Time for Changes to the Tree and Changes in Family Attitudes
Louise Annie Kinnear to Louise Antoinette Pool: 1872-74 to 1975
According to the tree I had assembled for my husband’s
family, his great-granduncle Archibald Shields married a Dutch/Javanese woman
by the name of Louise Annie Kinnear. My information on Louise was minimal. I
had no birth records or parents’ names for her, and I had no marriage record
for Archibald and Louise. The only records I found for Louise were from the
period after her marriage—the first record she appears on is the birth record
for Archie and Louise’s eldest daughter in 1909. Louise appears only on records
as Louise A. Shields—her middle name and maiden name never appear.
So how did I come up with the name Louise Annie Kinnear? I
confess, with shame, that I had just copied that maiden name from several other
Ancestry trees, including the one managed by my brother-in-law, who is a
careful researcher. None of those trees had links to any records that would
verify “Annie” or “Kinnear”.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I discovered another
Ancestry tree that provided a very different name for Louise. That tree,
apparently managed by a direct descendant of Archie and Louise Shields, listed
her as Louise Antoinette Pool, born in Padang, Sumatra, Dutch East Indies.
Despite all these new details, there were no records attached to the tree that
would verify the information.
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| Padang, Sumatra around 1900 |
I faced a conundrum. I lacked documentation for either
maiden name. Should I just assume, since it looked like this new tree was
managed by a direct descendant, that he or she had more accurate information,
and change my tree to match? I tried searching both names in Ancestry with no
result.
I then turned to my old friend Google. And lo and behold,
the name Louise Antoinette Pool turned up a match in the archives on the island
of Jersey. The Jersey court records include her will. While the will itself
cannot be accessed online, the indexed description provides some essential
information, reading:
“Will and Testament of
Louise Antoinette Shields, widow of Archibald Shields, of Sous Les Arbres, St.
Peter’s Valley, St. Peter and formerly of Aintree, College Hill, St. Helier.
Dated 25/08/1959. [Includes two closed documents]”
This is verification that Louise’s correct maiden name was
Louise Antoinette Pool. I already knew that Archie and Louise had retired to
the island of Jersey when he quit managing Alliance Plantation in Suriname.
Everything matched up to the data I already had. I quickly made changes to my
Ancestry tree, providing correct information and a screenshot of the Jersey
Archive index entry.
So what else do we know about Louise? And how much of what
we supposedly know is as inaccurate as the surname “Kinnear”?
Archie and Louise apparently married in Suriname around
1907, following the death of Archie’s father Thomas in 1905. I have no
information about how or where they met. Their first child, Margaret Sutherland
Shields, was born October 13, 1909 in Paramaribo. Their second child was born
in January 1912 in Lambeth, London, during one of the family’s regular visits
to Great Britain. They named her Euphemia Louise Shields. Their third daughter,
Bethia Delphine Shields, was born in 1913 in Paramaribo.
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| The Shields family on steps of Alliance Plantation house, supposedly taken in 1903, but woman at bottom is Margaret Shields, who only came out after husband's death in 1905. Likely taken around 1907. I believe Louise and Archie are the two people standing. |
The family spent most of their time living at the Alliance
Plantation house. They were an attractive family. The girls grew up with their
cousins, James Allan Smith and Bethea Elizabeth Smith, the children of Archie’s
nephew James Laing Smith. Young James was the same age as Archie’s youngest
daughter Bethia, and Bethea Smith was a year younger.
 |
| Louise at left with her three daughters, Margeret, Effie, and Bethia. Marguerite Smith and her children James and Bethea at right. Around 1915 or 1916. |
Archie and Louise spent some time living on Bay Street in St. Michael, Barbados. At some point, Archie acquired property on Jersey and
retired there, although he continued to travel to Suriname until at least the
1950s when the plantation was sold to the Suriname government. It is unclear
where Archie and Louise’s daughters were educated.
Archie died on Jersey in 1962 at age 98. Louise died in 1975; she was between 100 and 103 years old, depending on her actual birthdate.
So that comprises the facts about Louise. But what stories
and impressions do we have from other family members?
Archie and Louise’s niece, Ruth Shields McNiven, included
Louise as a character in a story she wrote in high school about life on Alliance
Plantation in Suriname. The way Louise is described is quite unflattering. She
blithers on about people coming to tea and the need to roll the tennis courts
while Archie is discussing serious problems with the plantation’s workers which
eventually erupt into a worker uprising. Louise repeatedly demands that she be
allowed to order expensive English dresses to keep up with other women in her
and Archie’s social set, and the story ends with her getting her gowns.
Ruth’s description of her many years later was a little kinder, but still indicated that Archie’s extended family weren’t very fond of Louise. She told John and Laurel Aird that when Archie brought his new bride home to Ellangowan, the Shields family home in Scotland, Archie’s mother was upset, wondering why he couldn’t have married a good Scots lassie? Ruth’s further comments on Louise were recorded by Laurel as follows:
“ Aunt Louise was half Javanese. Her father was an officer in the Dutch Army. She was brought up in a convent. Attractive. Lived to be 100 on Isle of Jersey. Much younger than he. She made Uncle Archie jealous by flirting.”
John Aird’s memoirs contain his memories of the Shields
family’s assessment of Louise:
“As a matter of fact,
Grandpa Shields’ brother Archie married a Javanese woman, who was referred to
as Aunt Louise. I once saw a picture of her as a mature woman, from which it
was obvious that she would have been very attractive in her youth. Anecdotes about
Aunt Louise suggested that she was very conscious of her station and also that
the family were careful to make sure that her status did not encroach on their
own. She must have had a difficult time of it in some respects. There
apparently were some children from that union, who were taken to Scotland when
their father retired there, and they lived near London for a time after his
death, but the family later lost track of them and no one seemed to know (or to
care) what became of them.”
John’s summary is repugnant, and reflects the bigotry of the
extended Shields family. It is also inaccurate. John Aird’s grandfather
attended his mother’s 100th birthday party in 1937, and Archie and
Louise were also in attendance, as is obvious from this portion of John
Sutherland Shields’ letter to his family:
“Uncle A. and Aunt
Louise came across Monday with the 11 A.M. boat. Dick and I went down to meet
them. They are both looking very well; Louise much improved, looking almost
younger and stouter than ever and a very healthy color, bright eyes and lots of
talk. Aunt B. and E. too are very well.”
So obviously the extended family knew exactly where Archie,
Louise and their daughters were, at least during John Shields’ lifetime. Ruth
seems to have kept in touch as well, and presumably the Smith cousins, who grew
up with Archie and Louise’s daughters, kept in touch with the girls.
But apparently racism kept some of the Shields family from
accepting Louise and her daughters as real members of their family. I shudder
at John’s casual comment that she was “referred to as Aunt Louise”, as if that
were merely a courtesy title granted to a “fancy woman” or something. She WAS
their Aunt Louise. And the idea that Archie’s daughters “were taken to Scotland
when their father retired there”, implies the family thought they ought to have
been left behind in Suriname with their “kind” or something. Louise isn’t even
mentioned as having accompanied Archie and their daughters. For goodness sake!
They were a family! Of course they moved to Jersey with their father! Families
live together!
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| Aintree, College Hill, St. Helier, Jersey: Louise and Archie's first home on Jersey. |
It is just stunning to be faced with the Shields’ family’s
bigotry. It is so disturbing to
read that they worried that Louise's ethnicity would drag down their own social
standing. John’s phrasing and word choice show he had, likely unintentionally
and without awareness, picked up on his extended family’s disdain and
repugnance for Archie’s half-caste (I use this phrase only in the context of
the time period—it is a horrible way to describe people now, of course) wife
and daughters, and channeled it in his writing. I want to emphasize that John
never exhibited any sign of racism himself as an adult; he was uniformly kind
and accepting of everyone. This reflects another type of “Change”, the theme of
this post: the younger generations of the family began, thankfully, to move
past the casual bigotry of the early twentieth century.
It would have been fascinating to ask Louise what she
thought of Archie’s family and their treatment of her and her daughters. I’m
sure it would have been enlightening and disturbing. She deserved better. At
least now her real maiden name is in the family tree.
Sources:
Memoirs of John Shields Aird: 10 November 1919-09 October
2005. Pg. 28.
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