Descendants of Charles Stewart of Atholl

 

The Stewart branch of the family probably originated in Blair Atholl in Perthshire. The earliest evidence appears as late as 1811. This is a marriage entry in the Blair Atholl and Strowan Old Parochial Register showing that John Stewart married Margaret MacGlashan on 17 November. John was 'in Glaicnacaisardoch'. This homestead was not shown on the maps of the period and no other mention of the name has so far been found.
See notes below.

 
Margaret was ‘in Shireglas’, a large house on the south bank of the River Garry.
There was a similar entry in the Dull OPR, Dull being the parish on the west bank of the River Garry where Margaret - she was known as Kate - lived, and probably worked as a servant, at Shierglass.

 

The entries do not give the names of the couple’s parents. However, Margaret’s birthplace was given as Midlothian in the 1861 Census for Blair Atholl. An IGI entry confirms that she was born on 16 June 1782 to Peter MacGlashan and Isabell Robertson at Canongate, Edinburgh. Peter was a Flax Dresser, one who prepared flax yarn for the spinning machine. He married Isabell on 13 August 1775. The Edinburgh Marriage Register gives the church as Lady Yester’s, in High Wynd.

 

John Stewart’s father and mother are revealed in his death certificate dated 19 September 1855. If his age at death - 66 - is to be believed, he was born in 1789 to Charles Stewart and Janet Campbell at Craggan, a cottage on the Lude estate, which is on the east bank of the River Tilt opposite Blair Castle. See Thomson's 1827 map.
Unfortunately, there are no records, among the many John Stewarts born at the time, which confirm his birth.
And no records of his parents’ marriage have been found. See notes below.

 

Being a mason, John would likely have travelled widely for work. In 1813 he was in the cathedral town of Dunkeld, where Kate gave birth to their firstborn child, Charles. Three others were born there but, sadly, all died.
By 1819 the family was back in the Blair Atholl area, where Isabella was born.

 

John Stewart’s children

Charles (b 1813) survived to found a line that took the Stewarts to Canada. He was a Mason, like his father. By 1846, he had made his way to Auchterarder, along with his brother John. While there, he married Janet Stewart and shortly afterwards set up home in Perth. He died there in 1889. He had two boys and 3 girls, one of whom - Margaret - married a Joiner called Finlay McColl and moved to Kelvinside, Glasgow, starting a lineage that ended up in Victoria, British Columbia.

 

Ann, born in 1815 in Dunkeld, only lived for a year.

 

Twins came next, born in 1816 in Dunkeld, but only survived for a day.

 

There are no records for the last three births in the Old Parish Registers:

Isabella was born in Blair Atholl around 1819.

John was born around 1821.

Ann was born around 1824. She was recorded in Ballentoual in 1841, but thereafter disappears from the record.

 

John Stewart

John Stewart (b 1821), was living in Ballentoual, a village just across the River Tilt from Blair Atholl, in 1841, next door to a 24 year old Tailor called Charles Gray. Two years later, Charles married Isabella Stewart (b 1819) and the pair lived at his tailor’s business in Blair Atholl, producing 6 children.

 

John was a Journeyman Mason, so would have moved around the county in search of work. He married Jane McAinsh in Auchterarder in 1847. Jane was born around 1826 in Fowlis Wester, the third daughter of Alexander McAinsh and Isabella Maxton. Alexander came from a line of village Shoemakers, while Isabella came from Dollar, Clackmannanshire. The family had probably moved to Perth by 1848 - all 6 children were born there.

John Stewart died in 1883, while Jane survived until 1894.

 

John Stewart’s children

Isabella, born in 1848, has not been positively identified in the 1871 and 1881 census records. It seems certain that, like many a poor Scottish girl, she headed for London in the late 1860s to look for work in service. In January 1881, while living in Chelsea, she had a son called Russell Stewart Sime. The father, William Sime, a Carpenter, hung around long enough for the baptism of the child in March but probably vanished soon afterwards. By 1888, mother and child had returned to Perth, where Isabella married David Kemp, a Carter, in a Free Church ceremony. Russell, however, was adopted by her parents, taking the Stewart surname. When her mother Jane died in 1894, he seems to have moved in with Isabella’s sister Maria in Kinnoull Street, Perth. Isabella and David had probably gone to work at Ochtertyre House near Crieff. At some point they became known as Russell Sime’s official parents. When he married Isabella Smeaton in 1909, Russell was an Ironmoulder, described as the son of Isabella Kemp.
Isabella died at Ochtertyre in 1920. Russell died in Glasgow in 1939.

 

Jane, born in 1851, died of TB in 1870.

 

John was born in 1854 in Perth.

 

Maria, born in 1856 had the unusual middle name of Hannon. She was a Silk Finisher who married a Postman called William Reid at a Temperance hotel in Perth in 1891. She underestimated her age by 6 years on the marriage entry! She died in Perth in 1927.

 

Alexander McAinsh was one of the few members of the family to make good. Born in 1859, he started as a Message Boy, then a Letter Carrier, eventually becoming an Assistant Inspector of Postmen in Perth. He married Isabella McGregor in 1894 and had two children, Jane and Alexander. He died of a stomach ulcer in 1908.

 

Jessie, born in 1865 married John Nairn in 1885 and had 2 children in Perth, before vanishing from these shores. She appeared in St. Stephen's Green West, Dublin in 1911 with her surviving daughter, Jeannie.

 

John and Jane had a seventh son, the adopted Russell Sime. It is not known when or why he came to Perth, but he was born in 1881 in London, the son of William Sime, a Joiner. After Jane’s death, he moved in with his step-sister Isabella, who was living with her sister Maria in Kinnoull Street, Perth. By the time of his marriage to Isabella Smeaton in 1909, he was an Ironmoulder, described as the son of Isabella Kemp.

 

John Stewart

John was born in 1854, the year before his father’s death. He was a quarrelsome man and, judging by his wedding photograph (which no longer exists), a tall (6ft), severe and ugly one with staring eyes, a squint and big feet. He was a drinking man who was not much liked by his children. He had a range of occupations listed in the various censuses, from Despatch Clerk to Timekeeper and Furniture Salesman. He probably began working for the Scottish Cooperative Society in Perth, transferring first to Dundee, where he married Elisabeth Inches in 1876, then to Edinburgh and finally to Glasgow as a manager in the Drapery Department. The couple had 10 children, 5 girls and 5 boys. His drinking seems to have led to his demotion and eventual dismissal from the Coop.

He died in 1912 in an asylum of ‘General Paralysis of the Insane’.

 

John Stewart’s children

Elizabeth Maxton Stewart, born in Dundee in 1877, took her middle name from her great grandmother on the McAinsh side. She also went into the Coop (she remained unmarried) and became their first female buyer (in gloves).

She died in Glasgow in 1959.

 

Georgina Stewart was born in Edinburgh in 1879. She appears as George (M) on her birth certificate, suggesting a slight error of classification. She married a butcher called James Johnston in 1900 and had 3 girls. She died in Glasgow in 1966.

 

John Inches Stewart was born in 1881 in Glasgow. He started his working life as a Mason, after his grandfather. He signed up with the Royal Horse & Field Artillery in 1899 and was sent to fight in the Second Boer War in 1901 and 1902. He drove the horses that pulled the great artillery pieces to the front. On his return to Glasgow, he was promoted to Corporal and trained as a Bombardier. According to family recollection, he contracted some kind of disease in South Africa. This may have had a grain of truth – he died of skin cancer in Glasgow in 1913. He never married.

 

Alexander McAinsh Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1884. He trained on Clydeside as a Ship’s Upholsterer and went to Liverpool to look for work. He may have been in a reserved occupation that saved him from being called up. In 1918 he married his landlord's daughter, Dorothy Allen, who was 13 years his junior. They raised 3 girls and 2 boys. He died in Bootle in 1960, while Dorothy died in 1986.
Their daughter, Dorothy, married Wilfred Hignett in 1939 and died in 1999.
Their son, Alan, married Elsie Westbury in 1945 and died in 2005.
Jean, who was blind, married Ronald Jones in 1948 and died in 2004. There were no offspring.
John married Joan Tomey in 1959 and became a Bank Manager. There were probably 3 children. He died in Crewe in 2016.
Margaret Teresa was doing her nursing training at Guy's Hospital in 1954 when she met Roy Clark, who would later become an anaesthetist. They married in London in 1956 and sailed to New York 3 years later, settling in Portland, Oregon. The couple had two sons, Timothy and Graham, but divorced in 1979.
Margaret remarried in 1981 - to a carpenter called Raymond L Pease - but they divorced sometime before 2003.
She may have subsequently married a Canadian university professor called Maurice Stewart.

 

Jane McAinsh Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1887. A Cash Girl at the Scottish Coop, she met William Francis Hamilton there and married him in 1914. They had 2 boys and 2 girls, although one girl survived for only a few weeks.

She died in Glasgow in 1969.

 

Thomas Ogilvie Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1889. A Railway Clerk, he married Janet Cannon in 1916 and had at least two sons. One, Charles Athole, died of meningitis at 13 months. The other, John Ogilvy, has left no tracks, though he may have died of TB in his youth.

Thomas died in Glasgow in 1931 of a lung tumour, although he was a non-smoker.

 

Isabella Kemp Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1892. After her parents died Bella was pressurised into becoming the family's housekeeper. She escaped by falling pregnant and marrying Robert Rennie* in 1915. Bob was a spirit salesman but by 1922 was unemployed.
Elizabeth, his sister-in-law, showed him an advert for jobs in Canada and offered to pay his fare.
On 3 August 1923, with £3 in his pocket, he sailed to Canada, intending to settle in Winnipeg and find work as an agricultural labourer.
Bella followed a year later with their 3 girls - Elizabeth (also known as Elsie or Lynn), Jean (also known as Jeanette) and Isabella (also known as Margo). A son, Robert Stewart, was born in Canada.
They ended up in Regina, where Bob was working in an oil refinery. He was recorded there as an Imperial Oil employee in 1935.
He was said to have lost his job, at which point the family returned to Glasgow to beg for support from Bella's sister Elizabeth.
Her other sister Jane was not impressed: the Rennies, she declared, had never bothered to stay in touch when they were in Canada.

Robert eventually got well-paid work in Bahrain.
In 1938 Bella and her son Robert were onboard the SS California bound for Bombay. They presumably disembarked in Bahrain to join Robert. But Bella hated the climate and refused to stay.
So in 1940 she and her son sailed, via Calcutta, to Los Angeles. They returned to Canada, possibly to Toronto, and were supported by funds remitted from Bahrain.
In 1944 Robert sailed to Baltimore onboard the SS Mark Hanna and joined his family in Toronto.
How the Rennies ended up in Portland, Oregon is not known. Bella died there (in Tigard) in 1969.
Robert died in 1977 and was interred in the Lincoln Memorial Park.


* Robert Rennie's document trail is of interest because of its quirkiness: every time his name appeared on passenger manifests or immigration forms his age / date of birth was incorrectly given - usually as 1898 instead of 1894. Perhaps his Canadian passport had the wrong birth date and, during 30 years of travelling, he never corrected it. On his official birth record, his parents' date of marriage was incorrectly given as 16 April 1893. Actually, it was 10 June 1890. When he married Isabella Stewart in 1915 his mother was noted as Margaret Campbell on the official marriage record. Actually, she was a step-mother of sorts (she was not married to his father). His birth mother was Christina Smith, who died in 1905. In the 1901 census for Portobello in Edinburgh, his father, who was called Robert, was listed as William. His father was known as Robert Rainy in the Glasgow electoral registers.
On a US immigration form in 1951 Robert declared that he had landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia in October 1920; but on his Canadian immigration form of August 1923, he said he had never lived in Canada before. Unfortunately, there are no shipping records that can confirm the 1920 event.


The Rennie children:
Elsie (Lynn) married Donald Layfield in Ontario, had 2 sons, and died in 1989.

Jeanette married a British Columbian sailor called Frank Russ, possibly in Toronto, where she lived.
Russ, a Petty Officer Telegraphist, was killed when his ship, the destroyer HMCS St Croix, was torpedoed whilst on convoy duty in the Bay of Biscay on 20 September 1943.
In 1952 Jeanette married Sherwood S Stutz, a US army major in Carson City and went to live in College, Fairbanks, Alaska. Their first child, Susan, was born in Christian, Kentucky and the second, Douglas, was born in Oregon. The couple divorced before 1960.
Jeanette died in Portland in 1996.

Isabella (Margo) married Paul Burgner, a naval officer who later became a doctor. They had no children. After they divorced, Margo retired to Palm Springs but returned to Portland, where she died in 2010.

Robert ran a successful truck accessory business after retiring from a career with a newsprint company. He died in Toronto in 2009.

 

Charles Athole Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1894. Reputedly the best-looking member of the family, he volunteered as a Private in the Seaforth Highlanders and was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

 

Maria Reid Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1895. The family knew her as Myra, though she preferred to be called Jean. She is thought to have eloped with David Brown, a Photographer from Arbroath in 1914. Sadly, they soon separated and eventually got a divorce. Jean probably went to London and worked as a House Maid at 29 Portman Square (in 1921). She also probably qualified and worked as a nurse. Returning to Scotland at the start of the Second World War, she took up a residential position as Personal Assistant to a wealthy family of solicitors. Later, she became the live-in Housekeeper and Nurse to Wilfred Semple, one of the sons of the family. He left her his house, furniture and car when he died in 1970.

Jean herself died in Paisley in 1981.

 

William Kenneth Stewart was born in Glasgow in 1898. He is said to given the wrong age at call-up and enlisted as a Private in the Gordon Highlanders. He was killed, probably at the Battle of the Selle in Flanders, almost the last action in the War, in 1918.

 

 

NOTES

Place names
When John Stewart married Margaret MacGlashan in 1811, his abode was written by the Parish Clerk as Glaicnacaisardoch. The Gaelic may translate as hollow-steep-dwelling. No other mention of the place has been found.

The closest is Glackneid or Glaicneid (hollow-nest), a homestead just south of the River Garry, 500 yards NE of Easter Invervack, which is also known as Balnastewardoch (Stewartstown). By 1850, the place had disappeared from the maps of the day.
There is also a place called Glackmore (hollow-big), just W of Shierglass.
OPR records
As there were strong social and religious pressures to baptise infants, it is thought that most children, even illegitimate ones, were baptised. Not all baptisms were recorded in the registers, however. This was either because parents had to pay for the entry, or because of inefficiencies in the record-keeping system.
As marriage registration was not compulsory, the registers were not comprehensive.
There seem to be no death or burial registers for the Blair Atholl area.
Charles Stewart
Charles's name appears in his son John’s death register entry of 1855. He was a mason, married to Janet Campbell. He was at Craggan at the time of his son’s birth. There are no other records.
It is presumed that our Stewart family followed the naming conventions of the day, at least for the male line. So John and Margaret’s firstborn son, Charles (born in 1813), was named after his paternal grandfather. Accordingly, John’s own paternal grandfather would probably have been born around 1745 and christened John. And this John's father would have been called Charles.
There are only three instances in the Blair Atholl records of sons named Charles born to a John Stewart:
1) One was baptised on 13 October 1757 to John Stewart and Elspeth Robertson in Pitagowan, near Struan (4 miles W of Blair Atholl). John was from Bohally (E of Tummel Bridge) while Elspeth was from Dalinriach (W of Tummel Bridge). After their marriage on 10 June 1755, the couple appear to have moved north to Struan, where Charles was born. This Charles Stewart probably married Katharine Gow at Pitagowan in 1786. 4 children were recorded in the OPR: Janet (b 1789), Grissel (b 1792), John (b 1794) and Margaret (b 1797).
2) Another Charles Stewart was born on 5 March 1758 to John and Ann Stewart at Easter Invervack, a homestead near Struan that was also known as Balnastewardoch. Charles probably married Janet Ferguson there on 27 Dec 1783. 3 children were recorded in the OPR: Janet (b 1788), George (b 1790) and Alexander (b 1807).
3) A third Charles Stewart birth took place on 18 April 1768 to John and Sarah Stewart at Nether Bohespick (NW of Tummel Bridge). It is not known if, or to whom, he got married.
Other Charles Stewart records that may be worth mentioning are:
4) An additional marriage, one without an associated birth, of a Charles Stewart to a Margaret McDonald at Kindrochit (by Struan) on 9 April 1776. 2 children were recorded in the OPR: Margaret (b 1784) and John (b 1789).
5) the Accounts Ledger of the Kirk Session Minutes for 26th June 1774 noted that charity was given to a Charles Stewart in Croftcrombie. This was a homestead near Croftmore in Glen Tilt, around 3 miles from Craggan on the Lude estate where our John Stewart’s family lived.
6) In the Kirk Session Minutes for 24th September 1752, a Charles Stewart in Glaicneid appeared before the Congregation for his fornication with Katharine McKay and was rebuked. Having paid his, and his party's fine, modified by the Session to £8 Scots by reason that the guilt was not committed in Blair Atholl parish, he was dismissed and got up his bill (ie his IOU was returned to him).
John Stewart
This John Stewart was baptised on 13 April 1755. His father was Neil Stewart of Balinloin (near Shierglas), who married Isobel Robertson of Carrick (near Fincastle) on 11 Dec 1752. John’s own son Niel (sic) was baptised at Tomban of Pitaldonich (near Struan) on 1 June 1789. Neil married Christian McKinzie on 17 Feb 1828 and a son, John, was born in 1832. Neil was a mason. He was recorded at Craggan in the 1841 census; the next entry on the page was that of our own John Stewart. However, no relationship between John and Neil Stewart has been established.
Masons called John Stewart
1) John Stewart was a mason from Ballafuirt, which was near Garry Bridge, on the E bank of the river at the southern entrance to the Pass of Killiecrankie. On 16 August 1768, he bought a number of items at an auction of the deceased John Stewart of Bonskeid’s possessions. Bonskeid is on the N bank of the River Tummel, near its confluence with the R Garry.
2) John Stewart, a mason at Bridgend of Tilt, was given a contract to build a ‘strong stone bridge over the Garry near the Kirktown of Strowan, for £83:10/- sterling’ on 8 May 1782 (1).
A John Stewart, mason in Bridge of Tilt, presumably the same man, was contracted on 8 Jun 1789 to repair the bridge over the Water of Errochty at Kirktoun of Strowan and to 'uphold his work' for ten years thereafter (1).
In 1792, possibly the same John Stewart of Bridge of Tilt and an Alexander Stewart built a bothy in Glen Tilt. They earned 1s 8d per day (1).
3) On 11 November 1810, a John Stewart, mason in Bridge of Tilt, perhaps the son of the above, married Elizabeth Stewart of Middlebridge (in Glen Fender).
4) In the 1817 Stewart of Garth Census of the Stewarts of Atholl, a John Stewart, mason, was listed at Dunkeld with 4 children. He was descended from the Stewarts of Fincastle (a glen north of the River Tummel), which may have been part of the Shierglas estate in Dull Parish.
This could have been our John Stewart – he had 2 sons and 2 daughters, born in 1813, 1815 and (twins) in 1816 – were it not for the fact that the twins were born and died on the same day in 1816, so would not have appeared in the census data.
While it is true that our John Stewart was in Dunkeld at the time (his first 4 children were born there), this researcher thinks he probably came from the Blair Atholl area. If he was not mentioned in the 1817 Census, it could be because information about the Atholl Stewarts was so sparse as to be almost non-existent.
5) On 17 March 1824 a John Stewart, mason, and an Alastair Stevenson quoted for the construction of the new church at Blair Atholl. Their price was £1255 with £35 for materials from the old church taken into account. A John Angus from Dunkeld won the contract. No indication was given of where this John Stewart lived (1).

References
1) "Church and Social History of Atholl", by John Kerr, Perth & Kinross Libraries, 1998
2) The locations of many homesteads and townships are given in "A Gazetteer of Place Names in Blair Atholl Parish" at http://www.borenich.co.uk/Place_names.html
3) This writer is indebted to the transcriptions of the Kirk Session Minutes provided by the webmaster of the Borenich website, above.