Working out how my paternal grandmother, Flora Clark, ended up in Portsmouth, hundreds of miles from her family in Scotland, was one of the biggest challenges I faced when I began researching.
This photograph, taken around 1919, is the only image I have of her.
I knew that she had been born in Glasgow in 1890 and finding her in the 1891 census proved straightforward as she was living at 4 Reid Street, Maryhill with her father, John Clark, and five of her siblings.
Her mother, Barbara Ann McDonald, was a patient in the Western Infirmary, where she was to die just a few weeks later, aged 47.
When it came to the 1901 census, however, I hit a brick wall as John Clark was living alone in a lodging house in Kelvin Street, and there was no sign of Flora anywhere in the UK records.
If it were not for a Poor Relief application that Flora made in 1907 to pay for hospital treatment, I might never have unravelled her story, but the record held by the Mitchell Library in Glasgow included a list of foster parents: a series of three short term placements, followed by “Portsmouth, England c/o Ferguson, 10 yrs.”.
There were five Ferguson families with links to Scotland in the 1901 census for Portsmouth, and just one of them had a daughter of about the right age – 9 year-old Martha Ferguson, born in Glasgow, living with her parents, David and Eliza, and a 26 year-old sister, Mary. When I shared this discovery with my father, he went quiet for a moment before saying “ah, when I was a child I remember being confused because some people called my mother Flora, and some people called her Martha”.
Many other pieces of the puzzle slotted into place after this. My father spent a lot of time as a child with “Aunt Mary” and her husband, Harry Hall, recalling that she had a strong Scottish accent and that her maiden name was Mary Catherine Scott. Through baptism, census and marriage records I discovered that Mary was actually David Ferguson’s stepdaughter, and that he was the fourth husband of her mother, Eliza Elkins. Flora gave the Hall’s Portsmouth address as her residence when she married Frederick Maitland in 1919, and widow Eliza Ferguson was living with them at the time of the 1911 census.
As always, answering one question raises many others, not least when and why did David Ferguson move his family from Glasgow to Portsmouth ?
Born in Ireland around 1851 according to the census, he became a labourer in Glasgow metal working foundries and is described as a fitter’s labourer in the 1901 census for Portsmouth. Dockyard records show that David was employed there as a skilled labourer from 1897 until 1905, when he was made redundant, and an entry in the 1897 Electoral Register for Glasgow suggests that the Ferguson’s probably left the city shortly before he began working in Portsmouth. Although I will never know what prompted him to take Flora to live in Portsmouth, it was not uncommon in the late 19th century for working class Scottish emigrants to seek the higher wages, better housing and healthier living conditions on offer in England.
By 1907, David and Eliza had returned to Glasgow with Flora as “Mrs Ferguson, 51 Arden Street” is recorded as a family member in the 1907 Poor Relief Application, and David Ferguson is listed at that address in the 1908 Electoral register. Mary had remained in Portsmouth with her husband, and her parents’ time back in Glasgow proved short-lived as they were back in Portsmouth by 1910 when David Ferguson died, aged 59.
Eliza Ferguson died in Portsmouth in 1918 – her death certificate shows her age as 77, but as she was born in Ireland around 1833, she would actually have been closer to 85. An analysis of the records relating to her four marriages reveals that she “lost” several years when she married David Ferguson in 1877, presumably in an attempt to reduce their almost 20-year age gap.
Flora died in Portsmouth on 27 November 1930, the day before her 40th birthday, when my father was just 6 years old.
Sleuthing Notes 