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Monument Inscription
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
ROBERT TELFER
DIED 26TH MARCH 1919 AGED 65 YEARS
ALSO HIS WIFE
JEANIE COUPER
DIED 3RD OCTOBER 1931 AGED 78 YEARS
THEIR DAUGHTER
NELLIE MANN
DIED 6TH SEPTEMBER 1901 AGED 14 YEARS
TELFER
Family History
This monument consists of two stone plaques, contained within a granite edging border. It cannot be ascertained with any certainty that these epitaphs relate to the persons buried within this lair. Both the plaques are easily moveable, and may have been taken from other parts of the kirkyard. Similarly no relationship is immediately visible between the persons named on each of the plaques. The major plaque or small stone relates to the family Telfer, and appears at one time to have been fastened to a base of some sorts with mortar.
Robert Telfer, first named on this memorial, was a local postman in the Mearns district. He resided with his wife and family at 30 Barrhead Road, Newton. Born in the parish in 1854, he married Jane Couper, and they raised three children, a son named Stewart and two daughters named Helen and Jane.
Robert Telfer’s parents were Stewart his father, a blacksmith to trade, and Helen Mann his mother, a local girl. This couple were married in the Mearns in 1846, and it is thought that Stewart came from outwith the parish.
Robert, although attaining the age of sixty-five years, perhaps left this life prematurely, as he was to die of cerebral concussion, having fallen and struck his head, or having received a heavy blow, on 26th March, 1919. The family had already had to cope with the loss of a child, when daughter Helen, died at the young age of fourteen years with an acute infection of her lungs, in 1901. Helen’s full name was Helen Mann Telfer, after her paternal grandmother, but she was known within family circles as Nellie, the name on her grave stone. As is often the case, the mother and wife of the family survived long after the demise of her spouse. Jane or Jeanie Couper, survived until 1931, dying aged seventy-eight years.
It is probably not appreciated that in the days before the development of the mass media, the function of the postman was not only to deliver mail, but also to transmit news of local events. Robert, as well as being the postman, was also to occupy the role of beadle or church officer for Newton Kirk. In a tribute to him the local minister said, “He travelled on foot twenty miles every day, lithe and active, like a greyhound, the bearer throughout the parish of the news of the parish and the heresay of the lesser happenings of Busby and the Shaws, (Pollokshaws)”.
The other plaque placed at the bottom edge of this small enclosure is in the shape of an open book and relates to a person named John Robertson. The plaque was donated by his Masonic Brothers in 1921. See entry S 16a for more information.