1900 Jessie Hunter Brown

 

Jessie Hunter Brown was born on 21st June 1876 at Boathouse, Blantyre. She would have eight brothers and sisters, all born at Boatland between 1877 and 1889. Jessie, or Jen as she was known is standing in the ferryboat on the Clyde around 1900, the photo taken on the Blantyre side looking across to Uddingston.

(The former house in the background on the Uddingston side is ‘Meadowbank’, known to have been bought by the NCB in 1947 and converted into 3 houses. It was demolished sometime in the 1960s.)

It is known that the siblings would take their turn in ferrying people across the river and it may not have been uncommon to have been rowed across the water here by one of the women of the family.

Family life was blighted by tragedy  on 19th April 1898, when Jen’s sister, Margaret then only 6 years old, passed away. I had heard that she drowned, but I have since found her death certificate which proved the cause of death was measles, rather than drowning. I cannot imagine the heartache the family would have suffered that year.

Jen is pictured in happier times later in 1912 with the arrival of her daughter.