Multiple

Given the high mortality rates of the time, it is not surprising that multiple marriages feature in the earlier branches of my family tree. In most cases, these were due to a widower remarrying since childbirth remained risky well into the 20th century, and it is sobering to reflect on the fact that I owe my existence to the early death of more than one young woman as three of my 3x great grandmothers were second wives. 

In each case these second marriages took place within a few months of the previous wife’s burial which, to modern eyes, may feel like indecent haste – the stark reality of life for an agricultural labourer left with several young children was that the survival of his family depended upon finding a new wife to care for them. 

Amongst my direct ancestors I have found only one third marriage, that of Matthias Dowding who went on to marry Elizabeth Dibben in 1829 after the death of my 3x great grandmother – in all, he had 14 children by his three wives.

In this post, however, I am going to focus on the story of a more distant relation, who was also married three times: Margaret Clark, was the elder sister of my great grandfather, John, who was born around 1835 in Strichen, Aberdeenshire according to census records.  

She was the eldest child of my great great grandparents, William and Christian Clark, but in 1841 is living not with her parents on their croft in Longhill, Lonmay, but with her maternal grandparents, James Clark and Isabella Forman, and their daughter Isobel. This was a common arrangement at the time and, although it would be nice to think that the grandparents were simply helping out a hard-pressed young family, the reality is that Margaret was probably helping them by working in their home and on their land.

Extract from the 1841 Census for Lonmay, Aberdeenshire

I have already told the story of the disappearance of her father, William Clark, not long after this census was taken, and of the years that her mother subsequently spent as a pauper reliant on Poor Relief from the Parish. 

Margaret is living with her mother and her younger brother, William, in New Leeds in 1851 but by the time of the 1861 census, the family has moved to Longate, Peterhead. She is then described as a dressmaker, and has a daughter, Helen Anne Milne, who was born in Peterhead on 14 July 1857. The birth registration noted Helen Ann as illegitimate but, after a petition to the Sheriff’s Court, Robert Milne was recognised as her father. 

Extract from the Statutory Register of Births for Peterhead

On 12 November 1861, Margaret married her first husband, seaman John Fowlie, and in the following spring he set off for Greenland aboard the whaling ship, the Active. Margaret must have eagerly awaited his return in the summer, but in June 1862 news reached Peterhead that he had been aboard a boat that was believed lost.  

Peterhead Sentinel  5 June 1862 [Source: British Newspaper Archive]

The hope that the crew might have been picked up by another boat proved to be a false one as a Register of Effects of Deceased Seamen lists the five Peterhead men as “drowned at Greenland 17/4/62”. John Fowlie was just 25 years old and had been married to Margaret for five months.  

On 27 October 1864, Margaret married her second husband, blacksmith Daniel Sutherland, in Peterhead. They had a daughter, Williamina Christian Sutherland on 2 December 1867, but again any happiness was not to last as Daniel died in Montrose on 27 January 1868. 

At the time of the 1871 census, Margaret is a widow living with her two daughters and mother in Longate, Peterhead, but later that year she married her third and final husband, shoemaker Duncan McPherson. Their daughter, Margaret McPherson, was born on 26 March 1875.

Margaret’s eldest daughter, Helen Anne Milne, married John McLennan, a blacksmith, in 1878 and they had seven children, who were all born in Peterhead: Alexander (1879), Margaret (1880), William (1885, died in infancy), Ellen (1887), John (1889, died in infancy), Christina (1892) and John (1895, died in infancy).

The cruel hand of fate had not yet finished with poor Margaret Clark, however, as she was to bury all three of her daughters. The first was Williamina Sutherland, who died from tuberculosis, aged just 12, on 16 May 1880. Her sister Helen Anne Milne also succumbed to tuberculosis in Peterhead on 23 May 1895, aged 37, when her youngest child was only 3 years old.

The following year, third daughter, Margaret McPherson married James Ogilvie, but sadly this was to prove yet another short-lived marriage as James died in 1898, shortly before the birth of his youngest son, followed just a few months later by his wife – yet again the cause was tuberculosis in both cases. The Ogilvies left three orphaned children: James (1896), Margaret Lillias (1897) and Duncan (1898) who are living at 25 St Andrew Street, Peterhead with their grandparents, Duncan and Margaret McPherson, at the time of the 1901 census. 

Margaret Clark/Fowlie/Sutherland/McPherson died in Peterhead on 15 November 1907 at the age of 73 and her husband, Duncan McPherson, a few months later, on 15 July 1908. They are buried in a family lair in the Constitution Street Cemetery, Peterhead alongside Christian Clark, Williamina Sutherland, and two of Helen Ann Milne’s sons who died in infancy. A small marble plaque sits behind the headstone commemorating Margaret McPherson and her husband, James Ogilvie, whose burial place is currently unknown. 

Notes compiled by James Wohltmann, who is descended from Margaret Lillias Ogilvie, reveal that Margaret Mcpherson’s three children were taken to the Quarrier’s Orphan Home at Bridge-of-Weir by their cousin, Ellen Ann McLennan, on 27 December 1907 and that they were subsequently sent to Canada under the now infamous Home Children scheme through which more than 100,000 Scottish children were sent to the country between 1869 and 1930.