2nd Great Grandmother
6th Generation
Born - 24 December 1878 - Landward, Lanark, Scotland
Died - 12 February 1948 - Methil, Fife ScotlandMary Ann was born Landward, New Monkland in 1878. Her mother signed her birth certificate with a cross, her parents could not read or write.
In the 1881 census Mary Ann was down as a visitor with her parents Agnes Brown and Thomas Murray at her Grandparents in Shotts, they lived in the Benhar Coal Company houses . There were 3 other miners boarding in the house.
In the 1891 census she was a 12 year old scholar living with her mum and youngest sibling Thomas in Ayr. Her sisters’ Catherine and Helen were still living with her grandparents in Shotts and Her dad William was a boarder at a house in Durham. As her younger brother was born in England in 1888 it would seem William stayed down there whilst her mum brought all the kids back to Scotland.
They are poor and her dad is going wherever he can for work. This ended with the family being estranged.
6 years later in 1897 her father applies for poor relief, he was sent to the poor house in Aberdeen.
He died in the poor house 3 years later. In 1905 her mother remarried Peter McKinlay and 1913 they emigrated to New Zealand with her siblings Catherine, Helen and Thomas. They all settled in Buller, New Zealand. Mary Ann was the only member of her family not to emigrate.
She had married Thomas Leitch in 1901 and they were living at Lawson Square, Buckhaven with their first born son John. Thomas was a 23 year old Coal Miner. Over the next 18 years Mary Ann gave birth to 14 children. Only 6 of them outlived her. Her eldest son also emigrated to New Zealand. This woman had a hard life, full of loss and suffering. To lose a father, her mother and siblings to emigrate, then to lose so many of her own children so young AND her husband to end his life with suicide. There is death in all walks of life but so much more prevalent when living in poverty.
Mary Ann was the last person on the family gravestone in Wemyss Cemetery. She died only 3 years after her husband aged 69 years. Her death certificate reads “cause of death – myocarditis, cardiac syncope.”
She had heart problems in the end, the romantic in me would say she died of a broken heart.
Marie's Genealogy 