Elder Roots and Fruits: The Lives and Loves of a Formidable Family

By Allie Logie

What was it like growing up without cars, TV, computers, phones? How did people cope with relationships when sex before marriage was frowned upon? Now is your time to find out. Read the stories of a family of six siblings and their parents who lived through two world wars and countless changes and still stayed loyal to each other. What was

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allie Logie
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805412878

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ELDER

ROOTS AND FRUITS

ELDER

ROOTS AND FRUITS

The Lives and Loves of a Formidable Family

Allie Logie

The people in this book are real. If I have offended or hurt any person or there are inaccuracies please forgive me. I’m only human.

Copyright © 2023 by Allie Logie

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, contact: [e-mail]

FIRST EDITION

978-1-80541-286-1 (paperback)

978-1-80541-287-8 (eBook)

I want to thank my cousins

for contributing to this book

and to all who have given me support

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my cousins for their contributions to this book. They will be sad that bits of the story will be missing and some bits not wholly accurate. I would like to have spent more time polishing it a bit but thought time is running out and the story must be told ! I would also like to thank my dear husband, Bill, for his support and for that of my children who are the most important part of my life.

I want to thank the publishers for helping me get this book off the ground.

If there are any profits from the book I would like them to go to the Multiple Sclerosis Society as three members of the Elder family suffer from this unkind disease.

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1: Where It All Started – Grandfather, the Reverend Peter Macainsh

CHAPTER 2: Hannah Gilbert Finds a Husband

CHAPTER 3: Hannah’s Life in the Manse

CHAPTER 4: Holidays and Hard Times

Chapter 5: Retirement and Grandchildren

CHAPTER 6: Offspring of Hugh and Hannah

CHAPTER 7: The First Child – Hannah, the Doctor

CHAPTER 8: The Second Child; The Only Son, Hugo, the Headmaster

CHAPTER 9: The Third Child, Second Daughter, Jenny the Teacher

CHAPTER 10: The Fourth Child and Third Daughter, Alison the music teacher

CHAPTER 11: Dora’s Story as Told to Her Daughter, Alison

CHAPTER 12: Her Story was written in her eulogy by Andrew Hurst, her husband

CHAPTER 13: What Happened Next? A Synopsis from Dora

CHAPTER 14: Family Gatherings

CHAPTER 15: Great-Granny’s Heirlooms

Epilogue

Appendix

Introduction

I burst into tears when I heard the news of the Sinking of the Titanic, admitted my mother. She would have been 6 years old when she heard about the tragedy. This was one of the events that made the twentieth century such a turbulent time to live through. Many momentous events – the death of Queen Victoria, World War 1, the crazy Twenties, the Abdication of King Edward VIII and World War 11 were to have a great impact on those growing up during this time. The invention of the airplane, radio, television and the discovery of penicillin were also to make their mark. The following account tells the story of a family growing up in a Scottish manse from the beginning of the century to the end of it. It is told in a variety of forms – firstly, a straightforward telling of the Grandparents’ stories, followed by the family’s life in the Manse. The six children tell their own stories, growing up in Fife and Edinburgh and their subsequent careers. Gathering the material for this memoir, we find that the stories come in different forms. The eldest sibling, Hannah, an immigrant to Canada, was interviewed by her granddaughter, Millie, and has some insights into medical practice in this era. The second child was Hugh, known as Hugo, to distinguish him from his father, Hugh. He was the only boy in a household of girls and his story is told by his son, Hugh. The third, Jenny, who emigrated to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), told her story to her daughter, Catherine, and tells of her rapid romance and marriage in South Africa. The fourth story is a collection of my own memories of my mother, the only one to stay in Scotland and who died earlier than her siblings. Next comes Dora who was the longest-lived and who died aged 103 and had plenty of time to pass on her story to her daughter, and lastly comes the youngest child, Pat. Her life is told by her husband and was the eulogy at her funeral. Hopefully, all these different lives and loves will bring together the essence of what it was like growing up in a manse and living in the turbulent 20th century and how it coloured and shaped their lives.

CHAPTER 1

Where It All Started – Grandfather, the Reverend Peter Macainsh

Legend has it that one of the ­Macainshes was a schoolmaster in Monzie, a small village in Perthshire, and because of his alcohol problem, lived at the opposite end of the village from his wife, while the children ran between the two. We don’t know if this man was Peter Macainsh’s father, Donald, or a relative. Whoever he was, Peter must have been a clever boy (a lad o’ pairts) as the local minister and schoolmaster took an interest in him and after he had served an apprenticeship as an ironmonger, he set off for Edinburgh at the age of twenty-five to study Divinity at the Free Church of Scotland’s Hall of Divinity. How, one asks, could a young lad from a village afford the fees? Well, we think he was helped by his local Presbytery because we are told that he had been examined in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Theology to the entire satisfaction of the Presbytery. He could then proceed to his second year. It must have taken a great deal of hard work to complete the course. The big question now was what he should do next.

We don’t know why Peter opted for Lochgelly in Fife – perhaps he knew someone there. In 1855, this would have been a very different place to his home village of Monzie and to his student life in Edinburgh. Lochgelly owed its rapid rise and prosperity to the mining and iron industries which came when the railway extended from Dunfermline. So, it was a mining village of about 3,000 persons with a post office, library, two schools, a hotel and a police station. We have to remember that in those days, there was no Health Service, no social services – no welfare state. So the minister‘s role was one of counsellor, seeing to the sick and needy, and caring for the orphans and widows. Peter worked hard and he must have been popular as a church was set up in Lochgelly. After a year, he was ordained and the building of a church for 500 persons was started. You can see it in Lochgelly to this day – a fine church and substantial manse. (The Church in those days was the hub of social activity as there were few other diversions like now with sports, television,concerts, etc., to entertain people.) This says a great deal for Peter Macainsh. We are told he exercised a profound influence for good in the community. For years before retiring from active ministry, he engaged student assistants, paying their salaries from his own pocket. After sixteen years of putting his heart into the community, he found time at the age of forty-seven to find himself a wife, Hannah Brown Johnston, aged thirty-eight. We know little of this lady but presume she was local. They were blessed with one child, Hannah Gilbert.

In 1891, after serving in Lochgelly for 35 years, the Reverend Peter Macainsh retired to Crieff at the age of 67. There he built the substantial house of Knockearn where we all met for a family reunion. (This will be mentioned later.) How could a minister afford to build such a large place, you may be asking? Peter had inherited a large sum of money from a relation, Mrs Graham Gilbert (see appendix for further information). Hannah Gilbert was the name given to the couple’s only child. The inheritance allowed the family to live well and later to afford to pay for school fees for their grandchildren. Peter Macainsh lived the last few years of his life in the place he grew up, Perthshire, and died in 1913 in his eighty-ninth year. Hannah Brown nee Johnston, his wife, died in 1919 aged eighty-six having seen the outbreak and end of the First World War. They are both buried in the churchyard of Monzie beside the grave of his parents.

CHAPTER 2

Hannah Gilbert Finds a Husband

So what did happen to the only child of the Rev Peter Macainsh and Hannah? We know she moved with her parents to Crieff when Rev Peter retired there. But what was a