My Great Great Grandfather from Scotland
A cousin from the Borders of Scotland found me on the InterNet and sent me a copy of George Mair, my GG Grandfather's, obituary. Double Click the picture. When you get to Webshots look for a little magnifying glass under the picture. This will make the obituary much easier to read!
Here is the story I first posted on our old NHS1969 site after I found the same fellow's grave. He lived to be almost 100 and was know as "Old Lochie"
May 30, 2001 Visit to Udny Green, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
My sister Marggie and I are staying at the Station Hotel on Guild Street in Aberdeen. It has feeling of a grand old hotel somewhat past its prime and faded in its glory. It reminds me of the Hotel Northampton (Massachusetts) where I worked as a young man in the 1970’s. The rooms are large, the ceilings very high, 20 feet or more. There are deep armchairs and wood paneling. The electrical outlets, radiators, clothes dryers, and plumbing are more of the foreign anglo fixtures that need exploration prior to use. And naturally there is a tea set. Marggie phoned up third cousin Peter Catto last night and we planned to meet at 10:00 AM in the lobby with family burial places as our goal.
After coffee in the dining room, we set out for the bus station and get on a double decker for Pitmedden which is reported to stop at Udny. The ride from the second deck provides a wonderful view but also exaggerates the motion of the bus and causes me some queasiness. The bus goes north up King’s Road past the back of King’s College in Old Aberdeen, formerly Aberdon. Aber is a Gaelic word meaning "at the mouth of" and Dee and Don are two rivers, hence AberDeen and AberDon. The city was founded when a Roman general was told to build a fortress near the mouth of the two rivers in the northeast.
The bus next travels through an Industrial Estate (Park) which is one of the results of the North Sea Oil boom and is quite ugly and seems so out of place in Scotland. Then suddenly we are in the countryside again. Soft rolling green hills of pasture with small groups of sheep everywhere. At this time there are usually a couple of lambs with each mother sheep. Less often we see Angus bulls, cows, and a very few horses. Yellow is splashed about the scenery in the form of wild Scottish broom and rapeseed fields. There is a lot of sky and not a lot of trees. The trees seem to cluster near the burns (small streams) and manor houses are often seen in these locations. There are scattered cottages built of stone, but most of the houses are clustered in rows as they might be in the city, except here, there is often just one short row hugging the road in the middle of nowhere.
The bus driver drops us off at Udny Station explaining that this bus doesn’t go to Udny Green. He gives us directions. And so, with serious heavy gray rain clouds threatening all around, we set off on a 3-kilometer walk through the wilds of Aberdeenshire for Udny Green. I am exhilarated, however. It is one of those intense moments of excitement that genealogists can experience when approaching a goal that has been in the works for a long time. I have seen the same look in the eyes of friend’s seeking other personal milestones. It reminds me of the look in my roommate Bob’s eyes in college one late fall afternoon. Bob was Captain of the Beloit College Football team that hadn’t won a single game in two years. That afternoon the home team finally won.
Udny Green is a small village gathered about a central green. There is a church and a very small hotel and that is about it. We stopped for lunch in the hotel. We were the only guests, and I do believe that the innkeeper had to hop in a car and drive to a larger town to shop for our food before she returned and cooked it and served us perhaps an hour later. Nevertheless, we enjoyed each other’s company and I enjoyed several Ginger Beers.
The cemetery had a round stone structure in it. I later read at the NE Scotland Family History Center that this building once contained a large lazy susan like device upon which fresh bodies were placed. Each day the wheel was turn one slot. After six days, the bodies were considered sufficiently decayed to be buried. The reason for this macabre ritual was to foil body snatchers from the University of Aberdeen medical school!
The cemetery was quiet, well maintained, as are most Scottish cemeteries, and past the backside one sees sweeping views of the neighboring fields and hills. A few gentle raindrops fell most of the time we were there, but there were no real showers. There was a walled in enclosure for the Seton family. The Seton’s were the owners of Mounie Castle. Peter and I have gotten close to establishing a family connection, although it is elusive because of some probable illegitimacy. Nonetheless, we recorded all the Seton inscriptions for future reference. I searched hard for Mair, Watson, and Simpson graves.
The crown jewel of the tombstones we found read in part:
"Erected by GEORGE MAIR shoemaker Davieshill Foveran in memory of his wife Susan d. 26 Aug. 1856 aged 35....Said GEORGE MAIR Davieshill d. 22 Jan. 1912 in 100th year."
Thus on a gray Scottish day, roughly 200 years after his birth, Marggie, Peter, and I paid our respects to our great great grandparent’s amongst the greens, yellows, and spirits of Scotland.
I. Alexander Mair was born in Udny Green about 1786. He married May Watson. He died in 1867.
II. George Mair, son of Alexander and May, was born January 17, 1813. George was a shoemaker and a crofter at Couter Cullen. He married Susan Simpson May 17, 1840 in Foveran. Susan died at age 35 on August 26, 1856. George lived until his 100th year dying on 22 January 1912.
Susan’s sister, Jane, moved in with George and helped raise George and Susan’s children. Jane Simpson died 22 Nov. 1884 at age 68. George, Susan, and Jane are all buried with their children who died young at the Udny Green cemetery.
III. Arthur Macdonald Mair was the son of George Mair and Susan Simpson and was born in Foveran June 11, 1850. He married Grace Anderson who was born in 1858 in St. Nicholas Parish in the City of Aberdeen. Arthur was probably working in the granite quarries of Shap, Westmoreland, England where he met and married Grace. They returned to settle in Aberdeen, where Arthur went to work for the monument making firm operated by Grace Anderson’s father & brothers. Sometime in the late 1800s, Arthur went and worked in granite quarries in New Hampshire in the United States, but returned to live with his family on Walker Road in Torry, a neighborhood of Aberdeen near the River Dee.
Grace’s parents were Aneas Anderson (1830 - 1899) and Sophia Sheed (1836-1911). They married 7 December 1855 in St. Nicholas Parish, Aberdeen and lived at 5 Hanover Street. Aneas and Sophia are buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery, Kings Road, Aberdeen.
Arthur (d. 1932) and Grace (d. 15 Dec. 1938) are buried with their children who died young at Allen Vale Cemetery alongside the River Dee in Aberdeen.
IV. George Mair was the eldest son of Arthur Mair and Grace Anderson. He was born in Aberdeen 17 November 1885. He went to the United States in 1906 and initially worked in New Hampshire as his father had done. While continuing to work each summer, he was able to put himself through Mt. Hermon preparatory school and Harvard University where he graduated in 1916. Although raised as a Methodist, he became a Presbyterian minister serving for many years in Bedford Park, Bronx, New York and eventually retiring to Princeton, NJ. George married Evelyn Thurber 22 September 1920 in New York City. George (died 15 Jan 1962) and Evelyn (died April 9, 1989) are buried in Ewing Cemetery, near Trenton, NJ.
This George Mair and Evelyn were my grandparents.