Andrew Duncan was my great grandfather and my dad was named for him.
Andrew’s name appears so many times in the local newspaper archives as a competitor and prize winner in the local Horticultural Shows. Exhibiting (and winning) in these shows around the Angus area was something he became very well known for.
Andrew was born in 1844 in the Upper Dysart district. He was the youngest of 6 children (3 boys and 3 girls) born to Robert Duncan and Mary Milne.
His early life seems to have been hard. His father died when he was only a few weeks old leaving his mother to raise the family. In the 1851 census he is noted as being a “pauper scholar” living with his mother who was working as an “outdoor labourer”.
Andrew’s obituary records that he started working as a “herd laddie” at the age of just nine earning 6d a week. From there he became a farm servant and then, in his teens, he took up employment as a gardener working at Arnat (Brechin), Broughty Ferry and Perth before eventually moving to the gardens at Old Montrose where he worked for the next 36 years. He came to occupy a “pre-eminent position in the Montrose district,” For well over 30 years his name appeared in the Montrose Horticultural Society’s Prize List. Although he often exhibited flowers, it was in the fruit and vegetable section that he won “practically all his championship honours”.
In 1922 he withdrew from competition. To mark his retirement, the Society presented him with the original Wellwishers’ Challenge Medal, a medal he had won more frequently than any other competitor since its introduction in 1902.
The inscription read “Montrose Horticultural Society. Well-Wishers’ Challenge Medal. This medal, having been frequently won by Mr Andrew Duncan, Old Montrose, at their annual exhibitions, is now presented as a mark of appreciation of his long and valuable support as an exhibitor.”
The presenting committee described the medal as an “heirloom to be cherished by those who would come after him”.
That heirloom is still somewhere — and remains on my list to track down.
My grandfather, Robert Duncan, was presented with a new medal with the hope that, he, like his father, would win the medal for a number of years.
Recently, I was thrilled to find a Montrose Review article in which Andrew’s daughter Bella described him as a “well-known piper” who would “diddle a tune” for her to follow. I had always known Auntie Bella played the melodeon, but I had never known that her father could play the pipes.
My sister, Ruth, recently found this newspaper clipping noting the presentation and celebrating what it described as a “family of gardening experts.”
The photograph shows Andrew on the far left. Robert, John and James follow with a note about their war service. Read more about that for sons Robert and James.
Andrew died in September 1928, aged 84, six years after retiring from competition. He died in his Old Montrose home — the same house where, only a year earlier, his latest grandson (my dad), another Andrew Duncan, had been born.
Craigachan 