Happy Summer Everyone! There is big news in the family shrub this summer. Not only have we have finally located Grampa Matt’s mysterious baby sister, Barbara Lafflin, but there is a surprise connection to another far-flung branch. There is plenty of news from some of the other branches, too, along with some interesting stories of how they amused themselves in their spare time. So pour yourself a glass of nice cold lemonade, pull your rocking chair into a shady corner of the porch, and let’s have a visit.

We’ve known for ages that Jim Coubrough and Annie Macdonald had four children: our Grampa Matt, and three younger girls. We learned early on that the first girl, Flora Jane, married Billy Atwell in 1878 and had nine kids of her own. The unfortunate middle sister, Mary Ann, was not capable of looking after herself, and when Annie Macdonald died in 1902, Mary Ann went to live with her older sister. Barbara, the baby of the family, on the other hand, has been a woman of mystery all this time. We knew she was born in 1860, and that she had moved to Minnesota, with her husband, one "Lafflin," whom she had married sometime between 1881 and 1891. That was it—until now.

The same web site listed deaths for two men who may have been Barbara’s sons: a James Franklin Laflin, 1889 – 1969, mother’s name "Cobraugh"; and a Tom Laughlin, 1896 – 1959, apparently the son of a woman named "Corrough." Both spellings are worth a second look, and I plan to order them soon. For now, though, I am sure we have our Barbara.

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We have often discussed the sudden appearance of the name Barbara in the Coubrough tribe, without ever finding and answer. We have also noticed that while the name Mathew was not unknown in the tribe, our Grampa Matt was the first one to bear it in about a hundred years. No other branches used the name until nearly the end of the 20^th century, when it was given to a young New Zealander whose mother "liked the name." The endless speculation has led us to a new theory: James and Jean may have "borrowed" the names from their friends.

After much searching of parish registers and old town documents, we have come to the conclusion that Jean Muir’s husband had been lured away from a job at Campsie to one near Pollokshaws. In 1789, the village of Thornliebank didn’t exist. A man named Crum had just bought a large piece of land on which he intended to build a calico factory. In those days, a factory owner was expected to provide housing for his workers, who would also need markets, schools, etc. In effect, building a factory entailed building a whole village. Being made mostly of wood and stone, the job would have required huge numbers of carpenters and stonemasons, as well as blacksmiths, labourers, etc. By 1789, our James was already a skilled carpenter, so if a huge new job was starting up, and paying good wages, James might have been tempted to pack up his family and move. Which seems to be exactly what they did.

The village of Campsie is about 30 miles from Thornliebank. In 1789, this would have been quite a ways to travel, especially with young children, and if there might not be a house at the other end. Chances are, James went first, with Jean and the children following sometime later. We know that the whole family had made the move not later than May 7, 1791, when their fourth son, William, was born in Pollokshaws.

In making such a big move, things would certainly be easier if you had friends to help share the load. Again from what we read in the old records, it seems likely that James and Jean were not only friends of James and Catherine Andrew, but that they had all come to Thornliebank at about the same time, for the same reason. James Andrew was apparently also a wright, and might have known our James from work.

You will see that many names in the Andrew family also appear in the Coubrough family. James and Catherine Andrew had a son named Mathew, who eventually had a daughter named Barbara. James Andrew also seems to have had a sister called Barbara. Later Coubroughs in Thornliebank had a habit of naming children after all sorts of friends and relatives after the obligatory grandparents’ names were used up. Possibly they all came up with this idea themselves, but it seems just as likely that they learned it from their own parents. If James and Jean Muir named their children after their friends, it would explain the sudden appearance of the name Barbara. And by the time our Matt was born, James and Jean had used up all the usual family names. They already had James, Malcolm, John, Robert and William, so they might have had to look further afield for names. Once a name was in the collection, of course, it was there to stay, and still today Coubrough girls are being named Barbara.

James Coubrough was in the British army when he met and married Annie Macdonald, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was still in uniform when his son was baptised, in St. John, New Brunswick: the baby’s baptism record says he was the son of James Coubrough, "No. 8 Coy, 5^th Btn. R.A." Jim and Annie were back in Halifax for at least a year before they moved to Canada West in 1857 or 1858, and with nothing else to go on, I assumed that Jim had been transferred back there. The news is that Jim may have still been in uniform—just not the one we thought.

Jim and Annie were definitely back in Halifax not later than February 8, 1856, when Flora Jane was born. Whether Jim was in the army at the time is still not clear. It is a matter of record, however, that he was out of the service for at least a year before they moved west: from early 1856 to sometime in 1857, he was an under-keeper (guard) at the Northwest Arm Provincial Penitentiary, in Halifax. Then, as now, apparently, ex-military people were in demand as prison guards. We still don’t know the reason he quit the prison job. Perhaps it didn’t pay well enough to live on it, or he was laid off, or he just grew tired of it. At any rate, by March 1858, they were in Dawn Township, and we all know the story from there.

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We have known for years that Matt and Jean Allan had a daughter named Ann. Beyond the fact that, at age 10, she had been a tearer for a calico printer, possibly replacing her older brother James when he joined the army, we knew nothing about her. A couple of months ago, having mistakenly ordered the film of the 1871 Barrhead census, I figured I might as well look at it. In the burgh of Pollokshaws, I found the family of one Mathew Coubrough, colour mixer, including his 26-year-old daughter, Ann.

Barbara seems to have moved about, from one relative to another, as was often the case for unmarried women. Whether they were working or not, they were frequently dependant on the charity of other family members, especially if they lived in a town where housing was hard to come by. In places where everyone lived in a "company house," single women were sometimes not deemed worthy of wasting a whole home on, so they had to find a relative or friend who would take them in. In 1841, Barbara had been living with her brother John. When he died, his widow went to live with her own daughter Catherine McCready, and Barbara became the housekeeper for her brother Matthew. When Matt died in 1873, she went to live with Matt’s daughter Jane Campbell.

This census also offers a couple new bits of information about Matt and Jean’s family. Their son Malcolm’s 1873 death certificate records his trade as what looks to be "watchmaker." I had thought that perhaps he had been apprenticed to a watchmaker, as a way out of the factory—possibly because Malcolm was in delicate health. The 1871 census, on the other hand, clearly says "sketch maker," leading me to believe that he worked in the calico factory after all. The sketch maker was the one who drew the patterns for the engravers to engrave, so perhaps our Malcolm had some artistic talent. The census also notes that he was unemployed, even though everyone else in the family was at work, presumably in the same factory. Malcolm died two years later, from TB, so perhaps in 1871, he was already too sick to work.

The other big surprise here is the daughter named Elizabeth. According to this census, she was 23 years old, which would have put her birth date at about 1847 or 1848. If she was alive for the 1871 census, one assumes she should have been listed with her family in 1851, when she would have been about 3 or 4; the 1851 census had no sign of her. I haven’t seen the 1861 census yet, but it might be worth a look.

As for Anne, I still didn't know whether she ever married, but at least she had survived childhood. I later found Anne and Margaret living together in the 1881 census. When Anne died in 1889, Margaret went to live with her oldest sister, Jane Campbell. In 1901, the widowed Jane was still living at Pollokshaws, with her sister, Margaret and Jane’s 30-year-old second daughter, Janet. Margaret and Janet were still employed as cotton weavers, but Jane had probably retired when she married. Neither Anne nor Margaret ever married. I don’t yet know what became of any of the three women after 1901.

Still on the topic of Matt and Jean, you will recall that they had several different addresses over the years. I thought that either Matt and Jean were rather footloose, or else they had to move a lot for work. Turns out I was just confused.

According to Barbara McCue, who has lived in Thornliebank all her life, their concept of housing is completely different from ours. She says that, in Matt and Jean’s day (indeed, even in the days of Barbara’s parents), people moved about to adjust the size of their accommodations as their families grew or shrank. Most houses were (and are) owned either by the factory owner or by the town. If you needed a bigger or smaller house, you put your name on a waiting list for a home of the appropriate size. If you wanted to marry, you put your name on the list, and when you had a house, you set the wedding date.

Usually, only very rich people who could afford to build mansions owned their own houses. These folks often had a house in the city (Glasgow), as well, which was known as the "town house." The large houses in Thornliebank were known as "country estates," and were cheek-by-jowl with the row houses. Some of these huge houses still exist: Barbara said that one a couple of blocks from her apartment recently sold for 1.5 million pounds!

With regard to the middle and working classes, the term "house" was used rather loosely. For most folks, it referred to what we would call a very small apartment. The houses were generally terraced homes (we call them row houses), and one entrance would serve four homes. That is, when you entered at the street door, there would be an apartment to the left, and one to the right, at ground level; up the stairs in front of you would be two more apartments, one left and one right. These homes generally consisted of a large combination kitchen-living room, and one or two small bedrooms.

The other thing that confused me about all of Matt and Jean’s moving around was that the villages all have different names, all of which are still in use. With my typical prairie concept of towns spaced a day’s wagon drive apart, I thought of all those villages being separated by at least a few miles. Wrong again! Even in Matt and Jean’s day, the villages of Thornliebank, Pollokshaws, Barrhead, Grahamston, and Cross Arthurlie were separated by no more than a mile—most of them by only a few hundred yards. Even Mearns and Busby, on the other side of Thornliebank, are within walking distance of a young child.

Putting together the idea that one moved about as one’s family changed and the idea that nearly all of the villages where Matt and Jean lived were practically connected to each other, it doesn’t seem quite as weird that they had so many different addresses. Indeed, Matt and his children probably worked in the same factory, regardless of where they lived: it probably meant only a few yards’ extra walk.

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John Coubrough was the third son of James Coubrough and Jean Muir. He was a power loom tenter, a trade he seems to have followed all his life. He married Catherine Andrew on April 9, 1808, in Eastwood parish, and had nine children that we know of. There may also have been a couple more that we haven’t found yet, since there is a gap of ten years between the second and third known children. We knew very little about John; we knew less about his wife.

Knowing her marriage date and the birth date of her youngest child, we could estimate Catherine’s own birth date at around 1785 – 1792, but that was all we knew of her: no parents, no place of birth, no brothers or sisters. Thanks to Barbara McCue, of Thornliebank, Scotland, whose ancestors John and Catherine were, that has all changed.

Joseph Gibb & Jane Martin

Joseph Gibb was the son of Jean Coubrough and Joseph Gibb, Jean being the oldest daughter of John Coubrough and Catherine Andrew.

The boy here noted as "Matthew C. do" has been the subject of endless speculation. He is the man known to us as Mathew Gibb Coubrough, who later married Margaret Dowall. According to the parish register, he was born December 25, 1851, the son of Jean Allan and Matt Coubrough. We suspect that Jean Allan died at or soon after his birth, and he seems to have gone to live with the Gibbs when he was very young: he was with them as a "boarder" in the 1861 census, when he was 9 years old. We had at first thought that he had gone there to be closer to school, but we later found that not only was his father living in the same village, but the boy’s 26-year old sister still lived at home, as did Matt and Jean’s other children: Ann, 21; twins Malcolm & William, 17; and Margaret, 12. Moreover, Matt and Jean’s son, Robert, was married and also living in Thornliebank. The mystery is why the baby was sent to live with his father’s cousin when he had so many closer relatives living only a few streets away.

We still haven’t solved this mystery, but we have discovered that he probably took the name Gibb for himself after he grew up. In the parish register entry for his birth, he is plain Mathew Coubrough, as he still is in the 1861 census. By 1871, as we see here, the Gibbs seem to have considered him their adopted son. When he married in 1874, he was just Mathew Coubrough, but when he reported Joseph Gibb’s death, he signed himself "Matthew Gibb Coubrough, Cousin Germane." Apparently he considered himself Joseph’s cousin, rather than his son. He did seem to be grateful to the Gibbs, since he and Margaret named their third son Joseph Gibb, but they also named their first son Matthew. Matt and Margaret followed the correct naming order for their first two sons. Oddly, though, they named their only daughter Jeanie Allan, after Matt’s mother, rather than Sarah, after Margaret’s mother. Perhaps Matt was closer to his birth family than the statistics would have us believe.

On another track, but still with the Gibbs, I have said in the past that Joseph Gibb and Jane Martin had two daughters named Jane, about two years apart, with the first, presumably, having died in infancy. There also seemed to be two sons named Joseph, whose birth dates I couldn’t quite reconcile with those of their sisters. Upon further study, it seems I have made a rather large error: Joseph Gibb and Jane Martin did indeed have two girls named Jane, and did indeed have two sons named Joseph, all born when I thought. The mistake was that there were actually two couples who had the same names.

Joseph Gibb b: 1829 Ratho, Midlothian, Scotland

+Jane Martin b: 1828/9 m: July 20, 1850 Eastwood, Renfrew

..... Jane Coubrough Gibb b: February 10, 1854, Eastwood

..... Jane Martin Gibb b: January 24, 1856 Cadder, Lanark

..... Anne Gourlay Gibb b: January 1, 1857 Eastwood, Renfrew

..... Joseph Gibb b: May 5, 1857 Cadder, Lanark

..... Barbara G. Gibb b: June 9, 1860 Eastwood d: 1876 Eastwood

..... Joseph Gibb b: February 11, 1867 Eastwood, Renfrew

The two children born in Cadder actually belong to another couple with the same names, who were married in 1855, in Glasgow. Jean Coubrough's son's family is:

Joseph Gibb b: 1829 Ratho

+Jane Martin b: 1828/9 m: July 20, 1850 Eastwood, Renfrew

..... Jane Coubrough Gibb b: February 10, 1854, Eastwood

..... Anne Gourlay Gibb b: January 1, 1857 Eastwood

..... Barbara G. Gibb b: June 9, 1860 Eastwood d: 1876 Eastwood

..... Joseph Gibb b: February 11, 1867 Eastwood, Renfrew

Little Anne may have died quite young: she was not with her family in the 1851 census, when she would have been about 4. The 1871 census said the girl Barbara was an "imbecile," and the 1881 census said the same thing about her brother Joseph. Whether they were born that way, or later suffered injury or illness is not known. It is possible that they both suffered from some defect, such as cleft palate, that hindered their speech and made them appear mentally defective. Whatever the case, poor Barbara was not yet 16 when she died of consumption in 1876, only a few days after her father’s Aunt Barbara.

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Barbara Coubrough & David Aitkenhead

Several years ago, I came across a Barbara Coubrough who married a David Aitkenhead in 1849. In the 1851 British census, they were the parents of two children: William, born about 1849, and Catherine, born 1850, but I was unable to find any further record of them. I suspected that Barbara’s mother had probably been Catherine Andrew, but had no proof. Then I found the 1871 census.

Catherine Andrew’s daughter Catherine was only about 16 or 17, in 1840, when she married Samuel McCready, in Thornliebank. Three decades later, they lived in Crossartherlie, in the Quoad Sacra Parish of Barrhead, Renfrew. Judging by the number of people working in the family, and the number of people crowded into a tiny place that had only one room with a window, I think that either the McCreadys were pretty hard up, or there was just nothing better available. But family was family, apparently, since they had taken in not only Catherine's mother, but a niece and a granddaughter as well. I don't know for sure who Catherine Harris was, but I think her mother was probably Samuel and Catherine’s daughter Barbara. The Register of Births in Scotland has a Catherine Harris McCready, born 1870, in Thornliebank.

If Catherine Aitkenhead was Samuel McCready’s niece, it seems fairly obvious that his wife and David Aitkenhead’s wife must have been sisters. David’s wife was the only Coubrough known to have married an Aitkenhead. As for young Catherine Aitkenhead herself, she had a daughter named Barbara, born out of wedlock, in 1874. The fact that her baby girl was called Barbara pretty much clinches the identity of the baby’s grandmother. In 1881, Catherine married a James Cochrane. He adopted the 6-year-old Barbara, and may actually have been her father. I don’t know if he and Catherine had any other children. James and Catherine didn’t have much time together: she was a widow when she, too, died of consumption, in November 1891, when her daughter would have been nearly 17. I don’t know what became of her after that.

Poor Catherine sure seems to have had a hard time in her short life: lost one or both of her parents at a young age, not educated enough to sign her name, illegitimate child, widowed young, died not much older. (She couldn't have been more than 40.) Kind of makes you feel sorry for her.

I still don’t know what happened to David and Barbara Aitkenhead. I assume that they died young, based on the fact that I haven’t found them in any records after the 1851 census, and the fact that their daughter lived with Barbara’s sister. Nor have I found anything about their son William. If both of the parents died when the children were very young, they might not have both been raised by the same relatives. Did William go to a relative of his father at the same time his sister went to a relative of their mother? Was he a victim of whatever took his parents? We’ll just have to keep looking.

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Matthew Coubrough & Margaret Duncan

I learned years ago that Matthew Coubrough had married Margaret Duncan in Barrhead, in 1851. They had four children before they disappeared from the Scots records. It wasn’t until two or three years later that I found them again—in Australia! After having four more children there, all but one of whom seem to have grown up, though I don’t know if they all raised families of their own. I still don’t know why they went to Australia. It was a fashionable emigration destination at the time, or they may have gone to the goldfields. They ended up in the state of Victoria, with Margaret dying in 1880, and her husband 15 years later.

A while back, I also found them in the 1851 Scots census: Matt living with his parents, Catherine and John, and Margaret visiting at the home of a William Coubrough, who turned out to be Matt’s brother. The census didn’t give the maiden names of women, and the ages in this particular count were completely out to lunch. Though I had names for another generation back, I still couldn’t connect them to anyone: they were relegated to the "alien list" for a few years.

Then, about three months ago, they decided it was time for me to find them. In trying to discover whether Catherine Andrew really had a daughter named Barbara, I ordered the 1841 census for Barrhead: it was a goldmine. Not only did Catherine and John have a daughter named Barbara (a 13-year-old power-loom weaver), they also had a 15-year-old son named Matthew, and three other boys: James, William, and Andrew.

Matthew and William, both "cotton power loom twisters, were listed as being 15 and 14, respectively. All other sources indicate that these boys should have been 20 and 19, so I suspect that the enumerator rounded these down to get the numbers he recorded. Matthew is almost certainly the one who married Margaret Duncan in 1851, while I am fairly sure that William is the one who had married Jane Brown in 1850, and in whose home Margaret Duncan was visiting at the time of the 1851 census.

The boy named Andrew is another mystery. The 1841 census didn’t say how people in a household were related to each other, and I have yet to find any record of any Andrew Coubrough born at the right time, to any parents. He was not living with John and Catherine in 1851, and I have no other information about him. They certainly could have had a son with that name. No other branch of Jean Muir’s descendants uses the name Andrew, but there are herds of them among John and Catherine’s descendants. If he did exist, he was probably between Barbara (abt 1829) and Malcolm (abt 1834).

Of the two Barbaras, the younger was almost certainly the daughter who married David Aitkenhead. The elder Barbara was John’s sister, who would really have been about 33. She never married, and worked in the calico factory most of her life. In 1876, at the time of her death, from "old age and debility," she was living with her niece, Jane Campbell, daughter of Barbara’s brother Mathew.

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William Coubrough & Jane Brown

William was almost certainly the son of John Coubrough and Catherine Andrew. It was in his house that Margaret Duncan was a visitor in 1851, just before she married Matt Coubrough.

James Donaldson Boarder 5 Scholar born Lanarkshire Glasgow

Daughter Marion married Archibald Blair, in 1880, and had at least five kids of her own. Some of the children ended up in the United States, but that’s all I know of her family.

Son John married Sophia Hair, in Glasgow, in 1881. They had two children: John in 1881, and Jane, 1882/3. Sophia’s husband was not yet 35 when he died sometime between 1883 and 1887. Their son, John, was about 2 when he also died, in about 1883. Daughter Jane managed to grow up, and in 1905, married an Angus Campbell. Sophia remarried in 1887 and had five more kids by her second husband, William Thomson.

Daughter Margaret married Robert John Mooney in 1898. They had no children of their own, but adopted a boy named Robert John Simpson, in about 1900.

Elizabeth had a twin sister, Jane, who is not listed here, but I don’t know whether she had passed on, or was just away somewhere. Elizabeth herself died in 1885, probably of TB. I don’t know what became of either Alexander or Catherine.

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Robert Coubrough & Mary Sandilands

We all know that John and Catherine Andrew’s son Robert was married twice. His first wife, Margaret Clark Macdonald, by whom he had four children, is still a mystery. She may have been the daughter of Robert Macdonald and Margaret Steel, but this is not certain. His second wife, known variously as Mary Sandles, Sandilands, and ever Sanderson, is known to have been a young widow with one daughter when she married Robert. We also found that she was the daughter of John Sandilands and Mary Cowan. Having outlived two husbands, the 37-year-old Mary didn’t bother with a third one when Robert died in 1857. What we didn’t know was that Mary had actually had two children when she married Robert.

Poor Mary’s life seems to have been filled with loss. Her first husband, William Gunn, whom she had married in 1847, seems to have died about 1850. In the 1851 census, the widowed Mary Gunn, age 25, a bleachfield worker in a cotton mill, was living with her 58-year-old mother, Mary Cowan Sandles. Also in the house were Mary Sandles’ daughter, Margaret Sandles, age 38, and four granddaughters: Agnes Sandles, 16; Margaret Sandles, 9; Mary Gunn, 4; and Isabella Gunn, 2. The two older granddaughters probably belonged to Margaret, though we can’t say for sure.

A little over a year later, Mary (Sandles) Gunn married Robert Coubrough, a widower of 32, who had four young children. Mary and Robert had three more children, only one of whom grew up. Her baby Jean was born in January 1857, and her husband died four months later. Baby Jean died the following year, and in 1860, her eldest daughter, Mary, aged 13, succumbed to consumption. Mary’s eldest son, Archibald, was eight years old in March of 1861, but he is to be found in no records after that, and probably also died very young.

Despite the fact that all of Robert Coubrough’s sons from his first marriage moved to England before 1870, Mary Sandilands seems to have been quite close to her step-children. Robert’s daughter, Margaret Steele Coubrough, was married from Mary’s home, as was Margaret’s daughter, Mary Waterson. By way of honouring her step-mother, Margaret Steel actually called her first daughter Mary, rather than Margaret after the biological mother she could barely remember. By 1871, only Mary’s second daughter, Isabella Gunn, and her second son, David Coburough, were still at home. In about 1875, Isabella married James Robertson, but they had no children and Isabella, too, died of consumption before she was 30. David, of course, married Mary McKay Smith, whereby hangs another tale. Mary Sandilands stayed living in her home at 162 Dairy Lane until her own passing in April 1903, at the age of 71.

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David Coubrough & Mary Smith

In April 1881, David Coubrough, son of Robert Coubrough and Mary Sandilands, married a woman called Mary S. McKay Smith, daughter of James Smith and Isabella Gunn. As it turns out, though, this is only part of the story.

In the 1881 census, taken just weeks before her wedding, Mary’s surname was Hector. On her marriage certificate, she is Mary Smith, daughter of James Smith, and on the birth registration of her fifth son, she is Mary Hector again. Further, the 1891 census lists a Hugh McKay as the father-in-law, of the head of the house, leading one to believe that he was Mary’s father. There was also a Jane McKay, sister-in-law, who one would take to be Hugh’s daughter and Mary’s sister. Being confused by all these names seemingly applied to the same person, I went looking for the reason. It took some digging, but we found the story—proving once again that truth really is stranger than fiction.

According to the same census, Mary Hector was a boarder in a Thornliebank household where David Coubrough was the head: They were the only two occupants. They were married in Thornliebank a month after the census, but not long after that, they found themselves in Glasgow, just a couple of doors down from Mary’s mother. For some reason, Robert seems to have been working in a shipyard at the time; we haven’t figured out a reason for that, yet. Mary and David’s second son, Hugh, was actually born in Glasgow, not Eastwood, as we had thought. The boy is obviously named for a man to whom Mary felt a strong attachment, if she did not actually consider him to be her father, which she may have done. In the 1891 census, he was living in Mary and David’s home in Thornliebank, and was said to be David’s father-in-law. It is also interesting to note that of Mary and David’s nine sons, not one is named James, after Mary’s legal father. This makes me think that Hugh played a much bigger role in Mary’s life than James Hector did.

As for James Hector, his death certificate gives his name as "Hector or Smith." This form usually indicates that his parents were not been legally married to each other. Possibly one of them was an alias that he took for himself, but it seems unlikely. While his daughter used both names, she seems mainly to have been known as "Hector," both before and after her marriage. The only place "Smith" appears is on her marriage certificate.

Jane McKay and her father Hugh are another mystery. Jane may have been Hugh’s natural daughter, but it is almost certain that Mary’s mother was not Jane’s mother. Jane’s mother, one Elizabeth Galbraith Ealing, widow of James Tough, did not survive Jane’s birth. The birth certificate goes to great pains to indicate that James Tough died two years before Jane was born, and to note that she was illegitimate. The birth registration was signed by Sarah Ward, nurse, and Hugh McKay, father, so unless Hugh was a real philanthropist trying to save a baby from an orphanage, he probably was her father.

Jane later married a Peter McBride, and their marriage record says Jane was the daughter of Hugh and Isabella McKay. Jane would have been only about 5 or 6 when Isabella went to live with them; never having known her own mother, she probably thought of Isabella in that capacity. Peter gave the information in Hugh McKay’s death certificate, but some of it is suspect. Peter said that Hugh had been the "widower of Isabella Gunn or Hector or Smith."Hugh himself had given the information for Isabella, stating that they were cousins, and that she was the widow of James Hector. One assumes that Hugh would have known whether he was married, so I think it safe to say that he really was only her cousin, and that Peter was confused. 

A "drover" was a sort of wholesale cattle buyer. The drover would buy local cattle at a fixed price, and undertake to get them to market. If they died or were stolen, or he was forced to sell them for less than he paid, he was out of luck. If he sold them at a higher price, the profit was all his own. The benefit to the drover is obvious, but it was also an advantage to the local cattleman not to have to drive his own 3 or 4 cows all the way to a market town. Our John obviously bought low and sold high fairly often, if he could afford to not only lend out the equivalent of several years’ of workman’s wages, but also to wait six years to get it back.

2. When King George V died, all Britain was in mourning. All over the country, collections were taken up to erect monuments in his honour. The London Times published lists of the names of people who made donations to these memorial funds. One of those whose name was in the paper was A. C. Coubrough, who gave £1. A. C., you will remember, was Anthony Cathcart, son of Anthony Sykes and grandson of Anthony Park Coubrough, owners of the Strathblane Calico factory.

A. C. apparently went by the name of Cathcart, or Cath, and was an electrical engineer by trade. He was the 1923-4 president of the Society of Engineers in India, and frequently appeared in the society pages of the London Times. He was about 55 when he married a young widow with the odd name of Ariel Pschye Weatherly, daughter of "Dr. and Mrs. Kennedy," on December 12, 1932, in Terling, Essex, England.

He seems to have had a few years left in him after his marriage. He lived until about 1962, or 1963, leaving an estate worth more than £50,000 (equivalent to more than £640,000 today).

Others of Anthony Park’s family didn’t do badly for themselves, either. His oldest son, John, a Captain in the Lanarkshire Artillery Volunteers, was of sufficiently exalted status to be "presented at court." He was presented to the Prince of Wales, at the Prince’s Leveé on the afternoon of 3 June 1878.

Cathcart’s cousin, Charles Coubrough, elder son of Ellis Wood Coubrough and Alice Merriam, married Doris Lacy in 1920, and they had three children: Charles Ronald, Ian Frank, and Joan Doris. After stints in the army during the Second World War, Ronnie became a lawyer and Ian went to work for Union Carbide, eventually becoming a vice president there. All three children eventually married; Ronnie had two children, Ian five (from two wives), and Joan three. All of them did well for themselves, but they were born to a life of privilege: According to the London Times (September 4, 1967), their father left an estate of at least £64,000.

3. The Winnipeg Times, in the "old days," often published the names of people staying at the local hotels, especially if they were important or well-known. Page 4 of the Wednesday, October 17, 1883, edition had this item under the heading Personals:

Other hotels whose guest lists were printed included the Queen’s, the Grand Union, and the Brunswick. This last was still in business at least as late as 1916: Several men whose attestation papers I have seen gave this hotel as their current address when they joined the Army during the First World War.

The A S Coubrough mentioned is, of course, Andrew Smith, while "WE Coubrourgh" was his brother, William Ellrig. Both men were sons of Henry Coubrough and Ellen Smith. Who Mrs. Joseph Mcclure and Miss Mathson were is a mystery to me. They may have been friends or relatives travelling with Andrew and William, or they may have just been residents of Stonewall who happened to be travelling at the same time as the Coubroughs.

4. In other news about the family of John Coubrough, father of Anthony Park Coubrough, it seems that he actually had three children by his first wife, rather than two, as previously reported. John, born 1717, was the eldest son of John Coubrough and Jonet Buchanan. He was not very lucky in his choice of wives, the first one, Agnes Edmonston, died about 5 years after her marriage, and John’s second wife, Agnes Lapslie, survived her marriage by only 7 or 8 years. We know he had no children by Ms Lapslie, and we thought he had 2 children by Ms. Edmonstone. It seems, however that we were mistaken, and he actually had three children by the first Agnes. A daughter named Jonet was christened November 6, 1743, which was about a year after their marriage, and about a year and a half before their daughter Jean, who we previously thought to be their first child. No mother is listed for the child, but Agnes’s husband was the only John Coubrough in the Strathblane area having children at that time. Witnesses were Robert and Malcolm Coubrough. John Coubrough and Jonet Buchanan had no known sons by those names, so I don’t yet know which Robert and Malcolm these were.

5. Some Coubroughs seem to have had friends who were not quite model citizens. Poor John Coubrough, of Carlton, Victoria, started out for a peaceful drink and ended up in a barroom brawl, though he appears to have been a bystander. In 1880, Carlton was a small town near Melbourne, but is today a suburb of that city. If John was the son of Matt Coubrough and Margaret Duncan, as I think he was, he would have been about 25 years old. This item is from Melbourne’s Port Phillip Herald, dated Thursday, October 21, 1880:

(Before His Honor Judge Cope and a jury of Four.)

coubrough v kersey.

6. During the Second World War, the Toronto Star published listed of wounded, missing, and dead soldiers. On Friday, February 2, 1945, the "748^th Army List Reports 46 Dead and 76 Wounded." Among those said to be slightly injured was one Malcolm Coubrough McCabe, gunner, of Dubuc, Saskatchewan. Malcolm, aged about 25, was the son of Robert McCabe and Margaret McEwan Coubrough, whose parents were Malcolm Coubrough and Isabella Hosie.

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A reunion still seems to be planned for July or August next year (2005), but I don’t yet have a firm date or a location from the people organizing it. Details will be posted to the web site as soon as I have them, and I will try to let every one know when I find out.

Here are some of the things I am still working on. If you know the answer, please don’t keep it to yourself. The rest of us would dearly love to know too.

1. We know that Grampa Jim’s mother, Jean Allan, died sometime between 1851 and 1865, probably in either Barrhead or Thornliebank. She could not have been more than 55 years old, and possibly as young as 41. But exactly when, and of what cause?

2. When I first found the family of James Cowburgh and Jean Muir, I wondered at the huge gap between Robert and Matt. The first five children are all only about 2 years apart: James, Malcolm John, William and Robert in 1785, 1787, 1789, 1791, and 1795. Then there is a ten-year space before the last three appear—all close together again: Matt, 1805; Barbara, 1808; and William, 1810. What was the reason for this big space? Five years and much study later, I am no closer to an answer, but I’m still looking. Any ideas?

3. We know that John Coubrough and Jonet Buchanan were married in about 1703 or 1704, probably in Campsie, Stirling, and we know that they had at least 11 children, between whom there are several intriguing spaces.

We also have some "strays," who look like they should belong to John and Jonet’s family, but of whose connections we have no proof. One of these is the Malcolm Coubrough who was married to Marion Reid in 1745. His children have the right names in the right places to be Jonet Buchanan’s son, but is he? I recently received some information from a Mr. Ian Brown, in Glasgow, that shows that he may belong to John and Jonet’s family. Moreover, this new information says that the Malcolm Coubrough who married Jean Buchanan (1796) was probably the son of Marrion Reid, just as we thought. If confirmed, this will connect two of our "big branches": the "calico factory" people and the Malcolm Coubrough and Jean Buchanan lines.

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