| THE STORY OF THE CARSONS
|
This is a narrative history of my Carson
ancestors, illustrated with photographs, where these are
available. Family group charts can be viewed by clicking
on underlined names.
|
| Origins
of the Name |
The first record of the name occurred in
the 13th century, in the form Acarson. Other early forms
of the name were de Carsan, a Carsan, Acrassane,
Acarsane, Akersan, a Kersane and Carssane. The name
appears to have originated in the south-west of Scotland
and to be of British (i.e. Welsh) derivation although the
actual meaning is unclear.
|
| Carsons
in Early History |
The first persons to have been recorded
as bearing the name Carson or a variant of it were:-
- Maurice Acarsan, bailiff of Isle
of Man, appointed by King Alexander
- Robert de Carsan, parson,
Kircandres, Dumfriesshire,1296
- John Acarson took Dumfries
castle, 1305
- Morice and Gilbert Acrassane,
jurors at Dumfries, 1367
The Carsons were an ancient
family in Galloway, which ended in the direct line in the
reign of James IV.
|
| Migration
of the Carsons to Ulster |
In the early 17th century the plantation
of Ulster commenced, this being a scheme by King James I
of Great Britain to settle this rebellious province of
Ireland with loyal Protestant subjects. Many of the
settlers came from south-west Scotland, and included
people of the name Carson. Carsons settled first in Co
Tyrone and later spread to other parts of the province,
especially Antrim and Derry. Carson is still a common
name in these counties.
|
| The
Antrim Carsons |
|
Our earliest known Carson ancestor was Matthew Carson, who was born around 1803, probably in
the county of Antrim in Ulster. He married Agnes Ferguson
(known as Nancy), born about 1821, the daughter of John Ferguson, a farm labourer, and Janet Wallace.
Matthew was a quarry labourer, working in the coastal
limestone quarry at Whitehead at the mouth of Belfast
Lough. Matthew and Nancy had at least two children, Jane,
born c1845 and Matthew, born c1854, although it is likely
that they had other children of whom nothing is known. It
is believed that the family lived in the quarry workers'
cottages above the old harbour of Whitehead, which are
still inhabited. When the family lived there, the town of
Whitehead had not even begun to be built. In 1865, while
living at Whitehead, Jane had an illegitimate son,
William, the name of the father being unknown. Matthew
senior died in 1871 at Whitehead, aged 68 .
|
| Migration
to Scotland |
|
| Around December 1873, Jane Carson, then aged about 28, her son William,
aged 8, and her mother, left Ireland to settle in
Scotland. The reason for this move is not known. At any
rate, the family, probably arriving at the ferry port of
Ardrossan, Ayrshire, settled in the nearby town of
Stevenston. Many Irish people came to Stevenston in the
nineteenth century, particularly to work in the local
coal mines. The widowed Nancy Carson worked as a
washerwoman, but in June 1875 she fell ill with fever and
died at the age of 54. Jane found work in Stevenston as a
seamstress or fringer and at other times as a
washerwoman. While living at Fullerton Place in 1876 she
had another illegitimate son, John, the father's name
again being unknown. By 1881, the family was living in
Boglemart Street and stayed at various different
addresses there over the years. Jane died there in 1907
at the age of 62. |
It is not known whether Matthew junior came across at the same time, but by
January 1875 he was living at Lugton, Ayrshire and
working as a miner, probably in the ironstone industry.
There he married Eliza Howard, also from County Antrim,
the daughter of Arthur Howard and Ellen Bryson.
|
| Return
to Ireland |
| By the next year, Matthew
junior had left
Scotland again with his new wife and had returned
to Co. Antrim. They settled in Glynn parish, on
the shores of Larne Lough, where they had at
least seven children - Ellen, born 1876, Agnes,
1878, John 1880, Margaret 1883, Matthew 1885,
Arthur c1887, Sarah c1889 and Elizabeth Jane
1893. At first the family stayed in the townland
of Ballypollard, but later they were in the
adjacent Ballylig. Matthew worked as a labourer,
probably in the large Magheramorne limestone
quarry nearby. |
 |
| |
Matthew & Eliza
Carson and family c1881 |
Eliza died in 1925, and Matthew
again moved across the water to Scotland, to live with
his daughter Maggie and family in the small town of
Kilbirnie in Ayrshire (see below). There Matthew died in
1934, aged 81.
Of Matthew and Eliza's children,
Ellen married Thomas Howard, her mother's
cousin, in 1897. Thomas was a ship's officer. and they
had at least five children - Matthew, born 1898, Mary,
1901, John, 1904, Isabella, 1911 and Thomas, 1919. The
family lived alternately at Ballylig and Belfast. After
1916 they stayed at 30 Edlingham Street, Belfast, which
they moved into after Ellen's brother John and his family
vacated it in c1916, following some disturbances in the
area. Ellen died in 1937, aged 60 and Thomas died in
1943, aged 81. Of their children, Matthew died in 1979,
aged 80. Mary married Thomas John Hull, a doctor, went to
live in London, and had two children. John remained
unmarried and died in Belfast in 1956, aged 51. Isabella
married Richard Harvey in Belfast in 1930, and had 3
children. Later she married for a second time, to George
Henry Bull, and had 4 more children. She died in 2005.
Thomas married Maud Rose Katherine Wood in Essex, and
they set up home in Romford. They had two children.
Thomas died in 1977 and Maud in 1995.
Agnes married James Hughes, a cabinetmaker, in
Ballymena in 1900, and they set up home in Belfast, where
James owned a furniture shop. They lived firstly at 53
Belmont Street and later at 33 Campbell Park Ave,
Belfast. Agnes and James had at least seven children -
Carson, Jane, born 1905, Elizabeth, Ellen, John, Arthur J
and David Howard.
John became a baker in Belfast,
later moving to Larne in Co. Antrim, the ferry port for
Scotland. He married Sarah Young in 1904 and they had at
least seven children.
Margaret went to Ayrshire to be her cousin John's
second wife (see below).
Matthew became a sailor,
probably at first in the merchant service before joining
the Royal Navy in 1906. He served as a stoker until 1911,
when he was invalided out. He married twice, but nothing
further is known of him.
Nothing further is known of
Arthur's life, but Sarah and Lizzie Jane are believed to
have remained unmarried and to have moved together to
England.
|
| William Carson
(1865-1902) |
|
| In the latter part of the nineteenth
century, coal mining was a prosperous industry in the
Stevenston area, as it had been for more than a hundred
years, especially since the construction of a canal had
allowed easy export of coal to Ireland from Saltcoats
harbour. By 1881, William was working as a pit boy. In
that year he was unable to work for several months, being
confined to bed with sores on his body, and he was forced
to apply for poor relief from the parish. Although the
family had earlier stayed at Fullerton Place, by 1881
they were at Boglemart Street, where many miners lived.
In 1888, William left the pits and found employment as a
labourer in Nobel's dynamite factory at Ardeer, a fateful
decision. This factory, which opened in 1873, was to grow
into one of the biggest in Scotland, employing many
thousands. |
 |
| |
William
Carson (1865-1902) c1900 |
| |
 The
Carson Family c1904
|
In 1888, William married Elizabeth
Beveridge Smith, daughter of Samuel Smith, engine-keeper
at Bartonholm Colliery between Kilwinning and Irvine, and
Marion Hunter. (See "The
Story of the Smith Family"). William and Elizabeth's first house was
at Schoolwell Street in Stevenston, before they moved to
Carment Drive and lived there for about seven years.
Finally they returned to the Boglemart about 1899.
William and Elizabeth had seven children. |
| Tragedy struck the family on 7th October
1902, when William was killed in an explosion at work.
Newspaper reports stated that the bang could be heard as
far away as Arran and Troon, and windows were broken in
Ardrossan and Irvine. |
| |
|
 |
The
Carson family at their shop in Boglemart Street,
Stevenston c1906 |
| |
|
After William's death Elizabeth ran a
grocer's shop in Stevenston and thereby met her second
husband, James Robertson Paton, a traveller in
confectionery, whom she married in 1907. It appears that
the marriage was not a happy one, however, as they
separated in 1918. Paton went to London where he
committed bigamy with a Mrs Henriette Wheeler, going
through a marriage ceremony with her at Kensington
Registry Office in 1919. He separated from her in 1922,
and later Mrs Wheeler discovered him living with another
woman, also calling herself 'Mrs Paton'. Suspecting
bigamy, Mrs Wheeler reported this to the police, who
investigated the matter, discovering that Paton had been
previously married in Scotland. Elizabeth and Mrs Wheeler
testified at Paton's trial at the Old Bailey on 23 June
1922, when he was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment,
served in Pentonville Jail, London. Elizabeth divorced
Paton in 1923. Only three years later Elizabeth died of
stomach cancer in Glasgow's Western Infirmary, aged 65.
|
| John Carson
(1876-1943) and Margaret Carson
(1883-1952) |
| |
|
| John was born in 1876, the second son of
Jane Carson and younger brother of William. He began work
as an apprentice brickmaker, but by 1898 he had found
employment in Nobel's dynamite works, becoming a foreman
and remained there till at least 1916. In June 1898 he
married Mary Miller, daughter of William Miller and Mary
McDougall. Tragedy was soon to strike them, as Mary died
soon after giving birth to their first child, Matthew, in
November of the same year. Then little Matthew died after
only seventeen days of life. John was alone again. Seven years later, however, he found
happiness again, when in 1905 he married his cousin
Margaret, known as Maggie, the daughter of Matthew Carson and Elizabeth Howard. Maggie had been
born in Ballylig, Glynn parish, Co. Antrim. John and
Margaret lived at various different addresses in
Stevenston, including Boglemart Street, Glen Sannox
Cottage and Nobel's Villas, until after 1916, having six
children. Around the end of the First World War, John
found a new job as a producer gas worker at Glengarnock
Steelworks, about ten miles from Stevenston, and the
family flitted to the adjacent town of Kilbirnie, staying
first in Central Avenue and later in South Neuk, both in
the Garden City housing scheme. In Kilbirnie, John and
Margaret had another three children.
Following the death of his wife
Eliza, Maggie's father Matthew came from Ireland to
Kilbirnie to live with the family. He died in 1934 at the
age of 81.
John died in Ayr in 1943 of a
stroke, aged 66, while Maggie, having moved to Muirpark
in Beith, died there of heart failure in 1952, aged 69.
Of the children, Elizabeth
married John Bell in 1932 and died in 1972, aged 66. In
1933, the family suffered a tragic loss, when Jeanie, as
Jane was known, drowned in the bath on her twenty-first
birthday. It is thought that she had taken an epileptic
fit, to which she was subject. John married Agnes Burrows
Paterson in 1938 and died in 1985, aged 70, while Ellen
died in 1994, unmarried, aged 74. William married
Isabella Harrison. Samuel joined the Royal Air Force
during the Second World War and became a Leading
Aircraftman. He served in the Far East, where he was
tragically killed at the age of only 21, probably in a
raid on a Japanese air base on the island of Amboina in
the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He is buried in
Ambon War Cemetery. Nothing is known of the other
children.
|
| Samuel
Carson (b 1888) |
| Samuel (known as Sam) was the eldest
child of William and Elizabeth and was a bright boy, who
is believed to have studied at Glasgow University. It is
known that after the death of Samuel's father, the family
received financial assistance from the Nobel company and
this probably allowed Sam to receive a University
education. He took up
teaching as a career and then served in the First World
War, becoming a First Lieutenant. In 1919, while living
and presumably teaching at Newmilns, a small town in
Ayrshire's Irvine Valley, he married Enid Eleanor Hopkins
from Birmingham, a widow, the daughter of Stephen
Hopkins, a landed proprietor, and Charlotte Clarke.
Samuel and his wife soon went to live in the Tyneside
area of England, where they had one daughter. Sam died in
Edinburgh in 1970, at the age of 82.
|
 Samuel Carson (b 1888)
|
|
| Robert
Hunter Smith Carson (1890-1977) |
| Robert, known as Bob, the second child of
William and Elizabeth, was also a bright boy and the dux
of Stevenston Public School. Before leaving school he
acted for a time as a pupil teacher, a system whereby due
to the shortage of trained teachers, the older pupils
taught the younger. He was not lucky enough, however, to
go to college, possibly as his mother could not afford to
send more than one child there. While a boy, Robert had
an unfortunate accident with an arrow which damaged one
eye, which he later lost. His first employment was as a
farm labourer on the Diddup farm near Stevenston. In 1912 he decided to improve his lot by
emigrating to Australia, where his uncle Samuel
Smith, his mother's
brother, had done well for himself, becoming a trade
union leader, a member of the New South Wales Parliament
and a member of the Arbitration Court. It is believed his
uncle may have promised to help him get a job. Robert
travelled around Australia a great deal and had a number
of jobs, including on a steamer serving islands in the
Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. It seems that Robert
could not settle "down under" and he returned
to Scotland in 1914. During the First World War he served
briefly as a gunner in the Machine Gun Corps, where he
spent several weeks in the front line in Flanders before
having the good fortune to be discharged from the Army,
probably because of his poor eyesight.
|
| After this he moved to Paisley where he
worked at Potterhill Railway Station. While there he met Helen
Neilson (known as
Nellie), daughter of James Neilson and Annie Briggs, who
was working in service at one of the big houses in the
nearby Thornly Park district. They married in Paisley in
1918. The employment situation between the wars was
difficult in the west of Scotland and Robert moved from
job to job a great deal, as well as experiencing periods
of unemployment. Robert and Helen lived in Paisley nearly
twenty years and had two sons. |
 Robert and Helen Carson
|
In 1939 the family moved to Canal Street,
Saltcoats, where Bob took on a general store vacated by
his aunts, Elizabeth and Agnes Carson. After a fairly
short time, the aunts wanted back into the shop, so Bob
managed to obtain another general store in Parkend Road,
Saltcoats and lived with Nellie in the room behind the
shop. During the Second World War, Bob worked in the ICI
explosives factory at Ardeer, formerly Nobel's, and
Nellie ran the shop. Bob retired in 1952 and he and
Nellie then moved to a larger flat upstairs in the same
building, before obtaining tenancy of a old people's flat
in Canal Street. Bob died in 1977 aged 87 and Nellie died
in 1982 aged 89.
|
| William
Carson (1892-1961) |
| Little detail is known of William's life.
Known as Bill, he served in the First World War. He
married Ada Wingfield, an English girl, and went to live
in Birmingham, where he remained for the rest of his
life. William and Ada had no children. William worked as
a salesman for a chemical company, and died in 1961 of
liver cancer, aged 69. |
 William Carson (1892-1961)
|
|
| Jane
Carson (1895-1976) |
| Known as Jeanie, Jane was married twice,
first to Joseph Cartner in 1939, then after his death, to
Walter Ferguson in 1964. Jeanie lived latterly in
Clydebank, Dunbartonshire with her second husband. She
suffered from diabetes and died in 1976, aged 80, from
gangrene of the foot. Jeanie had no children. |
Elizabeth Carson
(1897-1983)
|
Elizabeth, often called Lizzie, never
married and for much of her life lived with her younger
sister Agnes. Together they ran general stores, first in
Saltcoats and later in Glasgow. On retirement they bought
a house at Tillietudlem, an old mining settlement near
Blackwood, Lanarkshire. At first they owned a car, but
when they had to give up driving, they found life
difficult, as the village had no shops or other
facilities. They were both members of the Christian
Brethren at Crossford on the Clyde. Elizabeth died of
cancer in Law Hospital in 1983, aged 86.
|
| Agnes
Carson (1899-1990) |
Agnes also never married. In 1929 she
emigated to the USA, but later returned to Scotland,
possibly as a result of the Depression. She then lived
with her sister Elizabeth (see above) until her death in
1983. Agnes was then unable to look after herself and
after spending a year in Law Hospital she moved into
Auchlochan old folk's home at Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire,
where she died in 1990, aged 90.
|
| Henry
Beveridge Smith Carson (1901-1964) |
| Henry, known as Harry, became a
blacksmith and worked in Nobel's dynamite factory at
Ardeer, Stevenston. He lived all his life in Stevenston,
mostly in Boglemart Street. The old house, part of the
terrace fronting onto the street, was demolished in the
1930's and rebuilt further back as a bungalow. Harry
married Ann Jane Beattie in 1930 and they had four
children. In 1952 Harry stood unsuccessfully for the
first Stevenston Town Council after it attained burgh
status. He died of a stroke in 1964, aged 63 and Ann Jane
is believed to have died in 1966. |