This is the headstone of my paternal grandmother, Annie Aiken, wife of Thomas Broadfoot. I have, with the help of Jo, the "Scottish Genealogist" found her birth record. I didn't know that the place called Woodside is really in Old Machar, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Thank you, Jo!
Well, yesterday, I found her at age 17, working as a housemaid in Waterton House, Stonywood, North Aberdeen, Scotland in the 1901 Scotland census. I raced to Scotland's People's Web site to find the census image as Ancestry.com just has the index.
Bingo!. Now, I know I watch too much Downton Abbey. I was rewarded with a house history and several photos of the mansion as it looks today.
3 comments:
Hi Midge, Interesting! Little known fact - I briefly worked part-time as a house maid when I was a teen and a college kid.
Downton Abbey is the one thing that may yet persuade me to get a TV :-) When you look for Ann Aiken's birth, remember that Woodside is part of Old Machar, Aberdeen (I had a nosy at the Census on Ancestry) - good luck :-) Jo
My grandmother went into service about 1908 in Leeds in Yorkshire (just like Downton Abbey). She was an "undernurse" and she hated every minute of it. Her parents took her with them to America when they came to Massachusetts in 1915, when she was about 18 years old. It was her stories about Yorkshire that got me interested in genealogy at about the same age she was working six and a half days a week!
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