Charles’s father, John Soutar, was also a blacksmith.
I too have considered Soutar and Souter, as well as Jane and Jean, interchangeable.
I have more information on Jane Soutar, my great grandmother:
Also known as Jean Souter. As a child, lived at The Drums, Glen Clova.
In 1881 Jane was a widow farming at Whitehaugh (or White Haugh) Farm House, Clova, Angus employing 1 man and 1 boy, with her children David 15, Jeannie 13, and William 8.
'Depopulation...due to clearances for shooting...In the upper glen, only two houses were occupied...Whitehaugh (occupied) by a tenacious woman and young children...The stubborn survivor was Mrs Robbie in Whitehaugh, born Jane Souter, the blacksmith's daughter. She had kept on Whitehaugh...and continued to farm after everyone had gone...The rest of the family had left the glen. It was perhaps when son David died of TB in 1895 that she gave up the struggle and retired with Jeanie to a cottage at Crossmill, close to her married daughter and a pair of young granddaughters (where reportedly the pugnacious old lady attempted to govern Rottal.) From "Glen Clova through the ages" - by Flora Davidson
This "Little Granny" was very small and lived at Crossmill (or Crossmiln) in her latter years. She was a very religious, sweet, gentle, friendly person who even in her nineties looked a picture in a black dress, white shawl and crocheted white lace cap with black ribbon. She died in 1928 aged 96. In those far off days, Crossmill was thought of as a fairy cottage smothered in flowers: roses everywhere, honeysuckle framing the gateway, the water trough surrounded by fury mimulus and on either side of the door steps, clumps of mignonette. Her daughter, Ann Winter Ogilvy nee Robbie, was always referred to as "Big Granny"
Jane was a very small lady and was the "Little Granny" who soaked grain in whisky (or maize in cheap brandy), spreading it over the yard to attract the grouse, while the beaters were out on the Rottal Lodge estate. The grouse would be seen staggering around, and little Granny would pick them up, wring their necks and put into a water butt (or trough), saying: "Och, the purr wee thingees, I'll just hae to put them oot o' their misery!"
She was said to sleep in a curtained wall-bed in the kitchen, living on bannocks (oatcakes), home-made butter, brimstone and treacle, and tea brewed all day on the range until it was black and rank.
