McAndrews of Edinburgh

[IJDisney]

I am hoping some kind Root-chatter can help me with this.

My great grandmother was Ellen Cornish, born in 1876 in Exeter, Devon. She appears in Exeter in the 1881 and 1891 Censuses, married in Exeter in 1903 and lived in Topshan, Devon until she died in 1958.

However, people who knew her have told me that before she married she was a Lady's Companion to a Miss McAndrew, and lived in Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh. I would love to know more about her life there, how she got to be so far from her home, and what happened to Miss McAndrew for Ellen to leave her service. Did her lady die or get married, or was Ellen Cornish only hired for a set period or dismissed?

Does anyone know if there was a McAndrew family living in Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh in the 1890s or early 1900s? If I can get some context it will help fill out the possibilities.

Thank you in advance.

[Forfarian]

Does anyone know if there was a McAndrew family living in Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh in the 1890s or early 1900s? If I can get some context it will help fill out the possibilities.

Go to www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk (SP) and have a rake about in the indexes to the Valuation Rolls. Use wildcards to make sure you find all the MacAndrews as well as McAndrews - I'd search using m*c*ndr*w* and I wouldn't confine my search to Edinburgh - any family that employed a ladies' maid would have been pretty wealthy and could well have owned residences elsewhere - maybe a mansion near wherever their business was, and/or a summer home in the country or on the coast.

You might also try the 1901 census. Original documents are available at SP and quite a few commercial web sites have transcriptions, not always accurate or faithful to the originals.

[Crumblie]

Hi,

Find My Past has a Miss Catherine L MacAndrew boarding in a lodging house at 19 Atholl Crescent on 1901 Census, it says she was living on own means. There were also a number of servants there but not the person you are seeking.

[Forfarian]

Good find, Crumblie.

Catharine L MacAndrew died in Edinburgh in 1926, aged 64. She was almost certainly Catherine Lothian MacAndrew, born 1862 in Edinburgh. She seems to have been an only child.

In 1891 she was in Newton Abbot, Devon, with father Donald M Macandrew his wife Agnes B Macandrew, both born in Scotland. In 1881 they were in Torquay and in 1871 they were in 17 Regent Terrace, South Leith, Donald aged 51 and described as retired corn factor, born Edinburgh and Agnes as Agnes Rose Macandrew, 40, born Perth.

Agnes must have been Catherine's stepmother because there is a newspaper marriage notice in the Paisley Herald and Renfrewshire Advertiser on 26 November 1870 of Donald M Macandrew Esq to Agnes Rose Johnston on 22 November 1870. SP has this as D M Macandrew, and also a marriage of D U Macandrew to C H Lothian in Liberton in 1858, and there is a death of Catherine Helen Lothian or Macandrew in Liberton in 1862.

The 1881 and 1891 censuses would explain how Ellen could have got so far from home.

Donald died in Newton Abbot in 1893, aged 73, and Agnes Rose Macandrew died there in 1898 aged 68. The probate of the will of Donald Munro Macandrew, formerly of Leith but lately of Kilrock, Torquay, was sealed in Scotland on 10 June 1893.

That probate was granted at London on 1 June 1893 to John Lewis Macandrew, Captain 3rd Battalion Black Watch and Henry Augustus Johnston, stockbroker. His estate was valued at £34,454 1s 2d, which is equivalent to £4.5 million today (depending on which inflation calculator you use).

So if Miss Catherine Macandrew was Donald's only child she was certainly not short of a bob or two.

Interesting that their house in Torquay was called Kilrock. That is how the name of the ancestral home and family seat of Clan Rose, Kilravock Castle, is pronounced. So was Agnes perhaps connected with the Roses of Kilravock, notwithstanding being born in Perthshire according to the 1871 census? Not that that is of any particular relevance to your search for Ellen Cornish, but it might be of interest.

I note an Ellen E Cornish, aged 25, born Exeter, a housemaid in the household of Leonard Lees in Paignton in 1901, along with Alice Cornish, 31, parlour maid, also born Exeter. If this is your Ellen, it suggests that she cannot have stayed for any great length of time in Edinburgh, because presumably Miss Catherine remained in Devon until her mother's death in 1898, and Ellen was back in Devon by 1901. Or Ellen didn't go to Edinburgh until after the 1901 census, and was back in Devon by 1903.

[IJDisney]

Wow! Thank you very much Forfarian and Crumblie. You have certainly put me on what looks to be the right track. As seems likely, Ellen Cornish made contact with the family in Devon, and then traveled up to Scotland. But in what year that happened, and for how long, is still a mystery.

Ellen would have been 14 years younger than Miss MacAndrew. She was 15 in 1891, when Miss MacAndrew was 29. In 1901 Ellen would be 25 and Miss MacAndrew 39. I wonder if that would have been an appropriate age difference for a Lady's Companion? Maybe Ellen was actually employed as a Lady's Maid, which would allow for her younger age?

[Forfarian]

It would be interesting to know why Miss Catherine went to Edinburgh at all after apparently spending most of her life in Devon.

Did she have to go there in connection with winding up the Scottish end of her father's estate, perhaps?

I wondered if she had been planning to buy a house or flat in Edinburgh, but there is no listing of her in the valuation rolls, either as proprietor or as tenant.

Could she have been visiting relatives, and if so why was she staying in a boarding house rather than with the relatives?

And was she there long enough before Ellen's marriage to give rise to the story that Ellen actually lived in Edinburgh with her?