About the Family of Robert Young and Isabella Knox

I wrote about my great grandfather, Robert Alexander Young, here. Now it's time to write about the family he and my great grandmother, Isabella Knox, had. Robert and Isabella married in Berwick upon Tweed in 1884. They had ten children:

• Margaret Knox 1885-1950
• Elizabeth 1888-1890
• Dorothy 1889-1967
• Henry (Harry) 1891-1979
• Robert 1893-1964
• Isabella (Izzy) 1897-
• Elizabeth (Lizzie) 1899-1986
• William John (Willie) 1901-1977
• Peter 1904-
• Agnes 1905-

Censuses from 1891 to 1911 document that Robert, Isabella and their lived in different houses throughout their marriage, but most often in houses in the Greenses, as his parents and grandparents did, and where in fact generations of Youngs lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps even in the 17th century. I am in awe of knowing that my ancestors lived in one place for centuries.

The Greens - Low Greens and High Greenses - about 1897

I wrote here about the Berwick house where my mother was born in 1919 -- not in the Greenses.

My grandmother, Dorothy, made her life in Canada, along with her sister Lizzie, who married and lived in Montreal. Their sisters Izzy and Aggie would visit Montreal and return to Berwick, more than once through the years. I remember my mother speaking with them on the phone, but never met them. Their brothers and sister all stayed in Berwick or elsewhere in northern England, to the best I've been able to discover. I'm still researching some of them.

Recently, I've connected with the grandchildren of my grandmother's oldest sister, Margaret. One grand daughter shares my mother's smile, which my niece, her grand daughter shares. That's magical.

The never ending story continues ....





© Margaret Dougherty 2016-2020  All rights reserved

Crowded living quarters in working class northern England

Google Streetview is a beautiful thing.

I knew from statutory birth and death records and newspapers that my mother was born at and my great grandfather, Robert Alexander Young, died at 45A High Greens in Berwick upon Tweed in 1919 and 1915 respectively. I wondered if it was still there now.

The image on the right is on Google Streetview, time-stamped June 2016, and the Friends of Berwick and District Museum and Archives has confirmed to me that it still stands today.

45A was the upper flat, accessed by the paned dark brown door on the right in the photo. I'm told that as of 2010, the flat consisted of two bedrooms, kitchen, bath and living room. It's not clear if this has been enlarged since 1919.

I wrote about my great grandfather Robert Alexander Young here in 2016. My great grandparents and family are last recorded in the 1911 census as living at 53 Low Greens. I imagine that the flat there was a similar size. Look at the number of people living there then -- all ten of them. Five children still at school, three young adults/teenagers, and my great grandparents.

1911 Census, 53 Low Greens, Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland, England

The only one missing in the above census is my grandmother Dorothy, who had emigrated to Canada in 1908.

I'm not sure when the family moved from Low Greens to High Greens, but by the time of my great grandfather's death on 22 Feb 1915, except for my great aunt, Margaret Knox Young, who married in November 1914, they were at 45A. I'm sure the flat then would have been one large living/cooking/eating space, butI hope there were the two bedrooms. And don't forget that there would not have been indoor plumbing at that time.

My grandmother Dorothy returned to Berwick from Canada in August 1915 while my grandfather was in France with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, living with her parents at 45A. She stayed there until August 1919, when she sailed to Montreal with my mother, who was then just three months old. My great uncle Henry married in 1918, but do the math -- 45A was still a crowded household in 1919.

I cannot begin to fathom how crowded living conditions were in working class England at that time. My grandmother laboured and gave birth in a very full house, with I imagine very little privacy.

I'm beginning to think that my grandmother left for Canada alone at 19 simply to have more living space. I think that's what I would have done. No, really.

The never ending story continues....



© Margaret Dougherty 2016-2018 All rights reserved

Finding Aggie Pate and expanding my DNA pool

One of the stories I remember my mother and aunt telling was about their cousin Aggie Pate, who lived in California but visited Montreal, and by all accounts, was a ton of fun. But as usual, any specifics about her life were absent from those stories. I wondered often if she was my mother's auntie Aggie, but was assured decidedly not -- Aggie Pate was not at all like auntie Aggie.

As usual, the repeated use of the same names in my family often caused confusion in trying to keep it all straight. In the case of the name Agnes, this came from my 3rd great grandmother, Agnes Cowe Young (abt 1800-1866), who was called Nancy. None of her several grand daughters and daughters named Agnes had Nancy as a nickname. All were called Aggie. Confusion all around!

My most recent lost in genealogy research day--there can be many--came about inadvertently. Don't they all?

Berwick Advertiser
13 Jun 1882

A few days ago, I was researching my Youngs in really old issues of the Berwick Advertiser on Find My Past when I came across the 1882 marriage notice of one of my grandmother's aunts, Elizabeth Young (1857-1930) to Matthew Cockburn (1856-1914).

After adding this information to my tree, I found so much more on Ancestry and Find My Past, that I soon had added their eight children born between 1883 and 1901, only two of whom died in early childhood. It's interesting that although Lizzie and Matthew were married at the local register office, they had all of their children baptized at the local Anglican church.

Matthew Cockburn died in 1914 in Berwick upon Tweed, but before he died, his eldest surviving daughter, Agnes or Aggie left for better opportunities in Canada, arriving in 1911 in Montreal, where my grandmother, her cousin, Dorothy was by then living. One brother followed in 1914, and the rest of the siblings, including their mother, arrived in 1920 and 1922, never again to return to live in Berwick upon Tweed.

I can well imagine that they saw my grandparents, mother and aunt often during the 1920s in Montreal. Five married in Montreal, in all cases to men and women from Scotland. One, Peter Young Cockburn (1892-1949), served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, signing his attestation papers in Montreal just a few short months after he arrived from England in 1914. All but one of the Cockburn family, including great auntie Lizzie, moved on to California, settling and staying in the Los Angeles area for the rest of their lives.

Among those who married in Montreal was Lizzie and Matthew's daughter Agnes Young Cockburn (1884-1953), or Aggie, who married a man named Tom Pate in 1914. I had found Aggie Pate. It's one of those ah hah/sit back in your chair and push away from your keyboard to feel the enormous satisfaction of finding a lost relative. That feeling never gets old.

Here is Aggie's 1928 certification of naturalization signed in Los Angeles. American records like these are big finds, especially for women, who are so often overlooked. Aggie was petite, just 5'2".

Aggie and Tom Pate travelled to Los Angeles from Montreal with my grandmother's Auntie Lizzie in 1927. Sadly, Auntie Lizzie died less than three years after that move, in 1930. She was able to know her three small grandchildren though.

I've added all of these Cockburn cousins and their spouses to my tree. Several were childless though, including Aggie and Tom Pate. The two who had children? They had small families. All the Cockburns and their spouses are buried in the same Los Angeles-area cemetery. Still, in adding all of these new relatives to my tree, I'm hoping that my DNA matches will increase.

These discoveries reminded me--not for the first time--to remember to go through newspapers online for clues.

The never ending story continues....

© Margaret Dougherty 2016-2017 All rights reserved

Small houses filled with many people

Through the Berwick 900 blog that I discovered a few months ago, I'm learning about how my maternal Young ancestors lived. The Greenes are often mentioned in blog posts there.

My maternal great grandparents and 2nd great grandparents all lived and their families lived at various addresses in the Greenses.

Good people, volunteers working on the Berwick 900 Our Families project, have researched the families living at many specific addresses in the Greenses over three censuses and electoral registers.

The results of this mapping exercise are described in this post, and the compiled information is now on the Friends of Berwick and District Museum and Archives website. I'm now seeing that in 1891, three other families besides my grandmother and her family, which included her paternal grandparents, all lived at 71 Low Greens. Those four families totalled 13 people! Now, I don't think that the houses they lived in were that large, so I can't begin to imagine how they lived.

But I see this repeated in other households. Often families and extended families all lived under one very cramped roof. As offspring grew up, they may or may not have moved into their own quarters. What you see is that the same address remained the home to a family for generations.

I wonder why my grandmother Dorothy Young (1889-1968) was born at 61 Castlegate and not in the Greenses? Two years later, when the 1891 census was done, the family was at 71 Low Greens, living with my 2nd great grandparents, Peter Cowe Young and Elizabeth Diana Patterson. I'll have to find out who else lived at 61 Castlegate to solve that mystery.

I see from maps that the workhouse was very near the Greenses. I'll be exploring this further, now that I know my 2nd great grandfather Henry Knox died there. Were other of my ancestors ever in the workhouse?

The never ending story continues....

Robert Alexander Young (1854-1915) of the Greenses in Berwick

My maternal great grandfather, Robert Alexander Young, father of my grandmother Dorothy, was a railway man in Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland on the border between England and Scotland. He was the second eldest of eight children born to Peter Cowe Young (1828-1903) and Elizabeth Diana Pattison or Patterson or Paterson (1830-1903).

The Young and Pattison names go back centuries in Berwick, as do all the names in my ancestry there. I've traced them back to the mid to late 1600s. They all had large families in each generation, and most stayed in the area. Apart from the name Robert, the families used the same names, generation to generation: Peter, George, Clement, Margaret, Henry.....

Researching these lines, I can say, is a challenge. I continue to explore these I actually have two Pattison lines in Berwick, and they must be related since the same names (Clement, Elizabeth) appear in both lines, about 100 years apart.

Berwick Advertiser, 26 Feb 1915

My great grandfather's generation was the first to stray from the main occupation in Berwick before the industrial age -- fishing. Robert worked for the North British Railway, first as a fireman when he was a young man, and eventually as an engine driver. I know from censuses completed from 1841 going forward that my Young ancestors were all fishers.

Above, you can see the notice that appeared in the local newspaper when Robert died in 1915.

Berwick Advertiser 5 Mar 1915

This is the note of thanks that my great grandmother Isabella Knox Young (1862-1937) placed following his death.

Many branches of the Young family (and there were many branches!) lived on the same streets in central Berwick: Low Greens and High Greens. Sometimes these streets were for simplicity sake, even in census and other official documents, just called the Greenses or the Greens.

The Youngs seem to have moved about from house to house, back and forth, street to street, judging from censuses, as family sizes grew and shrank. You'll see that reflected in these death notices for Robert's mother Elizabeth...

Berwickshire News 7 Apr 1903

Berwickshire News & General Advertiser 15 Dec 1903

  

...and for his father, Peter Cowe Young. Elizabeth died at one address, while Peter died nine months, one number over, across the street. No doubt Peter was living with other family after Elizabeth died earlier in the year. But isn't it nice how this happened -- family was always cared for and housed, is the impression that I get. There was always family close by.

Berwick Advertiser 21 Jan 1937

Berwick Advertiser 21 Jan 1937

My Youngs were still living in the Greens as late as the 1937 and beyond. After my great grandmother Isabella died in 1937, her son Peter (1904-?) placed this note of thanks and also this death notice in the same edition.

It's definitely a bygone era when family members lived close by each other. It must have been nice though, to be able to run a few doors down to chat with an aunt or see your gran.

The never ending story continues ....

An intrepid and brave young woman

My maternal grandmother, Dorothy Young (1889-1967), set out from Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, England on her own, bound for Canada as an 19-year old girl looking for adventure in September 1908.

Dorothy aged about 30

Dorothy was the second eldest daughter of Robert Alexander Young (1854-1915) and Isabella Knox (1862-1937). The Youngs and Knoxes go back generations in Berwick. She originally went to Canada for a nanny position in Brockville, Ontario, but quickly grew bored with that and for a time worked as a cook in an Ontario lumber camp (!!) where she was the only woman, before settling in Montreal by 1911,where she found work as a servant. In Montreal, Dorothy became part of a circle of other Berwick immigrants, as I’ve found in news items in old issues of the Berwick Advertiser. She attended socials with her circle of friends and attended weddings and other events as far away as Toronto with her friends. At some point in Montreal, she and my grandfather John Matheson met. 

Dorothy returned to England in August 1915 to marry John in London, while he was on a short leave from the Canadian Expeditionary Force. She remained in Berwick throughout the First World War, seeing John when he had leave. My mother, Isobel Young Matheson, was born in Berwick in May 1919. 

In August of that year, Dorothy and my infant mother sailed for Montreal. Dorothy never returned to Berwick, but exchanged many letters with her mother and sisters. Two of her sisters visited Montreal through the years, and one also joined her there, marrying and having a family. The never ending story continues....