Daoine Pharaig
Peter's People
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Family Group Sheet
Notes: Schoolteacher. Graduated 1893 MA Edinburgh University. Taught in Skye (at Bracadale school, Struanmore), then headmaster in Daviot, Pennan (location for the film "Local Hero") and Croy schools. Retired to Marybank, Gollanfield Road, Croy, in late 1930s.
Notes: ‘Farmer’s daughter’ (employed), 16 yrs, spoke Gaelic and English, living in parents’ household at Cornaigveg, Tiree, Argyll, 1891 Census (551-1/004/7)
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Of William's and Kate's six children, four married, of whom two (Willie junior - my grandfather [AN06] - and Calum) had children of their own.
William Swanney (junior)'s family is described here.
The family of Calum Swanney and Isobel Heron, his wife, is described here.
Clockwise from top left: William Swanney, headmaster, Croy primary school; family photograph of Catherine and William Swanney (seated), in their garden at Marybank, Croy, with Callum and Isobel, Jack and Madge, Ella, David and Bessie, Willie and Meg; memorial with inscription on grave of William and Catherine Swanney, Croy church yard; Catherine Swanney with Callum (left) and Jack, at Marybank.
Bessie Swanney or Rattray and David Rattray
Betsy Swanney (Bessie) was the eldest of the six children of Willie and Catherine Swanney. Born on 11 October 1896 on Skye,
at Struan, in the parish of Bracadale, where her father was teaching, she went on study at university and then worked as a school teacher for the rest of her career. She was named after her
father's mother, Betsy Wards, who died when he was in his childhood.
While teaching in one of the schools in Perth, probably Caledonian Road or Southern District, where she may have been a music teacher, Bessie met another young teacher there, David Rattray. David was the son of hotel owner David Lawson Rattray, who latterly lived quietly in Kirriemuir, in Angus, and his wife, Jessie Ogilvy or Rattray.
On 4 August 1931, at Station Hotel, Inverness, they were
married. At that time Bessie was 34 and David was 28. The couple never had any children. At the time of the marriage, David was working as a school teacher at
Kinloss school, and lived in the schoolhouse there. Bessie also taught at that school. The roll had expanded enormously during the Second World War with the R.A.F. base at Kinloss,
which was why the Rattrays were there.
(Right: Bessie Swanney graduation photograph. Photographer unknown. From personal archives of Mrs Catriona Watt, grand-daughter of Bessie's aunt, Lizzie McDougall or McPhail.)
In the years after the war, Bessie often looked after her niece, my mother, Eleanor Swanney, who stayed with her grandparents at Croy schoolhouse part of the time she attended Inverness Academy between 1948 and 1950. They would often visit Culbin Sands or Findhorn. Mum was fond of Bessie and described the Rattrays' as like a home from home for her in the post-war years.
Bessie and David moved south, near to where he was from, where David got a job in Inverbervie, then in Johnshaven, where he was school headmaster. They retired to 13 Rosehill Road, Montrose. Bessie died on 9 July 1975, aged 78, of an infection of the abdomen and bowel cancer.
David married Helen Pert Robertson, a factory book-keeper, spinster, who was nearly 22 years younger than him, on 3 December 1975 in Lunan Bay Hotel, and died on 7 July 1977, at home in Montrose, aged 73 years.
Left: Bessie with Eleanor Swanney, 1940s. Photographer unknown. From personal archives of Eleanor Swanney or Symon.
Bessie loved cats and dogs. She is holding her brother Willie's cat in this photo (by an unknown photographer, from personal archives of Eleanor Swanney or Symon), standing second from right.
The photo is in the garden of the St. Madoes school house, on the day of Eleanor Swanney's marriage at St. Madoes church, to Scot Symon, of Errol (25 th July 1959).
Standing (from left): Ella Swanney, (bride's aunt), Margaret Swanney (bride's mother), William Swanney (bride's father), Bessie
Rattray or Swanney (bride's aunt), Freda Swanney (bride's sister, and bridesmaid). Front (from left): David and Iain Swanney (bride's brothers).
Ella Swanney
Ella Swanney, aged 67 years, with Linda and Alison, at Murie Gardens, Errol, June 1966.
Photographer unknown. From personal archives of Eleanor Symon.
The second child of William Swanney and Catherine McDougall, Ella was named after her mother's mother. Isabella McLean. Ella trained as a nurse, but bad eyesight apparently hindered her career. After her younger sister, Maimie (Mary) Swanney, died aged 20 years, of T.B., in 1929, Ella's mother asked her to come home. She did so and was housekeeper for her mother and father in Croy, initially in the schoolhouse, then in Marybank, their retirement home in Croy, for the next 30 years. After her widowed mother died, in 1959, the house was left to Ella. By this time, none of her close family were left in the area - the Swanneys had moved to Croy in the last of a succession of teaching posts around the Highlands and Moray Firth seaboard. Sister Bessie had moved to Kincardineshire, her nearest close relative, niece Margaret , daughter of her brother Calum, ws married and bringing up a family of small children in Wick, 180 km north of Croy, and her brother Willie, wife Meg and his family of four, was just a little further than that, to the south. So, very shortly, Ella took the surprise decision to move to St Madoes, where her brother was headmaster.
Ella Swanney (left), September 1967, at marriage of her nephew, David Swanney, and Sheila Forder, St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Dundee.
Photograph: Premier Studio, 121, Victoria Road, Dundee.
Ella's house in Cairnie Crescent, St Madoes, was a new bungalow built by St Madoes builders Stephen. The road is still unadopted by the council today! It became a place of regular visits for us as children. Auntie Ella's house often smelled of gingerbread. She had two old bagatelle boards that hours were spent playing. We also used to play a variety of card games with her, including snap and rummy.
In later years Ella suffered suffered from osteoarthritis of the hips and so was less and less
able to remain active. Willie and Meg had left St Madoes and moved into their retirement home in Lover's Lane, Scone. She did not mix much with people in St Madoes so,
eventually, she sold her house and moved into a residential home in Perth, called Rio, next to the Isle of Skye hotel near the junction of Queen's Bridge and the Dundee Road.
She later lived in a home in Luncarty, and finally in Moncrieffe Nursing Home, opened in 1985 in Bridge of Earn. While living in these homes she was visited often by her brother
Willie and his family. In the Moncrieffe home, which still exists as a family
run care home, she had her own room or a shared room, in her case shared with only one other woman, provided by the home in order to avoid the upheaval of going into hospital. She was
unaware of what was going on for several months and died in her bed, in her 93rd year.
John Tait Swanney ("Jack")
The eldest son of Willie and Kate was born on 20 December 1900 at Daviot Schoolhouse, Invernesshire. He graduated with a BSc from Glasgow University in 1922. His lodgings address at graduation was Roselea, Drumoyne Road, South Govan. He worked as an engineer for Motherwell Bridge (which he called "Mother Cat"), in Persia. Formed in 1898, Motherwell Bridge were acquired by Cape plc in 2014, still have a base in Motherwell and operate worldwide, according to the company's website.
After graduating Jack moved to London. In 1927, he married Margaret Tonner ("Madge"), possibly the daughter or niece of the landlady he lodged with, either as a student in Glasgow or when working in London. Madge's address was in Dartford, Kent at the time of the wedding. Madge was originally from Cockermouth in Cumbria. She was a year younger than Jack. The couple lived in Kensington Gardens. They did not have children. Jack would send money to his parents intending for them to buy things but they just banked the money, leaving him to buy the things intended when he visited them in Croy.
My mother remembers an old lady Mrs Cross who used to come to Croy often to visit Jack's mother. She made lovely smelling bread. Mum thinks Mrs Cross was Madge's auntie or mother, and who lived in Keswick. When mum married in July 1959, she and dad went on honeymoon in the Lake District and, on the suggestion of Madge, went to visit a sister or sister-in-law of Madge in Keswick. She gave Mum two little silver candle holders, taken from a cupboard, as a wedding present.
Having been advised that he had a fity-fifty chance of surviving open heart surgery for a heart valve problem, Jack and Madge visited all his relations in the year before the operation. Sadly, in November 1960 Jack died in the operating theatre during an operation on an aortic aneurism in a London hospital. He was survived by Madge, who died in Carlisle in 1987, in Garlands hospital.