Cupar is across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. A firth is an estuary; so the Firth of Forth is an estuary of the river Forth that separates Lothian (where Edinburgh is) from Fife. It's actually also a fjord which is kind of neat; I've only heard of fjords in connection with Norway. Then again Norway is only a boat ride across the North Sea from Scotland.
My dad sometimes told me about the bridges in that area of Scotland, especially the Tay bridge which for a time had been the longest bridge in the world until it collapsed in 1879 killing many people. I have an idea he thought one of our relatives was killed in that disaster but I haven't found any information on that in my research. He liked bridges though and, shortly before he died at 87, told me that he'd started dreaming of bridges. He would have liked the bridge we crossed on. The sun had come out and the Forth was sparkling with pleasure boats. We passed through Dundee, where my grandparents lived for many years and where Dad spent a year when he was a little boy.
But my destination was Cupar and after about an hour and a bit on the train, I arrived at the train station. I was really tired, it was 8:00 on a Sunday evening and the town was virtually deserted. I dragged my baggage several blocks to my b&b and was welcomed by the Wards with sympathy for my long journey and gingerbread delivered to my room. It was a large comfy room and I really appreciated it. Had dinner at the Golf Pub down the street and read some Cupar history before I fell asleep.
Cupar has been a bustling town for centuries. It used to be the seat of the sheriff and a market town; records go back to the 11th century. I was interested to read all of that but my focus was on my own family's time here. My great great grandfather was actually born in Leith, a suburb of Edinburgh, in 1821. I've found that my great great great grandmother stayed in the Edinburgh area, dying in 1868 at the ripe old age of 82. There's a possibility, though, that she was actually born in England because the only marriage record that matches up the right names for my ggggm and ggggf have them being married in Pocklington, Yorkshire. But the records that far back are very sketchy so I am not sure. So back to my gggps and how they came to Cupar.
I think that my great great grandfather may have moved to the other side of the river from Edinburgh because of his job as a railway plate layer--perhaps he followed the railway work. After his birth, the next record that I have that I can say fairly certainly is "his" is his marriage to my gggm in Strathmiglo, Fife, in 1847, a village that's very close to Cupar. My gggm was born in Bonhill, also very close. According to the 1851 census, they were living in King's Kettle (about 7 miles from Cupar) and he was working as a railway laborer. By 1861, they'd moved to Cupar and that's where the family stayed. Sadly my gggf died of a heart attack in 1873, probably on the job as his death certificate says that he died at St. Clair railway station, a little way down the line from Cupar. My gggm continued to live in Cupar, eventually with one of her sons, until her death in 1904. When I first started researching all of this fifteen years ago, these places meant nothing to me.
All I'd known from my dad was that his parents came from Dundee and that when he was a wee boy visiting Scotland he'd been taken to see family but he didn't know who they were or where they lived. It's really only our generation that's become interested in family history but even my sister wasn't particularly interested although if she were still alive, she might have been interested in all that I've uncovered. Fifteen years ago I started looking through the International Genealogical Index, an index that the Mormon Church had put together of data they had microfilmed. I was amazed to find names that matched up with the few records I had and then, like a jigsaw puzzle, more than more pieces began to fit. I now have over 350 people linked together in my "tree" on ancestry.com and the next stage I wanted to achieve was to put "pictures" to the words on paper. And so I was here, just as I've been in Ireland and in Dingwall. Eventually I'll merge those photos into this blog and complete a kind of "history" for my daughter and grandchildren.
Anyway, here I was on a Monday morning, walking the paths that my ggg's had walked, seeing the houses they'd lived in, the pub my gggf had enjoyed after his day's work, the bakery my ggf had worked in as a journeyman baker, and the cemetery where my gggps and at least one of the gga's and ggu's are buried. Here we go:
This is the house that my gggps were listed in on the 1871 and 1881 censuses. With 7 children. It is actually the back of a row of houses. I wonder how big it is inside; it certainly looked small from the outside. I had a difficult time finding it and had to go down a narrow alley that I worried might be private. There was a young man in his 20s sitting on the stoop of the house next to this and putting on my best "American" accent (figuring that Americans might be forgiven for being where they're not supposed to be) I asked them if this was the house number. He said yes and I explained what I was doing. He was fascinated and called his flatmates out to meet me. They all thought it was great and amazing that I was looking at a house that my family had lived in almost 150 years ago. Of course the windows are new and the door as well. A lot has changed but that's still the bones of the house. They lived there. Wow.
The house faces on to the Eden River (you can't really see the house, it's behind the first house on the left). I was standing on a small bridge when I took this photo. The house is down a very small street just across the road from the railway station. So my gggf wouldn't have had far to walk to work. The river flows through the town and is very pretty but my b&b hosts say that it floods every few years and causes havoc when it does. With these houses so close to the river, I wonder if they were flooded back when my relatives lived there. Probably.
Eventually my gggm moved in with one of my ggu's in a larger house just up the street. By 1891 most of my other ggu's and gga's had married and were living elsewhere, but several were still close by. My own ggm had married and gone to Dundee but my gggm visited her; she was there at the 1901 census. I have a living cousin who actually knew my ggm and said she would take him to visit my gga's and ggu's in Cupar. He doesn't remember much, just that they were kind and loving. He says that my ggm told him that her mother would send her to the pub some nights to tell my gggf that it was time to come home. When she got there, he'd laugh and hoist her up on a chair and say "Gi' us a song then Maggie and we'll go hame." And she'd sing and they'd go. Precious stories because there are so few of them and they give a small glimpse into a simple life back then. They were very poor but they made do. I've recently found out that at least one of my gga's married and went to the U.S.
This is the pub my gggf probably went to (lower right hand side, you can barely see the small sign sticking out from the side of the building). It's the pub that is closest to the railway station and is called, appropriately enough, The Railway. I went inside; it was empty at that time of the day (just before noon) and it's very plain. The barmaid couldn't tell me much about what it might have looked like 150 years ago but she, like so many others I met, was fascinated that I was coming back. She thought it was lovely. I tried to imagine it filled with men after a day's work, all chatting and laughing. But it was hard.
So I headed for the library hoping that the advertised "come to the library and discover your family's roots" posting on its website would prove true. But, sadly, it really didn't. Unfortunately the librarian who was staffing the "history centre" was new to Cupar and couldn't tell me much about what it had been like. She gave me four photo albums of historical photos but they didn't give many clues about it either. Most of the photos were from the era of the Great War, celebrating its end. Or of rich families. Guess they were the ones who could afford to either have their photos taken or take part in official openings and all. Not my family.
But one of the other librarians was helpful in pointing me to the Burials Office in the nearby government office and, although she was supposed to be at lunch, the woman there was so kind in looking through the burial records for me. Luckily Cupar was and is a small town so there weren't a lot of records to search through. She found my gggps' lair number as well as nearby ggas' and ggus'. So I started walking over to the cemetery. First, however, I stopped in at a bakery that was existent when my ggf worked as a journeyman baker when he courted and married my ggm in 1878. He actually wasn't from Cupar though, he was from Dundee and after my ggps married, they moved to Dundee. Maybe he did his apprenticeship in Cupar. However way it happened, he did come here and met my ggm who was working in the linen factory (that building doesn't exist anymore) and good thing too--if he hadn't I wouldn't be here.
There is nothing quite like Scottish baking. Oh my goodness, the sight of all those lovely cakes and rolls took me back to when I was a little girl in Montreal. Woolworths used to do cakes and rolls like that. I didn't realize the influence was Scottish although it's true I haven't seen such cakes in England yet. And it's quite different from French patisserie. I love it all, I love sugar :) So of course I bought a cake and chatted with the woman behind the counter. She confirmed that was probably the bakery that my ggf would have worked for although he probably worked out of the main bakery up the way. It's loads of fun meeting people this way. Something for them to talk about with their families at tea time "I met this very odd American who said...."
Now for the sombre moment. The green patch between the headstone with the cross and the headstone in the foreground is where my Cupar relations are buried. No headstones at all. They couldn't afford them I suppose or there was no one to erect one when the last died. But what remains of them is there; my DNA is buried in that soil. I said a little prayer for them and told them I remembered them and looked forward to when I'll meet them in the next life. And then I walked down the hill, picked up my bags and headed back to the railway station, on to Glasgow with the song "Bitter Green" in my head:
"But now the bitter green is gone, the hills have turned to rust
There comes a weary stranger, his tears fall in the dust
Kneeling by the churchyard in the autumn mist
Dreaming of a kiss"
(Gordon Lightfoot, 1968)
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