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By Beth Greenhorn

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In the first article of this four-part series, I wrote about my grandfather, Robert Roy Greenhorn (1879–1962), and my discovery that he was a Home Child with Quarrier’s Orphan Homes of Scotland. The second part of this story takes us to Gartsherrie and Falkirk, Scotland, the birthplace of my grandfather Robert and his parents.

I would like to acknowledge Anna Greenhorn, her daughter Pat Greenhorn, and my cousin Joyce Madsen, for generously sharing their memories of Robert Roy Greenhorn.

When doing genealogical research, gaps in the records and even missing information are often encountered. Researchers need to access a variety of archival and published sources to connect the proverbial “dots” when researching an individual’s life story. This is particularly the case when the person whose life is being researched was not rich or famous. While researching my grandfather’s story, I was able to piece together facts about his life through Canadian census records, passenger lists and Home Children records held at LAC, digitized primary sources on Ancestry, the Census of Scotland, historical publications, newspapers, and exhibitions available online.

I am grateful to my Uncle John and Aunt Anna (my father’s brother and his wife) for their research on the Greenhorn side of the family. Special thanks to Aunt Anna, who gave me photocopies of two pages from ledger books. The first sheet, titled “Greenhorn, John & Robert,” which is page 40, has entries for December 10, 1885; June 11, 1886; and March 15, 1889. The second sheet is titled “Greenhorn, Norval” and is page 285, with entries made on July 6 and 8, 1892; March 29, 1894; and November 25, 1904.

I contacted the Quarriers Aftercare team in Bridge of Weir, Scotland, to verify the source of these photocopied records and am awaiting a reply. However, I think it is safe to assume that they are copies from ledgers kept by Quarrier’s Orphan Homes of Scotland. Although they consist of only two pages, the information in these entries provide answers about why my grandfather Robert and his brothers, John and Norval, became wards of the Orphan Homes of Scotland and were relocated to Canada. Significantly, they mention Jeanie Greenhorn, my grandfather’s eldest sister, who is a key figure in this story.

Given that my grandparents, Robert and Blanche (née Carr) Greenhorn, were dairy farmers, I assumed that my grandfather came from a family of farmers, or at least had ties to an agricultural past. Little did I know that my grandfather’s family were among the working poor and victims of industrialization in Scotland. My great-grandfather, Norval Greenhorn (1839–82) and his father-in-law, my great-great-grandfather, John Fleming (1805–87), were employed as ironworkers in the manufacturing towns of Gartsherrie and Falkirk.

Gartsherrie, now a suburb of Coatbridge, was a former industrial village located about 14 kilometres east of Glasgow. This was the birthplace of my great-grandmother, Margaret (née Fleming) Greenhorn (1845–85). By 1843, the Gartsherrie Ironworks was probably the largest pig-iron producer in the world. In 1864, Andrew Miller wrote a vivid, but bleak, description of Coatbridge and Gartsherrie:

To all who may have visited an iron producing district such as Coatbridge, around which the fiery beacons flash, the scene on a dark night must have been most impressive; but what strange ideas would enter the mind of any man who had never been near or heard of an iron work… and looked down [from Gartsherrie Church] for the first time on nearly two score and ten blast furnaces belching forth their forked flames, while the innumerable stalks and furnaces of the surrounding mills and forges darted their meteor-like flashes of glaring white heat amid the gloom of darkness. (quoted on “The Bairds of Gartsherrie” web page, North Lanarkshire Council)

This photograph of the Gartsherrie Ironworks, taken in the mid-1870s, shows the blast furnaces (for the smelting of ore) on the “New Side,” built on the Monkland Canal. The “Old Side,” located on the opposite side of the canal and not visible in this photo, had another 8 furnaces, making 16 in total.

In the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1884, vol. I, p. 273), edited by Francis H. Groome, Coatbridge and district is described as follows: “Fire, smoke, and soot, with the roar and rattle of machinery, are its leading characteristics; the flames of its furnaces cast on the midnight sky a glow as if of some vast conflagration.”

The 1851 Census of Scotland (Scottish census records are available through Ancestry) lists my great-grandmother, Margaret Fleeming [sic], age six, as living in Gartsherrie. It shows her father, John Fleeming [sic], age 43, as being employed as a furnace filler. I assume that he worked at the Gartsherrie Ironworks since their address was 154 North Square. This was one of the housing units built for the workers by William Baird and Company, founders of the Gartsherrie Ironworks. By the time this photograph was taken in 1966, North Square was derelict, and it was eventually demolished in 1969.

A street map from the 1930s shows North Square hemmed in by railway tracks on two sides. The ironworks with the blast furnaces would have been within view. According to the Wikipedia page for Coatbridge: “Most of the town’s population lived in tight rows of terraced houses built under the shadow of the iron works” in appalling and overcrowded living conditions, where “tuberculosis was rife.” The Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1883, vol. III, p. 80) states that in Gartsherrie, “There are 400 workmen’s houses, each with two or three apartments, a small garden plot, and a cheap supply of gas and water.” It also mentions a school at the ironworks, which had 253 students in 1881 and could accommodate 612 children, and an academy with 400 students that could take 666 pupils.

I imagine that the ironworkers and their families seldom escaped the misery of Gartsherrie. The Industrial Revolution extended working hours: Work was no longer seasonal or limited to daylight hours, with workdays lasting from 14 to 16 hours, six days a week. This 1853 painting of Gartsherrie by Night shows the blast furnaces operating at night.

According to the 1861 Census of Scotland, my great-grandfather, Norval Greenhorn, lived with his parents and brothers in unit 8 on Back Row in Falkirk, an iron and steel manufacturing town, about 27 kilometres northeast of Coatbridge. Norval, age 22, was employed as an “iron manedar” (ironworker?).

The housing for workers in Falkirk sounds as miserable as in Gartsherrie. The Falkirk Local History Society describes the Victorian-era Back Row (or Manor Street) as grim and narrow, with overcrowded and insanitary buildings, notorious for their dilapidated condition and prone to regular outbreaks of cholera and typhus.

My great-grandparents, Margaret and Norval Greenhorn, married in March 1864. Curiously, the 1871 Census of Scotland does not mention Norval in the entry for Margaret. She was working as a general servant and living with both of her parents, her brother, his wife and their infant son at 154 North Square (see third image above) in Gartsherrie. The census does, however, mention a granddaughter “James Grenham,” age six. I believe that this was Jeanie Greenhorn, the eldest child of Norval and Margaret, born in 1864. As for Norval’s omission, I suspect that he was still working in Falkirk, although his name was not recorded there, nor in any other 1871 census records.

Norval and Margaret had seven or eight children, with only four surviving: Jeanie (1864–1938), John (1877–1961), my grandfather Robert (1879–1962) and Norval (1883–ca. 1960), the last to be born.

By the time of the 1881 Census of Scotland, Margaret and Norval were both living at 154 North Square in Gartsherrie, along with her father (John Fleming) and their sons: my great-uncle John, age three, and my grandfather Robert, age one. John Fleming was an unemployed furnace filler. Norval (senior) was working as a tube finesher [sic]. Jeanie Greenhorn, age 16, had left home and was employed as a servant for George Bissett, a fruit merchant, and his wife, Sarah, in Cleland Place, about 17 kilometres southeast of Gartsherrie.

I learned from the Orphan Homes of Scotland that my great-grandfather Norval died from inflammation of the lungs in late December 1882. My great-grandmother Margaret became a widow at age 37 or 38, losing the breadwinner in the family. She was pregnant with their youngest son, Norval, who was born sometime in 1883. She had two boys to care for: John, age five, and Robert, age three. I can only imagine the hardship and suffering that she and her children endured. My Aunt Anna’s ledger pages show that on December 3, 1885, Margaret died from kidney failure, or “dropsy” as it was called in the 19th century, leaving my grandfather and his siblings as orphans.

According to the entry for John and Robert Greenhorn from the Orphan Homes of Scotland ledger, Jeanie was about 20 years old and working as a servant for Margaret (née Campbell) Kerr at Gallowhill House in Paisley when her mother, Margaret Greenhorn, became ill. Mrs. Kerr gave Jeanie a month’s “holiday” to tend to her mother on her deathbed.

The burden on Jeanie would have been immense. She was suddenly left with the responsibility of caring for her three young brothers, all under the age of eight. The situation would have been difficult for most people her age, but especially challenging for an unmarried woman employed as a servant.

Jeanie was undoubtedly aware of the philanthropist William Quarrier. In 1876, he founded City Orphan Home in Glasgow and, in 1878, he opened the Orphan Homes of Scotland at Bridge of Weir, about 24 kilometres west of Glasgow. Throughout the mid-1870s and the 1880s, local newspapers regularly published articles praising Quarrier for his tireless and evangelical work in rescuing destitute children in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland. On March 28, 1884, the Glasgow Herald reported on a meeting in Glasgow the day before that year’s group of boys departed for Canada:

…in a large and populous city like Glasgow …institutions were needed to do the good that was necessary for the public to confer upon these poor little things left without proper guardians …To Mr. Quarrier and his staff the public owed a great debt of gratitude for all they had done in the past. (Applause) …all the boys that had gone out to Canada in the past, and who wished to do well, had found comfortable homes, and could get plenty of employment… Canada …was a place where the cities were not so densely populated, where there were no poor persons, and the population was very much an agricultural one. (“Orphan Homes of Scotland,” p. 9)

Just a few weeks before Margaret Greenhorn passed away, The Evening News in Glasgow published an article entitled “The Charitable Institutions of Glasgow: Their Past Work and Future Condition,” Part III (November 16, 1885, p. 2). The author commended William Quarrier, describing him as “a remarkable man… doing remarkable work which demands special notice. Amongst the poor and the outcast of Glasgow, his name was a household word long before it was known to the general public.” While I will never know if Jeanie had read this particular news article, I am certain that she, like other people in Glasgow and neighbouring towns, was well aware and supportive of Quarrier’s charitable work. Given the deplorable housing and working conditions as well as the pollution in Gartsherrie and vicinity, Canada would have sounded like a safe and healthy place where destitute children would thrive.

On December 10, 1885, John and Robert Greenhorn became wards of the Orphan Homes of Scotland. According to my Aunt Anna’s photocopied ledger entry, Jeanie handed “over these two boys and is quite willing they should go to Canada having had all arrangements fully explained” by Mr. Colin, a Pastor with the Baptist Church in Coatbridge. Norval, age three, was taken in by an aunt, Mrs. Greenhorn, in Haddington, east of Edinburgh.

For the next six months, Robert and John lived at City Orphan Home in Glasgow. They moved to the Orphan Homes of Scotland at Bridge of Weir on June 11, 1886. I have not found any interior photographs of the home in Glasgow, but I imagine that my grandfather and my great-uncle slept in a room similar to this dormitory in an orphanage at Huberdeau, Quebec.

In the third and last article of this series, Robert Roy Greenhorn’s story will take us to the Orphan Homes of Scotland in Bridge of Weir and then to Canada, to Fairknowe Home in Brockville, Ontario.

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Beth Greenhorn is an Online Content Manager in the Outreach and Engagement Branch at Library and Archives Canada.