When my Scottish great-grandmother moved in with my grandparents in the late 1940s following the unexpected death of her husband, she was only able to bring along a few possessions to the small 1930s four-in-a-block house in West Edinburgh where she’d have to share a bedroom with her granddaughter. The photograph boxes and albums that travelled with her were thus obviously of importance, and often I wonder what would have happened to them had they fallen into the hands of another branch of the family whose descendants were not so interested in social history.

As it was, my great-grandmother only decided to stay with this particular daughter and her husband because they were a one-child family with more living space. However, she did depart for weekends and weeks at a time to visit some of her other adult children and their families, giving my grandmother what must have been a welcome break and a little more freedom in a life that was already circumscribed by the societal pressure of the times in which she lived.

My Great Grandmother with her oldest son, Adam Neilson c1950

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, May 2023