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Monument Inscription
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
JAMES MIDDLETON
WHO DIED 25TH JUNE 1905
AGED 52 YEARS
HIS WIFE
AGNES MCMEEGHAN
WHO DIED 16TH MAY 1936
AGED 84 YEARS
Family History
The first named person on this memorial, James Middleton came from a humble household in the village of Newton Mearns. Born in 1852 to roadman/labourer Thomas Middleton and his wife Mary Jane Stewart, young James would have enjoyed the advantages of having been reared in clean country air rather than that of the nearby polluted metropolis of Glasgow.
James did not appear to have the same opportunities as some of his peers and followed his father into working as an outdoor labourer. This job, as its name suggests, entailed any kind of labouring work in the open air and was usually very poorly paid.
Despite these limited prospects James was to court and subsequently marry his first cousin, a girl named Agnes McMeeghan. The marriage was conducted by the minister of Partick United Presbyterian Church, Rev. Robt. M. Gebbie. Agnes the new bride had been employed as a bleachfield worker before her marriage. The couple aged twenty-one and twenty-two years respectively were to set up home at Ashview Terrace, Newton Mearns. Ashview Terrace was a tenement building situated on the south-western side of Barrhead Rd.
The close family relationship between this couple was caused by the mother of Agnes, Jane Middleton, being the sister of James’s father Thomas. Agnes’s father William was employed as a surfaceman, which was a repairer of road surfacing. He would probably have met his wife through his work association with her brother.
James obtained employment as a whinstone quarrier in one of the local quarries and while employed there received lacerated wounds to one of his hands. This injury became infected, whereby James contracted tetanus, or, as it was commonly known, lockjaw. Admitted to the Victoria Infirmary with this condition he succumbed to its effects on 25th June, 1905. The death was registered by his son Robert.
Agnes his widow survived her husband by thirty-one years. She died on 16th May 1936 at the age of eighty-four years.