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Archiver > SCT-EDINBURGH > 2003-10 > 1065894203


From: dnbell <>
Subject: [EDB] David Farquharson
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 10:45:48 -0700


Hi Folks:

Wondering if anyone has an information on/connection to the following
chap, his ancestry and family:

David Farquharson - (born Dec. 14, 1822 Edinburgh Origins Order #7060848
died June 18, 1889 in Edinburgh St. George). Married Rachel Millar June
14, 1850 in Edinburgh St. Cuthberts, Midlothian. Origins order #9630873,
LDS Batch #7204002. David was a manufacturing chemist in Edinburgh.
About the time he got his career under way, he married Rachel Millar
or Miller, born 1825 in Edinburgh St. Cuthberts. At the time of the
death of David’s father in 1860, David and Rachel were living at 31
Home Street, at the west end Tollecross district of Edinburgh, about
500 yards southwest of Edinburgh Castle, near the terminus of the now
disused Union Canal. David and Rachel later lived at 25/8 Bread Street
in Edinburgh-St. George with eight or nine other family members in 1881
in an apartment tenement (about 50-100 other people in the building),
probably above David’s chemist’s shop. Bread Street is in the centre of
modern Edinburgh, running off Lothian Road to Argyll Street in what is
now known as North Leith. The name came into being in 1825, and the
street had bakers occupying stores for decades thereafter. There was
also a guild of bakers located at one time on the street. Though listed
in the 1881 census as 258 Bread Street, the addresses there go up to
only 100 and the correct listing is 25/8. They later changed flats,
the family moving to 31 Bread Street, which may have been a flat
connected to David’s chemist’s shop. The Farquharsons had their
daughter Catherine (Kate) White Farquharson living with them along with
her husband, James Blackwood Thomson, and three of their children --
Rachel, Cecilia and Robert -- on Home Street. Catherine apparently died
in late 1880 or early 1881, perhaps during Robert’s birth, and the
Farquharsons and Thomsons moved on to Bread Street. Catherine and
Charles (he was teaching in Glasgow) do not show in the 1881 census with
the rest of the family. David died at 7:30 a.m. of a heart attack
(“rupture of left ventricle” according to his death certificate) at 31
Bread Street. Two years after David’s death, the 1891 census reveals
that his 63-year-old widow Rachel was living in 31 Bread Street with
three of her unmarried daughters: Rachel, 29; Annie. 27; and Margaret,
24. The Thomsons were also still living with Rachel : son-in-law widower
James Blackwood Thomson, still working as a blacksmith; his daughters
Rachel, 13; Cecilia, 12; and son Robert, 10. All three of David’s
grandchildren were still attending school in 1891.
His Wife: Rachel Millar or Rachael
Miller (born 1828 {1881-91 census reports give that date} in Kinross,
Kinross-shire, died July 2, 1904 in Dennistoun, Glasgow at 10 a.m.)
Origins order # 7048863 for birth, the daughter of weaver Thomas Miller
and Catherine White or Catherine Whyte, who married in Kinross June 24,
1827, LDS Batch M114628. Rachel was still alive when David died in 1889,
and shows as the 63-year-old head of house at 31 Bread Street in the
1891 census. Her daughter Catherine had died, but James Blackwood
Thomson was still living with her, along with his three children:
Rachel, 13; Cecilia, 12; Robert, 10. Three of Rachel’s daughters were
also still living at home: Rachel, 29, a fly-dresser; Annie, 27, a
dressmaker; and Maggie, 24, also a dressmaker. Rachel and Annie somehow
ended up owning a home in Lower Largo, Fife, which is probably where
Cecilia Blackwood Thomson met her future husband Alexander Bell. No
record of the elder Rachel’s death is to be found in Origins, but the
Scottish Records office in Edinburgh has a death certificate for her. It
shows that sometime after 1891, Rachel moved to Glasgow and resided with
her retired schoolteacher son Charles during her final years at 637
Alexandra Parade in Glasgow’s Dennistoun district. She died there July
2, 1904 at 10 a.m. of chronic hepatitis, catarrhal jaundice and
exhaustion. Her maiden name is spelled Millar on David’s death
certificate, she is Miller on her wedding certificate, Millar on her
birth certificate and Miller on her own death certificate, certified by
Dr. James Philips. Charles was present when his mother died at age 76.
He eventually moved from Glasgow to Lower Largo to live with his two
spinster sisters until his own death 20 years later, in 1924.

------

Any fcurther info on this Farquharson family greatly appreciated.

dennis bell in british columbia



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