The Lindsay family of Merry’s Rows – Part 4

For more than four decades, the life of Cecilia Lindsay had been marked by hardship, bereavement and remarkable resilience.

She had buried six of her seven biological children, watched her surviving daughter leave Scotland for Australia and welcomed two adopted children into her home.

But the final chapter of this Blantyre family’s story would bring further losses, new beginnings and a family connection spanning three continents.

By 1921, Cecilia and her husband William were living at 60 Merry’s Rows, together with their adopted daughter Mary Laird and Cecilia’s elderly mother, Mary Anderson.

A second adopted child, Archibald Anderson, born in Bellshill on 23 October 1921, would soon join the family.

Cecilia’s mother died in 1922, aged 91.

The following years were particularly difficult.

Family descendant Sharon Brown has shared her belief that Cecilia was struggling to care for her elderly mother while William was suffering from advanced syphilis.

This is an important part of the family’s oral history, although the medical circumstances have not been independently established in the research.

On 23 April 1927, William Lindsay died in Blantyre, aged 57. He was buried in High Blantyre Cemetery.

His death would have had serious consequences for the surviving household.

In Lanarkshire’s mining communities, accommodation was frequently associated with employment. When a miner died, his widow and children could lose the right to remain in company-controlled housing.

The research suggests Cecilia and her adopted children moved away from Merry & Cunningham’s Rows to 66 Forrest Street, a property associated with Belmont Cottages.

The move may have happened around 1927, or possibly earlier.

The house would later become the birthplace of Archie, Hugh and Alice Simm, descendants of the extended family.

Meanwhile, the mining industry itself was changing. Auchinraith Colliery, where Cecilia’s son Andrew had been fatally injured in 1919, closed completely in 1931.

For local families, pit closures could mean unemployment, financial insecurity and the loss of communities which had developed around the collieries.

Despite the upheaval, Cecilia’s adopted daughter Mary was beginning a family of her own.

Mary Lindsay Laird married Peter Johnstone in 1932, when she was just 17 years old.

Before marrying, Mary had worked picking coal at the pithead, one of the poorly paid occupations available to women in mining communities.

After their marriage, Mary and Peter initially lived at 66 Forrest Street.

Their children included:

• Charles, born December 1933
• William, born April 1935
• Cecilia, born 1936
• John, known as Jackie, born 1938

The family would also suffer the heartbreaking loss of twins in 1940, during the Second World War.

Mary later became connected to the Simm family through a subsequent marriage during the war years.

Her birth mother, Alice Laird, died on 15 July 1941.

Alice’s life had begun in Larkhall in 1880, taken her through domestic service in Dalserf and Flemington, and ultimately led to the birth of the little girl who became part of the Lindsay family.

Meanwhile, Cecilia did not live to see all the later generations of her adopted daughter’s family.

On 22 June 1934, Cecilia died in Motherwell County Hospital, aged 61.

She was buried in High Blantyre Cemetery, Section P, Lair 55, in an unmarked grave.

Her estate was valued at £96, 8 shillings and 6 pence.

The burial records associated with the lair identify several people:

• William Lindsay, interred in 1927, recorded aged 58
• Cecilia Lindsay, interred in 1934, recorded aged 62
• Margaret Devlin, aged nine months, interred in 1929
• William Paton, aged 80, interred in 1959
• Peter Wilson, aged 52, interred in 1975

Another important family burial site is recorded at High Blantyre Cemetery, Section F, Lair 1268.

The research identifies Walter Anderson, interred in 1900 aged 66; his wife Mary Anderson, née Thomson, interred in 1922 aged 91; and their young grandson Walter Anderson Lindsay, interred in 1902 aged two.

The original research also identifies the neighbouring Lair 1269 as the burial place of young Margaret Lindsay.

These unmarked and modest graves are reminders of ordinary working families whose lives rarely appeared in history books, but whose experiences tell us so much about industrial Scotland.

And what became of Cecilia’s only biological child to reach old age?

Jean Reid Lindsay, who left Blantyre for Australia in 1913, survived until 1980.

After losing her first husband, Harry Upton, at Gallipoli, she married Richard Cole and raised her family in Victoria.

She died in Footscray on 8 February 1980, aged 84, and was buried with Richard and their daughter Nancy Jean Cole.

Her descendants include Sharon Brown, who has helped preserve the family’s history.

Then, more than a century after Mary Lindsay Laird’s birth, another remarkable connection emerged.

On 20 December 2025, an email arrived from Archie Simm in America.

Archie was seeking information about the Lindsay family of Merry’s Rows, who had adopted his late mother, Mary Laird, during the 1910s.

That enquiry helped bring together this extraordinary family history.

From Bothwell and Prestonpans to Bridgeton, Blantyre, Hamilton and Bellshill, then onwards to Australia and America, the Lindsay story reflects the experiences of generations of Lanarkshire families.

It is a story of mining, weaving, migration, poverty, illness, dangerous work and the devastating loss of children.

But it is also a story of compassion.

Despite enduring six childhood bereavements, William and Cecilia opened their home to Mary and Archibald, giving them a place in their family.

And through those children, the Lindsay story continued long after the original miners’ rows had disappeared.

Today, the photographs, certificates, census records and family memories preserve the names of people who might otherwise have been forgotten.

William and Cecilia Lindsay were not wealthy or famous. But their lives, and the lives of their children, deserve to be remembered.

❤️ Do you have family connections to Merry’s Rows, Forrest Street, the Lindsay family, or Blantyre’s old mining communities? We’d be delighted to hear from you.

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