in 'leaflets' - that's fivers.

Gramps would ''Peg,peg,peg.'' writing at his desk
''I'm away with the birds,'' Peggy chirped
A note to a widow, in Inveresk.
''Don't ever get old!'' He'd percolate. Burped.
''Do I know you?'', she'd enquire, just jesting
''I'm still alive'' - she'd quote Dr Scott's wife
''I wish I was dead'', not simply resting
She had had more than enough of this life.
In a hospital ward at the Roodlands
In the next bed a wife took a last breath
''Lucky bugger'' said Granny. These good lands
Of the Lothians can take me. Roll on death.
GPS was her rock. And she his anchor.
She'd write to Hil and Jen in Scree Lanka.

A guest would be coming. So Grampa rehearsed
A story. For a later re-telling.
And we, as his guinea pigs, became very well versed
In his anecdotes frightfully compelling
''When I was boy!'' she mocked him with glee
She had heard all those chestnuts before
But on he continued, she let him talk free
Till at three came the knock at the door
The kettle was on, not filled to the brim
Different teas were scooped into the pot
Adopted grandchildren came to see him
But Jeannie Ford came rather a lot
For her liking. So she'd grimace and frown
At the sticky buns from the Honest Town

'Tissnt' 'Tis-sut' - they barked at each other
For three score long years and some more
Our grandfather fought with grandmother
Battles won but the strife never o'er
Peg too had stories, told against herself
Down previous decades she would take us
Relate us tales of days in ruder health
'You'll not know me, I'm from Longformacus.'
Baker Eddy. MRA. She championed both
In earlier years long gone by
Fervently now, she warned us against sloth
'Stick in' she would say. I'd say 'Aye.'
For, lang syne, she had gar'd us a' recite
Charles Murray's poem 'It wisna his wyte.'

At Ecclesiastes we all wondered
If her last days had no joy left in them
''Look after your legs!'' We all pondered
Words of advice each containing a gem
To Uganda, she wrote Roo and Droobie
Still writing near enough up till the end
Redundant now, the wee red book 'Ubi'
Had found her the sherry and Bostick- her friends.
During study in glorious Devon
I was to learn that Peg's mortal coil
Had been shuffled off - she went to heaven
Following near ninety years of hard toil
At the Butts we now saw an empty chair
And we were glad for her she wasn't there.”

From 25th g’child Lucy Wrinn (Meg)
“Bob,
although I've been thinking a lot about her since you alerted us to the closing date for memories, I have left little time to write properly and constructively about her.
So from my thoughts:
she was beginning to feel sore, physically, by the time I arrived (1968) on this planet, as I remember her (in the 1970s) sitting in the porch at Barry.
She'd sit in a white armchair with soft cover, sometimes with a tray contraption over the arm, to put her shells, Bostick and sherry on. There was always a tartan rug near or on her.
 
We'd travel from Tarves, get there in time for lunch - I'd sit on the settle along the back wall, and be desperate for lunch - potted haugh/meat loaf, boiled tatties, a tomato to end, so I could open up the seat and pull out something to play with.
 
The kitchen always seemed to have something bubbling away - demi johns -elderflower wine, elderberry juice, rowan and apple jelly .
 
In the round, flowery tin there were always Perkins and often Ballies - later 'BillAllies' (both Uncle Bill and Ali were fond of them). They were chocolatey, gooey and rolled in coconut usually, but sometimes rolled in colourful hunnersnthoosans - and the smell, when you lifted the lid was amazing - sweet and boozy!
 
She'd send me out to play in the garden - climb the apple tree and admire the flowers and veg, and to Mrs. Ramsay, next door, with the mending/darning. This was a bit scary for me - she was very deaf and spoke in a loud voice, had a funny looking shoe (now I realise it was an orthopaedic built up support) and a white fish in a tank, which somehow just looked spooky. Her house was really dark and a bit foustie smelling.
How did you get on? granny asked as I returned - 'Oh, Ok,' was as much as I could say.
 
I was encouraged to be close to Jane Stewart, Greenbank (across that deadly road) simply because we share the same birthday. We still remember each other, 41 years on.
 
The cupboard in the sitting room filled with 'guilty secrets' - Marks and Spencer delicious Digestives and peanuts - supplied by Ann Gillies (rival of  the Stewarts - Wm Low - yesyesyesyes.)
 
Then to the Butts, Haddington.
News of their move came first from Dad, who met me from school in Haddington the day they heard that Granny and Grandpa had been offered a place, round the corner from us, at Number 10 The Butts. (I must've been about 14 - perhaps he was out and about anyway).
 
This seemed to be positive from the very beginning - just seemed like the right thing to do.
Meg nearby and Kay available. Jimmy and Alison, David and Bobby, Lint and Keith able to come and stay. Auntie Jean came - and kept coming I think 4 times a year to do the Auld Yins - stayed at the manse - and got it all sorted - The Ubi Book told where to find EVERYTHING. Jean helped Grandpa plant out the garden - Lavatera under the loo window, of course, and lovely bird feeders to look out on along the old town wall. 'O, Blackie, Blackie,'.
 
The white garden seat.
 
Intelligent discussion and outings most days.
Chats and cups of tea at 3 pm - 2 scoops of one and 1 of the other in a warm pot. Often shared with lots of friends - they were told tea is at 3, so they'd come - from all over the place, quite often Musselburgh, but actually all over the globe, and sometimes they'd be a friend of a friend who'd been to Iona or Inveresk or s'where.

The chair on the left of the room was hers - always surrounded by Basildon Bond pad, a biro, Airmail letters to write, cards and letters of gratitude from the world, Shakespeare, her knitting - dishcloth squares and a ball of white cotton.
Never stopped writing or reading or knitting.
Every year birthday money and a word of encouragement - sometimes written by her.
 
Grandpa's seat on the right - a table nearby - thin white sermon paper, tiny even writing, daily bible study, Hebrew bible, texts, thoughts, an Iona cross, the Scotsman crossword - just with the relevant boxes filled in - he never bothered with the unnecessary, and the TV remote.
 
Walks along Zimmer Alley Granny called it, meeting others around the sheltered housing area.
If she fancied going beyond Zimmer Alley, I'd wheel her in her chair - 'a Hurlie'. To the river, church ( every Sunday), just out and about.
We'd pass a gloomy teenager/youth - she'd look him in the eye and say ‘Give us a smile, Honey’. (I was never sure whether we'd get a smile or some abuse - but they always smiled - were they surprised to be acknowledged?).
 
Uncle Keith rightly remarked that for these wheelie efforts - 'sometimes Granny tips Lucy and sometimes Lucy tips Granny.' I think there was only once she fell out and on to the kerb, but that was before folk sued the Council over the un-even-ness of pavements.
 
Latterly Mum would send round daily soup in a jar - would I just go with it?
In I'd go, and always they'd want to know what I'd learned that day at school or where I was off to - just really interested.
 
Oft said words in the 1980s -
'Rejoice in your youth’
‘Look after your legs.’
‘Where did you get that nose?’
‘What lovely feet you have’ - usually to a complete stranger, as they walked in front of her.
‘I'm away with the birds... the doctor says I've got arthritis in the brain.’
‘Look at this letter - have you heard - Let me read you this bit’ - there was always mail coming in, responding to the mail going out.
‘Come off it, Dad’ (if DSS was being objectionable).
‘Don't ever get old.’
‘Pray for a cure for pain.’
‘Hilly says go to bed and stay there - d'you think I can?’
‘I wish I was dead.’ (her 2nd last b'day)
‘I'd like our grandchildren to revolutionize the world.’ 
‘We've got 26 of the most beautiful grandchildren in the world.' ( I think she really meant that)
 
enough?
 
She truly was a great girl, Pegpegpeg.
with lots of love,
Lucy.” [end Lucy]

Extracts from letters from Mum to Kay

Iona Years: 1963: from The Glasgow Royal Infirmary from Mum to Kay

I’ve just been round the big ward. I go there twice daily (only place I can walk) and talk to the poor souls. Heavens what a weight of suffering is in this world. Mine is only a knee but how frustrating it is.....
I Just got hold of my ‘Case Book’ a lot of which I did not understand but I was daunted to read ‘General Impression - tired old lady.’ So that is what I look like. [she is 66]

Mum to Kay on 10 May 1963 G. R. I.
Hoping to get out of here on [May] 20th but may not. Ministers come to to see me who knew you [Kay]. Am well visited but weary of hospital.

Mum to Kay : Undated: but Mum is back on Iona from G.R.I. in 1963.
We have the Moderator, J. S. Stewart and his wife, coming tonight - 2 Gaelic ministers taking the gaelic Service tomorrow p.m. The 2 missionaries are in a tent and 2 other young ministers coming to another tent tonight.
I got home after 10 weeks (6 and a half in hospital) on Thursday. Jean and her friend Glynis (a Welsh Padre’s daughter and Colonel’s wife - knows about manses) arrived on Tuesday and have worked like galley slaves and will be hard put to this weekend with the house bulging.
I have to rest my knee and was up only 1/2 hour y’day.
So glad to be HOME but awful to see the place all weeds. We must get a student or somebody to help.
Dad wants to stay till he is 70 (2 and a half years) but I can’t see how we can if I’m not able to garden anymore.
Thanks for the photos. I’ve got all the impressions of Meg and Hilda. Silly after all to say who is Ransford? and who Stiven? - they will be themselves - a mixture of all the grans and great grans and dads and all the ancestors!
..... lovely photos. Jean says Meg like your Daddy - she KNOWS - I think she is like Torfida - the wee one I think is like you - both charming.

From Mum to Kay from Iona : Undated but later in 1963
Olive has kindly said she will come and help when you come [to Iona] .... I’m only 1/3 of a woman with my gammy leg.
My 2 colonel’s wives [Jean and Glynis] have gone. They did a very good job although 2 helps for 2 people is a bit uneconomical in the way of help.
Glynis became native. She loved it and had the most heavenly spell of weather EVER.
The Pisky ‘Do’ was by far the best. So courteous, well organised, DEVOUT they were. The procession led by the Cross from the prow of the corrach followed by 3x4 oarsmen and 2,000 Piskies - IN SILENCE nae daffin, nae gabbin!
They had Communion in the ships before they landed - then 2 Communion Services in Abbey - then 2 Thanksgiving Services in the p. m. and as Mrs. Scotter said “Not a scrap of litter in nunnery after 2000 piskies”. Almost I am persuaded to be a Pisky. The first thing the Bishop of the Isles did when he arrived was to call and ask Dad to come into it and he met the Archbishop at the jetty.
Didn’t feel able to go and have coffee with the Prime Minister [Macmillan] who anyway had just heard about Perfumo [and his call girl Christine Keiler] and was so dull, glum and mizzy - Jean persuaded to go Labour. Got this day a beautiful student, Sandra. Just sat her Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music - a smasher.

From Mum to Kay from Iona in July 1963
Dad down in full dress (tails) to meet the Archbishop at 2 p.m. off the George - I went down to please Katie and was sitting between Ian Renton and Linty’s minister in Cambridge and when they rose up to clap so did I and Dad pulled me up off the grass and introduced me to his Grace and His Lady. The Bishop of the Isles disappeared I know not where and it was left to Dad to take them to the Bishop’s House. Old Mrs. Mackay 90 was sitting on the seat at the door alone so Daddy introduced her as the oldest islander. What a thrill.
Daddy has asked him along so Glynis is ‘doing flowers for the Archbishop!’ We have only 3 big red poppies and the yellow bloom of cabbages and some honesty - but what fun.

From Mum to Kay from Iona : May 1964
Had my wee Mrs. Murray (Musselburgh) (who worked so long for me) for a week. She scrubbed the church and spring cleaned the manse and got the Abbey bug and went to prayers morning and evening and lectures at 7:30 p.m......
There are 10 wives from Musselburgh at the Abbey converts of Duncan Finlayson and they all came to tea.
Traveled to Edinburgh for Assembly with Wicky and Co. So glad my children were brought up by FEAR and made full of inhibitions! [This out of nowhere].

The Barry Years
From Mum to Kay from Barry May 1981
Please send a copy of Tessa’s poems to David and Jean. I will pay first time I see you.
Mrs. Stewart so kind and does so much for us.
I had the urge to contact Sadie Fleming [John Fleming’s mother] Is she still alive?
We are both very frail.
Do hope Roland enjoyed Canada [not till July]
How very touched I am by your kindness in sending me shells. 2 lots and so beautiful and just what I want.
Enjoying the Canadians but only till tomorrow. So glad he is going to Cambridge to see his twin sister.
Today tea in Blair with Auntie Margaret then quick call to Perth to see g’son William........

Extracts of Letters to Kay from the Butts. Most just identified by the day of the week not date:
Come and see us soon. We did enjoy Tessa and Hilda when they came.
Iona Cottage was in my name --- so ME writing a check....
David’s Jean coming for a trip in April.
Roo engaged - Myra bringing home the man of the century --- so wedding presents.
Come and shovel snow.
So grateful you are so near and come to see us and your lovely family too and they ARE LOVELY. Barry was so so FAR away specially these days and expensive petrol [right to the end she’d proffer 2 pounds sterling and say “is that enough” - not quite!]

I wrote to Tessa because I saw a bit about her in Life and Work - I wanted to say how happy I was she has a flat looking out on King’s Park.

Can’t do anything now - quite away with the birds.
Bless you. Do try to write better.
I’m sure the Highland people will be very kind [in Wick]. Revel in it.
Are you having any of your chicabiddies to see where you are?
It was lovely seeing you but alas not long or often enough.
We could not live without Meg and all the help from the manse.
Come again soon.
I love you and think of you and pray for you often.

Alison went to see Torfrida. I stayed in the car. I had liked to go to see Tessa but Alison said ‘No’. I hope to see Tessa soon.

When you said you told the Wickers [residents of Wick] you had to go to visit your family I thought that is US but NO of course it wasn’t. It was your own family.

Was heaven having Alison who did all the work and took us visiting but days of joy all over now.

I want to see Tessa but don’t know how. Will have to wait till Jean comes. Hasten the day!

Mum died on 1 November 1985. All Saints Day.
Here ends the telling of Mum’s Tale
OUR MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER MARJORY CURRIE (McIntosh)
Figure it thus: Marjery Peddie, nee Stewart, had child, Margaret Peddie who had an illegitimate child, Marjory Peddie (Reid, Currie) who had a child, Margaret Peddie McIntosh who was our mother.

In 1835, Marjery Stewart(32) married John Peddie at Kirkmichael.
In 1838 they had a baby and called her Margaret.
On 30 Oct 1858 that Margaret, when she was 20, and employed as a domestic servant, gave birth to an illegitimate baby at 2 a.m. at Ballintuim, Strathardle and she called her baby girl Marjory, after her granny. (-ery and -ory are interchangeable in records)
[In the 1851 Census there is an entry in which Donald Peddie, 67 and Margaret Peddie, 65 have, living with them, Margaret Peddie, granddaughter, aged 12, who is listed as ‘house servant’ -- The puir wee soultae!]

Our Dad (1979) said that the father of Marjory (Junior) was ‘Donald Currie, farmer in Strathardle’. (ScotlandsPeople dredges up no such person.)
[Sister Jean, writing from Battersea on 9 Sept 1999, a couple of weeks before her death, thought Marjory’s father was the Shipping Magnate CURRIE - NEWCASTLE LINE.]

In 1861 Marjory’s mother, Margaret, married an agricultural labourer called Alex Reid. Alex was 35, Margaret was 22 and wee Marjory was 3. Margaret went on to give birth to six more Reid children. So Marjory grew up with 3 step brothers and 3 step sisters all younger than herself. There are rumours that Marjory was a kind of Cinderella in the family.

In 1881 granny Marjery and ‘wee’ Marjory appear together in the census record: Marjory Currie, 22, Jute Spinner, resident at 13 James St. Blairgowrie with the widowed Marjery Peddie aged 79.

In 1887 Granny Marjery (nee Stewart), b in Kirkmichael on 12Apr1801, died aged 85 at Blairgowrie.

Two years after her granny’s death ‘wee’ Marjory is grown to be 31 and still living on James Street. A new neighbour, recently come down to town from Glenshee, is called James McIntosh. Soon it is recorded in The ‘Register of Marriages’ that on 28Jun1889 Marjory Currie, 31, Domestic Servant, spinster, married James McIntosh, aged 45, bachelor, of James St, Blairgowrie.
Mother: Margaret Peddie, Domestic Servant (aged 61)
Father: Thomas Tweedale Currie, Crofter, (deceased).
... note that Marjory is no longer a Peddie or a Reid but a Currie.

and again: in 1894, on J. C. McIntosh’s birth certificate, or ‘entry in a register of births’, (and again in 1897 on Mum’s), Marjor is recorded as ‘Marjory McIntosh m.s. Currie’.

And here: From The Statutory Register of Deaths : Records for the Parish of Teviothead:
“22September1925 at 9:30 a. m., Marjory McIntosh, other names Peddie, Reed, Reid, Currie.
Widow of James McIntosh, Fruit Grower, aged 67.
At The Manse, Teviothead, Roxburghshire.
Donald Currie, Farmer, (Reputed Father) (Deceased). [love Canadian-home-for-the-funeral James Cattenach McIntosh’s ‘reputed’]
Mother, Margaret Peddie (afterwards married to Alexander Reed(sic), Farmer), (Deceased).
Cause of death was. ‘10 month Cerebral Tumour.’
James McIntosh, her son (present) was the informant.”

She is simply ‘Marjory Currie, aged 67,’ on her Blairgowrie gravestone.

17Sep1979 Mum wrote, “So Glen is interested in the generations! Sorry mine blotted the copy book. My mother illegitimate of an aristocrat and a diary maid. But my husband descended from very good Germans.”

9Sept1999: Jean Scotter wrote: “Illegitimate daughter of summer holiday -visiting - the - big - Hoose - for - the - shooting called CURRIE [though what he was shooting in Strathardle in late January 1858 we’re not sure. New Year Parties?] - thought by MPS (& DSS) to be son of Shipping Magnate Currie - Newcastle Line [but Currie himself was only 33 in 1858]. By standards of the time he ‘did’ well by the girl - gave her his name, v. important apparently & kept her mum in funds (think he stumped up for wedding pressie (1923) for MPS even -- tho mibbe his family or solicitors [probably, him being dead since 1909].”

“He”, whoever “He” was, was a progenitor, so, just in case....

[CURRIE, SIR DONALD (1825-1909), British ship owner, was born at Greenock on the I7th of September 1825. At a very early age he was employed in the office of a ship owner in that port, but at the age of eighteen left Scotland for Liverpool, where shipping business offered more scope. By a fortunate chance he attracted the notice of the chief partner in the newly started Cunard steamship line, who found him a post in that company. In 1849 the Cunard Company started a service between Havre and Liverpool to connect with their transatlantic service. Currie was appointed Cunard agent at Havre and Paris, and secured for his firm a large share of the freight traffic between France and the United States. About 1856 (aged 31 + near the time of Marjory’s birth) he returned to Liverpool, where till 1862 he held an important position at the Cunard Company's headquarters ..... in 1880 he was returned to parliament as Liberal member for Perthshire, but, though a strong personal friend of W.E. Gladstone, he was unable to follow that statesman on the Home Rule question, and from 1885 to 1900 he represented West Perthshire as a Unionist. In 1881 his services in connection with the Zulu War were rewarded with knighthood, and in 1897 he was created G.C.M.G. {Grand Cross of Saint Michael and Saint George}. Currie paid for a major restoration of Dunkeld Cathedral in 1908, in gratitude to the Minister's daughter, who had nursed him through a serious illness. He died at Sidmouth on the I3th of April 1909.]

So that is a pretty sketchy picture of Marjory Currie’s life which can’t have been an easy one. Sister Jean believes that she taught Jean how to cuddle and told that, while all the dying old lady wanted was for her daughter Peg to play hymn tunes for her in the Teviothead Manse, Margaret Peddie Stiven was caught up in putting into practice the training of Atholl Crescent where she'd been taught the wifely virtues of sewing and homemaking and cooking. Jean said “our Mum confessed that she was more concerned with getting ‘a good skin’ on the manse linoleum than comforting her mum.”

What a stretch the dear 67 year old woman had made from Ballintuim, through her Cinderella years with the Reids,
working herself up to becoming a spinner in the jute mill by age 22,
companion to her granny Marjory on James Street (it is actually a sweet wee house still standing)
1887 granny Marjory’s death
1889 married a 45 year old ex-glendweller scavenger spouse: she was 31
1892 moved to Laurel Villa
1894 son James Cattenach born
1897 daughter Margaret Peddie born
helpmate to James in his market garden,
mother to bonniest girl in Blair who was an emerging school teacher and best raspberry picker in a hormone riddled migrant labour force;
her mother Margaret Reid died in 1909 aged 71 (I’m not sure what kind of relationship they had);
widow from 1916 to 1925 after James’ died, very senile, aged 72
mother of constantly wounded malaria suffering WW1 officer who was in W.W.1 from the very beginning in 1914, and spent Armistice Day (1918) in a field hospital high on morphine for war wounds and then went to Canada right after the war circa 1920.
in 1923 her only daughter married (a minister, yet)
she died in September 1925, at her daughter, our Mum’s, home at Teviothead 8 months after she and Dad had arrived on their first pastoral charge with wee Jean aged a few months. And soon David was on the way.

I have only a couple of ‘stories’ about her. When Mum would complain to her about our Dad she would just say, “Well, you would have him.” and when her husband was demented at the end of his life he would give visitors gifts as they left the house after a visit and Marjory would have to follow them out of the house to retrieve items still necessary for their life together.


OUR MATERNAL GRANDFATHER JAMES (with bits about our great grandfather William McIntosh)

It’s rather extraordinary that I had to burrow away in records to get to know my grandfather James. He’d been dead for 19 years before I was born and he was not much talked about in the family. I can remember when small, as is the way with ‘brats’, acting disparagingly towards out local ‘scaffie’, a formidable chap with a huge moustache, a wheelbarrow, a shovel and large birch broom. Mum did not upbraid me at all. She simply very respectfully engaged him in conversation in front of me and reminded me that there was no reason to disrespect a scaffie. When the gas lamps in the town were equipped with pilot lights and automatic timers just after the war she was worried about the lamp lighter ‘leery’ being put out of work. I think it was her father my Mum was talking about when she told me about a relative who would say grace even when taking a drink out of a stream.

JAMES McINTOSH was born in 1844 in Kirkmichael.
His mother, Elspeth Grant (1784 - 1836), the tailor of Glenkilrie’s wife, gave birth to 6 children, 4 girls and 2 boys between 1808 and 1820 beginning when she was 23 and ending when she was 36. She died in 1836 when her youngest child, son Robert (the stonemason) was 16.

The child that is part of our family tree is the 3rd child, and first son, William Cattanach McIntosh who was born in 1812 when Elizabeth was 28. William grew up under the tutelage of a capable mother and a peripatetic tailor dad.

William became the specialist in the sorting of flax in Dundee with Baxter Brothers. As a flax inspector and “Batch Setter”, he was responsible for selecting the different kinds or qualities of flax for any predetermined kind of yarn.

William’s spouse was Betsy Bruce who was the daughter of Elspeth Runciman and David Bruce.
20 April1805 Betsy was born in Alyth.
6Dec1840 Betsy bore John at Alyth when she was 35
27Jun1841 Betsy and William were married at Alyth when she was 36.
1843 Annie was born
28Jan1844 James was born when she was 39
1850 Betsy died aged only 45 leaving the children in the care of the distraught 38 year old William.
John was only 10, Annie 7 and James 6. It’s wee Jimmie that became our ancestor, Mum’s dad.
James went from his home in Dundee to be raised by various relatives in Glenshee. James and his Fleming cousins, Robert b 1845 and John b 1851 hung out together. They appear to have had great affection for their bachelor uncle Robert (b1820) (Bob the Builder). James eventually left the glen to work in Blairgowrie.
In 1856 John (Toe) emigrated to N.Z. at age 14 and probably wee Annie was Daddy’s helper until she married at age 25 in 1868.

WILLIAM was a widower for forty two years.
We get a little glimpse of him from the 1881 census that tells us that at 74 Ferry Road in Dundee, WILLIAM McINTOSH, widower, 68, flax inspector, born Kirkmichael, was the head of a household that consisted of his daughter ANN who is by then 39, and her husband and family.

William died at Laurel Villa, Blairgowrie, the home of his son James on 23rd May 1892 aged 80 years. He seems to have been a lonely man to whom his kids were very kind. On James McIntosh’s registration of marriage (1889) under ‘rank and profession of father’ he is William McIntosh, labourer. How have the mighty (Flax Inspector, Batch Setter) fallen. Labouring at age 77. No Old Age Pension in these days.

Meanwhile James grew in wisdom and stature and favour until, at the time of the registration of his marriage in 1889, he was a 45 year old labourer (Lighting and Cleansing Department) living on James St, Blairgowrie, with or beside Marjory the spinner.
Two years later, in the 1891 census, he is James McIntosh (47), scavenger, living at Hillside Lodge on James Street: head of household : born Dundee: with wife Marjory McIntosh (32) born Ballintuim. Also resident in the household are John Reid (24) unmarried, joiner(house), brother-in-law, born Persie and Margaret Reid(20), sister in law, unmarried, laundress, born Kirkmichael.

What else do we know about our grandfather James McIntosh?

Our mother thought that he was a kindly man. In a letter dated 11Jan1984 our mother remembered, “We only have the Flemings to blow about! But of the three who were left to help Uncle Bob with the croft it was Jimmy (my father) who was the kindly one.” Then on 21Jan1984 MPS continues, “[I remember] ...Uncle Bob [Robert the Mason] and Auntie Jane [sister of Bob and his housekeeper] and the two Fleming boys and Dad (James McIntosh) on the the old croft at Dalvattan... the Flemings were so kind to us. They kept me at college and brother Jimmy at University and eased my mother’s old age.”

A couple of clippings from a Blairgowrie newspaper stuck in the BLACK BOOK of clippings that Uncle Jimmy’s mother kept and passed on to him (there is no date but an auction is advertised to be held on 18 Nov 1892 in another clipping near by) tell us a little about mum’s dad. The first records that:-
“The state of the lighting and cleansing staff was taken into consideration, seeing that Murray, one of the scavengers, is at present scarcely able for his full duties. It was resolved to recommend that these duties be lightened for a time, giving 2 shillings extra per week to McINTOSH and Donald in consideration of the extra work thus laid on them, and reducing Murray’s wages in the meantime to 9s per week.[This before Labour Standards Acts.]

Junior Magistrate Stewart took the opportunity to compliment their other two scavengers for the energy they displayed for some time past in carrying out the work. He thought that there had been fewer complaints than for many years past. The men were at work early and late, and grudged no time nor trouble. Since the new year there had been paid for wages 93 pounds, 2 shillings and 4 pence, which included cartage. During that time the men had collected manure to the value of 70 pounds 6 shillings and 10 pence which therefore paid their wages to within 22 pounds 15 shillings and 6 pence. This was not a very unreasonable sum for the extra work they had done. If the lighting of lamps, attention to drainage etc, were taken into account it would seem the men had done their duty well, and he would take this opportunity of Commending them for it. The chairman remarked that they had been fortunate in securing a good foreman.”

The second clipping tells us that
Junior-Magistrate Stewart intimated that:
“the foreman scavenger had handed in his resignation....
He might be allowed to say
that he received the resignation with regret
and he thought the Commission would agree with him
when he said that MR. McINTOSH had been a very faithful servant during the four years he had been their foreman scavenger.
He had discharged his duties very conscientiously
and with a great deal of of energy and perseverance.
He certainly deserved credit
for the work he had done in draining the burgh,
and he carried with him the good wishes
of the whole commission.” (Applause)

The CHAIRMAN also expressed his regret,
and in doing so said:
“that MR. McINTOSH had been
an excellent servant
and began great improvements
as soon as he got in harness.”

It was also reported in the same paper on the same day that:-
“Laurel Villa, Perth Road, belonging to Mr. Alexander Kidd,
has been sold, by private bargain, to Mr. JAMES McINTOSH,
foreman of the Lighting and Cleansing Department,
of the Burgh of Blairgowrie.
Mr. Kidd bought the place
when it was a wilderness, ten years ago,
and has immensely improved it”

So JAMES in his 48th year,
three years after his marriage
and two years before the birth of his son JAMES CATTANACH[25:3:94]
changed his status dramatically
from Foreman of The Cleansing and Lighting department to landowner-fruitgrower.
His descendants wonder how Laurel Villa was purchased.
Some think retired William helped.
Some think ‘The Curries’ helped through Marjory.
Some think that Sir Robert Fleming, who helped Annie McLeish, also helped James.
Some think that James had been ‘putting it away’ for 48 years.
The real question is: “Why do we question?”

Anyway it was a time of great change for JAMES, descended from McINTOSH of GLENSHEE, for a PEDDIE lass called MARJORY from BALLINTUIM, STRATHARDLE had come into his life.

His Obituary in the Blairgowrie Advertizer, October 1916 had this to say:

“James McIntosh was a native of Dundee and spent his youth and early manhood in Glenshee and was for eighteen years (1869 - 1887) farm manager at Slochnacraig [on road about 4 1/2 miles south of Spittal of Glenshee]. In 1887 he was appointed Superintendent of the Lighting and Cleansing Department of Blairgowrie Town Council, then the Police Commission, with full charge of the drainage system and was credited with having the means of carrying out the work of establishing the sanitary condition of the Burgh.

The faithful and conscientious manner in which he performed his duty, gave the utmost satisfaction to the Commission who regretted to receive his resignation when he bought Laurel Villa (1891), Perth Road and took up fruit growing from which he retired after 20 years experience of it nearly five years ago (1911) and came to reside at Lethendy View which he had meantime purchased.

Mr. McIntosh, a man of rare excellence of character actuated by the highest morality, was very intellectual and a great reader, and as long as he was able he was most energetic and industrious. As a neighbour he was all that one could desire. When resident in Glenshee he was an elder of the Parish Church. On coming to Blair he joined the Old Ist Free Church and was to the last a most faithful and regular attender. He was chosen by the congregation as an elder but respectfully declined the honour.

The deceased, who was seventy-two, leaves a widow and son, 2nd Lieut. J. C. McIntosh who has been twice wounded and is presently in hospital abroad, and a daughter to whom much sympathy has gone out.

The esteem in which Mr. McIntosh was held was evidenced by the very large representative attendance at the funeral at the Cemetery on Thursday.”

[Albert Stiven wrote from the trenches on 17 Nov 1916:-
“I was very sorry to hear that Mr. McIntosh had died. Indeed to tell you the truth it did not surprise me. The poor man was bad enough when I saw him last and news of Jimmie’s wounds must have broken him altogether.”]

[Rough Chronology from dates above:
(1844, 28 Jan, James McIntosh born, Dundee)
1869 to Slochnacraig as farm manager aged 25
1887 Foreman Cleansing and Lighting Department, Blairgowrie, aged 43
(1889, 28 June married, aged 45, at Blairgowrie. Marriage certificate calls him ‘scavenger’.)
1891 To Laurel Villa, aged 47
1911 to Lethendy View, aged 67
1916, 29 October died, aged 72, at Blairgowrie.]

Don’t forget that his only brother John (Toe) had left for New Zealand in 1856, four months away by boat, and his only sister had left for Topeka, Kansas, U.S.A. in about 1902, at almost 60 years old. His only son was badly wounded in W.W.1 and his cousins had soared in status leaving James maybe just a little lonely.

Our Uncle Jimmy told the tale about his dad’s habit of saying, when agreeing to take part in an activity in the future, “If I’m spared.” A friend having had enough of it said, “Jamie, Jamie, man, if you’re no spared we’ll no expect ye!”

OUR PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER JEANNIE SIME (Jane)
David Sime (1819 - 1876)(57) WAS OUR PATERNAL GREAT GRANDFATHER
To find the Simes we have to go off amongst some farm communities in Angus. Our father reported “the Simes were farmers at and around Finavon and Tannadice” and bonnie spots they are. There, on 17May1819 Martha Edwards, farmer’s wife, Tannadice, brought forth David Sime whose sire was James Sime. It is on record that on 17 May 1819 James Sime and his spouse Martha Edwards had a son baptized at the Tannadice manse and they named him David. Maybe not born that day!

We just know a little bit about David Sime from farm boy, to clerk, to “manager of the Goods (Freight) Traffic (Railway) in Dundee.”
“He secretaried the committee which carried through the provision of Public Swimming Baths and Wash Houses in Dundee.” Maybe Jane was an aider and abettor in this endeavour but the prize went to David for “Muriel Henderson of Vancouver, B.C., a 1/2 cousin [of D.S.S.], has a Silver Salver ‘Presented to David Sime for Charitable Work in Dundee.’”

In 1848 when David Sime was 29 he had moved to Dundee and taken up with Jane Deadrick (1823 - 1905)(the shipsmaster’s daughter) who was 25 and they were wed in the city of Dundee on the 5th of April.

Jane Deadrick Sime had five children:
Mary Sime b 1851 who became mother to Edward Deadrick Muir, best man at our father’s wedding and also of Willie Muir the Strathmore tatty farmer.
Susan Sime 1853
Jane [Jeannie] Sime 1855 -1938
David Sime b 1859 d 1860 (1 year 11 mths)
Millina Sime 1864 when Jane was 41

A ‘Wills and Testaments Search’ reveals that David Sime was an Agent of the Caledonian Railway Company living at I, Commercial Street, Dundee and that he died on I June1876 at Dundee, testate. He was only 57 years old. Wife Jane became the sole executrix of his estate which was “more than £600 but less than £800”. I think their residence at 1, Commercial St., Dundee might have been Jane’s from her family.

When David died daughter Jane was 21 and Millina only 12.
Wife Jane was a widow for 29 years.
She must have felt like a Jane Austen character with 4 daughters to marry.
On her death certificate her name is registered as Deadrick.

AT LAST WE GET TO OUR PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER JEANNIE SIME

In “What I meant to say at my Golden Wedding (8Dec73)” Our Dad said about us, his seven children, “.... as my mother [Jeannie Sime] used to say in the idiom of Finavon [on the banks of the South Esk a bit N.E. of Forfar, Angus] ‘you’re here A’ wyce and warldlike’....”

Jeannie (or Jane) Sime,
granddaughter of Susan and Colin Deadrick(1804 -1882) the shipsmaster, daughter of Jane(1823 - 1905) and the late David Sime(1819 -1876), unmarried, born Dundee 5Mar1855 took up with John and Jeannie Stiven’s fifth son in the ‘Binnery’ family, David Russell Stiven, born 13Mar1859, and they were married on 7Aug1890. He was 31, she was 35.

And Jane Sime and David Russell Stiven cleaved unto one another and Jeannie, for she preferred that name to Jane, brought forth 2 sons. David Russell (our Dad) on 16Feb1896 and Albert a year and a half later on 7Sept1897. Apparently she was confined to bed during most of the 38 weeks of Albert’s gestation. It must have broken her heart when he was killed at the Somme in 1917 aged 19.

Here follow a few DSS stories that might give a wee insight into the lives of Jane Sime and David Russell Stiven

Boys and their dog.
As boys my brother and I trained our dog Punchie to go out at the door while we hid what we had taught him was a PIECE which on the word of command he burst open the door and scampered round the room until he found it. One Sunday afternoon my mother sat at the piano playing - and singing - Peace Perfect Peace - and was surprised when she looked down to see Punchie sitting up begging.

Dad’s Boyhood Christmas
I look back over many years to my boyhood. How busy my mother was as Christmas drew near, baking and writing and seeing that my party suit was clean and neat and that the back of my ears was not a place for growing potatoes. At that time of year she was indeed cumbered with many things as I well realize now. But it is only now I realize it. What still stands out amongst my most precious memories of childhood’s Christmas is that along with all her other preparations she prepared the Way of the Lord. We had no Christmas tree at home. In St. Mark’s Church in Dundee I cannot now remember whether we had any decorations, but how glad I am still that she took me to Kirk and that the heart of a boy was filled with the thrilling adoring wonder of that blessed morning as he gazed out upon those those simple things so high above his understanding and sang in the family pew the Incarnate Saviour’s praise.

From Mum to Bob and Marlene 5 Sep 77 Peg and her mother in law
“ We are too old to have even family [staying]. In old age one needs ‘Routine’ and ‘oor ain wee corner’. I remember Granny Stiven saying, ‘I like it Peggy when Papa and I are just alone.’ I thought, ‘Heavens! Are you not glad to have your only son and his fiancé?’ But I understand now. Live long enough and you understand everything.”

Giving away a third of the buns
My mother GAVE FOUR CHRISTMAS BUNS ANNUALLY to our Church about this time (She MADE A DOZEN).

I (Bob) was only 3 when our granny died. I have only a couple of memories. She used an Ear Trumpet (or Ear Horn) that I think we found amusing. She also liked the way I could place her footstool (or did we call it a pouffe?) exactly where she wanted it. Our dad used to say that on the merrits of that accomplishment she’d declared that I was the “most intelligent one in the family.” Insightful lady.

When were young, in the Inveresk manse dining room there hung, above our mum’s escritoire, in a huge gilt frame, an oil painting of our Dad’s Mum when young. It was a dead ringer for the poster “Keep Death off the Roads”. When our dad was with the Huts and Canteens in Germany in 1945 rust and gravity burst the wire on which it was suspended from the picture rail and it came down with a clatter. Our mother must have considered hanging too good for it so the next time we had a bonfire she threw it into the flames. Our dad. on return from his war, was not pleased .

Jane Sime outlived David Russell Stiven by 14 years and died on 3August1938.

OUR PATERNAL GRANDFATHER D. R. STIVEN

Though he is my grandfather he died 10 years before I was born and again it is only through hunting about in the records that I have come to know him a little. If you have not seen his letters to our father after our Uncle Albert was killed in the trenches in W.W.1 you are missing a priceless insight into our Grandfather Stiven.

Our Dad’s Dad, David Russell Stiven (13Mar1859-22July1924) (65) was raised by John Stiven (10Jul1826 - 11Oct1878) (52) and Jane (Watson) b 21Dec1825. He was born when his father was 33 and his mother 34.

He was the 5th of 12 children. Willie 1859, Alec ‘53, John ‘55, Harry ‘57, Himself ‘59, George ‘60, Bathea ‘62, Dick 1865, Jeannie ‘66 or ‘67, Albert ‘68, Mary ‘69, Louisa ‘71. That’s 8 boys who called themselves ‘The Binnery Boys’ for they lived at ‘Binnericht’ on Perth Rd, Dundee.

In the 1881 census he is a 22 year old machine fitter. His oldest brother who’s nom de plume was St. Iven, wrote (1928) that “David Russell was to begin with, a mechanic in Blackness Foundry, and he afterwards went to Keyham Dockyards. On returning to Dundee he became Manager at Blackness Foundry, and then after some years, he started on his own account as a Consulting, Inspecting, Mechanical Engineer and Valuator, with offices at 57 Meadowside, Dundee.”

His letterhead offered:
“Designs and specifications for mills and factories;
Designs and specifications for extensions and alterations;
Designs and alterations for machinery and gearing etc.
Inspection of machinery, gearing, or general work.
Inventories and evaluations of buildings and machinery, etc.
Reports on machinery, gearing, or general work.
Reports as to economical organisation and working.”

He lived at ‘Fir Neuk’ in the Blackness Road. He was a great joke teller, “ruled his life by The Book of Proverbs and by tags from Browning, Longfellow, and the unfortunate and ill-used Lindsay Gordon [1833-70]” (Said Dad in his Golden Wedding speech 18Dec73). In 1898, and again in 1902, he won the President’s Prize at the Balgay Bowling Club in Dundee. The bowls, won as prizes, are here in Comox with us. [The Club is still googleable]. A Calligraphy Sampler of Revelation 3:12 crafted by D.R.S. at the West End Academy in 1874 is happily still in existence (in Comox 2009).

Revealing tales told by our father.
Compose yourself
“After many years I still remember very vividly how before engaging in any approach to the heavenlies, even for the simple approach in the saying of grace before meat, if I happened to be, as a little boy I often was, just a wee bit obstreperous, it was my father’s (our grandfather’s) habit to say, ‘Compose yourself.’ Much of our cooperation in this preparation in earthly life for heavenly love is in composing ourselves: in turning from the distractions and frivolities to the abiding and meaningful; in ‘setting our affection upon things above.’”

A story that his son, my Dad, used to like telling:
On 23 Feb 1977 Dad wrote to me about his Dad, David Russell Stiven:
“Your panegyric [laudatory discourse] on the ancestral pudding reminded me that if the original maker’s son hadn’t been a strict Sabbatarian you wouldn’t have been in Thunder Bay for neither you nor I would have been,
because my father wouldn't have been, because he would have been a passenger on the ill-fated train that went down in the Tay Bridge Disaster [7:15 p.m. 28Dec1879]. He [David Russell Stiven 1859 - 1924] was probably in his teens [20] then and on a visit to see his Grandmother Elizabeth at his mother’s [Jeannie Walker Watson b 1825] old home at Dura Den in Fife. When he said to his Uncle [that would be John b 1832, Sunday School teacher etc] that he intended to stay as long as he could and return on Sunday in order to go to work first thing on Monday, his Uncle said, ‘You won’t travel from this house on The Sabbath.’ So he went home on Saturday.”

Parent’s Feelings
“In 1915 when my brother was 17 my father said to me that it was time to be thinking about what he could do to serve his King and Country. “Plenty of time,” I said. My father did not agree so I developed the argument a little further. “It would be a sorrow and a vexation to my mother.” “What your mother feels doesn’t matter just now.”

I thought he might be speaking somewhat callously of my mother’s feelings. Of course it was only when my brother didn’t come home that I realised he was referring even more to his feelings and that HIS feelings didn’t matter then. He was denying himself.......

So when we really want to come to Him and come after him, our own concerns, our own satisfactions, our own ambitions, our own desires, our own prejudices and pet theories must go by the board. He has PREEMINENCE. There is no doubt whatsoever that the cross has at its end crucifixion.”

David Russell Stiven died (as our Mum was wont to say) “Under the knife” during a prostate operation on 22July1924.

Having dealt with the parents and grandparents we’re off into antiquity.

Keith Moffatt has extracted this from “A list of persons concerned in the Rebellion” Edinburgh University Press 1890, Rev. Walter MacLeod and Rosebery, Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of, 1847-1929:-
“John Stiven of Montrose was active in Raising men for the Rebels and in oppressing the Countrey for Horses and carts to Transport the French Arms and Ammunition, also in forcibly carrying off or stealing Horses from the well-affected to the Government.”

Dad tells us, and St. Iven (1928) does too, that William Stephen of Kingoldrum had 9 sons one of whom was Charles (1753 - 1821) the Snuff Box Maker and another was John (1767 - 1831).

Kinnear (History of Glenbervie) tells us that “Charles Stiven (John’s brother) was born in the parish of Glenbervie. His father was a devoted adherent of the hapless Jacobites, and Charles himself was named after the young Pretender, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. The whole family, indeed, seem to have been staunch Episcopalians and Jacobites. Jean Stiven, in whose house in Stonehaven meetings were held after the destruction of the Episcopal Chapel by the bloody Cumberland, was probably an aunt of Charles Stiven [and John too].”

OUR PATERNAL STIVEN/FERGUSON GREAT GREAT GRANDPARENTS : COWFEEDERS & INN KEEPERS

In 1790 John Stephen (25Apr1767 - 1831) (64) married Elizabeth or Betty Smart (20Sept1770 -1834) (64) from Forfar.

Betty gave birth to 2 sons and 3 daughters probably at Logie Buchan.
One son was William Stephen/Stiven (29Feb1796 - 1867) (71).

In the meantime, Lawyer Ferguson was being factor to the Earl of Southesk. His wife had 2 sons. The elder son, Duncan, was nicknamed “The Knight” on account of his exceedingly good looks. On 15 June1787 Duncan married Bathea(ia) Wallace (b 1761) who brought forth at least 2 girls, one of whom was Elizabeth Ferguson who was born in 1806 at Longforgan (1806 - 1884) (79)

On 18Jun1826 Elizabeth Ferguson married William Stephen/Stiven at Strathmartine.
Elizabeth bore 10 children - 9 boys and 1 girl.
We can imagine the sort of life she had with 10 bairns (wee George died at one year old in 1838). Her man, William, was 30 to her 20 when they were married.
She was farmer’s wife [a cowfeeder was the equivalent of a dairyman] and they kept an Inn. Their grandson (William St. Iven) reported that “at the farm of Bridgefoot, Strathmartine, the land was a bit ‘dour’ and ‘to eke out their income’, (and to cheer up their fellows!) they kept the Strathmartine Inn ‘Licenced to sell Porter and Ale’. Their house was conveniently situated at the roadside, and just far enough from Dundee to make refreshment for man and beast quite desirable. They did very well, one way or another, and Elizabeth used to say that she made her hens pay all right! Husband William would, however ask her sometimes, what she paid for her corn!”

Grandson William goes on to say, “Grandfather (William) was a ‘pawky’ man if ever there was one, and many a good story he told us. Elizabeth was an equally ‘denty’ body, and I can see her yet, both when coming from her washing-house to meet us when we went to Bridgefoot on a visit, and when she came to Dundee to return visits. On the latter occasions she always wore her silk gown, and her most characteristic attitude was sitting with one foot pushed out below her skirt, to show she had on her best shoes.”

After William, the cowfeeder, innkeeper and pukka jute merchant died
Elizabeth outlived him by 17 years during which time one son emigrated to England and 3 to America.

One of her sons who did not emigrate was John Stiven (10July1826 - 11Oct 1878) (52).

While all this breeding was going on at Strathmartine another fecund pair were over in Dura Den, Fife.

OUR PATERNAL WATSON GREAT GREAT GRANDPARENTS AT DURA DEN, KEMBACK FIFE

On 4April 1805 one yclept John Cobb of Montrose married a Marjory Scott On 19Sep1805 Elizabeth Cobb was born (19Sep1805 - 4Feb1891) (86).

On 25 Aug1798 David Watson wedded Elizabeth Don at Farnell, south east of Brechin. In 1805 Elizabeth Cobb gave birth to Alexander Watson(1805 -1868)(62)

Alexander Watson married Elizabeth Cobb on 22 March1822. They were 17.
Apparently they eloped and married without parental consent. On 5May2005 Keith Moffatt wrote, “Alexander Watson and Elizabeth Cobb look down on us still from portraits done by J. Caw in 1838...” and they looked down on us manse brats from their guilt frames, hung on opposing walls of the hall of our home in Musselburgh.

Elizabeth Watson gave birth to her first child on New Years Day 1824, when she was 19, and she went on to produce 10 more wee Watsons in the next 26 years having the last one when she was 45. 6 Girls and 5 boys. Wee James, Elizabeth’s third child and first son, born 5Feb1828, when his mum was 23, lived only 17 days.

They lived in the Parish of Kemback, Fife adjacent to the sweet romantic glen of Dura Den.

I sent Keith and Lint Moffatt a whole screed I’d composed about Elizabeth and Alexander Watson. I’ll spare you that!

W. St. Iven (1928) wrote that “the old Watsons were a very worthy couple...
Grandfather Watson was one of the most genial of men. He had a trick of rubbing his elbow with his left hand... Grandfather Watson came to Dundee on market days, and he often went west to Binnericht [home of Jeannie and John Stiven and their 10] for dinner. He sometimes brought a bag of these sweets which look like bird’s eggs, and he would ask us boys whether they were sparrows’, or robins’, and whether they were ‘deep-sitting’, meaning that, near time for hatching out, and on our saying they were sparrows’ eggs and just about to be hatched, he would proceed to rub and laugh. By this time though, I should have told you, grandfather had acquired for himself Bleblo Works, Flax Mills at Dura Den about equally distant from Cupar-Fife and Dairsie Stations. He usually drove to and from Dairsie in his trap, drawn by a horse that also did duty in a yarn cart....”

Elizabeth has come down to us, and is still celebrated amongst us as our father’s “Grandmother Watson”. She is the originator of what David Sime Stiven called “Great Grandmama’s recipe for Dura Den plum pudding” which is in most of the recipe boxes of subsequent generations, and figures regularly in the DSS/MPS correspondence recorded in “Bobby’s Behoof”, for Marlene sent from Canada an annual pudding which DSS used with great aplomb to celebrate his birthday. He enjoyed complaining about the postage as much as he enjoyed sharing his pudding on the 16th of February.

Elizabeth became a widow on 26Feb1868. Alexander was at Ferry Port on Craig, now Newport, on the Fife coast just across from Dundee when he fell dead of a heart attack at 11 in the morning. He was 62 and so was Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s 6 adult girls were were aged 44,43(Jeannie),39,33,31,18. Her 4 surviving sons were 36,28,26,20. She remained in Kemback until her death on 4 Feb1891. She was 86 and had been a widow for 23 years. St. Iven relates that “Maister John” (eldest son) who had joined his father in the flax spinning business, had been THE man of the place at Dura Den until he emigrated with his family as a golf pro to Los Angeles’ after his mother’s death. He must have been Elizabeth’s right hand mill man before flax was eclipsed by cotton and jute.

OUR PATERNAL STIVEN GREAT GRANDPARENTS AT BINNERICHT, DUNDEE
One of Elizabeth Watson’s (Dura Den) daughters was Jeannie Walker Watson (21Dec1825- ?) and she married John Stiven (10July1826 -11Oct78( (52) the eldest son of the Bridgefoot farm and Strathmartine Inn family. That was because from amongst all the 7 surviving Stiven boys (1 boy died at one year old) he was the one who became our progenitor. They were married at Scoonie [Kirkland, Leven, Fife] on 22Dec1850.

Jeannie bore 8 boys and 4 girls during 20 years, from the time William was born when she was 26 until she was delivered of Louisa when she was 46.

John is described as a stout man with a hearty voice and as quite a character. St. Ivan (1928) says “John was the oldest [of the 10 Bridgefoot farm children] and he used to brag to us boys that he got up, when he was young at an unearthly hour in the morning to go with [his cow herder father’s] milk. It was very difficult for us to believe that a big [I don’t think St. Iven means ‘size’ here but ‘hugely successful’] man like father, as we knew him could ever have carried milk. Would he have on the black silk hat he always wore in winter or the beaver one he wore in summer? He used to ascribe his deftness at tying up a parcel to the fact that he was in a grocer’s shop for some months, but he went on to an office, very shortly after that, and he worked himself up until he became a pukka Jute Merchant.... He continued his connection with Flax and Jute until he became Agent in Dundee for his father-in-law Alexander Watson of Blebo Mill in Kemback Parish, Fife.”

A faded newspaper cutting (cut from I know not what) headed “Famous Curlers of Other Days - Interesting records of Dundee Club” reveals that John Stiven was a winner of the club Kettle in 1853, 1859, 1864, and 1874.
That’s competent curling over a period of 21 years. He got his first Kettle when he was 27 and his last when he was 48 (4 years before his death).

John kept a huge garden at Binnericht (366 Perth Road, Dundee), on 2 acres near the River Tay, and probably Jeannie W. was much employed with that. St. Iven again, “Mother [Jeannie] was very particular about our having everything clean, including food, and I can even yet hear her say: “William, you might take a clean towel and go into the baker’s for a loaf...... A familiar question was: Have you boys got clean handkerchiefs?” This when we were going out to a party or suchlike, and she generally added: “Now be sure and be polite.”

“We were a lucky lot, enjoying, as we always did, so very good health... due in some measure to the fact that we lived so much on fruit.... apples and pears, and gooseberries and strawberries to our hearts’ content. Our very pigs throve on the diet, for they got the ‘windfalls’. We kept pigs and hens and rabbits and ‘doos’ and sometimes white mice! We even kept a cow and a horse when we first went to Binnericht.” I wonder if Jeannie banished them!

Anyway running/managing/wifing/mothering that household would have been quite demanding as her husband climbed from farm boy to pukka jute merchant! Then when John was 52 and Jeannie was 53 John died ‘disease of liver - 5 mths dropsy’. The 1881 census, 3 years after John’s death shows William -29, Alexander -27, David -23, George -20, Bathea -18, Richard -15, Jeannie -14, Albert - 12, Mary -9, and Louisa -8 all still at home. (Only James -26, and David -24, are missing).

In spite of constantly chucking money for ‘more credits’ on ScotlandsPeople and hunting like some sleuthy trapper I cannot track Jeannie beyond the 1901 census where she is shown to reside in St. Mary District, Dundee, at 146 Inverary Terrace (got diverted googling the map of that address). Jeannie age 65, flax merchant’s widow, is head: Alexander 37, unmarried son, accountant: Henry P. 34, unmarried son, flax merchant: Richard C. 26 unmarried son mercantile clerk: Jeannie E. 24, flax merchant’s daughter: ditto Mary W. 21: 14 year old Isabella Findley is the general domestic servant. And then the trail is cold.

St. Iven tells us that “Jeannie Elizabeth along with Mary, stuck to Mother to the end.” But where they stuck and to what end is a mystery. Jeannie E., different from Jeannie W, died in Dundee in 1955 aged 88). And to think that when I was at Corps Camp at Barry in 1950 I went to see J. E. when this 15 year old could have asked that 83 year old all about everything!

OUR PATERNAL GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER CONRAD DIETRICH EDELWEIN
Once upon a time someone called Conrad Dietrich Edelwein was forced to flee from Germany to Dundee. In 1979 Dad wrote: “Edward(sic) Deadrick changed his name from Dietrich, dropping the Edelwein borne by his father when forced into exile from Germany, probably about the same time as the poet Robert Browning’s were also exiled and came to Dundee.” All my evidence points to the fact that he became John Deadrick.

As we look at the death certificate of Colin Deadrick, of I Commercial St. Dundee on 10May1882, (74) widower of Susan Milne (Record of Deaths in the District of St. Clement in the Burgh of Dundee) we can deduce that :
His father is recorded as John Deadrick, sugar maker. He had to be born in sufficient time to be old enough to sire Colin Deadrick born 1804.
Say John Deadrick b circa 1780? His spouse is recorded as Jane Shanks. That gets the pedigree back a bit into antiquity.
Colin Deadrick, shipmaster, was out of Jane Shanks by John Deadrick in 1804.

The Austrian ‘Konditor’ translates into sugar baker [I think, as in confectioner]. But the term can also refer, not to a maker of sweets, but to an owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from the Barbados. Sugar refining would normally be combined with sugar trading, which was a lucrative business because it involved hauling slaves to Barbados and sugar back to Europe. Was our ancestor a slave trader or a confectioner?

OUR PATERNAL GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER THE WHALE CATCHER DEADRICK
In the 1861 census: Colin Deadrick at 1 Commercial St., Dundee, is listed as head, widower, 57, Shipmaster. Susan Neil, his unmarried niece, 27, is housekeeper.

In the 1881 census he is Colin Deadrick (77), widower, retired shipmaster, St. Clement Angus, and he has more company. He is living as ‘head’ of a household of Simes at I Commercial St., Dundee, Forfar, Scotland --- his widowed daughter Jane Sime, 58, and her unmarried daughters Mary 30, Susan 28, Jeannie 26, and Millina 17.

On 14Mar69, apropos Lois (Canada) getting her first tooth, our dad wrote: “One of my great grandfathers [Colin Deadrick] at the age of 84 had every tooth sound.” Where do some dates and ages come from? Colin’s death is recorded on 10 Jun1882, age 79, in the District of St. Clement, Angus. He appears to have had all his teeth sound for 5 years less than dad thought he had!

Dad (12Sep1986) “One of Glen’s [Canada] great, great, great grandfathers .... pursued these monsters [whales] in a little cockle shell of a boat and dispatched them with a hand thrown harpoon from anything but a ‘safe distance’. Nor was he wanting in other initiative for he became, later on, the Captain of the ship which for its peculiarity became known as ‘The Hull Steamer’”. [Can find no mention of it].

I regret that we can’t flesh out the phantom Jane Shanks, spouse of John, or Susan Milne spouse of Colin. We know that Colin was a widower in 1861(21
years before he died).

We also know that Susan Milne birthed a baby called Jane in 1823 when Colin was only 19. Susan must have had anxious moments when young Colin was off in his cockleshell of a boat. Anyway Susan’s Jane was destined to be one of our progenitors for Jane Deadrick was married to David Sime from Tanadice on 5Apr1848 aged 25.

And they were our great grandparents.

... and the wheels on the genealogical bus go round and round...

Bob Stiven Comox 2009