Over the last few months I have been exploring the newspaper archives in search of material on Bridge of Allan. I started searching in the year 1800 and continued thereafter by chronological year. I am now up to 1967 [the year of my birth].
This archive-dwelling has presented a narrative-timeline that is rather different to that which you may find in history books!
This hole ousia post is about two incidental [and ephemeral] findings .
Ephemeral, these findings may be, but they matter to me because they link family present with family past.
These two archive findings relate to the sale from Bridge of Allan: of a puppy and a car.
The puppy [as printed in the Stirling Observer, 23 January 1948]:
I shared these two archive findings with my mother on Facebook, and last night, on the phone, my mother shared with me some of her memories.
My mother [Margaret M. Scott] was born in St Ann’s, Bridge of Allan in the early summer of 1943:
Here is ‘wee Margaret’ in the garden of St Ann’s held in her brother’s arms, alongside her sister Helen who is holding Sprig, the family dog:
This is what my mother shared with me last night:
“I well remember Sprig. Bracken was daughter of Sprig so this [advert] could be for another puppy of Sprig. I can just remember the puppies. Granny was very keen on the Kennel Club and pedigrees!”
This is a photograph of one of my mother’s birthday parties at St Ann’s [my mother is standing front row, farthest left]:
This is a more recent photograph of St Ann’s, Bridge of Allan, in the time that it was ‘Beehive Nursery’:
Beehive was a Nursery for Rachel [my daughter] [granddaughter of Margaret M. Scott]:
Such were Rachel’s bright beginnings.
Now to that car for sale:
Heatherlie, is the house directly opposite Mossgrove [our family home]:
I was aware that my mother’s Granny [‘Mrs Gibson’] had once lived in Heatherlie:
And that Heatherlie was sold by our family in 1951:
My mother has many memories her ‘Granny Gibson’.
Ellen Callender Stevenson [‘Granny Gibson’] was born in Falkirk in late summer, 1879. This is a photograph of her taken a few years before she married:
In the summer of 1907 she married Wilfred Lawson Gibson. Their first family home, was Balhaddie, Dunblane:
Wilfrid Lawson Gibson, who served throughout WWI, was a kenspecklet figure in Dunblane and Bridge of Allan. He was known to all by his war-time title: ‘Major Gibson’:
Back to that car: the Armstrong Siddeley Sports Saloon, for sale from the house opposite Mossgrove. Who did this car belong to? Who drove it? . . . . had Major Gibson bought it before he died? . . . . Why do these questions matter to me?
I asked my mum last night, this was her reply:
“I don’t think Granny Gibson was ever overseas and in 1950 I don’t think she would be able to. I have no recollections of that grand-looking car. Bob Stevenson was the one who had posh cars and a chauffeur [Bob was Granny Gibson’s brother]. It could have been Grandfather Gibsons I suppose. xx”