This week's Sepia Saturday prompt image shows a primitive cottage . I turned to my cousin's family history with memories of his Smith crofter ancestors from the most northerly island of the British Isles - Unst in the Shetland Islands of Scotland -
Using primarily www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk & ancestry.co.uk the Smith family was traced back to Great, Great, Great Grandfather - John Smith. (1759- c.1840.) John's youngest son Gilbert was born in 1802 at Snarbrough - the ruins of this family home still visitble today.
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Gilbert Smith married Catherine Mouat in 1829, with the ceremony performed
by the Rev James Ingram - the first clue to the Ingram name that featured in the Smith family down to the present day. Gilbert and Catherine made their home at Gardin (below)
But by the 1871 census the Smith family had made a major move, leaving Unst behind to live on the Scottish mainland. Youngest son John was the last member of the family to be born on the island. He followed a varied career as a butler, a pub landlord, a move to England in 1883 as a hotel manager in Leeds and finally around 1885 a move to the north west seaside resort of Blackpool, Lancashire.
There was a family story that John became Catering Manager at the Winter Gardens entertainment complex in Blackpool. and in the photograph below he looks the part. But I have been unable to find any detailed documentary evidence to support this. In 1900 he appeared in court d on a charge of undischsrged bankruptcy where he was then described as a "waiter"; in the 1901 census as a caterer; in the 1911 census as a furniture dealer; and in the 1921 census as a "retired caterer". He died in 1925 aged 78.
John Ingram Smith was the last of the immediate Smith family to be born on the island of Unst, But the Rev. John Ingram must have had an influence on the family, with so many Smith descendants christened with the middle name of Ingram down to the present day. The connection with Unst lived on.
The Shetland Isles - Photograph courtesy of Pixabay
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Thank you for such a well documented (and illustrated) family history! John Smith did seem to be a man of many talents, and I'm glad that he lived past his retirement. Having done so myself, it is certainly a way to review one's life and all the different things that have been of interest.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very long way from the Shetlands to Blackpool. I wonder if John ever went back. I imagine that life on the remote islands around Britain in olden times offered few opportunities for advancement. Reading about his history makes me think about how immigrants in our time face the same stressful pressure to seek a better fortune.
ReplyDeleteSo many rocks needed to build those houses! And still they stand! Amazing. The name Ingram appearing down through the years in the family reminds me of the name Kinsey in my family. My Dad's maternal grandfather's name was John Kinsey Smedley. We have no idea where the name Kinsey came from. J.K.'s daughter, my paternal grandmother, Harriet, gave her son her father's middle name as his middle name and it continued on down through his son, and his son's son. That son had wanted to continue the Kinsey name tradition, but he married a woman of a faith that does not allow giving the name of a living person to a new child so that was the end of the name Kinsey in the Bradley family. I do wish we new where the Kinsey name had come from, though. I've found some interesting information that might suggest it goes back to George Smedley who was the first Smedley to come to America in the 1600s and may have met and made friends with a fellow Friends (Quaker) member with the las name of Kinsey? No real proof of that, though.
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