The Old Family
and how we got here
Mary Beaton was born in Leith, the second of ten children. She stayed in Leith until the family moved to Bathgate when she was probably around 15. She was listed as a domestic servant in the 1891 census while she was at Bathgate. Her father Walter died soon after and it seems the family then moved through to the Bonnyrigg area which is just a few miles from Roslin where she met and married Allan Old. There were carpet factories in both Roslin and Bonnyrigg and most of the Beaton youngsters worked in that industry though no specific factory is mentioned. It is possible that this could have been a factor in them meeting but we can't tell.
What we can tell is that things might have turned out differently as Allan had been with her sister Jane before Mary. In fact, Jane had a child, also Allan, by him. She brought the child up on her own and mother and son were to be found with granny Rachel in Bonnyrigg in 1891 before young Allan moved to live with his father in 1901, to work in the West Lothian shale industry. Mary had her first child, Rachel, to her husband on 27 June 1898 only having married on 29 April 1898, although the birth certificate has the marriage noted as 1893 to look better.
She had six children including my grandfather Alexander and with young Allan staying with them there were nine living together which is why they had to have two of the small miners' terraced houses in Kingscavil, where she stayed until she passed away in 1930.
The family photo shows Rachel, Allan, John (Jock) and Walter at the back and my grandfather Alexander (Alec), his father Allan, Mary, his mother Mary and William (Bill) at the front. Click to see a larger version.
We have a great photo of the Beaton sisters courtesy of Sylvia Amos from Oregon. Back left is her grandmother Isabella Beaton and centre back is our Mary Beaton but we don't have positive identification of the others or when and where the photo was taken. The sisters were, from oldest to youngest, Mary, Jane, Janet, Isabella and Lizzie and there were 2-year gaps between them, more or less. Make your own judgement of who is who.
