Monument Details H01

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Forename
Surname
Date of Death
Age
Place Name
James
Goldie
11 October 1939
84
Mary
Skilling
11 May 1908
28
Agnes Strang
Todd
15 January 1894
39

Relatives: Husband of Agnes Strang Todd. Father of Mary Stone Condition: Sound Material: Granite Height: 1.5 Breadth: 0.8 Depth: 0.2 Inscription Condition: Clear but worn Inscription Technique: Incised Mason: Not known Pre 1855 no. N/A ( What's this? )

Monument Inscription

ERECTED
TO THE MEMORY OF
AGNES STRANG TODD
BELOVED WIFE OF JAMES GOLDIE
WHO DIED 15TH JANY 1894 AGED 39 YEARS
AND SEVERAL OF THEIR FAMILY
THEIR DAUGHTER MARY
BELOVED WIFE OF ANDREW SKILLING
DIED 11TH MAY 1908 AGED 28 YEARS
THE ABOVE JAMES GOLDIE
OUR GRANDFATHER
DIED 11TH OCT. 1939 AGED 84 YEARS

Family History

This memorial appears to have been in use over a period of some forty-five years, having originally been raised to mark the first burial in 1894 and completed with the last burial in 1939.

The family it commemorates, Goldie, had been native to the Mearns district for several generations. James Goldie the patriarch of the family was born in the village of Newton to John Goldie and Mary Kilpatrick in 1855. John Goldie was working as an outdoor labourer, an occupation his son James was to take up in his adult years.

On 21st August, 1877 there would have been celebrations at the home of Agnes Todd at Crofthead Farm, Mearns, as this was the day she married her suitor James Goldie. Agnes who worked as a farm servant, was the daughter of John Todd, a dairyman at Crofthead Farm, and his wife Christina Dickson. The couple were joined in matrimony by the then minister of Mearns Kirk the Rev. Mungo Reid.

With James living in the village of Newton no doubt Agnes would have made her way there on occasions to meet and court her young man. A favourite spot for such trysts by the lovers of the village was on the road outside the local gasworks. The gasworks were situated at the bottom of the Teawell Brae which was to the north end of Main Street in the village. The big attraction for this spot for courting couples was not only its relatively private situation but the fact that in the winter time the boundary wall next to the road was also the wall of the furnace room, thus creating what was described as the “Hot Wa”. This wall was well used by many of the Mearns folk for their courting in comfort.

James unfortunately was to lose his wife when she died at thirty-nine years of age, leaving him the task of raising his family as a lone parent. One of these children, daughter Mary, was in 1905 to marry a local joiner named Andrew Skilling and the couple set up home in Main Street, Newton. Once again tragedy was to strike this family through the death of one of their womenfolk at a young age. Mary, aged only twenty-eight years, was to succumb to kidney failure at her home in Main St on 11th May 1908, leaving a young husband to grieve the loss of his bride after only three years of marriage. Mary was buried beside her mother in the plot allocated in Mearns Kirkyard.

James, the husband and father of these two women, was to survive for another thirty-one years before joining them in the kirkyard in 1939, having enjoyed a full life achieving the advanced age of eighty-four years.