Ewing Family of Renfrewshire/Greenock/Paisley

[pfwgrant]

Hi both - sorry to be so long in replying.... life is getting in the way of research!

I have a bad photo of the painting of the house at Bredilandmoor(muir) and will post it sometime - when I find it.  It was basically a large cottage, but I still do not understand how they slept 16 in there. As Paisley expanded, it was subsumed by Foxbar, and I have a copy of a newspaper article calling the cottage  the last of the old style cottages when it was demolished for a housing estate. I must dig out the notes and check because I am sure another old family letter (from Scottish Sharps to New Zealand Sharp cousins c1910) says that Breliandmoor had burned down and one of the Ewing aunts (sister of John Ewing of Warwick) was so upset about it that she took ill and nearly died!

Re Foxbar, Wikipedia says (rather ominously)... "Foxbar is an area of Paisley, bordered by the Gleniffer Braes and Paisley town centre. Consisting mostly of residential areas, Foxbar has rapidly grown over the past century to be one of the largest housing areas in the town. An area of low socioeconomic levels and poor social mobility, the local authority (Renfrewshire Council) has invested significantly in the area, which nowadays boasts multiple community centres, public parks and social areas".  Hmmm....     The semi-rural idyll of the Ewing-era Bredilandmoor appears to have been rather spoiled!

My research links the weaving John Ewings to Kilbarchan (John Ewing = Margaret Maxwell), then the move to Bredilandmoor. The wife of the next John Ewing was Margaret Baird who (rather unusually despite her Scots name) was born in England.  Perhaps her father was an Army private or similar.  As weavers I recall that the Ewings were involved in the social unrest in the first half of the 19th century. Various newspaper articles show the Ewings at Bredilandmoor, the last being an assault by John Ewing on his wife Margaret Sproul - not long before he died.

Interested to hear you had found proof of the Ewing arrival in QLD on the Light of the Age (couldn't see the name on the scans).  All of my ancestors had arrived in New Zealand from Scotland, Ireland and England by 1879, but the only one I cannot find the ship for is my gt grandfather John Sharp's arrival in Otago NZ from Scotland (nephew of John Ewing of Warwick QLD). All I know is oral tradition from one of his daughters who told me when in her 90s that her father arrived in Otago when he was 18, having come out to New Zealand as a groom to some stud Clydesdales being imported by Robert Charteris, a farmer of East Taieri, Otago. Maybe John Sharp slept alongside his charges in the hold and was missed off the passenger list!!

Currently watching Australia resoundingly beating NZ in the netball champs, but enjoyed seeing NZ hold onto the Bledisloe Cup in the rugby last night!

Regards,
Peter   

[OZScot]

Hi Peter,
Just when I was beginning to like you, you had to mention the Rugby. Oh well we win everything else I suppose.
A very big surprise to me was that John Ewing of Warwick Qld didn't follow the generational family  footsteps of weavers. Well, maybe he did very early and very young perhaps. Maybe the jobs were starting to fall or drop right off because of the cotton shortage caused by American Civil war.

On his Marriage certificate his father's [also John] listed profession was weaver, but John of Warwick Qld was 'platelayer'. Big surprise that he already was one when he came here and the reason he was selected obviously. Poor Mary signed with an 'x' as did Margaret Sproul in her marriage certificate.!

Sounds like John when he came here carried on some of the unrest as he was a strong advocate for the 8hr work days as cited by his daughter Jane in her story on Trove. I found where John Ewing and others formed a 'Union' of sorts to take their fight to the Parliament at some stage. I also found where he was collecting monies from workers for the fight. Today it's called 'Union fees'.

Can you tell me where you got the information from, where John Ewing assaulted poor Margaret Sproul? Is there a Scottish digitised newspaper like the Australian 'Trove'? If there is I'm dying to delve into it because I'm trying to see which John Ewing has run into some trouble here. John had a son born 1861 in Paisley and wouldn't you know it he called him John as well and that's the problem. He has totally dropped off the face of the Earth. He landed here with them and the only trace of him we have found is on John of Warwick's DC where he has died. So he was alive between 1861 and 1907 and that's all we can find. No marriage, no death or burial.

There are a few mentions of a John Ewing in Qld Police Gazettes but just the name. No age, no date of birth just the name. Dilemma, which one is he? All the mentions have occurred in Brisbane. John of Warwick was essentially working all the rail lines on the South and Western Railway which is quite a distance from Brisbane for those days of horse and buggy, Cobb & Co and the completed lines.

I'm essentially trying to rule one or the other out or in, and I think like most a leopard won't change it's spots, so if I can find anything out about John Ewing's past, who brought his family here, before he came it may very well seal the case. He was born 1835 and arrived here in 1866. So I guess maybe the years 1850-1865.

Unless someone out there knows where infant John Ewing went or what happened to him, it's a total dead end.

Cheers.