GENEALOGY
Finding Female Ancestors — Jean
I next want to look into my Scottish ancestry as part of my Finding Female Ancestors series. My paternal grandfather was Scottish, but the majority of his ancestry was Irish.
Post-1855 Statutory Scottish records typically hold a wealth of information. Times of birth or death are recorded, as well as the mother’s names on marriages. Some of the early records even make note of parents’ origins, number of children, and burial information. This is typically lacking on certificates in England and Wales.
As is quite common in Scotland (as well as some places in England), my grandad had a family surname as his middle name. The name was Carroll, the maiden surname of his grandmother, Agnes.
This is the story of Agnes’s mother.
Jane Duffy, or Jean as she was later known, was born about 1838 in Ireland. She’s considered to have been the youngest child of Margery (née Harkins) and Patrick Duffy. She and five of her siblings migrated to Scotland during the Great Famine.
The Duffy family settled in New Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, on the outskirts of Glasgow.
Little can be gleaned of Jean’s childhood. Her parents have proved difficult to trace. It is not known when they were born or died or even if they also made the journey to Scotland with their children. What is known, however, is that Jean lived with her brother Hugh and his family.
When Jean was around twenty years old, she gave birth to a little girl named Elizabeth. Jean worked as a papermill hand when she met Peter White, a ship’s carpenter. Their baby girl was illegitimate.
It’s unknown what became of Peter White, but he and Jean were never married.
Jean and Elizabeth moved to Rutherglen, even closer to Glasgow, when Elizabeth was still young. Jean found work in another papermill there, and it was in Rutherglen where she met Barny Carroll.
Bernard Carroll — known as Barny — was around ten years older than Jean. Like her, he’d been in Ireland, and they’d immigrated to Scotland around the same time. He was a redsman at the colliery, whose task was to clear any debris or detritus from the mine workings.
Barny had been married to a woman named Annie Dickson, and together, the couple had at least four children. Poor Annie died on 4th April 1860. The doctors had discovered a cancerous tumour on her uterus about a year before. She was around 32 years old when she sadly passed away.
Presumably, the Carroll family was already known to Jean at that time because, just three months later, she married the newly widowed Barny at the Catholic church in Rutherglen, fast by anyone’s standards.
Jean was only eight years older than Barny’s eldest son.
On 11th January 1862, Jean gave birth to the first of her and Barny’s children. They named the baby girl Agnes, and she was soon baptised at Rutherglen.
Shortly after her first birthday, Agnes took ill and sadly died. Jean probably thought it was a common cold to begin with. But Agnes’s runny nose and rasping breath soon developed into a nasty cough. A barking cough is a distinctive sign of croup.
Just over a month later, Jean gave birth for the third time. This was her first boy, whom she and Barny named Patrick.
Another baby girl followed, and perhaps wanting to honour and remember the life of the beloved little girl they’d lost, they named her Agnes. This Agnes is my great-great-grandmother.
Six more children followed for the couple, though sadly, four died. Of the nine children Jean and Barny had together, only four survived to adulthood — Patrick, Agnes, Edward, and Robert.
It’s interesting to note that almost all of the children the Carrolls lost died of disease or infection. This probably speaks to the environment and living conditions, the poky tenements and miner’s dwellings, and the healthcare available at the time.
Though she had married and was living away from her siblings, they and Jean remained close, bonded by their shared experience of what they had endured in Ireland and their move to Scotland, perhaps. Jean named several of her sons after her brothers, and her siblings acted as godparents — or sponsors — for her children.
Jean’s husband Barny died around 7:30 on the morning of 5th March 1887. He’d contracted phthisis — what we know as tuberculosis today — about a year prior. It’s a wasting illness. He’d have lost weight, felt fatigued, and been plagued with sweats and a persistent cough.
Jean still lived with her youngest sons. Like their father, they became coal miners after they left school. To supplement the household’s income, Jean opened the house to lodgers. This was how she met her second husband.
Patrick Fern was a checkweighman at the colliery, charged with weighing all the coal mined to determine wages due to respective miners. This was often an elected position.
He and Jean were married on 6th August 1891.
It’s safe to assume, I think, that Jean had a bit of a temper and a rather colourful vocabulary. The following appeared in the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser, 9th November 1901:
USING THREATENING LANGUAGE. — At Airdrie J.P. Court on Monday, Jane Duffy or Ferns, wife of Patrick Ferns, checkweighman, 50 Kirkwood Rows, was charged with cursing, swearing and using threatening and abusive language and conducting [herself] in a very disorderly manner in Kirkwood Rows on Wednesday, 23rd October. She had four previous convictions, and was fined 5s, or three days.
The surname is slightly different, but it’s definitely her. The name of her husband, his job, and their address is the same.
Jean died on 7th December 1908 at 11 Braidfauld Street, Tollcross, which is believed to have been the house of her son, Patrick. It was noted on her death certificate that she’d been diagnosed with bronchitis two years before, and it was a chronic issue for her.
Her body was laid to rest two days later at the nearby St Peter’s, Dalbeth Cemetery in common ground.
References:
- The birth certificate of Elizabeth White, 1858, New or East Kilpatrick, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
- The death certificate of Ann Carrol, 1860, Rutherglen, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
- The marriage certificate of Bernard Carrol and Jane Duffie, 1860, Rutherglen, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
- The death certificate of Agnes Carrol, 1863, Rutherglen, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
- The death certificate of Bernard Carrol, 1887, Bothwell, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
- The marriage certificate of Patrick Fearon and Jane Duffy, 1891, Shettleston, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
- District News, Kirkwood, Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser, 9th November 1901, britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
- The death certificate of Jane Ferns, 1908, Shettleston, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
