Nancy Eleanor Mitchell (1901-74) married John Arthur Lanyon. Nancy was the only daughter of Isaac Haig Mitchell and Margaret Hunter. Margaret’s story is told in the post ‘DNA Detective’, this is the story of Isaac’s family.
Isaac Haig Mitchell was a mechanical engineer who became a trade unionist. You can read about him on Wikipedia and see his portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Isaac was named after an uncle also called Isaac Haig Mitchell who was born in 1831. I eventually tracked him down to New York, America where he was working as a clerk and married to Sarah. He died of arthritis chronic inflammation of the joints aged just 36 in 1868, just a year after his nephew Isaac was born.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Isaac’s complicated family tree!
Isaac’s father was Alexander Mitchell 1816-1894 he was born in Eccles and lived all his life in the borders area, dying in Hawick in 1894.
He was a wool dyer and scourer (scouring is washing the wool to remove all the dirt and grease). Wool was a big industry in this area and many people worked from home, spinning and weaving. Hawick was known for its tweed and cashmere industries.
Alexander’s first wife was Mary Gadd from Leicestershire. They had 7 children together but sadly Mary died of puerperal fever aged 37, five days after giving birth to her seventh child. Baby Alison also died. Alexander was now a widower with six young children to care for.
Alexander may also be the father of Mary Little’s illegitimate son Alexander Mitchell who was born in 1856 and grew up to be a dyer and scourer. (Mary Little was the niece of John Hunter who was the father of Margaret Hunter who married Isaac Haig Mitchell and this may be how the two families knew each other.)
In 1860 Alexander married Isabella Cairns age 27 and the mother of an illegitimate son born in 1859, James Adie Cairns. They were both living at the same address when they married so perhaps Alexander was the father of her child although he had another son named James from his first marriage who was still alive in 1861 so it seems unlikely.
Isabella & Alexander had three children: Isabella, Margaret Douglas & Isaac Haig. Alexander is described as the step father of James Adie Cairns who sadly died age 4 of Phthisis Abdominalis (abdominal tuberculosis). Sometime before 1881 they adopted a child, John Murray born 1871, the son of Elizabeth Murray. Elizabeth may be a relative or a friend. In 1871, aged 23 she was admitted to Roxburgh Poorhouse as she was a pauper, pregnant and unmarried. Ending up in the poorhouse usually meant the woman’s family has disowned her and thrown her out.
By 1891 John Murray was no longer with the family, I couldn’t find a record of his death but did locate a record that showed a John Murray joining the Kings Own Scottish Borderers Militia in 1890. After that there are too many John Murrays to identify what happened to him.
The 1891 census shows that Alexander and Isabella had two grandsons living with them: William Paterson and Alexander Brown Mitchell. These are both the illegitimate sons of Isaac’s older sister Isabella. Isabella was a power loom weaver and as she was able to support herself financially and had support from her family she didn’t end up in the poorhouse.
William’s father is named as William Paterson a solicitor’s clerk. William (junior) changed his name to Mitchell from Paterson. This William Mitchell was staying with Isaac in London in 1901 when Nancy Eleanor was born.
Isabella Cairns is descended from the Cairns family in Yetholm Roxburgh. Yetholm is the gypsy capital of Scotland and most of the families in this small village were descended from or intermarried with the gypsy community.
Isabella’s mother was Margaret Douglas and the Douglas family were a well known gypsy family.
Map of the Borders Area of Scotland.
Unlike his peers Isaac stayed on at school and did an engineering apprenticeship. On the 1891 census he was boarding at Newcastle Upon Tyne where he joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. In 1892 he moved to New York and found work as a millwright and joined the Socialist Labour Party of America. In 1894 he moved back to Galashiels in Scotland and founded a branch of the Independent Labour Party. He moved to Glasgow where he was the ASE’s delegate on the TUC. In 1899 he became the first general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions.
In 1899 he also married Margaret Hunter and in 1901 their daughter Nancy Eleanor was born.
They moved to London and he was elected as a Progressive Party alderman on London City Council. In 1907 he accepted an offer to work for the Board of Trade. He became known as ‘Haig Mitchell’ and grew a distinctive beard.
His first wife Margaret died in 1922. On 29 Jul 1927 he married a widowed neighbour Avis Chatterley Baird. Avis died in 1986 aged 100!
In 1941 Isaac wrote an article “The Road to Peace”
Isaac died on 15 Mar 1952 at Wandsworth, London. After his death Avis wrote to his daughter Nancy and the letter gives us an insight to his traits as he aged.
The Lanyons 