Compiled by Morag T Fyfe
Welcome to Grave Matters No 5. We have just passed our first anniversary of indexing the Burial Registers of the Glasgow Necropolis as one of the indexers pointed out to me recently. Indexing began at June 1842 and I am pleased to say that we have reached the end of 1844 and just started on 1845. This also marks the end of volume 2 of the Burial Registers and the start of volume 3. The entries for 1957 to 1967 have also been added, together with other entries scattered through the Burial Registers. The indexers and I have indexed 2690 entries though, unfortunately, this does not equate to 2690 completely new entries in the database, but at least persons already in the database have had more information about them added.
Tragic drowning accident
There is a poignant entry in the Burial Registers against 27th June 1844 which records the accidental drowning of Mrs Jane Arthur Craig, aged 18 years, wife of Walter Baxter, Esq. Jane’s death caught the attention of several newspapers both Scottish and English including The Scotsman, Caledonian Mercury, Greenock Advertiser, Glasgow Herald, Perthshire Courier, the Morning Post and Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. The reports are virtually identical and presumably copy that in the Glasgow Herald which was the earliest to be published, on 24th June. A typical one is as follows:
On Saturday last, a most melancholy accident took place near the Falls of Clyde. On the morning of that day a small party of friends left Glasgow for the purpose of visiting the Falls and spending a holiday, amongst whom were Mr and Mrs Walter Baxter, of Buchanan Street. After having seen the two lower Falls, the party separated, one portion proceeding upwards to visit the Bonnington Fall, while Mr and Mrs Baxter and a friend remained behind. They seated themselves on the banks of the river waiting the return of their friends, when Mrs Baxter expressed a wish to see Wallace’s Cave, which was below, and in the immediate vicinity. She accordingly went to the spot, accompanied by the friend already alluded to, and having surveyed the locality, requested that he would call her husband to participate in the sight. Leaving Mrs Baxter seated by the river’s brink, the gentleman retired a few paces to call her husband, and, on his return, found that in the very brief interval that had elapsed, Mrs Baxter had disappeared. Whether the unfortunate lady had fainted and unconsciously fallen from the top of the rock, or whether she had risen and approached too near the brink and fallen into the flood, must forever remain a mystery – for the only trace left behind her was her handkerchief, lying upon the rocky seat which she had occupied when her friend proceeded to call her husband. A search was immediately made for the body, which was not, however, discovered till early the following (Sunday) morning, and within a few yards of the place where the accident happened. Mrs Baxter had been married only nine months before.
Jane Arthur Craig was born on 24th October 1825 to James Craig and Margaret Aitken Blackburn. She married Walter Baxter on 13th September 1843, a month before her eighteenth birthday. She was buried by her husband in Alpha 42, the first interment in that lair which was probably bought for the purpose. Walter remarried, died in 1869 and was buried in the family lair. Incidentally Jane’s parents owned a lair in Epsilon, as did a brother, while a second brother had a lair in Gamma.
James Dykes Black, MC
On 14th October 2018, one of our First World War casualties was honoured by a short ceremony at his graveside by members of 6 SCOTS C Company. They were honouring two of their forbears, who both served in the HLI in the First World War and are buried in Glasgow, as part of the British Army’s Operation Reflect. Ceremonies were held in Lambhill Cemetery for Pte Lewis Cohen and in the Glasgow Necropolis for Major James D Black, M.C. Died 5th July 1918.
For the Necropolis ceremony, 6 SCOTS were joined by members of the HLI Association and the University of Glasgow chaplain, Reverend Stuart MacQuarrie. Annette Mullen and Scott Kerr represented the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis and laid a wreath at the grave of Major Black, MC.
Are people buried where expected?
In memory of JAMES CAMPBELL, Merchant in Glasgow, born 20th April 1736 died 29th September 1800
and of MARION MUIRHEID, his wife born 15th December 1739 died 15th July 1815.
Also of their children;
JOHN, Lt Col H.E.I.C.S. born 7th May 1764 died 31st January 1832.
CHARLES, Surgeon H. E. I. C. S. of Sumatra,
born 13th January 1768 died at Calcutta 19th January 1808.
ANNE, born 25th October 1769 died 22nd February 1842; widow of LOCKHART MUIRHEAD, LLD,
MARGARET, born 16th January 1770 died 8th July 1819.
JANE born 7th November 1773,
ANDREW DONALDSON born 1st May 1777, died 2nd December 1853.
LILLIAS born 15th May 1781, died 12th July 1852.
CHARLOTTE MARION born 17th September 1782, died 4th September 1834,
wife of JAMES REDDIE, Advocate
and eight others who died young.
In compartment Delta there is a Campbell family stone and anyone finding it would be delighted with the wealth of information given and might make the assumption that the persons named on the stone, who died after the opening of the Necropolis in 1833, are buried beneath it. A check of the Index to the Burial Registers shows, however, that no burials have been made in this lair and it seems likely that a descendant of the family bought the lair in order to commemorate the family’s links with Glasgow. It is a pity the Necropolis can’t claim this family as Marion Muirheid, Mrs James Campbell seems to have been a cousin of James Watt, the inventor. One of her daughters Charlotte Marion Campbell, Mrs Reddie was the mother of James Campbell (Reddie) a writer and translator of erotica. Ann Campbell, Mrs Lockhart Muirhead, another daughter, married the first Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Glasgow and first Keeper of the Hunterian Museum.
Another example of someone not being buried where expected is Charlotte Mary Ann Alexander who died on 6th October 1844 aged either 3 or 4 months. There is a stone on Sigma 53 which lists Walter and Charlotte Alexander and their family including Charlotte Mary Ann but when one of the indexers found the entry for Charlotte’s burial it turned out she had been buried in Sigma 3. Furthermore there was a note against the entry that Charlotte’s remains were removed from Sigma 3 and reburied in Quintus 103 on 27th April 1893. It turned out that the remains of Thomas and Janet Neilson and John Thomson, who had been buried in Sigma 3 between 1838 and 1859, were also removed to Quintus 103 that same day.
To confuse matters further there is a 20th century stone on Sigma 3 where Charlotte Mary Ann was originally buried for a family by the name of Wylie; one of the four names is that of Captain Robert Downie Wylie KIA 1917. On investigating further I found that at the time of the four early interments 1838-1859 the lair belonged to Thomas Neilson. It looks as though the Wylie family bought the lair from the heirs/executors of Thomas Neilson and the existing burials were exhumed and reburied in the more modest surroundings of Quintus 103; there is no stone on that plot at the moment and I doubt there ever was one.
To add another layer of complication to the story, young Charlotte was named after her mother Charlotte Mary Ann Thomson who died two years after her daughter in 1846. Her husband, Walter Alexander, commemorated her on the stone on the family lair (Sigma 53) but the Burial Registers show she was actually buried in the Thomson family lair in Kappa 27 though she is not named on the stone. The upshot of all this is that members of the same Alexander family can be found in graves in three separate compartments in the Necropolis.
John Pollock
I am pleased to say I have received some very helpful feedback to my piece on John Pollock in Grave Matters 4 and hope to add a Profile of him to our collection on the website.
Black History Month
Black History month is held in October each year during which there are talks, walks and other events. There are a number of slave owners buried in the Necropolis and many others who benefitted from the slave economy.
In a prominent position above the main carriage way leading up to the summit of the Necropolis, in Compartment Beta, is a weathered stone commemorating Albertus Thierens and his wife Jane Margaret Bell. The inscription on the stone tells us that Albertus came from Wesselvaleigheid [Wisselvalligheid], Demerara [Guyana] but died in Glasgow on 3rd September 1845. His wife Jane predeceased him, dying at Wessselvaleigheid, Demerara on 29th October 1842.
Wisselvalligheid was a sugar plantation on Leguan Island, Guyana owned by the Thieren family since the early 1800s at least. In 1815 it had 83 slaves and produced 220,068 pounds of sugar and 3142 gallons of rum. By 1832 there were 175 slaves (80 females and 95 males) and, although it is difficult to interpret the records on the Legacies of British Slave-ownership website, it seems Albertus Thierens received a minimum of £4779 4s 5d in compensation in 1836 for his half share of the slaves in Wisselvalligheid and another half share in plantation Maria Elizabeth.
Not surprisingly the Thierens family had close links with Glasgow and the Clyde. Matthias Thierens, brother to Albertus, graduated MD from the University of Glasgow in 1816 and took a Port Glasgow girl, Elizabeth Kirkland, back to Demerara as his wife. Albertus’ own wife was also Scottish being the daughter of Thomas and Margaret Bell and seems to have come from either Port Glasgow or Greenock.
Sometime after his wife’s death in 1842 Albertus came to live in Glasgow with his only child Cornelia. On her father’s death Cornelia seems to have lived with her aunt by marriage, Elizabeth Thierens, until her marriage to Dr James A Sewell in 1862. Four years after her marriage she died of consumption in Canada leaving behind two small children.
There were two further burials after that of Albertus in 1845 though neither woman is named on the stone. In 1850 his mother in law, Margaret Bell, was buried and she was followed in 1872 by Albertus’ sister in law Elizabeth, widow of his brother Matthias, who had cared for his orphaned daughter Cornelia after his own death.
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Anyone who would like to help indexing the Burial Registers is very welcome to join us by contacting me at research@glasgownecropolis.org