April 5th

On this day in  1985 - just a few days after you were born in fact - Helen Christie Paterson died.  Helen is your first cousin twice removed.   She is the daughter of Elspet Christie (grandma's auntie) and Joseph Paterson.  And while I don't think I ever met her (though it's possible I did when I was a baby) I know her as the person my mum called "Nellie".  Nellie and her husband Ian (known as Fergie - Ferguson being his middle name) were on the Christmas card list and were spoken of in our house when I was growing up.  They had a child called Ian, born in 1941, who was profoundly disabled.  In 1985, on May 1st,  Mum and Alex went to the UK and spent quite a few days in Aberdeenshire (in Turriff specifically) with various cousins.  They had missed Nellie but they visited Ian who was now hospitalized.  His mum had done everything for him for 40 years and while he was seemingly non-responsive he understandably lost his ability to live once his mum died.  And so Ian died a few weeks later.

There's quite a gang of family in the town of Turriff.  Apart from its fame as a place where our family have lived (and still live I imagine) 😇 it is also known for the "Turro Coo".  Here's the story:

The Turra Coo Monument celebrates a famous incident in 1913 whereby a cow was taken from the farm, then owned by Robert Paterson, by Sheriff's Officers when he refused to co-operate with Lloyd George's National Insurance Act. He was at the centre of a popular protest which claimed the compulsory contributions towards a scheme which provided unemployment and medical benefits were too high, because it was a service that farmers and farm labourer would rarely use. The seizure of the cow by the authorities and its subsequent auctioning in Turriff brought a riot in the town. The cow was eventually bought by Paterson's supporters and returned to the farm, where it died six years later.