Lizzie’s Story 2: Dundee

A Jute Mill

Elizabeth Clark and her aunt Christina “Jane” were about the same age and had grown up together. By 1881 they had moved to Dundee to find work in the mills and lodged together on Idvies Street. By then she had dropped the name Wedderburn.

Robert Neil Wedderburn had married a woman from Dundee in 1867 named Elizabeth Wilson Hood, but he died young in 1873 from a paralytic stroke. He had no other children and didn’t recognize Elizabeth Clark in his will.

Dundee was a thriving textile and port city know as Juteopolis for its huge number of jute mills. Dundee was heavily involved in trade with America. Jute fabric was manufactured in Dundee and sold to Southern slave owners for slave clothing and as large bags for cotton bales. The cotton grown on Southern plantations would return to Scotland for processing.

Map showing Meigle, Dundee, and Newburgh, Fife

Dundee had the most female workers of any city in Scotland. Elizabeth and Jane soon found husbands though! Jane married first, in June 1882, to a widower George Campbell McQueen. The wedding was in Meigle at the Free Church and Elizabeth was her witness.

[The Free Church of Scotland was a breakaway sect that split from the national Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) in 1840. They reunited in 1929.]

Elizabeth gives her name as “Elizabeth Wilson Clark” which is the first time that Wilson appears on an official record. This was hugely confusing as her father’s wife was named Elizabeth Wilson Hood - why would she use that name? It wasn’t on her birth certificate. Finally I found out that Elizabeth Wilson was her mother Catherine’s paternal grandmother. Perhaps Catherine knew her well and was a favorite.

In December it was Elizabeth’s turn. She married Andrew Millar, a draper from Dundee whose parents were from Newburgh in Fife. Andrew learned his trade from his father Robert Dalgleish Millar, also a draper. When Andrew was a teenager his father took him on sales trips to England - they show up on a census in 1871 in Staffordshire.

Elizabeth and Andrew had three children. Maggie Ritchie Millar, and Lizzie Clark Millar (my grandmother) were born in Dundee and the youngest, William Clark Millar was born at Ardler. Perhaps Andrew was traveling and Elizabeth needed the help of her aunts.

The Jute Mill Song sung by A Parcel of Rogues