on the list, John of 1798. He held three roods (3,630 square yards of land), on which were erected a house and an outhouse. The largest landholding in Mullnahunch was sixty acres or 290,000 square yards. Even John’s next door neighbor, John Beadmead, had four acres three roods or 22,990 square yards.
My John was obviously of modest means; indeed, if the value of his tenement is anything to go by, he seems to have headed one of the poorest families in the area. When John of 1798 died, his youngest son, David, my great-grandfather, signed his father’s death certificate with his mark, a cross, which means, almost certainly, that my grandfather Adam was the first in my direct line of Ardreys who could read and write.
Illiteracy was common in Ireland in the nineteenth century, and consequently family names, especially unusual family names, were often variously spelled. Men such as my great-grandfather had to rely on clerks to listen carefully and make an accurate record. There was the added complication that, for political and economic reasons, Scottish names were often Anglicized by people whose first language was notGaelic, hence the innumerable spellings of my second name in the records: these include Ardray, Ardary, Ardery, Ardry, Ardree, Ardrie, Airdrie, Airdrey, Ardrea, Arderly, Artrey, Arderey, Arderry, Artery, Adderley, Aredrey, Ardarie, Ardare, Ardarike, and even Dare. (This sometimes had unfortunate consequences. My great-grandfather David’s brother, George, married Eliza, John Bedmead’s daughter, the girl-next-door in the village of Mullnahunch. Eliza’s name was written into the records as, variously, Bedmaid and Bedmate by clerks who no doubt thought this was funny. And it is … a bit.)
John Bedmead (father of Eliza of the user-friendly name) brought shoemaking into my family and by the middle of the nineteenth century my Ardreys were running a small shop in Mullnahunch where they manufactured and sold boots and shoes and pots and pans, and sold candles, salt, clothes, and eggs and other farm produce.
Following his father’s death, my great-grandfather David immigrated to Scotland and found work as a car conductor. It was in the early 1990s while I was looking for David’s first home in Glasgow—60 McLean Street, Plantation—that I came across an Ardery Street, a mile and a half away, over the river on the north bank of the Clyde. I wondered if this Ardery Street had anything to do with my David, though the spelling differed from my own name. I did not think that this may have been where the man called Merlin lived in the last two decades of his long life, after he was driven out of town by Mungo Kentigern’s Christians. I was not to discover the evidence for this for more than a decade.
In the 1870s a young Martha Milligan was sent from her home in Kilmarnock to work as a domestic servant in Glasgow. I picture her meeting my great-grandfather David when she was a passenger on his bus going to her work. They were married in 1877. Martha’s family found David work as a railway pointsman in Riccarton, Kilmarnock, and by the time their first son, John, was born they were living in Railway Buildings, Barleith, Kilmarnock. Seven other children followed; the last of them was my grandfather Adam. He was born in 1893, after David and Martha had moved to Coatbridge and opened a shop where they made and sold boots and shoes. The only surviving photograph of David shows a man with a large moustachewearing an apron and standing at the door of his shop near the fountain that marks the center of Coatbridge. My grandfather Adam, an Assistant Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Baillieston, Glasgow, had two sons; 1 my father, another David, was the older of the two.
I served my legal apprenticeship in a solicitor’s office that, I have always suspected, was a portal to the world of Charles Dickens. One of my jobs was to catalog deeds that had been left untouched in black tin boxes in the basement since
My John was obviously of modest means; indeed, if the value of his tenement is anything to go by, he seems to have headed one of the poorest families in the area. When John of 1798 died, his youngest son, David, my great-grandfather, signed his father’s death certificate with his mark, a cross, which means, almost certainly, that my grandfather Adam was the first in my direct line of Ardreys who could read and write.
Illiteracy was common in Ireland in the nineteenth century, and consequently family names, especially unusual family names, were often variously spelled. Men such as my great-grandfather had to rely on clerks to listen carefully and make an accurate record. There was the added complication that, for political and economic reasons, Scottish names were often Anglicized by people whose first language was notGaelic, hence the innumerable spellings of my second name in the records: these include Ardray, Ardary, Ardery, Ardry, Ardree, Ardrie, Airdrie, Airdrey, Ardrea, Arderly, Artrey, Arderey, Arderry, Artery, Adderley, Aredrey, Ardarie, Ardare, Ardarike, and even Dare. (This sometimes had unfortunate consequences. My great-grandfather David’s brother, George, married Eliza, John Bedmead’s daughter, the girl-next-door in the village of Mullnahunch. Eliza’s name was written into the records as, variously, Bedmaid and Bedmate by clerks who no doubt thought this was funny. And it is … a bit.)
John Bedmead (father of Eliza of the user-friendly name) brought shoemaking into my family and by the middle of the nineteenth century my Ardreys were running a small shop in Mullnahunch where they manufactured and sold boots and shoes and pots and pans, and sold candles, salt, clothes, and eggs and other farm produce.
Following his father’s death, my great-grandfather David immigrated to Scotland and found work as a car conductor. It was in the early 1990s while I was looking for David’s first home in Glasgow—60 McLean Street, Plantation—that I came across an Ardery Street, a mile and a half away, over the river on the north bank of the Clyde. I wondered if this Ardery Street had anything to do with my David, though the spelling differed from my own name. I did not think that this may have been where the man called Merlin lived in the last two decades of his long life, after he was driven out of town by Mungo Kentigern’s Christians. I was not to discover the evidence for this for more than a decade.
In the 1870s a young Martha Milligan was sent from her home in Kilmarnock to work as a domestic servant in Glasgow. I picture her meeting my great-grandfather David when she was a passenger on his bus going to her work. They were married in 1877. Martha’s family found David work as a railway pointsman in Riccarton, Kilmarnock, and by the time their first son, John, was born they were living in Railway Buildings, Barleith, Kilmarnock. Seven other children followed; the last of them was my grandfather Adam. He was born in 1893, after David and Martha had moved to Coatbridge and opened a shop where they made and sold boots and shoes. The only surviving photograph of David shows a man with a large moustachewearing an apron and standing at the door of his shop near the fountain that marks the center of Coatbridge. My grandfather Adam, an Assistant Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Baillieston, Glasgow, had two sons; 1 my father, another David, was the older of the two.
I served my legal apprenticeship in a solicitor’s office that, I have always suspected, was a portal to the world of Charles Dickens. One of my jobs was to catalog deeds that had been left untouched in black tin boxes in the basement since
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