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Monument Inscription
IN MEMORY OF
ALEXANDER BLUE,
EASTFIELD
DIED 7TH JUNE 1875, AGED 59 YEARS.
ALSO HIS FAMILY
WILLIAM,
DIED 5TH JUNE 1870, AGED 21 YEARS.
ALEXANDER,
DIED 12TH NOVR 1872, AGED 34 YEARS.
LILLIAS,
WIFE OF JOHN MITCHELL,
DIED 28TH MARCH 1889, AGED 31 YEARS.
HIS WIFE LILLIAS MUIR,
DIED 11TH NOVR 1893, AGED 78 YEARS.
Family History
The surname Blue carried by the persons enumerated on this stone was well known within the parish of Mearns.
Alexander Blue was born in 1816 into the family of the blacksmith at Eastfield on the outskirts of Mearnskirk. The art of smithing was one of the oldest and most respected craft skills known, and within the rural communities became ever more important as the introduction of mechanical machines became widespread on farms.
Taking the trade of his father, Alexander for some reason also took tenancy of the thirty-five acre farm of Eastfield. Having married a woman called Lillias Muir from Cathcart, he set up home at this locus. His skills were not to be abandoned, as he continued to practice as a blacksmith as well as farmer at Eastfield. With a family of ten children to support, the earnings of the smithy would be a welcome addition to the family budget.
The large number of children produced by this couple, consisting of seven boys and three girls, occurred over a period of twenty years. One of the sons, Allan, initially followed his father and grandfather into the blacksmith trade, but through time earned his livelihood as a veterinary surgeon. Allan went on to marry Jean Paterson and set up home at 58 Douglas Street, Glasgow. They lost a year old daughter named Lillias Muir Blue to pneumonia and measles.
Alexander Blue died aged fifty-nine years, the cause of death being simply described as a result of paralysis he had endured for four days. With the help of her large family Lillias, his wife, continued working the farm until her own demise in 1893 aged seventy-eight years. Tragically, despite successfully raising her children to adulthood through all the ever threatening childhood ailments and diseases, Lillias was to see the death of three of her children, named on this monument, before her own passing.
Son William died aged only twenty-one years of an abdominal tumour which he had been suffering from for a year before his death.
Losing one son was bad enough for Lillias Blue, but two years later son Alexander who had continued as a third generation blacksmith was to die of an over consumption of alcohol, whereby he fell asleep and never woke up. Alex was only thirty-four years of age when he died and still living with the family at Eastfield.
Daughter Lillias married a farmer called Thomas Mitchell of Crosshill Farm, Rutherglen. She failed to survive childbirth and died at that locality in 1889 aged thirty-one years.