Janet Martin

 

Janet Martin was a farmer's daughter or at least that's what her death certificate says.  Her birth certificate says that William was a ploughman and her first two censuses say he was a farm grieve, which means the foreman in charge of the other workers but not actually the farmer.  Whatever his status, the family lived in a most unusual house.  It was a seven, yes seven, roomed house on an island in the River Forth.  That's where Inch or Inch Island Farm was and access was by boat. You can take a drone trip over the island, which is now abandoned, and the amount of lying water hives a hint as to why it was difficult to farm. We can see a protective moat round the island and it is reported that there was a 9 foot (3 metres) high wall at one stage to hold back any flood waters but once breached this would give no protection at all. This drone footage shows the farmhouse Janet lived in and also the boat graveyard at the edge of the island.

Janet was actually born in Alloa itself, the town seen at the top of the photo but was living on the island by the time she was four and still there ten years later.  What is even more remarkable is that she was one of only two children and the three farm servants lived in their own two roomed bothy next door.  There must have been plenty opportunity for hide and seek in the house.

In 1891 she played another game of hide and seek with me.  I couldn't find her son Albert Brember but I did find Janet with a four day old baby named John Martin.  The full story is on Albert's page.

She was lucky though that Andrew Brember was happy enough to take Janet with her child, marry her and integrate Albert into their family.  Andrew wasn't strictly in our line, even if he was named as Albert's father at his wedding, suggesting that Albert didn't know he was illegitimate, but he looks a really nice person in this photo with Janet and an unknown woman.  Maybe the fact that he was illegitimate himself infuenced his benevolence. 

Sadly though, tragedy was to hit the family.  A look at the family in the 1901 census shows four sons, Albert, Andrew, James and William.  James isn't in the 1911 census when he would have been 14 and there is no trace of any James Brember between 10 and 20 anywhere in Scotland so the obvious assumption is that he died young.  Having said that, we can't find a matching death record.  We also know that Albert died in World War I and a search for Brember in the Commonwealth Graves Commission website gives us this chilling result, of three all in the same year of 1917.

 

The 19 year old William is their son and the only other one has the initial A which would match the last remaining son Andrew.  However a search on Scottish deaths under the name Brember returns the first two but not Andrew.  Initially my search in the Scotlandspeople site returned three Brember deaths, two beginning with A but thankfully the other one was a 50 year old Annie from Glasgow.  A look at this photo of Janet suggests deep sorrow, understandable in the circumstances.

The 1911 census tells us that she had given birth to 8 children of whom 6 were still alive (although this would suggest that James was still around, even if he was missing from home).  This was before the Great War of course when they lost two sons.

Janet married in Edinburgh despite having no known connection with the place and this echoes her parents marrying in Glasgow for no obvious reason.  She started her married life in Alva then Tillicoultry before settling in Burntisland.  She was to be found back in Alva when she died at the grand old age of 84.

Addendum - James Brember was the reporter of his mother's death so did survive after all.