The Old Family

George Bruce

George Bruce is an interesting character from a family history perspective.  He is one of the few for whom we have a complete set of censuses as he lived from 1840 to 1917 and although we don't have his birth record we do know about his birth and we do have his other records including a previous marriage.  We also have a diversion into England and links to crofting, herring fisheries and shipbuilding, three significant aspects of Scottish social history.

I have no idea if he was George or Dod or Geordie as all the records say George but they would have in any case whatever he was called.  His is one of several instances across the trees covered in this site where an illegitimate child carried the surname of the father, suggesting that it was public knowledge and everyone was OK with it.  No birth record can be found but his mother Janet MacAdie was a spinster when she later married David Sinclair, a farmer from Thurso, and she took George Bruce with her to add to the children she had with her new husband.  We do know who George's father was though as it's clearly stated in his marriage and death records as David Bruce (dec) but the marriage also says (reputed) and whether this means reputed to be deceased or reputed to be the father is unclear but the bracketed words are separate so I favour the latter.  David Bruce from Wick was a boat carpenter and this is significant as George later became a ship model maker on Clydeside and it hints that George kept in touch with his father and picked up an interest in joinery with a maritime slant from him.

George was born into the crofts of South Dunn near Watten in Sutherland.  If you visit the area now, all you can see are ruins and sheep and that, of course, could be the reason for George leaving the area as the Clearances were under way at the time of his birth.  He was with his mother living in his grandparents' croft as a one year old and still there ten years later when his mother had left to marry David Sinclair in 1849.  He moved in with his mother and stepfather though by the next census in 1861 aged 20, a full ten to twenty years older than his step brothers and sisters.

Four years later he married Elizabeth Sinclair (no relation to his step-father that I know of - it's a very common name up there) in Watten but he is given as being from Govan and she from Watten, suggesting that he went to seek his fortune down there and came back to collect his childhood sweetheart before returning south to set up home and family with her.  It wasn't to last though and after about ten years Elizabeth died leaving George with a couple of children to bring up on his own (although they had lost at least one other).  He re-married, this time to Christina Campbell and they had a further five children including Annie and girl/boy twins.  Two of the children were born in Southampton, another town with a naval tradition, but as there were no other children born I don't know exactly when they returned to Govan but they did, although this extract (below) from Wikipedia suggests 1893.  This time it was to a fairly substantial house with four rooms, a world away from the croft he was born in.  The boy done good.

William Becket-Hill, who had been managing the yard as official receiver since 1886 soon formed a new consortium and shipbuilding resumed as the Southampton Naval Works under the management of J. Harvard Biles, a naval architect from the Clyde subsequently to become the first Professor of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow. The Southampton Naval Works built eighteen ships, but that business also experienced financial problems and went into receivership in 1893.

His last home was at Clifford Street which now lies under the motorway just at the point where the M77 meets the M8, or at least one side of the street does.  The other side just survived.  Sadly, according to the numbers of the surviving houses, their one was demolished.  Also going by the surviving examples, this would have been a decent house.  Not as romantic as this though.

As a ship model maker on Clydeside from the 1870s he would have been at the cutting edge of the industry when the shipyards were at their peak and in a period of transition as sail was fading fast and the steam boats were growing in size.  I often look at the models in the Glasgow Transport Museum or the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh and wonder if we are looking at his work.  The models were needed to show the client what the ship would look like and also to ensure that the paper designs were viable.  You can easily see how much skill goes into the making of them. George was lucky enough to be able to retire as noted in the 1911 census.

(click to enlarge)

I checked George's first marriage to see if there were any nuggets to be found there even if it wasn't of interest in our direct line but I found a contradiction there.  The full record is as below and his father is noted as George, not David.  I believe that this could just be an error given that two other vital records say David but we must keep an open mind.

Free Church, Watten, May 18 1865
George Bruce, Joiner, Single, 23, Govan
- George Bruce, Joiner (dec)
- Janet Macadie
Elizabeth Sinclair, Farmer's Daughter, Single, 18, Dunn, Watten
- William Sinclair, Farmer
- Helen Swanson