May 18th

William Fisken 1837 - 1917

On this day your great great grandfather, William Fisken, died.

This is not the William Fisken of steam-plough fame but of course they are related.  Plough William is GGgrandfather William's uncle.

The other interesting relationship is that GGgrandfather William is the brother of Flora Fisken who happens to be your great great grandmother.  His daughter married her son.  This means you are short a couple of great great grandparents!

Anyway, to William Fisken of the day.

All our Fiskens started off in Perthshire, Scotland and then some ended up some 50 odd miles east of there in Dunbartonshire and then some, like William, ended up in Newcastle upon Tyne in England.

I don't have an exact birth date for William so I'll write about his beginnings here.  He was born in Muthill, Perthshire in about 1837.  He was the fourth child of the five born to Peter Fisken, a sawyer and Elizabeth Crerar.  His sister Flora of above, was a year younger than him.  

William became a sawyer.  I'm not sure how long he remained in Perthshire but presumably until he was old enough to be off on his own.  We find him on the 1861 census already in Dunbartonshire - in Tarbet on Loch Lomond - lodging with his future parents-in-law, the Campbells.  He married one of their daughters, Lily Campbell in 1868.  I will already have written about the marriage last month as the date was April 30th.  But I will re-iterate here:  William and Lily were married in Dumbarton in the church which I visited last year.  What a treat that was!  William was 30 years old and Lily was 29.  She was a dressmaker.  Lily already had a child - Neil - who was 10 years old at time of the marriage.  Neil had his biological father's surname (MacDonald) but went by his mother's name Campbell.  William and Lily had six children between 1869 and 1882.  The fifth child was Catherine Fisken - our direct line - she is your great grandmother.

After Catherine - your great grandmother - married her first cousin William Fisken Glover of Northumberland/Newcastle in 1904, she moved to Newcastle.  This occured just shortly after her mother Lily died.  A few years later, William (the William Fisken of today's post) moved to Newcastle too.  And interestingly three of his adult children moved too.  So this was the migration of the Fisken name into the Newcastle area.  At one point he was the head of the household at 92 Georges Road in Newcastle and four of his adult chldren as well as his son-in-law William Glover and his and Catherine's three children (my dad's siblings) were living with him.  This is according to the census taken in 1911.  Sometime after that the Glover/Fisken couple (your great grandparents) moved to 88 Ethel Street (an address which remained "in the family" (though never owned) until 1960).  And it was at 88 Ethel Street that William Fisken died on May 18th in 1917.  He was 79 years old, a retired wood sawyer.  He died from bronchitis.

I've never been able to figure out where he is buried. I would like to do so.  It's one of my ongoing challenges!

I will just finish up with a brief update on those other children (other than great great grandmother Catherine) of William and Lily.  In birth order:

• Mary McFarlane Fisken married a seaman of Bristol and she lived down there (and hence set off the chain of events which caused me to have an aunt and uncle in Bristol)
• Elizabeth Lilly Allan Fisken went to Newcastle.  Never married.  She was the "Aunt Lil" my dad would speak of (I actually believed she raised my dad - but maybe not exactly).  Aunt Lil was still living when I was born but I have no personal memory of her.  Alison does of course.  She remembers her as very formidable lady who scared her half to death!
• William Fisken moved to Newcastle and worked in the shipyards.  He doesn't seem to have married - he certainly was still single at age 40.  I lose him after that.  
• Alan Campbell Fisken went to Australia!  It is two of his grandchildren in Adelaide with whom I'm in contact.
• And finally, Duncan Campbell Fisken went to Newcastle as part of the Fisken Wave.  He was a ship's carpenter.  He married Eva Ferguson in Newcastle when he was 29.  They moved south - first to Cheshire and then to the greater London area.  He died in 1953 at age 70.  He and Eva had one child - a son Alan who was killed in 1945.  He was a flying officer in the RAF.  He left a widow and a young son. 

Change of Pace

I'm going to change the terms of reference for this project.  By including all ancestors with whom we share "blood", the project is overwhelming - and more to the point, not achieving what I intended.

Because there are so many that come up I haven't had time to do what I wanted - to review what I already had documented and to research further.

So, I've decided that I'm going to just work on your pedigree line.  These are your direct ancestors.  So the parents of parents of parents, etc.  No siblings therefore no cousins.

May 9th

222 years ago today, on May 9th in 1797, George West was born.  He is your 5th great uncle.   His parents were Ferryden fishers John West and Janet Simpson - they are your 5xgreat grandparents.  They had eleven children including their second born George - but our blood line descends through his brother Alexander who was born a couple of years later.

As with a lot of the Ferryden folk, I can't determine with any confidence further information about George.  There are so many people with the same name.  Once civil registration was instituted in 1855 there is a better chance of confirming that you've got the right person.  i.e. in terms of marriage, rather than the church just jotting down George West of this parish married Annie Coull of this parish, we get information about their ages, their parents, where they lived etc.  Lots of clues to follow!  Same with death and birth certificates.

It didn't look like this in 1797 I'm sure!!

May 7th

On May 7th in 2004 Clive John Lincoln died.  Clive is your first cousin once removed.  He is my first cousin having been the child of a brother of my mother.

But I never knew him.  I knew of his existence but it wasn't until I began doing genealogy did I find anything out about him.  He was a child lost to the family through various circumstances I suppose but mainly because of the the war.

If you flip back to February 4th you can refresh yourself in regards to Clive's birth - and the April 4th post for his first marriage.  (We'll get to his second marriage in September).

But today we are noting his death.  I was very sad to find this certficiate because it meant I was never going to know him.  The certificate also made no mention of family.  The informant was a neighbour which may mean something or nothing of course.  At the time of his death he was a scaffolder and living at 13 Greywood Avenue in the Fenham district of Newcastle.  The cause of his death, as certified by a coroner (he had an inquest, the reason for which is maybe worth my while following up) was Left Sided Pneumothorax and Pulmonary Emphysema.  He was 64 years old.

May 6th

On May 6th in 1831 Hugh Morrice was born.  Hugh is your first cousin 4X removed being the son of 4th great aunt Margaret Matthew.  Hugh was Margaret and John Morrice's 4th of nine children.  He was born in a crofter's cottage in Greystone in the parish of Monquhitter.

Greystone and Bell Croft (geograph.org.uk)

May 5th

On Mary 5th in 1902 your great great grandfather William Glover died.  He was the much respected minister of the congregational church in Horsley in Northumberland.  William was born and raised in Castle Donington in the east midlands of England.  He was married twice.  First to Celia Adams with whom he had a daughter.  Sadly Celia died along with a second child.  William heeded the call to Northumberland to head the church at Horsley- which he did for 25 years during which time a new church was built "within budget"!  He married Flora Fisken who lived with her uncle, William Fisken (of plough fame) who was the minister of the presbyterian church in nearby Stamfordham.  William and Flora had two sons.  

On May 5th William was out and about visiting parishioners.  He stopped at Holeyn Hall cottage to rest where he "sighed and expired".  

He was 62 years old at the time of his death.  Cause was cardiac dilation syncope.  His funeral was reported in wonderful detail in the Hexham newspaper.  He is buried at the graveyard in nearby Ovingham.  

May 4th

May 4th in 1854 was when your fist cousin 3X removed, Alexander Ironside, was born in Monquhitter in Aberdeenshire.  The Ironside name came onto our family tree through the marriage of Alexander's father, also Alexander, to Jane Donald.  Alexander was their first born.  Eight siblings followed.  The family were crofters / farmers. 

And May 4th is also the day when your German grandparents got married.  Karl Muller and Klara Schwalb tied the knot in 1929.  I fear I know nothing about the marriage - but would assume it took place in Rheinbach or nearby - maybe in Fritzdorf where Oma was from.  At the time of the marriage Karl was 23, Klara was 22.