1896 Jane Nicol and grandchildren

Isn’t this a wonderful old Blantyre photo! The lady’s brooch around her neck says “1896” which ties in perfectly with the history of this family.

Shared here by Mary O’Neill, the great great granddaughter of the Victorian lady pictured, this is the Henderson family who first lived at Barnhill, then later moved to the Westend.

The children are Annie (b1889), Samuel (b1890) and Robert (b1893), children of Robert Henderson and Isabella Stewart. Together they lived in the early 1890’s at former property, Scotsland, at the junction of Broompark Road and Bardykes Road. With them was Isabella’s father, James Stewart.

However, there’s a touch of sadness here, for a year before in 1895, Isabella, the children’s mother died. The children are pictured here with their grandmother, Jane Henderson (nee Nichol who was born in 1828, not that far off 200 years ago!) Jane was 68 in this photo and she died in Blantyre in 1914, aged 86.

Robert Henderson did remarry, to Elizabeth Mary Neillans in 1900 and the whole family moved to the Westend prior to 1901. When she married Robert, Elizabeth had moved to Blantyre and at 24, eleven years younger than Robert she was a step mother to Robert’s 3 children to his first marriage. By 1911 the couple had 4 children of their own, to add to their growing family.

Mary O’Neill told me, “Robert met his second wife Elizabeth in the late 1890’s when he went to London to visit his sister Jean. There cannot have been many coal miners from Blantyre going on a holiday to London at that time.  Jean was friends with Elizabeth and they both worked at Windsor Castle. Elizabeth was also from Scotland born in Edinburgh in 1876, a twin with Annie Ross Neillans, and grew up in Chirnside in Berwickshire. “