Desert Tale
Number 9, Volume 6
Old Photographs
Grandmothers, great grandmothers, great aunts, and my great, great, great grandfather named John MacGregor born in 1789, married Agnes Duncan, and what a bunch of characters they all were!
Who were my antecedents? They seemed to live ordinary lives, worked, gossiped, drank tea, had sex — lots of it — by the large family I descend from. Or, was it the dreary, cold Scottish nights without television which gave them something more entertaining to do!
When they sat stone-faced with silly hairdos for their Victorian and Edwardian photographs they could not foresee their future generations all the way down to me. Nor did they care, so I see no reason to waste my valuable time writing about them and their past lives. Yet — I took the old photos and spread them on my desk and gazed into their eyes and read the genealogy report prepared for me by the Dundee City Registrar’s Office: Jessie MacGregor Mitchell, my grandmother had married George Sandeman Lindsay. All I had to do was research the MacGregors and Lindsays to see why I am the way I am.
I had heard stories as a child from Granny Lindsay that she did not get along with her three stern-faced sisters — the ones in the photo. One was fat and seemed opinionated, perhaps my loquaciousness descended from her DNA. And I have to let my imagination run wild with her personality, so maybe that was why she accepted the proposal of the first suitor who came her way. (I never did that.)
The other one — and I wish I knew her name — was slim and pretty but looked stuckup, or maybe she was myopic. And the one sitting down in the front row with spectacles on seemed to be destined to marry a rigid Presbyterian vicar; something Granny would never have done. She, instead, married for love not money or position. In that regard, I take after her. She was happy with her tall, good-looking, charming, singing, owner of a hairdressing salon. Life with him was surely much better than having to listen to her sisters’ daily admonitions.
Being a writer, curiosity got the better of me and suddenly I wanted to understand their characters and personalities; after all, I carried their genes. They seemed to be nicely dressed, albeit without pearls, but Granny was wearing a silver locket. This was not an informal photograph, they had obviously called the photographer over to the house and the picture had a sense of artistic merit. But what occasion had made them all sit so still? Was someone getting engaged? Had someone died? Why no smiles?
I found myself staring at my hard-working grandmother who helped feed her nine children by working as a midwife. She had always been my mentor, and I am so glad I had the opportunity of meeting her. In fact, I am alive today because of her. I owe her my life thanks to her midwifery skills because Dr. Campbell had told her I would not live through the night. But it was her sheer determination and belief in a “wee drap o’ Brandy,” on my tongue that caused me to cough, turn red instead of blue, and catch my first breath of air.
The second photo was also intriguing, and on the back my dear mother’s handwriting: “Auntie Mary, (that’s where my middle name comes from) Auntie Isabella, Auntie Jean, Auntie Elsie, and of course my grandmother, Jessica MacGregor. Granny had named all her daughters after her aunts, not her sisters. That was her sweet revenge for being disinherited from the family’s lucrative jute business because she had married beneath their stature.
I loved getting to know my family. Isabella Burton, my great, great, great grandmother. Was she related to Richard Burton’s family from Wales? And — Christina Wilkie — who was she in 1888? What were these women really like? How I would enjoy going back in time and talking to them. Suddenly the passion of fantasy overcame me. I simply had to do more research to find out what was going on in their lives starting in 1789 in Dundee. I found out that a stage coach service began from Glasgow to London, and that the British Fishery Society was established that year, but not much more seemed to be happening.
The Irish potato famine had reached Scotland in 1845, but by the looks of the women in the photos they seemed to be overweight which meant they were well fed and did not depend on the inedible rotten potatoes for survival. Since Dundee, faced the sea and a bountiful amount of fresh fish was readily available together with the corn which was being imported, it is safe to assume my family did not starve.
Suddenly, without notification to my senses, a book was born: “Out Into the World.” I do have another writer in the family and I hope to live up to his talent and memory. Randolph, Sire de Toeny, who is said to be the ancestor of the Lindsays in 1018. So it is comforting to know that I descend from a noble family: the present Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, whose seat is in Fife. But there were also some bad Lindsays in the family and I hope to dig them out as there has to be some drama in this story.
Was Granny a Suffragette? She certainly took no insolence from anybody. She once whacked a man over the head with her umbrella for exposing himself to her long before the #Meetoo Movement. “Dirty devil!”
It is going to be a journey of adventure and enlightenment as I find out all about them, and in the process discover my own weaknesses.
Researching the O’Sullivans from County Cork is going to be arduous work, and how I am going to combine the two disparate families I do not know just yet. But one thing is certain, whatever our DNA, we ended up together and have been married for many years.
Alinka Lindsay Zyrmont