Peter Nicoll had provided a stumbling block in my research. He was the father of Isabella who married Andrew Duncan and influenced my dad’s middle name (Andrew Nicoll Duncan).
Peter was born a “natural child” to Helen Nicoll in 1825 and no father was recorded. The space for father’s name on his 1903 death certificate is left blank.
It is unlikely I will ever know for certain who his father was.
Despite the inauspicious origins however Peter lived a successful life.
Peter is invisible in 1841 census records as is his mother Helen. He appears in 1851 in Marykirk, newly married to Susan Ross Crammond and his occupation recorded as a shoemaker (journeyman).
The couple went on to have 5 children, the eldest being Isabella, my great grandmother. I had anticipated this would be all I would know about Peter until I came across an obituary to him in the Montrose Review.
Although Peter began his working life as a shoemaker, he later adapted as local industry changed. With the decline of handloom weaving in Luthermuir, he turned to dealing in potatoes and hay, and in later years focused on the vegetable and fruit trade. He became a regular exhibitor and successful prize-taker at district horticultural shows — a detail that resonates strongly, given the reputation later earned by his son-in-law.
I had always noticed that while Duncan cousins were spoken of in the family, Nicoll relatives never were. The obituary helps explain this. It records that “latterly times dealt rather hardly with him”: two sons and a daughter died young. John died of tuberculosis in 1880, and Mary Jane of breast cancer in 1901. At his death he was survived by a married daughter, described as “the last of a numerous family.”
Despite these losses, it is heartening to read that Peter was remembered as a well-liked man, “possessed of a large stock of quiet humour and quaint sayings.”
Peter’s obituary leaves me with further Nicoll hunting to do. He had three sons, yet only two are mentioned as dying young: “Two of his sons, one of whom held an important position in London, died in the prime of their manhood.” One son therefore appears to have survived, yet Isabella is described as the last of the family. A small inconsistency — and a problem to solve.
Peter’s parentage remains another conundrum, with my DNA results suggesting potential matches on his unknown paternal line. More work to be done.
Craigachan 