Christina Campbell

There is no better place to start than this wonderful photo of Christina holding Annie with the twins Christina and Alexander at her side and George's daughter Elizabeth from his previous marriage.  Christina is about 37 at this time.

Christina was born in Doune, the daughter of a joiner who was to marry a joiner, the son of yet another joiner.  Her eldest son became a joiner.

As an aside, my father Allan and his brother Jimmy who were both joiners and came from Bridgend both married Linlithgow girls and moved to Linlithgow to live.  Both families had one daughter, Dorothy and Janice.  Both of them were Linlithgow girls and both married joiners from Bridgend, Ian Fowler and Freddie Ramsay.  Both couples moved to Linlithgow and had one daughter!  Spooky or what?  What is it about joiners?

Back to Christina, her birth was a little difficult to locate as it had been recorded 5 years after her birth.  This isn't the only instance we have of this and it's because birth and baptism don't have to be related.  In Scotland it was normal to have the baby baptised as soon as possible after the birth but it was possible to delay the event.  The Church only really recorded baptisms, not actual births.  It could of course have been only the registration rather than the baptism which was delayed but whatever the case it made it more difficult to locate and only came to light because it was the next entry to a sibling.  It also doesn't help that her father was noted as John rather than James but it would be an amazing coincidence if there was another Christian Campbell with a mother named Christian McLaren in the same place around the same time so I think we can put it down to an error.

It's interesting to see the evolution of her Christian name which, coincidentally, was Christian.  In her case, reflected in other contemporaries, it drifted to Christina and eventually, in one late census, Christine.

In the 1861 census when she was 12 she was already working in the local cotton mill with her widowed mother and older siblings.  It was in Deanston, just over the River Teith from Doune and after the cotton industry fell away the buildings became became the Deanston Malt Whisky Distillery.  Doune is also known for it's mediaeval stronghold, Doune Castle.  As a boy I loved that castle as it's the nearest thing we have to a crusader castle in Scotland, Blackness Castle excepted.  Fans of Monty Python's Flying Circus will be interested to know it was heavily featured as The Frenchman's Castle in The Holy Grail film.

Cotton weaving wasn't a well-paid job and the conditions deteriorated causing the family to move to Clydeside for better employment prospects and Christina became a machine stitcher or sewing machinist along with her sisters.  This extract from a website states that the American Civil War was the cause of this shift.

Before the American War of Independence, the tobacco trade had been a major source of wealth in Scotland (contributing largely to Glasgow's growth). Subsequently the Americans could sell freely anywhere, resulting in a substantial decrease in Scotland's trade. This resulted in investment being diverted into cotton, and this industry dominated Scotland's economy for the next hundred years. But the influence of America on Scotland was felt again in the 1860s, when the Civil War cut off supplies of raw cotton and Scotland's cotton industry collapsed. This began Scotland's shift from textiles to heavy industry. 

In fact, the American Civil War was instrumental in the growth of the Clydeside yards.  George Bruce was already working in the yards and living nearby and after the death of his first wife had a couple to children to bring up.  Christina married George and had, according to the 1911 census, 8 children of her own of whom 4 were still alive.  This is quite strange as she had five of them with her in 1901 so either one of her twins had died young or there was a mistake in the recording.  There was certainly an unusually large gap between her marriage in 1878 and her twins born in 1882.

George's work took them down to Southampton for a few years and the last two children were born there before they settled again in Govan.  With children in occupations such as glove saleswoman, draughtsman and school teacher she had come a long way from being a cotton weaver in what would have been, to our modern eyes, a sweat shop.  One thing intrigues me though.  In the 1891 census she is down as being born in Stirling town whereas every other one says Doune in Kilmadock Parish.  I'd leave this as just a rogue entry but the intrigue is that her mother also had two entries where she was born in Stirling and others saying Doune.