Hello again Monica.£63 in total. Family history can be an expensive hobby!
My grandfather Robert Hume Gray married my grandmother Janet Cunningham Connell in 1921, when they were both 27 - so quite late. As there was a trade depression, he had difficulty finding work as a joiner, and decided to go to America in 1923, with 2 brothers and 2 sisters, leaving his widowed mother with another sister, and my grandmother with my mother Margaret born 1922 and about to give birth to my uncle Angus. She seems to have moved from Govan where most of her family were, to Stratheven, and according to her divorce defence, was walking out with an acquaintance, who forced himself on her.
She had nothing further to do with him, but found herself pregnant, and had James on 25th May 1925, and had him adopted. Although her mother in law had little to do with her, she found out about this, let her son know, consulted lawyers re divorce, and obtained the birth certificate. She thought it was illegal to call him James Gray, but as that was her name, it was not.
She seems to have been the driving force towards divorce, at first going to where they lived in Eaglesham
with her son, to try to take the children. ( My grandfather said in the court that she could have had '' the girl'', if he could have his son. Glad my mother never saw this.) There were numerous accounts later of him visiting Janet, and she stated that he wanted a reconciliation. The defence cites ''carnal intercourse'' as they like to call it, and him buying her a syringe and quinine to avoid pregnancy - never heard of that one. It details various wranglings, and he said that she offerred not to defend the action if he paid for a new life in Canada. The divorce did take a long time - 1925 to 1927, and indications were it might be becauseof reconciliation. She seems to have defended it on that note. She did give the children to him at Christmas but regretted it and went to the house to be called a prostitute by her mother in law, and told she'd end up like one of her sisters - who had all her insides taken out at the hospital! Summoning a policeman did her no good.
Although there were holes in my grandfather's story re visits, meetings and reconciliations, she lost both her children, and he skipped off right back to America leaving them with his mother. I can find no trace of her after that.He did have to pay seven guineas to account of her expenses, and fifteen shillings weekly as interim aliment. I was intrigued to see that apart from a landlady who witnessed 2 visits of my grandfather, there seemed no-one to speak for her - she had 8 siblings, but may be that wasn't the way it was done. Perhaps she had enough money to emigrate. Aussigen couldn't find anything for Australia, and I'm starting to check elsewhere. My mumwas always told she had deserted them, and never knew this story before she died, but she remembered a woman watching her in the school playground.
I never knew how heartbreaking this journey could be, and I'm still no closer to finding her.
