Mary Alexander

Mary Alexander's life story can be seen in parallel with her husband John Binnie as they were together from the 1841 census until they died within a year of each other in the Low Port in Linlithgow where they were living with family in their old age.  In fact they were both born in Linlithgow right at the start of the nineteenth century before doing the tour round the Lothian farms and returning to Linlithgow around 1880.  Yes, they both lived to a good age, Mary reaching 85 although she was noted as being deaf in the 1881 census.

Mary's parentage is difficult to resolve.  Her death notice gives her parents as Alexander Alexander and Marion Nicol but no birth to these parents, named Mary or otherwise, can be found.  Parent names on death certificates are notoriously inaccurate though and it could be better to look at children's names to predict parents' names.  The first two boys were Alexander and John and the first two girls were Marrion and Agnes.  Convention would have it that the father's parents were Alexander and Agnes and the mother's parents were John and Marion.  John's parents are correctly anticipated and so it would seem that John and Marion should be as well but there is the distinct possibility that both fathers were Alexander so the death certificate could actually be correct.  Unfortunately, John and Marion doesn't give us any results either.  It looks like she just wasn't recorded and we have to accept that we can't find her ancestry.

In the 1851 census she was recorded as Mary Alexander and in 1861 as Mary Alexander or Binnie but she is Mary Binnie in the others.  This is something I've seen elsewhere, that a married woman still uses her maiden name at times.  It's not just a modern phenomenen, a side-product of emancipation.  It might just have been that everyone knew them by their pre-marriage names but this doesn't hold when they have moved about so much.  Maybe it's a factor of the irregular marriage, that they are a married couple by repute but actually have never gone through a ceremony.