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My great, great grandmother’s birth was
recorded in 1843. She was Ann or Annie Grieve from Dunure
Harbour, the youngest child of John and Mary (née Andrews)
who married in Maybole on 2 July 1826. Ann’s first child was
my great grandfather, David Grieve. He took his
mother’s name because he was a bastard. It seems Ann went
into service and we can only speculate as to who the father
might have been! David sailed to the Far East and Australia
in the 1890s, came home briefly at the turn of the century
when his daughter was born and worked in the gas works in
Kilmun. Later he went back to sea on steam ships back
and forth to New York and the West Indies between 1901 and
1910, He subsequently was a Special Constable in Glasgow in
1917 but I believe he died before the end of World War I,
although I can find no record of his death. I did not know
David but his wife, my great grandmother lived long enough
to know my children. She told me nothing about David’s
origins but our Auntie Tote (Sarah Henderson Roberts née
Galloway) , a half sister-in-law and at one time our last
surviving relative in Scotland, who was a little younger,
told me that Ann had 6 children – 3 illegitimate (Grieves)
and three legitimate (Roberts) and I have been able to
verify this. She married James Roberts, a widower and older
man, when she was 29 (although pretending to be 32). When
Ann married she took a middle name “Rodger”. Frances and Ann
Rodger (sisters, dressmakers, probably daughters of Janet
Rodger) may have been next door neighbours in the
fishermen’s cottages at Dunure Harbour. Later she married
again following James’s death. I’d be fascinated to know
anything that might be known locally about Ann and her
fisherfolk family.
Ian MacFarlane.
ian_macfarlane@onetel.com |
