Maternal Ancestors
The McCallum family of Dunfermline, circa April 1901. My granny, Mary Ann Murray McCallum is standing, back row, left, while my Great Aunt Jenny, the suffragette (jailed at Holloway in 1908) is at the back, standing on the right. My great-grandfather was a mason who worked on building the Forth Bridge. The parents and Jenny moved from Inverkeithing just before my granny was born.
My mother's father, Peter, worked in the West Fife coal mines and on the railways, after an army career, from the age of 14, which took him to India and South Africa. His mother, Montgomery Chrystal, and father, James, also worked in the Fife mines. Both were dead by 1886, when Peter was still a baby, and he was brought up by his elder sisters. His mother had interesting family connections, including Walter Muir, who emigrated to the USA in 1848, dying in Cedar City, Utah, in 1857, and who was a Mormon pioneer. Walter's grandparents were my g-g-g-g-g-grandparents! Here are Peter Williamson and Mary Ann Murray McCallum, with my sister, Sheila.
My mother's mother's father was John McCallum, a stonemason who worked on the Forth Bridge. His family lived in the parish of Kilmichael Glassary, Argyll, at a place called Nether Rhudle, less than a mile from Dunadd, seat of the original Scottish kings of Dalriada.
Kilmichael Glassary Parish Kirk, November 22nd 2005.
My mother (with bow in hair, left of centre) with her two brothers, sister, two McCallum aunts and assorted cousins.
My mother (the youngest) with her two brothers, John and James, and sister Jenny Williamson.
John McCallum's wife, Janet Hutchison, was a Fifer through and through. A very formidable woman according to my own mother.
Jenny McCallum, my granny's elder sister, in her prison outfit after she was jailed at Holloway in 1908 for suffragette activities.
I remember my granny very well.
Mary Ann Murray Williamson, my grandmother, wearing a locket owned by her grandmother, and now in the possession of my sister.
It turns out that her name is derived from her own grandmother, Mary Ann Murray, the daughter of John Murray, a sailor of Elie, Fife, and Mary Ann Dennis, of Burnham Overy, Norfolk, who married in 1819.