My great-grandmother, Margaret Mitchell, was born in Ireland in 1854, one of at least 12 children of Adam Mitchell (1805-1891) and Ellen Kirkwood (1816-1882). The family migrated to Glasgow around 1858. Margaret’s father worked as a labourer in the docks and mills around the Forth and Clyde canal, and the family lived in Caithness Street and Sawmillfield Street, in the area between the canal and Garscube Road, for many years. In the 1880s, two of Margaret’s brothers, Thomas and George, and her sister Ellen and her husband, emigrated to Pennsylvania, where skills gained in the iron works of central Scotland were in demand.
More to come on the family’s story…
