Lizzie’s Story 4: The Missing Years
Lizzie (left) with Maggie? (unknown date)
From the time of her parents’ deaths (1901 and 1902) until she got married in 1922 there are few clues as to what Lizzie did or where she lived and who with.
The big mystery is why she waited until she was 37 (and 7 months pregnant) to get married. Dad heard she met John Moffat in a military hospital on his return from France, but that may not have been true.
The only records I have for her young adult years are:
1901 Census (England) Kings Lynn, Norfolk (corset maker, age 15)
1907 Baptism All Saints Episcopal, Jordanhill, Glasgow, Scotland (age 21)
1911 Census (England) Stamford St George, Lincolnshire (age 26)
1922 Marriage (age 37)
Lizzie’s suitcase
After her parents’ deaths Lizzie seems to have gone back to live in Scotland or at least visited regularly.
Lizzie (Scotland) to Maggie (Hunstanton, Norfolk, England) bef 1907
Lizzie writes of hiking 20 miles in the Trossacks to Loch Katrine. Many of her photos show her in the hills or at the beach so she must have loved the outdoors.
Loch Katrine
In 1907 she gets baptized at All Saints Church in Jordanhill, Glasgow.
In 1911 she is back in England working as a housekeeper for Maggie’s husband’ business partner Benjamin Reedman. The census shows all three siblings living in Stamford St George. William lives with Maggie and her growing family and the next year will emigrate to India as a textile salesman.
2 Kings Road, Stamford Home of the Reedmans
The War Years 1914-1918
Here I draw a complete blank.
Did she stay in England with Maggie and her family?
Did she go back to Scotland and live with her aunts in Fife or Perthshire or her step-cousins in Glasgow?
The 10 years between censuses can be filled in with other data, such as voting or property records. There isn’t a defined record of Lizzie but there are some possibilities. She was a single unmarried woman without resources of her own so would have needed to work.
She supposedly met John when she was volunteering in a military hospital in Edinburgh - but she is not listed in any Red Cross records. He was injured in the middle of the war so they would have been dating for about six years which makes that story unlikely.
John McInnes Moffat c 1914 Highland Light Infantry
Did they first meet during the war and then get in touch again years later?
Marriage
She married in Paisley but gave her address as 29 Bruntsfield Avenue, Edinburgh, the home of her great uncle William Clark. William (70) was a retired lawyer and lived with his sister Jessie (77). Neither had ever married.
No-one from her family attended the wedding - her witness was John’s mother and his witness was his sister. This seemed odd until I figured out that Uncle William was very ill (he died a month after her wedding); Jessie Clark had dementia; her sister Maggie in England was very pregnant with her sixth child; and brother William was in India.