Tag Archives: Helen Ramsay MUIR (1874-1951)

ORMSBY, Helen (1846-1905)

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Brickrow Farm, Ayr, Scotland, Ormsby Family

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[for Helen’s parents and siblings see page ‘ORMSBY’ at top of screen]

[this post last edited, new information and / or images added 18 March 2013]

Helen ORMSBY was born on 19 July 1846 in St. Quivox, Ayrshire, Scotland, and died 18 February 1905 in Gibbsyard, Ayr, Ayrshire, Scotland.

Helen was the eldest child of James ORMSBY and his wife Helen STEEL. The St. Quivox Old Parochial Record (OPR) listed her, although the handwriting doesn’t make clear whether she was born or baptised on the19 July of 1846.

 Ormesby, Helen, lawful daughter of James Ormesby & Helen Steel 19 July 1846, St. Quivox

The forty years covered by census records from 1851 to 1891 recorded that Helen lived at Brickrow Farm with her parents and then her widowed mother and siblings after her father’s death. She attended school for the first sixteen years of her life and then after the 1871 census her occupation, listed as ‘farmer’s daughter’, indicated she worked on farm activities at Brickrow (cooking, tending the kitchen vegetable garden, feeding the animals and chickens, working as a dairy maid and so on) .

Photo above: Brickrow Farm;  this photograph is now in the collection of an Ormsby family descendant who still lives in Ayrshire, Scotland.

By the 1901 census Helen, (no occupation given), her mother [Helen STEEL] , brothers Andrew [Andrew ORSMBY] and Henry [Henry ORMSBY] and 10 year nephew James Henry [James Henry ORMSBY] lived at Gibbsyard, Auchincruive. They likely moved there at the time of the marriage of Helen’s brother John [John ORSMBY] to Helen Ramsay Muir [Helen Ramsay MUIR] in 1894.

Helen, 59, died at Gibbsyard in 1905 of ‘acute bronchitis’, some days’. She predeceased her mother by eight years. The informant of her death was her brother John who lived a short distance away at Brickrow Farm.

MUIR, Jane (1865-1933)

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Muir Family, Watson Family

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(see ‘Thomas & Jane (MUIR) WATSON Family’ under heading ‘WATSON’ )

[this post last edited, new information and/or images added 12 March 2013. Unless otherwise indicated all photos are from the author’s collection]

[For more Watson family photos also check out Donald Slater’s family history Flickr account www.flickr.com/photos/palaeoecogeek]

Photo below: Jane (MUIR) WATSON, 10 June 1914, Rosewood District, Lemberg, Saskatchewan, Canada

Jane MUIR was born 19 December 1865 in Crosshill Village, Kirkmichael, Ayrshire, Scotland, the first child born to James MUIR and Helen McNAB.  From an early age Jane, as the eldest child, was likely given responsibility for her younger siblings. She seems to have had a particular bond with her younger sister Helen Ramsay (MUIR) ORMSBY who remained in Scotland. It was a bond that these sisters shared throughout their lives, even though geographically separated by an ocean at the time of their deaths.

The family moved frequently as James changed employers and jobs in an effort to support the growing family. By 1878 the family had established some degree of permanency when James, now a ‘Bower’ (probably a farmer who tended cattle) moved his family to Slaphouse Farm, by the Slaphouse Burn on the outskirts of Ayr. Three more children, Mary, George Kennedy and Gilbert, were born between 1878 and 1882 while the family lived at Slaphouse.

On 20 January 1887 at Robbsland, Jane, 21, married local tenant farmer Thomas WATSON, aged 32. The eleven years difference in their ages was normal for the time when men often delayed marriage until they could afford to have a family. The marriage, conducted by William Granger the Minister of St. Leonard’s Parish Church in Ayr, took place in the bride’s home of Robbsland as was common at the time.

(story continued in posts 14 May – 22 May 2012)