Agnes Louisa Finch (1869-1952) and Robert Hardie (1866-1920).
My great-grand aunt and uncle.
Agnes spent much of her life in Scotland but was born in 1869 and baptised on 21 November of that year in St Matthew’s Church, Redhill, Surrey, the daughter of Isaac Finch and Phoebe Ann Ward.
The family lived in Chart Road and Glovers Road, Reigate, and by the 1891 census she was working as a dressmaker, still living at home. She married Robert Hardie on 9 June 1898 at St John’s Church, Victoria Street, Edinburgh. He was living at Montgomerie Drive in Glasgow at the time but how and where they met is a mystery. He was the son of Robert Hardie and Janet Bisset and was born in 1866 in Comrie near Perth. Robert Jnr gave his occupation as a butler.
The couple had four children and lived in Glasgow. The 1901 census showed the couple with Mary living at 1 Temple Gardens in the district of New Kilpatrick, Robert still working as a butler. In 1911 the census recorded them living at Tollcross Road in the city but Robert had become a self-employed confectioner and ice cream seller. A valuation record from 1915 recorded the family at 6 and 4 Tollcross Street, one a residence, the other a shop.
Robert could well have been a victim of the Spanish flu that raged across the world after the First World War for he died at home on 16 April 1920, the cause of death given as influenza and bronchitis. He died intestate but the value of his estate was later given as £405.
Agnes took control of the business and continued to live in Tollcross Street, as shown in the valuation records of 1925 and 1935. The Surrey Mirror reported her as one of the siblings at the funeral of her brother Jacob.
She died on 9 January 1952, from what was quaintly described as ‘cardiac weakness’.
Their children were:
- Mary Elizabeth Hardie (1899-1986). Mary was born in Glasgow and married engine fitter and engineer Walter Carswell in 1929. They remained in the city, raised a family and both died in the same year, 1986.
- Chrissie Hardie (1901-1968). Chrissie didn’t marry and lived with her mother and later her younger sister Nora.
- Nora Elliot Hardie (1904-1963). Nora also remained single, living with her sister and mother in Glasglow.
- Robert James Hardie (1906-1979). An engineer, Robert married Margaret Winter McConnell in 1935 and worked for Ford in Essex, England, where the couple raised their family. Margaret died in 1986.
Sources: Ancestry.com, ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, the British Newspaper Archive, Surrey Family History Centre (Woking). The Scotsman 15 September 1979 for Robert Jnr’s obituary.