This family photograph shows John and Janet McCallum and their children at
about the turn of the century. John McCallum was a stonemason who worked on
the construction of the Forth Rail Bridge. His wife Janet was a typical matriarch
who lived to a great age and bullied everyone in the family (anecdotal evidence
from one of her granddaughters!).
Mary Anne (back row, far left; later a Quaker convert) married Peter Williamson
and had 4 children, John (emigrated to Canada and had 6 children, 5 boys and
a girl), James (emigrated to South Africa), Jenny (married and had one daughter
Jennifer) and Christina (married and had a daughter and a son). Peter Williamson
had been orphaned at an early age and ran away to join the army at 14, giving
a false age; he served in India and South Africa, and if only someone had written
down his experiences they would probably make a good book. The Williamsons took
in lodgers in their home in Rose Crescent, Dunfermline, and one couple, who
were on the stage, left their daughter Kathleen there and never came back for
her, so she was brought up as one of the family.
David, one of the McCallum sons, also emigrated to South Africa: he was
married twice to sisters (Phemie and Aggie) and had a son, Robert, by his first
marriage.
Jenny McCallum (back row, far right) worked in a linen factory but gave up
her job in 1908 to join a Women's Freedom League demonstration in London, where
she was arrested outside the House of Commons and imprisoned in Holloway. Her
story is mentioned in 'The Auld Grey Toon' a history of Dunfermline published
by Dunfermline Libraries, and in 'The Guid Cause', the story of the Scottish
suffragettes by Leah Leneman.
Further anecdotal evidence suggests that Jenny was involved in politics after
the war: her niece (Christina Morrison, nee Williamson, b. 1918) was told that
she had been dandled on James Maxton's knee as a baby during meetings of Red
Clydesiders at the McCallum family home in Brucefield Avenue, Dunfermline, and
she can remember being taken to political meetings by her aunt in the 1920s.
Jenny married and emigrated to South Africa where she died.
The youngest child in the family, Elizabeth, stayed in her parents' house
in Dunfermline, had a daughter, Jenny, and married her cousin Archie, who had
returned from New Zealand where a previous generation had emigrated.
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If you have any connections with this family contact
Sheila Perry
