Tuberculosis Leads to Loss in the Shields Family: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Loss”

A Tragic Loss: James Laing Smith Dies of “Galloping Consumption”

James Laing Smith: exact dates of birth and death unknown

 

            Bethia Shields was born on January 26, 1863 to Thomas and Margaret Sutherland Shields. She was the oldest of their seven children. Her father, Thomas, spent most of his time abroad in the Demarara region of Dutch Guiana assembling and managing sugar processing equipment for large sugar plantations. Her mother raised the children back in Scotland. Thomas’ visits home to Scotland must have been times of great excitement for the children. His stories of life in colonial South America probably fascinated them, inspiring a longing to join him and see this exotic place for themselves. Thomas likely looked forward to bringing family to Demarara too.

            When Bethia reached her late teens, her parents sent her to cooking school, preparing her to become her father’s housekeeper in the Georgetown area of what is now Guyana. At age 18 or 19, she accompanied her father to South America to take on her new role. He had been living at a plantation called Vryheid’s Lust, so that is probably where Bethia first lived.

Georgetown, Guyana circa 1880

            She met a fellow Scotsman in the region and fell in love. James Laing Smith was working as a manager for another sugar plantation. Little is known about the young man. Even his birth date is unknown; some family trees show his birth as early as 1847, which would have made him sixteen years older than Bethia. Others claim he was born as late as 1862, which would have made the young couple only a year apart in age. His parents’ names and his birthplace are also unknown. It is believed his middle name was Laing, which would presumably be a grandparent’s surname, but that hasn’t helped to identify the correct Smith family in Scotland. His origins remain a mystery.

            According to Ruth Shields McNiven, who was Bethia’s niece, Bethia returned to Scotland to assemble her trousseau before marrying James Smith. Her entire trousseau, including the wedding cake-- a fruit cake heavily laced with rum--was lost when the ship carrying it sank off the coast of Ireland. Bethia’s brother Robert teased her about her sunken wedding cake, saying “Oh what a feast for the fishes!”

            It is unclear whether Bethia was on board the ship when it foundered; presumably the crew and passengers were rescued if so. She collected a new trousseau and returned to Georgetown, Guyana, where she and James were married in 1882.

Georgetown in 1880s. Water St. and wharf area where Bethia's ship would have landed

            The couple had four children: James B. Laing Smith, born in 1884; Margaret Sutherland Smith, born in 1886; Mary “May” Howie Smith, born in 1888; and Euphemia Laing Smith, born in 1892. All the children were born in Georgetown, Guyana, the largest city in the Demarara region.

Georgetown was a lovely town, with wide streets and European-style construction and amenities. Scottish and Dutch families who ran the plantations and businesses in the region all socialized together and enjoyed a much more comfortable life than might be imagined. It is easy to imagine Bethia and her children strolling down these charming boulevards.

Georgetown High Street in 1880s or 1890s. Women in Victorian gowns.

            Meanwhile, Thomas Shields had taken over management of two plantations near Nickerie, Suriname. Careful management and improvements in efficiency at the Hazard and Waterloo plantations, including sourcing new fuel for the boilers, helped to make the plantations more profitable. 

Sugar processing plant at Waterloo Plantation which Thomas managed

            Around 1890, Thomas Shields had built up a large enough fortune to purchase his own sugar plantation, Alliance, in Suriname. James Smith had been working as a manager for other plantation owners in Guyana. At some point, probably after Euphemia’s 1892 birth (Aunt Ruth was not clear on the timing), Thomas, believing his son-in-law would be an asset at the plantation, offered James a job as Alliance’s manager.

The Smith family moved to Suriname. Tragically, shortly after arriving, James developed a virulent form of tuberculosis. Due to the speed of the disease’s development, doctors referred to the variant as “galloping consumption.” Within three months of becoming ill, James was dead. He was buried in Paramaribo, Suriname. There are no records available that provide a specific death date or a burial location.

            Fortunately, no one else in the family developed consumption. Following her husband’s death, Bethia and her children returned to Scotland. Thomas Shields must have felt great guilt since his job offer had inadvertently led to James’ death, for according to Ruth Shields McNiven, Bethia was given one quarter interest in Alliance. This enabled Bethia and the Smith children to live in comfort. They returned frequently to Alliance for extended visits.

            James Smith’s loss was painful for the family. Bethia Shields Smith never remarried. She died in Kirn, Scotland, on June 18, 1956 at the age of 93.

Sources:

Sugar factory pix: Waterloo, Nickerie, Suriname, Coenraad Liebrecht (Coen) Temminck Groll photographer. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suikerfabriek_-_20651612_-_RCE.jpg

https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2018/01/21/galloping-consumption/

The Sweet Power of Engineering: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Power”

 

Thomas Shields and the Machinery of Sugar Processing

Thomas Shields: 1837-1905

 

            Thomas Shields, John Shields Aird’s grandfather, was an engineer whose knowledge of sugar processing machinery led him to South America and a new life. The equipment he installed and maintained had the power to transform sugar cane into sugar and molasses, and also had the power to change the destiny of the Shields family.

            Thomas Shields was born in the West Lothian area of Scotland in 1837. According to John Aird’s Aunt Ruth Shields MacNiven, he came from an engineering family. My examination of Scottish census data, marriage records and death records casts doubt on this. Thomas’ father, Archibald Shields, born in 1806, was listed on most documents as a “farm servant”. Thomas appears to be the first engineer in the family. During the mid-nineteenth century, most engineers trained through apprenticeship, so he didn’t need expensive schooling or a university education.

            Thomas married Margaret Sutherland on December 20, 1861; he was 24 and she was 23. Her family owned a foundry in the town of Airdree, so Thomas may have used his father-in-law’s connections to advance in the engineering field.

            According to Ruth Macniven, Thomas went to work for the company of McOnie Harvey. According to Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History,

            “In 1883, McOnie Harvey and Co., Glasgow engineers, was formed by the amalgamation of Robert Harvey and Co. and McOnie’s. By 1907, after Harvey’s death, his son Robert took over and developed the business as Harvey Engineering Company, Ltd., makers of sugar machinery and erection of central sugar factories, with a high reputation in all sugar-producing countries.”

            Thomas obviously went to work for the company well before the 1883 merger, back when it was called A & P W McOnie, for by the 1871 Scotland Census, when he and Margaret already had five young children ranging from age eight to one, he was listed as an “engine smith employing 3 Nat men”, which I assume meant three “native” men. It isn’t clear if Thomas had brought South American natives back to England, or if the entry meant he employed them abroad.

            According to Ruth McNiven, McOnie Harvey sent Thomas to the Demerara region of what was then British Guiana and is now the South American county Guyana, probably in the 1860s. He was charged with installing sugar processing equipment for a large sugar plantation there. Demerara was a sugar cane growing region along the Demerara River. A type of raw cane brown sugar became known as Demerara sugar because it was processed from cane grown in this region. Most Europeans reached the area by sea, landing in the city of Georgetown and then proceeding inland to the sugar plantations.

            It appears that most plantations had their own sugar processing equipment. Rather than ship the raw cane for miles in rugged territory, the cane would be processed into a more easily shipped product—raw brown sugar and molasses. This led to a booming business for the equipment manufacturers. As you can see from the illustrations, the equipment was huge and complex. An expert like Thomas Shields would have been essential to correctly assemble and train operators of the equipment on the plantations.  

            According to Ruth, Thomas was so well-thought of by the plantation owners that he was asked to stay on as Consulting Engineer for the Crum Ewing estates, which comprised five sugar plantations. Many owners would amass more than one plantation, and would centralize the sugar production plant on one or two of the properties. The Crum Ewing plantations were owned by Scottish businessman Humphrey Crum-Ewing and the James Ewing & Co.  According to a biography of Crum-Ewing,

“With the abolition of slavery the value of plantation land (in the West Indies was) reduced substantially and Humphry took the opportunity to purchase a series of plantations for the company in British Guiana (now Guyana, South America). The purchases included the plantations on the Atlantic coast east of the Demerara River known as Better Hope, Vryheid’s Lust, Brothers, Montrose and Felicity.”

Thomas made his headquarters at Vryheid’s Lust, which is Dutch for “Freedom’s Hope”. This sugar plantation still exists today just outside of Georgetown, Guyana, and the plantation name is also shared by a desperately poor, mostly black community.

Canal along edge of Vryheid's Lust Plantation, circa 1890

            Eventually, Thomas Shields decided to purchase his own plantation in the neighboring country of Suriname. Alliance Plantation also had its own sugar processing facility, a photo which is below.

            Thomas Shields’ life, and those of his children, were transformed by the powerful McOnie Harvey equipment. Thomas’ training and skill in assembling and maintaining the desperately needed equipment transformed him from an engineer employed by a Scottish manufacturer into a wealthy landowner in colonial South America in a matter of two decades.

 

Sources:

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Robert_Harvey_and_Co

https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/profiles/the-crum-ewing-memorial-beta-compartment-of-glasgow-necropolis/

Plantation Life in Suriname: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Favorite Photo”

Archie Shields and Daughters on Entry Drive to Alliance Plantation, Circa 1917-18

Photo taken by Surinamese Photographer Augusta Curiel

            Some photos are so evocative and beautiful that they immediately draw you in—you feel an instant connection to the moment, the place, and the people the photographer captured. This photo of my husband’s great-great uncle Archie Shields and his daughters is one of those photos.

            My husband’s great-great-grandfather Thomas Shields was an engineer for a manufacturer of sugar processing equipment, and in the early 1870s was sent from Scotland to the Demarara region of what is now Guyana to supervise the installation of equipment at a large sugar cane plantation. He stayed on in South America, at first managing and maintaining the equipment, and then moving on to managing entire plantations. Thomas eventually bought a plantation of his own in Suriname that was known as Alliance Plantation, and several of his children, including his eldest son Archibald, followed him to Suriname to work at Alliance.

            Archibald, known as Archie, was born March 18, 1864, in Clackerton Scotland, to Thomas and Margaret Shields. Like his father, he first trained as an engineer before moving to Suriname to work on the plantation. He eventually took over as manager of Alliance during his late twenties.

Archie married rather late in life. His wife, Louise Annie Kinnear, was the daughter of a European planter and a Javanese woman. Archie and Louise appear to have wed sometime after Archie’s father died in 1905; Archie was about forty. Their first child, Margaret Sutherland Shields, was born October 13, 1909 in Paramaribo, Suriname.

The couple spent most of their time in Suriname, returning every couple of years to Scotland to visit family for several months. On a visit in January 1912, their second child, Euphemia Louise Shields, was born in Lambeth, London. Their third and final child, Bethia Delphine Shields, was born in Parmaribo in 1913.

The three little girls spent most of their childhood at Alliance Plantation, living in the huge plantation house there. Sometime around 1918, Paramaribo’s most famous and talented photographer, a Surinamese woman named Augusta Curiel, came to the plantation to take photographs. She was accompanied by her sister Anna, who served as her assistant. One of the photos Augusta took was this stunning shot of Archie and his three daughters on the long, tree-shaded drive that led to the Alliance Plantation House.  

This shot truly captures the privileged lifestyle of the European plantation owners and managers. Archie stands proudly in his white suit and white pith helmet, resting his hands on daughter Euphemia’s shoulders. Little Bethia, who looks to be about three years old, stands close to her sister, chubby legs encased in white stockings.

Young Margaret, probably about nine years old in the photo, is perched on an amazing tricycle with three delicate wheels and solid black pedals, probably shipped from England to Suriname. All three girls are in pristine white dresses. The climate was hot and humid; imagine the work required to keep all these people in white clothing each day. The Shields family of course would take on none of this labor. So who would?

We get a clue from an easily overlooked detail on the left side of the photo. Two other children are barely visible, seated on the ground between two trees, slightly behind the tricycle. They are dark skinned, the children of some of Alliance’s indentured laborers. These workers were imported from Java and India to work in the cane fields, to run the sugar processing equipment, and to clean, cook and do the laundry in the huge plantation house that can be seen at the end of the tree-lined drive. The lives of those two children were vastly different than those of the three Shields girls, and Curiel’s composition illuminates that difference.

European planters like Archie and his father attempted to recreate the society and trappings of the wealthy and elite in their home countries in the new world of South America. Alliance’s tree-shaded drive echoes those that lead to the stately homes of the United Kingdom, differentiated only by the more exotic tree species used, and the style of the home at the end of the drive. Archie’s clothing and his daughters’ playthings and dresses all mimic the fashions of the wealthy in Europe, with the necessary substitution of lighter weight fabrics in cooling white. And, like the wealthy back in Scotland and Europe, Archie seems to ignore and dismiss the lives of the common people who made his lifestyle possible—Alliance’s hundreds of servants and laborers are invisible in this image, except for the two youngsters hidden in the shade at the edge of the drive.

Alliance has since fallen into ruin. The view of the drive today is nearly unrecognizable, as seen in this tourist photo.

Sources:

The original of this photograph is owned by the Stichting Surinaams Museum in Paramaribo. The photo can be found on their Flickr stream and on various internet sites. Here is the museum’s info on the photo:

“Alliance seen from the Commewijne River. With a gentleman with three little girls on the entrance, one of them on a three-wheeled bicycle. To the left, between the trees, a few small children. Date: Location: Commewijne, Suriname Manufacturer: attributed to Augusta Curiel Inv. Nr .: 74-13 Photo archive Stichting Surinaams Museum.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tropenmuseum_Royal_Tropical_Institute_Objectnumber_60006292_Huis_op_plantage_Alliance.jpg

https://collectie.wereldculturen.nl/?query=search=*=TM-60006292#/query/4f163456-4eb5-4c23-a1f0-46cbda254676

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Curiel

https://www.surinameplantages.com/archief/a/alliance

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Augusta_Curiel

Shields Family’s Repeated Names: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Namesake”

 

Scottish Naming Conventions in the Shields/Sutherland Line

 

            A quick glance at the Shields/Sutherland section of my husband Bruce’s family tree shows repeated use of certain first names, both across and down generations. I wondered why they kept using the same names even when there had to be confusion, with cousins just months or years apart often sharing the same first name and surname. Then I ran across notes my mother-in-law took while talking to her husband’s aunt, Ruth Shields MacNiven. Ruth explained that the family followed a Scottish naming tradition.

            According to Ruth, in Scottish families, the first son is named for the father’s father, the first daughter is named for the mother’s mother, the second son is named for the mother’s father, and the second daughter is named for the father’s mother, etc. So Mary “May” Seller Shields Aird was named for her mother, Mary Jane Pollock’s, mother, Mary Seller.

            Confusion can result when the families are quite large, so you have five or six siblings all wanting to use their parents’ first names for their first or second sons and daughters. And that’s exactly what happened in the Shields line: repeated Effie/Euphemias, Johns/Jacks, Archibalds, Marys/Mays, Bethias and Margarets.

            As an example, let’s look at my husband’s fourth great grandparents, Robert Muir and Margaret Mary Anderson Lauder. Robert was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland on December 11, 1779 to parents John Muir and Ann Penman Muir. Margaret was born on June 1, 1780 to parents Archibald Lauder and Bethia Anderson Lauder.

The couple married in Lanarkshire, and Robert and Margaret Mary went on to have several children. The first two sons and daughters, in order, along with the grandparent who they were the namesake of, are listed as follows:

Son John Muir, born 1806. Named for his father’s father, John Muir.

Son Archibald Muir, born 1808. Named for his mother’s father, Archibald Lauder.

Daughter Mary Anne Muir, born 1812. Named for her father’s mother, Ann Penman Muir.

Daughter Bethia Muir, born 1815. Named for her mother’s mother, Bethia Anderson Lauder.

Old Monkland area of Lanarkshire, Scotland where Muirs and Sutherlands lived

            Bethia Muir went on to marry John Sutherland. Among their first children were Robert Sutherland, namesake for Bethia’s father Robert Muir, and Margaret Sutherland, namesake for Bethia’s mother Margaret Anderson Lauder.

            Margaret Sutherland went on to marry Thomas Shields. Their first daughter was named Bethia Shields, named in honor of  Margaret’s mother Bethia Muir. However, Margaret and Thomas broke tradition somewhat, naming their first son Archibald Shields, thus honoring Margaret’s grandfather Archibald Lauder instead of her father Robert Sutherland. Margaret and Thomas waited until their fourth son was born to use her father’s name, Robert.

            Ruth Shields MacNiven, the source of the information on Scottish naming practices, was the grandchild of Margaret Sutherland and Thomas Shields. Ruth married a cousin named John (but called Jack), had an aunt named Bethia, a sister named Margaret and both an uncle and a brother named Archibald, so the names continued on for several more generations.

            These examples show how complicated and confusing this branch of the family tree can be. While namesake children are a charming tradition, they make the genealogist’s job much trickier.

Beginnings....

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge: Week 1 Prompt "Beginnings"

For the past two years, I have been participating in genealogist Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge. She believes, as I do, that we need to do more with our genealogical research than simply collect names and documents on our Ancestry family trees. Our research should try to document and explain the lives and choices of our ancestors, and the best way to do that is to write about our discoveries, and to do research about the time and place our ancestor lived to illuminate and contextualize our discoveries. 

So to facilitate this process, Amy Johnson Crow provides 52 open-ended prompts each year, one for each week. My job is to write up a story I have unearthed about an ancestor that fits--however closely or loosely--with the theme. Without this structure, I doubt I would ever have written these stories down, and after my death, my children would have been left with only a pile of photos and a large family tree on Ancestry filled with unfamiliar names, neither of which would have been of interest to them. I am so grateful that I discovered Amy's challenge, and that she has continued to organize it each year.

In 2019 and 2020, I posted my stories on a blog I set up for my side of the family called "Twigs on the Family Tree". But that blog was devoted exclusively to my own ancestors. So far I haven't done any posts about my husband's side of the family. After my success with the 52 Ancestors challenge last year--I completed a blog entry for all 52 prompts, along with five extra blogs--I decided that this year I would start to work on my children's other family tree: their dad's side of their heritage. Hence the name of this new blog: Another Tree to Climb. 

So this is a new beginning--make that beginnings! The beginnings of...

        * A new blog

        * A new year of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

        * And a new direction for my research.

I should note that I will still blog about my side of the tree as well. I will decide whether the prompt of the week best fits one of Bruce's ancestors, or one of mine, and will post to the appropriate blog. 

Here's to an exciting year of discoveries to come!