THE
STORY OF OUR FAMILY
GENERATION
FOUR
JAMES
TAIT AND THE TAITS
Charles Tait (1801-75) and Agnes Smith (1804- ) –
gggrandparents
William (1826-)
Robert (1829-1904)
Jess (1830-)
Henry (1833-)
Georgina (1836-1909)
Charles (1837-)
James (1840-1919) and Charlotte Keeble (1839-1904) –
ggrandparents
Ada Agnes (1879-1936) & James O’Donoghue
(1874-1965) - grandparents
This blog continues the story of Ada Agnes Tait’s family, taking us to
the north east of Scotland to the town of Arbroath.
Sadly I am unable to upload some of the great historic photographs of the area, as the copyright holder refused my request to use three or four of them. So I have provided a link to the ones I would have used.
Sadly I am unable to upload some of the great historic photographs of the area, as the copyright holder refused my request to use three or four of them. So I have provided a link to the ones I would have used.
James Tait (1840-1919) – my ggrandfather
https://tour-scotland-photographs.blogspot.com/2018/09/old-photograph-shorehead-road-by.html
Arbroath is located on
the North Sea Coast of Scotland, about 16 miles north east of Dundee and 45
miles south west of Aberdeen. The town
grew considerably during the Industrial Revolution owing to the expansion of
firstly the flax and secondly the jute industries plus the engineering
sector. By 1817 Arbroath was Scotland’s
biggest sailcloth producer. From the 18th
century shipbuilding and repair were important industries. A new harbour was built in 1839 and by the 20th
century, Arbroath had become one of the larger fishing ports in Scotland. I have promised myself a trip up there
sometime.
https://tour-scotland-photographs.blogspot.com/2010/04/old-photograph-harbour-arbroath.html
https://tour-scotland-photographs.blogspot.com/2010/04/old-photograph-harbour-arbroath.html
In 1865 James married Mary Ann
Simpson in Arbroath in the Wesleyan Methodist Church.
Mary Ann’s parents were
Robert Simpson and Mary Smart. Robert
was a baker. Mary Ann was born in 1845.
James and Mary Ann had
two children in Arbroath: Mary Jane (1867-); James (1870-). Then they moved to London, and in 1871 were
in 18 Burcham Street, Poplar. A third
child, Margaret, was born in 1874.
Mary Ann died in 1876,
and by 1881 James was living with Charlotte Phillips (née Keeble) in 12 Sturry
Street. They were married in the same
year. Ada Agnes had been born two years
before in 1879. By 1883 they had moved
to 66 Cotton Street and Albert Edward was born that year. By 1891 they had relocated to 18 Cotton
Street, just down the road from our O’Donoghues. and were still there in 1901 with an 18-year-old
son, Albert, and Lily, described as a daughter, but she was Charlotte’s from an
earlier relationship to be described in the next blog. Charlotte’s relationships were really quite
hard to get my head round, which is one reason why she is worthy of a separate
article.
Charlotte died in 1904
and by 1908 James had married again.
Alice Kerr was from Sunderland and 21 years younger than him. They were living at 6 Clifton Road, Canning
Town in 1911.
James seems to have
changed the nature of his work over the years as sometimes he is described as a
sailmaker and at others as a general labourer.
Like so many on the docks, employment was precarious and subject to the
daily call up at the dock gates.
The best description I
have of him was from Kate Hosford (née Phillips) who grew up next door to our
lot. She said that he was a big man with
a long white beard and that when he and Thomas O’Donoghue, my great
grandfather, got together and started to sing it was quite something. After my father died, I found some very old
sheets of a traditional Irish song – Shamus O’Brien. I have always wondered if this was his memory
of his childhood, hearing his family singing.
I’ve attached the words at Appendix One.
I was also told by
someone that Gaelic was to be heard in the house. Thomas would certainly have spoken the
language, perhaps James spoke the Scottish version. They are a bit different, but speakers of
either can easily understand each other.
James Tait died in 1919
in Poplar – he was 79.
Now to look at his father
and James’s siblings…
Charles Tait (1801-75) and Agnes Smith (1804- ) –
gggrandparents
Charles Tait was born in
around 1801 in St Vigeans, in his day a small village and parish immediately
north of Arbroath. The old village consisted of a single
street of red sandstone cottages flanking the foot of the church mound. The church (right) has undergone some changes
since Charles’s time. Today St Vigeans
has been absorbed within the growth of Arbroath.
Charles and Agnes married
in Arbroath in 1829 in the Church of Scotland.
As shown above they had seven children.
As their eldest, William, was born before Charles and Agnes were married
I wondered if he was the child of an earlier marriage for Charles, but I have
not found one so must conclude he was born ‘out of wedlock’.
Illegitimacy in Scotland ran higher than in England and Wales in the
nineteenth century: in 1859 6.5 per cent of births in England and Wales, but 9
per cent in Scotland, were illegitimate. This statistic, called the
illegitimacy ratio, disguises a great deal of variation among smaller
localities, particularly in the case of Scotland where only 3.3 out of every hundred
births in Orkney were illegitimate, but in the North Eastern counties of Nairn,
Elgin, Banff, Aberdeen and Kincardine on average over 15 per cent of
births were born outside marriage.
In 1841 two families of
Smiths were living each side of our couple.
Peter Smith (age 50) was a Fish Manager; his sons Robert (age 25) and
Thomas (age 20) were pilots. John Smith
(also age 50) is another pilot. Peter
and John were probably Agnes’s (age 40) siblings.
A pilot is a sailor who manoeuvres ships through dangerous or
congested waters, such as harbours or river mouths. They are navigational
experts possessing knowledge of the particular waterway such as its depth,
currents, and hazards. This is a very
skilled job and I imagine that Charles was a fisherman before he gained the necessary
experience.
Agnes
Smith, Charles’s wife, may have been born in Arbroath either
in 1796 to David Smith (a butcher) and Margaret
Swankie or
- in 1804 to David Smith (a writer) and Agnes
Neish
The
reason I am not sure as to date is that in the 1841 census Charles and Agnes
are both said to be age 40. By 1851
Agnes was recorded as age 55 i.e 5 years older than Charles and in 1861 as 6
years older. I suspect Agnes didn’t tell
Charles her correct age until after 1851.
I wonder what he said! This
points to the 1796 birth parents as the possible ones, but none of her children
were named David or Margaret whereas Agnes was used, so we are left wondering. I discuss Scottish naming practices and our
family later.
Charles
was still living by himself at 15 Old Shorehead in 1861; he was a widower as Agnes
had died in the 1860s. By 1875 he had also gone; he is buried in the Western
Cemetery in Arbroath. I must try and
find it.
Charles
& Agnes’s children
As
you will see although Charles was a pilot/fisherman many of his family were
employed in the flax industry. There are
all sorts of different jobs in the records.
I will mention a few as we proceed.
I am listing their children’s
names for reasons that will appear later.
Their eldest son, William
(1826-), was employed as a flax dresser in 1841, a worker who separated the coarse
part of flax or hemp with a hackle (a very large comb); they were also known as hacklers. One of my mother’s ancestors in the late 18th/early
19th century was a hackler in Norfolk. By 1851 all of Charles and Agnes's children, bar James (still at
school) were employed in the flax industry.
But William had vanished from the records. I checked to see if he had died or emigrated
to USA or Australia without success.
Robert
(1829-1904) married Jessie Stuart/Stewart in 1852 and the children - Jacob,
Jessie, Henry & Robert – followed. Then, I think, Jessie died (and he
married Isabella (also Elizabeth) Johnston with whom he had another five – Mary
Johnston, Charles, Isabella, Agnes Smith & Alexander Wood. I have been in contact with a descendant of
Mary Johnston in the US.
You will have noticed the
second names that look like surnames. This
is a very early/mid-19th century thing. They are not today’s double-barrelled
surnames ie Smith-O’Donoghue, but are true Christian names. Their usage can be based on a number of circumstances.
It was common to use the
mother’s or one of the child’s grandmothers’ maiden names. We can see this above with Johnston (mother)
and Smith (grandmother). This also
extended on rarer occasions back to the parents’ grandparents. But it might also be the surname of the
parish priest who baptised the child.
Robert’s jobs ranged from
weaver to flax mill bleacher to yarn bundler.
In 1861 the family was living in 30 East Mill Wynd, Arbroath. This is what the street looked like, not sure
exactly when but probably in early 1900s judging by the lamp and the state of
the street surface. A wynd is a narrow street or alley leading off a major
thoroughfare in Scotland and Northern England; based on Old Norse venda.
https://www.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-150-567-C
Jessie
(1830-) married James Bell in Arbroath and seven children arose: Ann Leuchars
(James’s
mother), Agnes Smith (grandmother), Jessie, Jane, Jemima, Alexander
Smith (grandmother) & William. James
was a flax canvas weaver on the power loom.
Again rather later in time but picture is at least representative of a
flax mill
Henry
(1830-) appears to have died young in the 1840s. Well, I can’t find him
Georgina (1835-1909)
was six years older than her husband, John McMillan, an Irishman from Ulster. They were married in Arbroath in 1865 and had
at least five children: John, Robert, Mary, Jane & Jessie.
In 1871 they were living
in Elm Bank Cottage in St Vigeans where John was a domestic servant in the
household of Andrew Lowson (1813-1897), the most important mill owner in the
town. He was described as a “striking and loveable person”, and by 1864 had twice
the horsepower at his disposal and employed twice the number of workers as his nearest
competitor. He employed one thousand
people. Baltic Works is shown left.
The
main house Elm Bank is now a Category B listed
building. It is described as a small two-storey
classic mansion house, ashlar and slate, built around 1830, with extensive
addition in the mid-19th century.
It all sounds very Downton Abbey as the family
employed the following staff: coachman, gatekeeper, cook, table maid, house maid,
lady’s maid, washerwoman, gardener and a general domestic servant (John).
By 1881, however, they were back in the town and
Elm Bank Cottage doesn’t seem to exist anymore…strange. She returned to flax spinning and John was a
labourer. They lived in 10 High Street
from at least 1891 and this picture is of the High Street in the 1890s.
http://www.arbroathtimeline.moonfruit.com/1890-1899/4518446716
Georgina died in 1909 and was buried in the Eastern Cemetery.
Charles (1837-) was living
with his father until 1851, working as a machine flax dresser. By 1861 he had gone somewhere else, but
where? It is possible that he had died
as there is a burial of a Charles in 1868 in Arbroath, but where was he for
those seventeen years?
Looking outside the
UK, did he emigrate? There is a Charles
b.1840 in Massachusetts in 1870 but not thereafter. My best shot is a Charles in Essex in 1901
described as a retired soldier. Looking
through the Forces War Records there are two of them as possibilities in the
record for 1861. No idea if they are relevant and I would have to go to the
National Archives in Kew to check out their service record. More work required.
Scottish naming
practices
In order to see if we can
establish who my gggrandfather, Charles’s, parents and siblings might have been,
we need to fall back on naming practices.
The
Scottish ones were much the same as the Irish.
However, the latter first follow the paternal for both sons and
daughters before moving to the maternal.
Sons:
First
after paternal grandfather
Second
after maternal grandfather
Third
after father
Fourth
after father’s eldest brother
Daughters:
First
after maternal grandmotherSecond after paternal grandmother
Third after mother
Fourth after mother’s eldest sister
I
have read that in about 10% of cases the first and second paternal/maternal are
reversed.
Who might gggrandfather Charles’s
parents and siblings be?
Those of you less
obsessive about family history may be saying ‘Oh lord, what’s he going on
about?’, well like TV you can always turn the screen off! Or just move on to the next section. This bit is really for me to record my
research.
What the naming practices
suggest is that Christian names stayed in the family through the 19th
century, even if they didn’t follow the sequencing precisely.
There are records before
Charles b.1801 but they are sparse. I identified two possible parent combinations
for Agnes earlier but neither really fit the pattern.
Our couple’s sons in
order of birth are William, Robert, Henry, Charles, James. So Charles’s father ought to be a William and
Agnes’s a Robert, or, if we are one of the 10%, vice versa.
Their daughters are Jess
and Georgina. So if the naming practice
was being followed Charles’s parents were a William and Georgina; Agnes’s would
be Robert and Jess.
Going right back into the
17th century there is a William Tait who had four children between 1633
and 1648: Isobell, James, Marie, Janet.
He lived in Arbirlot which is about two and a half miles west of
Arbroath.
There is a William b.1761
in Arbroath who married a Christian Maver in 1784 and died in 1832.
But this is all very
tenuous, so let’s give up on that route.
We do, however, know Charles
and Agnes’s children, so we can test how far they went in following the
tradition on the paternal line.
Second son Robert, b.1829
had sons with Jessie Stuart: Jacob, Henry, Robert and a daughter Jessie. And with Isabella Johnston: Charles
& Alexander and daughters Mary, Isabella & Agnes.
First daughter Jess b.
1832 had sons with James Bell: Alexander and William and daughters Ann
Leuchars (James’s mother), Agnes Smith (her mother) so in the reversed
sequence but at least the right names.
Remember how earlier I said the mothers’ maiden names were used as
Christian names.
Second daughter Georgina
b.1835 married John McMillan and had sons John & Robert and daughters Mary,
Jane & Jessie
Charles gets one look in
and Agnes two, so one has to say…so much for naming practices in the next
generation.
But there is a lot of
concurrence in the names used for these two generations. Out of 30 names there are four times Jess(ie);
three Robert, Agnes and Mary; two Henry, Charles, James, Alexander & Jane –
so three quarters of the total.
Charles was born in 1801 in
St Vigeans which was a separate parish in the first half of the century. There aren’t many other Taits in this period there,
so I suspect all these people born or living in St Vigeans are related to him
either as uncles/aunts or siblings/cousins.
Uncles/aunts:
James b. 1770s and Jane
Gibb with son James b.1793
Jacob b.1770s and Agnes
Brown with sons Henry b.1803, David b.1810, Jacob b.1811, Alexander b.1813 and
daughter Elizabeth b.1806
Siblings/cousins:
Ann b.1802, David b.1813
The Tait name
The Tait name is of
Norse/Viking origin derived from teitr meaning glad or cheerful.
The
Taits were an armigerous (with a coat of arms) clan who hailed from the
area of Innerleithen, a
small town on the Scottish Borders. Tait was the second most significant name in
that town in the 1881 census. There is a
hill nearby called Pirn and this coat of arms is of the Taits of Pirn, possibly
from 17th century.
The
town first appears in manuscripts in the 12th century so perhaps
Taits were there much earlier as today’s form of surnames started to be adopted
from about the 12th century.
The
counties with the most Taits in the UK 1881 census were Northumberland 1440;
Edinburghshire (Midlothian) 1199; Lanarkshire 783; Shetland 528, Durham 521; Forfarshire
(Angus) only 160. It was the 479th
most common name.
Arbroath
and Inchcape
For
the last twelve years of my working life I was employed by a company called
Inchcape PLC, which was about 150 years old.
I knew there was a strong Scottish connection, and an Inchcape Rock, but
not much else.
I
was looking at today’s Arbroath street map and saw an Inchcape Park down by the seafront
and looked further.
Thanks to the pioneering spirit of a young engineer,
Robert Stevenson, who dreamed of building the impossible, a lighthouse was
planned on the 'Rock' that had claimed over 100 lives.
Despite many obstacles, Stevenson never lost faith in
his plan, and by February 1811, the lighthouse on Inchcape Rock was finished.
It is the oldest, sea-standing lighthouse in the world and today still saves
lives.
100 years later, inspired by this pioneering spirit,
Inchcape's founder James Lyle MacKay (1852-1932), when awarded a title for his
services to industry became the first 'Baron Inchcape of Strathnaver' and so
named the company that he led. He was
the second son of James Mackay of Arbroath a well-to-do shipmaster who died in
1862 while crossing the Atlantic.
Arbroath today
From the visitscotland site
“Arbroath, settled in the 12th century, lies 15
miles to the north east of Dundee.
The attractive old harbour of Arbroath remains in action and long sandy beaches and
stunning
sandstone cliffs stretch out on either side of the town. Arbroath Abbey, located
near the centre of the town, is also well worth a visit.
The town's most famous product is the Arbroath Smokie, which was
first created in the village of Auchmithie. It is line-caught haddock,
smoke-cured over smouldering oak chips, and still made here in a number of
family-run smokehouses tucked in around the harbour. One of the most approachable
and atmospheric is MM Spink's tiny whitewashed premises at 10 Marketgate; chef
and cookery writer Rick Stein described the fish here, warm from the smoke, as
"a world-class delicacy".
Wander
through the huddled cottages of the 'Fit o'the Toon' - the harbour district
where the smell of Arbroath smokies usually hangs heavy in the air. Beyond it,
the seafront road heads into Victoria Park. At the far end of the road, a path
climbs up over the red sandstone cliffs of Whiting Ness, stretching endlessly
onto the horizon and eroded into a multitude of inlets, caves and arches that
warrant hours of leisurely exploration.”
Looking at the electoral roll for 2003-10 there have
been 31 Taits still living in Arbroath in that period, so they are still very
much around.
Sources & acknowledgements
https://tour-scotland-photographs.blogspot.com/
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Elmbank+House,+St+Vigeans,+Arbroath+DD11+4RD/@56.5755244,-2.5938032,14z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48868d0136a2538b:0x4476fd5dd2d1c8ba!2sElmbank+House,+St+Vigeans,+Arbroath+DD11+4RD!3b1!8m2!3d56.5755106!4d-2.5933446!3m4!1s0x48868d0136a2538b:0x4476fd5dd2d1c8ba!8m2!3d56.5755106!4d-2.5933446
https://www.ancestor.abel.co.uk/Angus/intro.html#tak
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~steve/namingse.htm
https://www.inchcape.com/en/who-we-are/our-history.html#item-undefined
https://www.visitscotland.com/info/towns-villages/arbroath-p241591
http://britishsurnames.co.uk/surname/tait/1881census
APPENDIX
ONE
SHAMUS O'BRIEN
A traditional Irish folksong
Oh, sweet is the smile of the
beautiful morn,
As it peeps through the curtain of
night;
And the voice of the nightingale
singing his tune,
While the stars seem to smile with
delight.
Old nature now lingers in silent
repose,
And the sweet breath of Summer is
calm;
While I sit and wonder if Shamus
ever knows
How sad and unhappy I am!
Chorus.
Oh! Shamus O'Brien, why don't you
come home?
You don't know how happy I'll be;
I've but one darling wish, and
that is that you'd come,
And forever be happy with me!
I'll smile when you smile, and
I'll weep when you weep.
And I'll give you a kiss for a
kiss;
And all the fond vows that I've
made you, I'll keep,
What more can I promise than this?
Does the sea have such bright and
such beautiful charms
That your heart will not leave it
for me?
oh! why did I let you get out of
my arms,
Like a bird that was caged and is
free!- Chorus.
Oh! Shamus O'Brien, I'm loving you
yet,
And my heart is still trusting and
kind;
It was you who first took it. and
can you forget
That love for another you'd find?
No! no! if you break it with
sorrow and pain,
I'll then have a duty to do:
If you'll bring it to me, I'll
mend it again,
And trust it, dear Shamus, to you.- Chorus.
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