I knew very little about Mary Jane Nicoll other than that she was the younger sister of Isabella, my dad’s grandmother.
While researching her father Peter, I came across a newspaper notice published after his death which mentioned the recent death of one of his daughters. That small detail prompted me to find out more about Mary Jane and, in turn, uncovered the story of a woman who devoted her life to education.
Mary Jane died of breast cancer in 1901 at just 42 years of age. Unlike many women of her generation, however, she left behind more than simply birth, marriage and death records. Examination results, census returns and newspaper reports allow us to piece together the life of a respected teacher whose work was recognised throughout her career.
Mary Jane was clearly an exceptional scholar. At just 18 years of age she placed third in Aberdeen and seventeenth in the whole of Scotland from around 700 candidates sitting the teacher’s examination. At the time she was working as a pupil teacher at Townhead Infant School in Montrose.
Her examination success earned her a £15 scholarship to attend a Normal School – the teacher training colleges established to prepare the next generation of schoolteachers.
In the 1881 census she is recorded as being a teacher living with her parents at Cauldhame Feus, Marykirk.
Sometime during the following decade she moved to Alyth in Perthshire, some 35 miles south, south-west of Marykirk. The 1891 census finds her living in the Victoria Street Schoolhouse and working as a teacher at the Elementary School.
Newspaper reports reveal that, before the creation of the publicly funded School Board system, Mary Jane had served for around fifteen years as headmistress of the Alyth Industrial School. When responsibility for education transferred to the newly established School Board, the Industrial School was absorbed into the public system. Rather than losing her position, Mary Jane was retained as a teacher and sewing mistress.
The newspapers make frequent reference to her work, and always with respect. Former pupils presented her with gifts when she briefly left Alyth for another teaching post before later returning. When illness eventually forced her to give up teaching, local newspapers described her as “an admittedly able teacher” who enjoyed “the respect of the community”. Another reported simply that her death would be “deeply regretted”.
Around the beginning of 1901 her health began to fail and she returned to her father’s home at Luthermuir. Newspaper reports suggest that her illness was initially expected to be temporary, making her death all the more unexpected. She died there on 9 March 1901, while her father Peter, then aged 73, was still living alone at Cauldhame Feus.
Although she never married and left no direct descendants, Mary Jane’s life left a lasting impression on the community she served. More than a century later, the surviving newspaper reports allow us to recognise her not simply as another name on the family tree, but as a gifted teacher whose commitment to education earned the admiration of colleagues, pupils and the wider community.
Craigachan 