This piece was published in the October 2010 edition of Family History Monthly magazine.
LOOKING FOR JOHANNA
Legends run through families like branching roots, getting finer as they progress. For many, they can be the inspiration to dig into family history, to explore genealogy for the first time; and although the process often proves legends to be just that, sometimes evidence emerges of a possible truth.
Take my case; on a chilly morning in March 1810, in a parish near Dumfries in South West Scotland, a little girl was baptised.
The girl’s entry in the Old Parish Register reads, “Mary Walker, a foundling child about 3 weeks old, bap at Terregles Manse on Friday 23 March”. As an abandoned child her future should have been uncertain, but she was baptised and brought up as the youngest daughter of a working class family in Dumfries.
As Mary grew, an obligation to visit a spinster, living in a large house a few miles outside town, became part of her routine; she had. When Mary married, it is rumoured this lady gave an inn as a wedding gift to Mary and her husband David Irving. She kept in touch and when the old lady was on her deathbed, so the story goes, she called for Mary to visit one last time – there was something important to say.
By the time Mary arrived, Johanna Mounsey Gordon was dead. It was the 6 May 1854. What was she to be told? The speculation pointed clearly in one direction, that Johanna was Mary’s mother.
Mary Walker was my 5 x great grandmother and I have known this tale most of my life. My Mother retold snippets that had floated down through time in an insubstantial and unsubstantiated way. It was all just a story; or was it?
The surge in popularity of genealogy and the accessibility of records through the internet captured my imagination and I began a search to uncover the truth.
I first found Johanna’s will. As my first foray into genealogy this was a thrilling discovery. A window was opened into the world of someone I have known about only as a mysterious figure. But if I had hoped for revelations I was disappointed. Certainly it was interesting, but no more so than many other historic documents. But it whetted my appetite and I delved into the world of my known ancestry, guided by details gleaned from the family lair in Troqueer Parish Church in Dumfries.
Soon I had travelled back through generations to unravel some of the mysteries of Mary Walker’s upbringing. Mary was brought up in the family of David Walker and his wife, Douglas (sic!) McIntyre. Douglas gave birth to eight children, and though only four survived it must often have been challenging to feed so many hungry mouths.
Mary married David Irving on 15 June 1828. They settled in a small flat in Dumfries and started a family. Their first daughter was born on 31 July 1829; they named her Johanna.
They had 7 children in all, but there were no more clues about Mary’s ancestry. I hoped that her death certificate might illuminate things – but I was disappointed. Mary died in December 1865 from pneumonia; her husband died 5 months later.
The trail could have gone cold but I pursued Mary’s children. The OPR show Johanna married a Robert Law. She had seven children and lived a long life – dying in 1912 aged 82. As I downloaded her death record I hardly dared hope for a breakthrough; magnifying the image revealed under “Name and Surname” – Johanna Gordon Law.
I moved on to my direct ancestor, Allison, born 1842, Johanna’s sister. She married William Dunkeld in January 1868 at the Grey Horse Hotel in Dumfries. At least two other siblings were married at the same place. Was this more evidence, supporting the story of the old lady giving an inn?
Fast forward to Allison’s death in January 1903; the entry for “Name, and Maiden Surname of Mother” was clear – Mary Walker, m.s. Gordon. It was through this line the story came through my own grandmother, Alison Dunkeld, of Johanna Mounsey Gordon from the big house in Lincluden.
Johanna Law’s granddaughter, Ethel Hart, born to Jane Law and Douglas Hart in 1879 was given Johanna as a middle name; in memory of her Grandmother, or of the old lady? More intriguingly, Ethel Hart and her younger sister Jeannie, knew my own maternal grandmother and often talked of the scandal involving Johanna Mounsey Gordon and an unknown but titled gentleman. Through them my grandmother inherited an ancient and fragile glass-plate photograph – allegedly showing Johanna – now in my possession.
A late postscript to this search took me to finding out more about the original family of David Walker and his strangely named spouse. One child is clearly recorded as Joan in the OPR, yet in later years she became known as Johanna.
So with enough evidence to say that Mary Walker, the foundling child baptised on that morning in 1810, was in all likelihood the illegitimate daughter of Johanna Mounsey Gordon – who was she?
Johanna Mounsey Gordon was the daughter of Gilbert Gordon, Baron of Halleaths, an estate near Lockerbie: an excise man who likely knew Burns. He had five children: Archibald, Catherine, Janet, Johanna, and Patricia. Gilbert was of noble lineage, but it was Patricia who would become eminently “googleable”!
Patricia Heron Gordon married William Ramsay, later Maule, the first Baron Panmure in 1794. We have Panmure artefacts in the family – two “Villa Panmure” plates, currently decorating my dining room wall.
Of their 9 children, the most famous was Fox, named after Whig party champion Charles James Fox. Born in 1801, Fox was educated at Charterhouse, became a Captain in the 79th Highlanders, and was MP for Perthshire and Elgin. He was also under secretary at the Home Department, Vice-President Board of Trade, Privy Councillor, Secretary at War, Lord Lieutenant of Forfar, and President of the Board of Control. He was a player!
Fox’s sisters Patricia (who married a Gilbert Young, of Lincluden House, Dumfries) and Mary (who married a James Hamilton of Ayr but later moved to a grand terrace in Edinburgh) are both mentioned favourably “for their liberality” in Johanna’s will. She died at Lincluden House and evidently spent time in her later years with the widowed Mrs Young and Hamilton.
I wonder if they knew her secret, and knew who the father was. For if we accept that Johanna was Mary Walker’s mother, we must speculate about the father. The finger of suspicion points to William Ramsay Maule, Johanna’s brother-in-law. For all that he was a respected landowner, a friend of the arts and generous in many respects, his debauchery was equally well known.
In his volume The Great Historic Families of Scotland (1887), James Taylor gives this appraisal:
Mr. Maule was a very remarkable character, and during his early and middle life, his name and eccentric doings, in one form or another, were almost continually before the public, whom he alternately surprised and scandalized by his systematic defiance of decorum and conventional usages…
Unfortunately, Mr. Maule’s passion did very often get the better of him. He was unmeasured both in his likings and dis-likings, ‘devotedly attached to those who did not thwart him, implacable to those who did;’ liberal and kind to those who came into contact with him only in the affairs of public life, but most arbitrary and despotic in his behavior to his own family. He would brook no opposition to his will, and was vindictive and unrelenting to those who thwarted him or refused to submit to his authority. He was ultimately at variance with all the members of his family and the verdict of public opinion unhesitatingly pronounced him in the wrong.
However, Mr Hunter remembers Patricia as “the wisest, most judicious, best-tempered, best-dispositioned, sensible and good woman in the whole circle of my acquaintance.”
We will never really know. I have contacted a number of other descendents of Mary Walker, but none have heard our legend. I’ve even tracked down a direct descendent of the Baron and Patricia so the truth could be found through DNA testing – but perhaps we should leave things as they are.
It’s a romantic and intriguing story that led me to find out much more about my ancestry than I imagined possible. I’ve developed a rich understanding of where I’m from, and I’ve tracked down many distant relatives with whom we share occasional e-mails, but nothing more.
I know Mary Walker faced an uncertain future as a foundling child in 1810, but she was taken good care of and ultimately made her own way in the world.
Interesting and well written……novel next?