Family Group Sheet

Husband   Andrew Smart [AN20]

Born

? April-June 1843, Errol parish, Perthshire, Scotland

Chr.

 

Married

2 Dec 1864, Coopers Lane, Main Street East, Greenock (Est Church of Scotland Banns) (M/1864/564-02/129 East Parish Greenock, Renfrewshire)

Died

4 June 1913, age 70 yrs, Royal Infirmary Infirmary, Dundee (St Mary’s Parish); usual residence Cottown, Errol. (COD: Nephritis) (D/1913/282-2/379 St Mary Dundee)

Buried

 Errol burying ground, plot number 187. No memorial.

Husband’s Father Andrew Smart (ploughman; crofter) [AN40]

Husband’s Mother  Catherine Melville  (later Robertson)    [AN41]

Other wives

     

Notes:  Ploughman, East Inchmichael bothy, Errol (1861 Census); Farm servant, Greenock (marriage cert, 1864); Railway labourer, Greenock (1865, 1867); Labourer, Rait (1869), Gardener, Rait (1871), Labourer, Rait (1873, 1874), Westown, Errol (1876); Traction engine driver (employed) at Westown, Errol parish (1891 Census); traction engine driver at Cottown, Errol parish (death cert, 1913).  Living at Cottown [pronounced "Caught Town"], St Madoes parish, 1911, in 2 roomed house, 4 persons: Andrew Smart, HoH, 67, widowed; Cath Smart, daur, 42, single; Maggie Smart, daur, 34, single; William Smart, grandson, 18, single. (1991 census, Perthshire, RD 392-, ED 001-, p.11, Sch. 47).

Wife     Margaret Campbell [AN21]

Born

? 1843, Lismore, Argyllshire

Chr.

 

Died

28 July 1902, age 59 yrs, West town, Errol (COD cerebral softening, congestion of lungs) (D/351/1902/?? Errol, Perthshire)

Buried

 Errol burying ground, plot 187. No memorial.

Wife’s Father         Archibald Campbell (mason) [AN42]

Wife’s Mother      Mary Kennedy [AN43]

Other husbands 

     

Notes: House servant (marriage cert); could not write English (signed marriage cert “X” “her mark”); not a Gaelic speaker? (Census 1891)

Children

Sex     Name

Born

Married

Died

1 F  Mary Smart

 

(maternal grandmother's name)

8 July 1865, 1 William Street, Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland (B/564-1/1865/290 Greenock Middle or New Parish, Renfrewshire)

David KENNEDY, ploughman, widower, 32, Carse Grange, Errol parish, Perthshire, son of Robert Kennedy, farmer, and Mary Kennedy m.s. Gilmour (dec'd), m. Mary SMART, domestic servant, spinster, 31 [actual age=32], Westtown, Errol parish, daur of Andrew Smart, engine driver, and Margaret Smart m.s. Campbell, on 24 December 1897 at Westtown (Banns acc. to Free Church of Scotland). (M/351/1897/16 Errol).  Issue not researched.

7 Jun 1942, Dundee (usual res. Tayport), aged 76 yrs.  (D/1942/282-02/441 St Clement)

2 F Catherine Smart ("Kate") (paternal grandmother's name)

29 [or 26] March 1867, 1 William Street, Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland (B/564-1/1867/138 Greenock Middle or New Parish, Renfrewshire)

David ANDERSON, 26 Jun 1914, Dundee (informant at father’s death, single, using own name, residing Kirkton House, Auchterarder)

10 Jun 1943, Rait, 76 yrs, widow of David Anderson, road-man (D/1943/363-/2 Kilspindie).

3 M George Alexander Smart

 

(Ploughman, 1918, 1925; described as farm grieve on son's death cert)

24 June 1869, Rait, Kilspindie, Perthshire, Scotland (B/363/1869/8 Kilspindie, Perthshire)

Ellen CAFFERTY, daur of Michael Cafferty, farmer, and Anne Caffety, m.s. Ruddy, on 7 Dec 1917, at St. John’s R.C. church, Perth. Children: (1) Helen SMART, b. 9 Oct 1918, Gloagburn,Tibbermore, Perthshire (B/395-/1918/11 Tibbermore), m. James Dallas Hay (d.o.b. 15 Dec 1910), joiner, son of Thomas Hay, joiner, and Catherine Hay, m.s. Dallas, on 7 July 1939, at Middle Church vestry, Tay St, Perth (Helen a grocer's shop asst, spinster, 20) (M/387-/1939/169 Perth), d. 11 Oct 2004, post mistress (retired) [Rhynd P.O.], widow, 86 yrs, at Craigieknowes Nursing Home, Perth (D/390-/2004/661 Perth & Kinross), husb. Jimmy Hay d. 23 Dec 1969, 59 yrs, Perth Infirmary, usual res. Post Office House, Rhynd (c.o.d. bronchial carcinoma) (D/387/1969/878 Perth); their son Thomas (Tommy) Hay, was also a joiner; (2) Andrew SMART, b. 21 Feb 1925, Cottown, St Madoes, Perthshire (B/392-/1925/1 St Madoes), d. 5 May 1999, at Ninewells Hosp, Dundee, salesman (retired), 74 yrs, married to Evelyn Rose Ewen, headmistress, usual res. 14 Kintillo Rd, Bridge of Earn, Perthshire (D/399/1999/333 Perth).

26 Sep 1937, Royal Infirmary, Perth (usual res. The Shack, Guildtown), 68 yrs. (D/1937/387-/519 Perth)

 

Ellen Smart, married to George Smart, labourer, d. 13 Aug 1933, 46 yrs, at Noranside Sanatorium, Angus, (11 km NE of Kirremuir) usual res. Pictstonhill, Scone, Perthshire; c.o.d. phthisis pulmonalis [pulmonary tuberculosis].  (D/287-/1933/22 Fearn or Fern, Angus)

4 M Andrew Smart [AN10]

 

(paternal grandfather's name)

21 May 1871, Kilspindie, Perthshire, Scotland (B/363/1871/9 Kilspindie, Perthshire)

8 December 1905, at Little Powgavie, Inchture, Perthshire, Cecilia WANLESS [AN11], agricultural labourer, spinster, 23 yrs, Little Powgavie, daur of James Wanliss [AN22], ploughman (deceased) & Mary Ann Wanliss [AN323, m.s. Campbell. (M/1905/395-/1 Inchture)

16 March 1940, 4.50 a.m., aged 68 yrs, [Crosslea], The Cross, Errol (apoplexy hemiplegia, arteriosclerosis) (D/1940/351-1/7 Errol)

5 M Archibald Campbell Smart

(maternal grandfather's name; also name of new minister of Errol Free Church) 

28 May 1873, Rait, Kilspindie, Perthshire, Scotland (B/363/1873/11 Kilspindie, Perthshire)

---

13 Dec 1873, Rait, Kilspindie, 7 months. (D/1873/363-/9 Kilspindie)

6 F  [unnamed] Smart

21 August 1874, 3 p.m., Rait, Kilspindie, Perthshire, Scotland (B/363/1874/18 Kilspindie, Perthshire)

---

22 August 1874, 12 noon, age 21 hours, Rait, Kilspindie, Perthshire, Scotland (D/363/1874/12 Kilspindie, Perthshire) (COD not stated; no medical attendant)

7 F Margaret Campbell Smart (“Auntie Maggie”)

 

(mother's name)

28 November 1876, Westown, Errol, Perthshire, Scotland (B/351/1876/71 Errol, Perthshire)

George McDONALD, gardener, 28 Nov 1911, Kinfauns.

14 Apr 1957, Carnoustie, 80 yrs. (D/1957/274-/18 Carnoustie)

References:

Updated 24 November 2010 and 7 Feb 2015

The lives of my great-great grandparents Andrew Smart [20] and Margaret Campbell [21] span the period of Victorian high farming in a period of rural population decline, most notably in the highlands and islands.


A likely explanation of why a Gaelic speaking girl from Lismore would have married a ploughman from the Carse in the 1860s is that Andrew would have met Maggie at harvest time in the Carse.  Large numbers of highlanders and Irish used to travel to the Carse to work at the harvest time every year, until the introduction of machinery and the collapse of the grain market through foreign imports in the 1870s replaced the need for such seasonal labour.   Maggie probably came as part of a group of women and men from Argyll (possibly via Greenock, if she had already moved there from Lismore) for the 1864 harvest in September.  She may have come for harvests in previous years when she may have met Andrew who, as ploughman in what was well-known to be one of the most advanced farming areas of Scotland, was part of the aristocracy of agricultural labour in Victorian Scotland.  Each would probably have barely turned 20 when they married, a couple of months or so after the 1864 harvest was in, just after Martinmas term, by which time the ploughing would have been done and the wheat sown.  Probably Andrew would have worked until the end of his six-month fee (fixed-term contract of employment) and then skipped the Martinmas feeing market to go through to Greenock where he got work labouring on the railway at Greenock.  No need to cart his few belongings from Inchmichael to Greenock: he lived a few hundred yards from Errol Station, opened in 1847, and he could have got a train all the way to Greenock.  The couple seem to have stayed initially in Greenock, where their first child was born (seven months after the wedding) in July 1865, and their second in March 1867, but after three or four years of married life they moved back to Andrew's home territory, in the rich farming country of the Carse of Gowrie.

 

Naming pattern for Margaret and Andrew's children conforms to the traditional Scottish preference for naming after the parents' own parents.  An exception is the naming after a George Alexander, who may have been a medical doctor who delivered the child.   One little girl died after a few hours and was never named, nor attended by a medical practitioner.   Archibald Campbell Smart, sadly, also died in infancy.  He would have been named after the mother's father but it is also possible that the Smarts were members of the Free Kirk whose minister, Rev. Archibald Campbell, who preached in Rait, had commenced in Errol in the early 1870s.

 

Latterly Andrew Smart worked as a traction engine driver, that is to say, operated a threshing machine which would have been hired out to farms that did not possess a threshing mill. 

 

After living in the village of Rait, the Smarts moved down to Westtown (of Inchmartine, below Rait), where Margaret died at the early age of 59.  Andrew moved to Cottown, in the parish of St Madoes, where he was living at the time of his death in Dundee infirmary almost 11 years after Margaret's death. 


They are both buried in Errol burying ground. 

Andrew Smart and his wife Margaret Campbell buried in plot 187 of Errol burying ground. No headstone.
Andrew Smart and his wife Margaret Campbell buried in plot 187 of Errol burying ground. No headstone.

Scot Symon (b 1936) [2] remembers as a young boy walking with his father and mother the three or four miles from Errol to Rait, and back again, on Sunday afternoons to visit Auntie Kate, who was in her seventies at the time.  By this time both his grandparents on the Smart side had died.

In the 1901 Census, Andrew and Margaret Smart were living in one of the cottages in the hamlet of Westtown, on what was then the road from Inchmichael to Kinnaird.   Living with them in their 2 rooms were their daughter Maggie, single, 23,  domestic servant, and their two grandchildren, William Smart, 8, (born in Errol parish), and Nellie (Helen) Smart, 5 (born in Dundee).   Not known yet whose children this boy and girl were.    Nellie may have been the Helen Smart who married Jimmy Hay, and who was a relation of Scot Symon, son of Mary Smart and great-grandson of Andrew and Margaret Smart.  Helen and Jimmy Hay were at Scot Symon's wedding with Eleanor Swanney in 1959.  If it was this Nellie from 1901, she would have been about 63 in 1959, and would have been Scot's second cousin and first cousin of his late mother Mary Smart or Symon.

 

Auntie Kate lived in one of the houses in Rait on the east side of the main street as you turned off the road into the village from the main road.  Scot Symon remembers walking up from Errol as a boy to visit. He also remembers visiting an Auntie in Tayport, on the Newport side, in a house on the main road.