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Relatives: Wife of John McLean Stone Condition: Sound, Tilted Material: Sandstone Height: 0.8 Breadth: 0.52 Depth: 0.12 Inscription Condition: Mint Inscription Technique: Incised Mason: Not known Pre 1855 no. N/A ( What's this? )

Monument Inscription

ERECTED
BY
JOHN MCLEAN,
IN MEMORY OF HIS WIFE,
ANN BAIRD,
WHO DIED 11TH APRIL
1870, AGED 63 YEARS.

_____ . ______

THE ABOVE
JOHN MCLEAN
WHO DIED 27TH JANY 1885
AGED 81 YEARS

Family History

On 16th March, 1807 in a weaver’s cottage in Eaglesham a daughter was born to Ann Green, the wife of John Baird. John and Ann had married in the village on 11th March, 1803 and it was there that they raised their family.

Eaglesham, in common with many such villages before the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the accompanying factories and mills it created, harboured a not insubstantial number of hand-loom weavers. Working mostly in wool, these persons worked within their own homes producing cloth for outside contractors who supplied the raw materials and in some instances the looms. The cloth was for the most part of rough quality and would be used for everyday wear or soldier’s uniforms. With the Napoleonic Wars then in progress no doubt the weaver’s products would be in great demand.

While such pressure was applied for their output, weavers were able to command good wages when set against other trades, and Ann would have enjoyed a reasonable quality of life within this household.

Ann, when twenty years of age, succumbed to the blandishments of a local thirty-three years old joiner in the personage of John McLean. The marriage took place in the village of Eaglesham on 27th March, 1827. The couple remained in the village certainly until the last of their children was born in 1843, after which at some time unknown they moved the few miles along the Humbie Road into Mearns Parish. The couple raised seven children in total, four sons and three daughters. The names and years of birth of their family were as follows: - John (b.1828), William (b.1830), Matthew (b.1833), Ann Green (b.1835), Baird (b.1838), Margaret (b.1840) and Jean (b.1843).

The mother of this large family, Ann McLean nee Baird, is first to be commemorated on this monument, dying in the village of Newton on 11th April, 1870. Ann, who had been diagnosed with a heart condition for six months prior to her death, was sixty-three years old.

Her husband John, born in the late 18th century, was to achieve the remarkable age of eighty-one years before joining his wife under this plain and simple gravestone.