Strathaven
Sue rented a car and drove to Strathaven where some of our ancestors are from. It is a town south of Glasgow. There are the ruins of a castle. The lord of the castle is said to have gotten angry with the lady of the castle and had her blessed by a priest and left with some food and water and then had her bricked up into a niche in the wall. When one of the walls fell down they did find a human skeleton. There are also claims of underground passages but none have been found yet. The castle was built about 1458 and occupied until the 1700s.
There is the Avondale church which is the church our ancestors went to (the grey church with a clock in front). Many of our ancestors from the late 1700's to the mid 1800's were silk and cotton handloom weavers. In the mid 1800's the handloom weaving industry was declining and the railroad came to town in the 1860s so some of our ancestors worked as railway carters. Later jobs were harder to find and Archibald Boag was a farm worker. His wife Mary Hutson's family where shepards in Drumclog (nearby town) and that is where Archibald and Mary were married. Mary's family came to America first and later helped Archibald and Mary come to Michigan.
We took pictures of some of the graves and found at least one grave of our ancestors (James Wilson, born about 1763 and died May 17, 1840, and Helen Muir born about 1771 and died Oct 29, 1848). They had a daughter Helen Wilson born Feb 28, 1802 and died May 30, 1880. She married Archibald Frew, born June 5, 1800 and died March 13, 1875. They had a daughter Helen Frew born March 26, 1827, and she married Archibald Boag, born March 19, 1828 and died July 18, 1882. They had a son Archibald Boag born Sept 23, 1859 and died in Sanilac County, Michigan Dec 17, 1935. All of these were born in Strathaven, Avondale Parish, Scotland.
We also found the grave and memorial to James "Pearlie" or "Purlie" Wilson born Sept 3, 1760 and hanged and beheaded Aug 30 1820 in Glasgow Scotland. See http://www.electricscotland.com/history/1820/wilson.htm for more information on him. I originally thought we were directly related to him and that he was Helen Wilson's father but since her father died in 1840 this can't be him). They are probably related but I don't know how.
See the following pages for the ancestors of Opal Peters and Francis Hund. Opal Peters was my grandmother and her mother Ellen Boag was born in Scotland and is the daughter of Archibald Boag and Mary Hutson.
OpalPetersAncestor.html
FrancisHundAncestor.html
Link to this Page
Drumclog Church