Eliza Rettie, born 1862

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Eliza Rettie, born 1862

Eliza Rettie, born in Cuminestown on 13^th August 1862, was the daughter of James Rettie, agricultural labourer, and Eliza Rettie née Yeats, all resident in the parish of Monquhitter. According to the ages given in the 1891 census James must have been around forty-two years old when Eliza was born. He was described as an agricultural labourer when Eliza was born, but by the 1881 census he was a brewery carter. [GROS Statutory Births 1862 223/00 0070; Census 1881 223/00 001/00 015]

At the time of the April 1881 census Eliza Rettie's family were living at 60 Main Street, Cuminestown, Monquhitter with their son, John, a journeyman tailor aged twenty-eight and two grandchildren, James Ingram aged eleven and Ann Rettie aged ten. [Census 1881 223/00 001/00 015] Nowadays the main part of Main Street only goes up to the mid forties, and even though there's a section south of High Street Close, which has now been downgraded to a mere side-road, it only has a few houses on it. Presumably there were once at least a few more. Nor was n° 60 the last house in the street: there was a post-office at n° 61, and at least a couple more houses beyond. [Census 1881 223/00 001/00 015]

Eliza at that time was working as a general servant for David and Mary Porter and their grandchildren at Ardlogie Cottage, also in the parish of Monquhitter. [Census 1881 197/00 010/00 019] Ardlogie is about one and a quarter miles east south-east of Fyvie, and there are several cottages there: it is not clear which one was Ardlogie Cottage. The various groups of buildings near Fyvie which have the name "Ardlogie" in them are Ardlogie itself, which is a farm; East Mains of Ardlogie; Cottown Ardlogie; Campfold of Ardlogie and Denhead of Ardlogie. Ardlogie Cottage could have been at any one of these. The places on the census go like this:

Ardlogie (which must be the farm)
ditto Cottage
ditto ditto
Kirktown
Ardlogie Cottage
ditto ditto (this is the one where Eliza Rettie was)
ditto ditto
Ardlogie
Denhead

Alison MackGeograph

and then a series of ditto ditto cottages at Denhead. Kirktown is probably what is now called Kirkton Croft, just north of Ardlogie Farm, so the cottage Eliza was living in might have been one of the group at Cottown Ardlogie, which is immediately east of Kirkton Croft, and between it and Denhead.

On or about April 1882 Eliza, who was then nineteen, became pregnant by the fifteen-year-old George Shirran. Their daughter Margaret was born on 23^rd January 1883. At this point Eliza is listed as being a domestic servant in Cuminestown. [GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010]

On 9^th May 1883 a paternity suit brought by Eliza established George as the father. [GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010 RCE] On 9^th July 1883 the case was written up by the Registrar, who instructed that George's name be added to the record of his daughter's birth, but this was not actually done until 3^rd May 1884, after George had joined up, which explains why his occupation is given as "soldier" in the amended record even though he was a farm servant when Margaret was born. The exact text is as follows:

In the Fourth Column of Entry No, 10, in the Register Book of Births for the year 1883, before the name of the Child's Mother, insert George Shirran, Sprottynook, Fyvie, Millbrex, on the authority of a certificate in the form of Schedule (F.) to the following effect: --

In an action relating to the paternity of a female child named ____________ born 23^rd January 1883, at the instance of Eliza Rettie, Cuminestown, Monquhitter against George Shirran, Sprottynook, Fyvie, Millbrex, the Sheriff Court of Aberdeen, Kincardine & Banff on the 9^th day of May 1883, found that the said Child was the illegitimate Child of the Parties aforesaid.

July 9^th 1883
At Monquhitter
Donald Duff
Registrar

At the top right a note has been added which says "3^rd May 1884" and someone's initials.

Margaret thereafter seems to have always been referred to as Margaret Shirran rather than Margaret Rettie. Her marriage, for example, was in the name Shirran and she appears as Shirran on the census. [GROS Statutory Marriages 1908 685/02 0398; Census 1891 223/00 001/00 006]

At the time of the 1891 census James Rettie, then 70, is listed as a brewery carter. James Rettie, his daughter Eliza Rettie and granddaughter Margaret Shirran, along with a female boarder, were living at 33 "Village Street", Cuminestown. There is no Village Street as such in Cuminestown now: this must have been either Main Street or High Street Close. Eliza is described as a housekeeper, and Margaret as a scholar. [Census 1891 223/00 001/00 006]

Ten years later, in April 1901, the thirty-eight-year-old Eliza was acting as live-in housekeeper to an eighty-four-year-old aunt, Susan Fowler, a lady of independent means who had a private house in Cuminestown, near Ashley Cottage. [Census 1901 223/00 001/00 018]

In April 1911, now forty-eight, she was the live-in servent of a seventy-seven-year-old widower named David K Merton (or Meston?) at Balmedie Lodge, a medium-sized cottage on the main road just north of the turning into Lumsden Way in the village of Balmedie, on the coast six miles due north of Aberdeen. [Census 1911 174/00 001/00 002]

For whatever reason, Eliza never married. We cannot know whether she was still carrying a torch for George Shirran, never found a suitable partner or merely preferred not to marry - or found it hard to do so when she already had another man's child. Nor do we know whether she stayed in touch with George and his family or not, although his parents and brothers must have been aware of her: the paternity suit must have been well-known locally.

The fact that she called her daughter Margaret Shirran could indicate affection for the child's father; or an angry desire to make him face up to his responsibility as a parent; or simply a feeling that Margaret would get on better in life if she didn't have her mother's surname to proclaim her a bastard. But if Eliza wasn't on good terms with George's family it must have been very awkward for all concerned: since the nearest kirk and shops to the Shirran family croft at Ewebrae were at Cuminestown, they must either have regularly run the risk of bumping into Eliza or her daughter in the street, or have had to go out of their way to frequent Kirkton of Auchterless instead.

Eliza Rettie died on 14^th October 1918 at Garmond Village (a thin skein of buildings either side of a single road about a mile north of Cuminestown), aged fifty-six, of "hemiplegia". Hemiplegia is weakness on one side of the body - probably due to a stroke, although a brain tumour or a head injury is also possible. The register entry for her death describes her as a domestic servant (retired) and her death was registered by William Smith, "Inspector of Poor for the Parish". I would take this probably to mean that she had had an initial stroke, and suffered partial paralysis, some time before her death, and had been forced to retire early and depend on the parish for support. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1918 223/00 0015]

The fact that Eliza evidently died in some poverty need not mean that she had been abandoned by the Shirrans: they were poor themselves, and at that point George's parents had both died, and George was in the army and had two daughters still at home to support. The fact that their daughter Margaret was living in Edinburgh by the time of her marriage in 1908 [GROS Statutory Marriages 1908 685/02 0398], and later died knowing that her father had been a sergeant [GROS Statutory Deaths 1922 685/10 0383], may well mean that she had stayed in touch with her father and he had helped her to find a place. Without that family connection to "Auld Reekie", one would have expected that a working-class girl from a poor family in the Turriff area who wished to move to the city would have been more likely to move to Aberdeen, about twenty-five miles away, than to Edinburgh which is around a hundred and ten miles from Turriff.