With his kind permission, John has prepared a brief overview of this much more detailed study below for anybody interested in this family. Almost all the Mann families were descended from a John Mann born in 1722. John Campbell as author of the detailed, remarkable study is directly descended from one of those families. The study is in two parts which includes references and focuses mainly on the families who stayed in Blantyre.
The branches of the family who had a presence in Blantyre are labelled below from A to G and expanded detail is available in the full study.
The charts in the document are annotated in a similar manner to that of the top-level tree shown above. The annotation includes indications of dates, birth places and occupations. Very brief summaries of the labelled families are given below.
Family A – James Mann (1788) and Mary McKean
James Mann married Mary McKean in Blantyre in 1804 and they had a family of at least ten children. Several members of the family were still in Blantyre at the time of the 1841 census. James Mann died sometime before 1851. Their eldest son Alexander married Catherine Corbet and they had four children born in Blantyre; by 1845 the family had moved to Glasgow and the couple had four more children born there. After the death of James Mann, his widow Mary McKean and four of their children emigrated from Scotland to Canada. Their fourth child John remained in Scotland and married Catherine Smellie; John was a school teacher and by 1851, they had moved to the Fluchter Schoolhouse in Baldernock, Stirlingshire, when they had five children. The four children of James Mann and Mary McKean who went to Canada all married and had children. Margaret married William Alcorn and in 1869 they emigrated again, this time from Canada to Queensland, Australia.
Family B – John Mann (1790) and Jean McDonald
John Mann married Jean McDonald in Hamilton in 1818. The couple had at least five children. It seems that eldest boy Alexander (1820) must have died as a child as another child named Alexander was born in 1831. In 1841 John, an agricultural labourer, and Jean were living at Barnhill in Blantyre with their two youngest children. John Mann must have died before 1851 as from then his widow, Jean, can be found living in Basket, East Kilbride. Their son Alexander married Marion Speir from Bridge of Weir in 1855 and the couple lived in Glasgow; they do not appear to have had any children. John Mann and Jean McDonald’s daughter Agnes married Alexander Frame and the couple with their family moved to various places in Lanarkshire, to Argyllshire and then to Muckhart in Perthshire. Alexander Frame initially worked as a stone mason but then became a gamekeeper like his father before him. It was a surprise to find that they had twins born in 1880 in Flintshire in North Wales.
Family C – Alexander Mann (1795) and Janet Coats
Alexander Mann married Janet Coats in Hamilton in 1827. Alexander was a farmer spending his working life with his family at Craigknowe Farm. The couple had a family of at least four children. In 1856, Alexander was recorded as being one of the judges at the ploughing match for the Hamilton, Blantyre and Cambuslang Ploughing Society. He died in Blantyre in 1862 and Janet died in 1879 having taken over the running of the farm with their son Alexander (1829) for a while after her husband’s death. Alexander had worked as a ploughman on his father’s farm before he married Janet Scott in 1866. Their grandson, Alexander (1867) started work as a farmer but then moved to Carluke and worked as a publican and as a wine and spirit merchant. It was probably on a business trip that he met and married Emma Coke, the daughter of a beer seller. By the time they were retired, the couple had moved to Gravesend in Kent. Isabella Mann (1831), a daughter of Alexander Mann (1795) and Janet Coats, married Alexander Dick, a potato merchant; they had four children and lived in the Calton district of Glasgow.
Family D – Robert Mann (1801) and Isabella Craig
Note: this is the author’s branch of the family
Robert Mann married Isabella Craig born in East Kilbride in 1799. In 1841 Robert Mann was living at Muirfoot with his wife and four children and was working as an ironstone miner. During his working life, Robert also worked as a farm servant and a hand loom weaver. The couple had at least four children and the whole family can be found living in New Street in Blantyre in 1851. Robert Mann died in Kirkton of Blantyre in 1862 and Isabella lived till 1877.
Their son Andrew Mann (1832) was one of my great-grandfathers. In 1851 he married Bethia Renwick in Hamilton. Though they started their married life in Blantyre, they moved to Paisley where Andrew was a power loom tenter at the Underwood Mill and to Glasgow where their daughter Jane Mann, my paternal grandmother, was born in 1870. The family moved back to Blantyre where Andrew was a grocer and a proprietor of houses.
A significant amount of the material from this section, relating to Blantyre, has been incorporated in articles by Paul Veverka on this website; these are entitled Andrew Mann b1832 – d1910 and Jane Mann b1870 – d1911. The section in my study also contains more details about my more recent family connections and the other children of Andrew Mann and Bethia Renwick.
Robert Mann and Isabella Craig’s daughter Janet Mann (1835) married Thomas Mackie in Blantyre in 1860. At the time, Thomas was a dyer living at Orchardhead. The couple had at least seven children and remained in Blantyre throughout their married life. Brief details of some of their children are as follows. James Mackie (1861) married Agnes McEwan and the couple set up home in Hamilton and later moved with their family to Bridgeton in Glasgow. Robert Mackie (1861), a coal miner, married Mary Baird and they brought up their children in Blantyre; one of their granddaughters, Mary, emigrated from Scotland to Australia. Isabella Craig Mackie (1863) married Thomas Barrie, a coal miner; the couple lived in Blantyre and had a son named Thomas. Mary Riddell Mackie (1866) married Thomas Barrie’s brother Robert Buchanan Barrie; the couple had at least eleven children and the family emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1911; a grisly story, described in an article by Paul Veverka on this site, involved their daughter Janet Mann Barrie. Janet Mackie (1869) married John Thomson; they had two children born in Blantyre and in 1905 they emigrated from Scotland to South Africa where they had four more children and where John Thomson worked as a station master.
Robert Mann and Isabella Craig’s daughter Margaret Mann (1838) married a dye worker George Todd. George later worked as a coal miner and was killed in the Blantyre Pit explosion of 1877 (see article on this site by Paul Veverka)leaving Margaret with six children to bring up. Three of the children emigrated from Scotland to the USA and later to Canada. A fair amount of information is included in the study about those families.
Family E – Andrew Mann (1788) and Janet Mathieson
Andrew Mann married Janet Mathieson born in Inverness in 1809. The couple probably had around eleven children, all born in Blantyre. I have included two of the children, John (c1810) and Ann (c1815), as likely belonging to this family. Andrew Mann died sometime between 1841 and 1851. Janet Mathieson continued to live in Kirkton, Blantyre for the rest of her long life, dying at the age of 98 in 1883. Brief details for some of their children follow.
Ann Mann (c1815) who was probably one of their children married Robert Corbet in Blantyre in 1833. Their first three children were born in Blantyre and then the family moved to Stonehouse where three more children were born. When or soon after their youngest child Elizabeth was born in 1841, Ann must have died and Robert Corbet remarried in 1844. Robert Corbet and Catherine Currie had four children. The family, including three of Ann’s children, emigrated from Scotland to the USA in 1849.
William Mann (1819) married Catherine Spence, the widow of John Mann (from family F) in Blantyre in 1861. Catherine had four children from her first marriage and five children from her second marriage. Articles by Paul Veverka on this site describes the military career of William the ‘Old Inkerman’ and his son Johnnie Mann, a well-known character in Blantyre. William Mann (1855) from Catherine’s first marriage and Andrew and Duncan Mann from her second marriage all emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand. William and Catherine’s daughter, Elizabeth Gloag Mann, married John Brownlie and emigrated from Scotland to the USA.
Andrew Mann (1824) married Agnes McKenzie in Blantyre in 1846. Their first three children were born in Glasgow (maybe at Agnes’s parents’ home) and five further children were born in Blantyre. From the birth date of the youngest child they must have lived in Blantyre up until 1869 but by 1871 the family had moved to Shettleston.
Janet Mann (1824) married John McLachlan in Glasgow in 1852. Their eldest child John was born there in c1854. John McLachlan senior was a boot closer. The family moved to Liverpool where their second child Andrew was born in 1855 and then moved to Northumberland where their third child Janet was born in 1859. The family moved back to the Scottish borders where two further children were born. Their son Andrew was jailed in Selkirk on at least three occasions, probably for poaching offences.
James Mann (1829) had an illegitimate child, James Mann (1851) with Isabella Pollock. He did not marry Isabella but much later, in 1884, he married the Helen Struthers (née Spence) a sister of Catherine Spence (see family F). The son James married Jemima Corbett in Blantyre in 1874 and the couple had at least eight children. James and four of his sons were coal miners. James and Jemima had a son James Mann (1875) and it was probably that James Mann who was involved in sectarian and football violence. Another son, Duncan Mann (1887) signed up in 1914 to join the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force and fought in France in WWI with the Second Canadian Battalion. James and Jemima’s youngest son Andrew died from a fever aged three and it was rumoured that he had died from hydrophobia (rabies) following a dog bite.
Family F – William Mann (1795) and Barbara Munro
William Mann married Barbara Munro in Hamilton in 1828. The couple had at least eight children born in Blantyre. Barbara must have died between 1843 when her daughter Ann was born and 1851 when William is recorded as being a widow. The family lived in Kirkton, Blantyre. Brief details for some of their children follow.
John Mann (c1831) married Catherine Spence in 1852 in Blantyre. The couple had four children born in Blantyre. In 1858, John Mann died and his widow Catherine married John Mann’s cousin William Mann (see family E) in 1861. John and Catherine’s son William emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand in 1879. There he married Ann Henderson and became an underviewer with the Westport Coal Company.
Jean/Jane Mann (1836) married Thomas Russell in Bothwell in 1859. The couple had at least nine children. A tenth child, a daughter, Lizzie/Elizabeth Russell is recorded in the censuses of 1891 and 1901 but it turns out that she was in fact Elizabeth Connell, an illegitimate daughter of Thomas and Jean Russell’s eldest daughter Barbara Russell (1860). Thomas Russell had a number of occupations but latterly became a grocer in Bothwell; he was followed in that trade by three of his children and his granddaughter Lizzie.
Andrew Mann (1838) married Agnes Beveridge in Carluke in 1863 and they had four sons. Andrew died in 1872 and Agnes married a widower John Malley in 1875. She was widowed again in 1881 and in 1883 she emigrated from Scotland to the USA with three of her sons and, from her second marriage, two daughters. They probably followed her eldest son who had probably emigrated the previous year.
Margaret Mann (1841) emigrated from Scotland to Australia between 1861 and 1864. There she first married William Brand and later William Eade from England.
Family G – James Mann (1804) and Jane/Jean Prentice
James Mann probably married Jean Prentice in around 1834 and they had at least five children. Jean probably died between 1847 and 1851. In the 1851 census, James’s wife is named as Mary. It seems likely that Mary was Mary Martin, the widow of John Mann (see family E) and that James and Mary lived together as man and wife though they were not married. James and Jean’s daughter Jean Mann (c1845) married William Brown in Glasgow in 1872 and they had four children born there. James and Jean’s daughter Mary (c1847) married a thirty-five year old widower James Frame in Glasgow in 1868; they had six children, born in Larkhall.
The family of Marion Mann and John Yuill
Marion Mann married John Yuill in Blantyre in 1808 and the couple had at least ten children. Their first child was born in Cambuslang in 1809 and the subsequent children in Barony. Though I have included quite a lot of information about the family and their descendants in my study, I will only add a couple of sentences here as the family had no later Blantyre connections. Suffice to say that a number of their descendants emigrated from Scotland to Canada, the USA and Australia. I have made contacts with a number of their present-day descendants, particularly those with whom I have DNA matches, and these have led me to investigate these links in some depth.
The Irish Mann Family (Blantyre from 1881)
Peter Mann (c1825) and Ann Cairns (c1831) both came from Ireland but were married in Old Monkland in 1847. They had two children born there. Their son William (c1854) emigrated from Scotland to the USA and there married an Irish girl, Sarah Gordon. By 1881 Peter Mann and his wife had moved to Blantyre where Peter worked as a coal miner. Their daughter, Helen, who had married Michael McInearney, had moved by then to Blantyre where Michael also worked as a coal miner, as did their sons later on. Peter and Ann’s son William and his wife and daughter returned from the USA and settled in Blantyre where three more children were born. William also worked as a coal miner.
To obtain a link to download copies of the full study (as .docx or .pdf files) please contact the author who will respond as long as he is able to do so! His email address is:
