My late husband,
Bill Barrie, knew my mother well, because she lived to the age of ninety. But
he barely knew his own mother. Her name was Sarah. She came from Hamilton,
Lanarkshire; and she died when Bill – or Billie, as he was known in Scotland – was
three and a half years old. All he retained was the faint and precious memory
of her teaching him to read, as the two of them rested in bed during her final
illness.
Bill told me that his mother’s family, the
Glens, virtually disowned Sarah when she married Archibald Barrie. She bore
four children in quick succession – Archie in 1926; Margaret, 1928; Billie,
1930; and Jean, 1933. Sarah died in
Hamilton, soon after Jean’s birth, and baby Jean was adopted by Archibald’s
brother and his wife. Archibald’s sister helped care for the other siblings until,
barely a year after Sarah’s death, Archibald married a young Irish Catholic
woman, Annie Carolan. They soon had their own son, Iain; and Billie, a
protestant boy in a Catholic household, was made to feel unwelcome and unloved.
His two older siblings fared somewhat better, particularly Margaret.
After Bill emigrated to New Zealand in 1954,
he corresponded with other family members for a while – particularly Archie, to
whom he was close – but they gradually fell out of contact. Bill married a girl
from a large Mangakino family, they had a daughter, got divorced twenty years
later, and he married me in December 1977. Then suddenly, one evening in 1996, Bill
received a phone call from Scotland. His younger sister, Jean, had, after a
long search, managed to trace him.
The following year, Bill and I took our two
teenaged children to Scotland to meet Jean and Archie. Bill was later also
reunited with his older sister, Margaret, who visited us from the USA; and
Auntie Jean, his mother’s youngest sister, who lived in Melbourne. Auntie Jean
gave Bill this photo, his only tangible reminder of his mother:
 |
| Sarah Barrie with two of her children: Margaret and Billie, 1931. Photo Barrie Family collection |
In the photo, Sarah’s eyes are dark and
shadowed. The bonnie baby in her arms is Billie; and Margaret is seated beside
them.
*
Throughout
our long marriage Bill was vehement that he did not want me to delve into his
family history, particularly the Glens. He said his life began when he came to
New Zealand.
But now Bill is dead – it has been more than
three years – and I wish to place some of his ashes near Sarah’s grave when I
go to Scotland in June. I believe Bill would understand. It is important to me
to make this pilgrimage – to honour the mother-in-law I never met – but first I
need to find when she died, and where her grave is. Perhaps I can also learn
something of her story.
I have scant information. A family tree,
prepared by a neighbour for Bill’s 80th birthday – it focuses mostly
on the Barries – includes an image of Sarah’s marriage certificate, and this is
my starting point.
 |
| Marriage certificate for Archibald Barrie & Sarah Glen, 31 October 1924. |
*
Sarah Glen
and Archibald Barrie were
married on 31 October 1924, at 52 Morris Crescent, Blantyre, Lanarkshire. This
was the Barrie family home, and Archibald’s sister was a witness. Archibald
was 21, a coal miner by occupation. Sarah was 20, and signed her name as Sadie
Glen, domestic servant, Blantyre.
The ceremony was performed, according to the Forms of the Evangelical Union
Congregational Church.
This cluster of facts brings immediate
questions to my mind: Why was there no involvement by Sarah’s own family? Who
were her family? And why did they disapprove of Archibald?
 |
| Archibald Barrie, late 1920s. Photo: Barrie family collection |
Basic information about Sarah's early years is supplied in the
family tree prepared by our neighbour, and also in another tree prepared by
Bill’s cousin and namesake, Bill Glen in Australia:
Sarah Glen was born on 14 August, 1904, in
Hamilton, Lanarkshire, the middle child of nine children born to William Glen,
a coal miner, and his wife, Eliza Henderson. Eliza died on 25 May 1918. So Sarah lost her mother when she was only
thirteen. William Glen did not remarry. That
means he brought up Sarah and her siblings on his own, possibly with help from
family members. He died in Hamilton on 20 June 1940.
*
My first
challenge is to find out when and where Sarah died.
With little expectation of success – if
Sarah’s death record could be found, wouldn’t that have happened already?
– I searched the internet site Scotland’s
People. My initial search was unsuccessful, and so I broadened the search to
‘anywhere in Lanarkshire’. On getting one result, I paid to view the record.
It was Bill’s mother. The death record showed
that Sarah Glen died of acute tuberculosis, on 5 October 1934. She did not die
in Hamilton, as Bill believed, but in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire. She died at
her home 5 Avon Drive, Mossend, and her husband, Archibald Barrie, was present.
 |
| Death certificate for Sarah Barrie, 5 October 1934 |
I was partway there. Should it not be
possible to also find her grave? Unsure how to proceed, I completed an online
form designed for potential users of North Lanarkshire cemetery services:
‘I will be coming to Lanarkshire in
July 2019, and hope to visit the grave of my late husband's mother. I searched
Scotland's People, and found her death record:
Sarah Barrie (maiden name Glen) died on 5 October 1934 at 5 Avon Drive,
Mossend, Bellshill. Her grave is not listed for the Bellshill cemeteries on
findagrave.com. Can you provide any guidance as to where I might search next? Many
thanks, Ann Barrie, Wellington, New Zealand.
A few days later, an email with the header
‘Lair search’ arrived in my inbox. What on earth did this mean? Was someone trying to sell me something? I
clicked to open the email. And suddenly, what had been very difficult became
very simple:
‘I can confirm that Sarah Barrie is
interred in lair 512 Section O in the Bothwellpark Cemetery New Edinburgh Road
Bellshill. Hope this helps.’ Cemeteries Support Officer, Bellshill.
At last I knew where Sarah was buried.
It seems anticlimactic to say so, but I had
also, along the way, learned another meaning for the word ‘lair’. A lair is not
only the resting place of a wild animal, but in Scotland it is the ground for a
grave in a cemetery. [2]
*
So I now had
the beginning and end of Sarah’s life – and
I knew where I would take flowers and ashes –
but I felt there was more to know.
I asked Bill Glen in Australia if he knew
which school Sarah would have attended. He replied that it was most likely the
same one his mother and her sisters attended: Low Waters in Hamilton. I learned
from comments posted on the Facebook group for this school, that it was founded
in 1878. The earliest photo shows a Victorian stone building with children running
towards the camera, the girls wearing white smocks. [3]
I now felt I could visualise Sarah as a
child, particularly when I married the Low Waters photo with a family group
photo given to Bill by Auntie Jean. The six oldest Glen daughters are with their
mother Eliza. By a process of elimination, Sarah must be the slim, alert-faced
young girl standing beside her mother. Her long hair is tied back with a ribbon
to one side, and she is wearing a dark long-sleeved dress with a bow at the
collar.
 |
| Eliza Glen with six of her daughters, ca. 1910. Photo: Glen family collection |
But I still felt there was something
important I needed to know.
I entered details of Sarah and Archibald, and
their four children – Archie, Margaret, William and Jean – into My Heritage
database; and I was directed to a family tree prepared by one of Bill’s
relatives in Scotland. The four siblings appeared, but, to my surprise, there
was a fifth, Elizabeth, born in 1925. No date of death was given.
Bill had never mentioned Elizabeth to me. She
would have been his oldest sister. Was she the reason Sarah was married from Archibald’s
home and not her own? Was she the reason Bill was nervous about my delving into
his mother’s history? A shotgun wedding? Or perhaps Bill did not even know
about Elizabeth? On calm reflection, I decided the latter was most likely.
Knowing Elizabeth must have died, most likely
within her first year, I searched Scotland’s People for her death certificate.
I did this repeatedly, over several days, always drawing a blank. Finally,
after using the name Eliza, and extending the date of death to 1929, I was
successful.
Eliza Henderson Barrie died on 22 January
1929, aged three, at 65 Donaldson Street, Archie and Sarah’s home in Hamilton.
Cause of death was tuberculosis and peritonitis. So Sarah named her first born after her mother. The child might
well have been nearly four when she died, in which case Sarah would have been
pregnant when she married Archibald. Given the conservative attitudes of the
time, I can understand why this was might have been too much for her staunchly
Congregationalist father to countenance. So sad. Such a common story in those
days.
*
Part
of me wishes to delve deeper and deeper. But really, I now know all I need to
know when I go to Scotland in June.
Blog by Ann Barrie
Additional photos: |
| Bill Barrie, with his brother Archie and companion, in Lanarkshire, 1997 |
 |
| Bill Barrie with his Auntie Jean, Chadstone, Melbourne, 1999 |
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