An Island Family Home -Sepia Saturday

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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