Agnes Wilson

Lair 117

From Number to Life

 

We are often messaged to ask if we can find someones relative or family friend, and there is nothing more heartwarming than being able to say ‘We’ve found them’.

 

In September we were contacted by Gordon Mason, ‘I wonder if this lady was on your list of burials at Hartwood. This is my GG Grandmother. I've never been able to track down her grave, although the family by this point were in a number of locations across Lanarkshire and may possibly have taken her for burial closer to one of the various homes’With a quick search, we found her on the cemetery list and here her story unfolded.Agnes Wilson was a bit of an enigma in the family records. and Gordon never found any record of her alleged husband William actually living with the family.

 

Agnes appeared in Kirkmuirhill with kids and her sister c1860 having come over from Ireland. Worked as a 'Strawberry pollinator' and the kids initially had the surname 'McCurfill' despite Agnes listing herself as the wife of William Wilson. A lot of the Lanarkshire Wilsons were Irish immigrants who changed their names to Wilson, and William and Agnes Wilson are two of the most common names in Lanarkshire.

 

Her Sister and Daughter were house servants at Crag Lodge in Carmunnock, hence the home address, I imagine they looked after her there before she was taken to Woodilee.A curiosity is that her sister Mary Ann had Arteriosclerotic dementia, and was cared for by Agnes' son James in his home in Stonehouse, where she died a few years later. She's buried in Stonehouse. I can only imagine that Agnes’ behaviour differed and that Mary Ann was more manageable to remain in the cottage, whereas Agnes was institutionalised.

 

There seems to be uncertainly regarding her age, through the different census's. In the 1861 ceusus she was 31 and in later ones it varied a wee bit. If 31 is correct, she'd have been 76 when she died.Agnes rests in plot 117, records tell us she died on 12/10/1906 and was buried on 17/10/1906. She rests with an Elizabeth White nee Craig. As we have no record of the layout of the actual cemetery, we can only go with lair numbers we have found, which would place Agnes in the top back corner near to where the Princess Felice rests.