David SUTHERLAND, Fishertown, Golspy, a Gaelic-speaking seaman, through John SUTHERLAND, christened in Golpie, 01 May 1748, through Donald "Davy" SUTHERLAND d. pre-1866, Fisherman.
Anne MACDONALD b. 1780 d. 02 October 1866, Fishertown, Golspie through James SUTHERLAND b. 1812, Fishertown, Golspie d. 25 August 1892, Age: 80 m. 25 Nov 1836 to Elizabeth MACKAY b. 20 July 1817, Embo, Dornoch d. 1898 dau of Alexander MACKAY, Embo, Dornoch & Anne SUTHERLAND, Embo, Dornoch, through James SUTHERLAND b. 1858 Fishertown, Golspie m. 10 October 1879 Golspie, to Mary MACRAE, Fishertown, Golspie b. 26 January 1858, Fishertown, Golspie d. 27 January 1937, Fishertown, Golspie
In the 1841 Census for Scotland, James SUTHERLAND and his wife, Elizabeth MACKAY [b. Embo, Dornoch] lived on Shore Street, Fishertown, Golspie. They had one of the original cottages built according to plans laid out by the Countess of Sutherland for a village based on the "Street of the Fishertown" in the early 1800's. The cottages were 50 feet by 20 feet with a croft of 3/4 of an acre. The men built their own cottages and had a 99 year lease on the land. This cottage on Shore Street was tenanted by James and Elizabeth until their deaths.
William MACRAE, b. Fishertown, Golspie, Sutherlandshire,, m 31 May 1792, Golspie, to Sarah SUTHERLAND - Children of William and Sarah: 4 (known)
through Robert MACRAE [3rd child of 4 known] b. 24 May 1806, Fishertown, Golspie m 04 March 1830, Golspie, to Jane URQUHART b. Brora, Parish of Clyne, Children of Robert and Jane: 4 (known)
through William MACRAE [2nd child of 4 known] b. 05 June 1832, Fishertown, Golspie, m. March 1853, Fishertown, Golspie to Jane SUTHERLAND b. 14 April 1832/1835-36, Fishertown, Golspie - Children of William and Jane: 5
through Mary MACRAE b. 26 January 1858, Fishertown, Golspie d. 27 January 1937, Fishertown, Golspie m. 10 October 1879, Fishertown, Golspie to James SUTHERLAND b. 04 February 1856, Fishertown, Golspie d. 30 October 1931, Fishertown, Golspie Children of Mary and James: 8
through Williamina SUTHERLAND [4th of 8 children] b. 08 July 1887, Fishertown, Golspie d. 13 February 1959, Los Angeles, CA m. 17 July 1913, Pittsburgh, PA to Henry Brown ANDERSON b. 09 October 1885, Evanton, Kiltearn, Scotland, son of William ANDERSON, Sawmiller, [whose family were originally crofters in Clyne, Scotland] and Jane BROWN, Bothwell/Glasgow, Scotland[dau of John BROWN, 18 May 1808 Badnellan/Clyne & Christine MCLEOD, 1820 Badnellan, Clyne] d. 02 January 1920 Pittsburgh, PA, Children of Williamina and Henry: 3
Research by Harriet Brown Anderson, 1918-1997 [Corrections to Sutherland tree by Morag Mackay Sutherland and Roland Johnson]
Photograph above shows part of Shore Street, Golspie
Below is my aunt's story:
Narrative by Harriet Brown Anderson:
My mother, Williamina Sutherland, and her cousin, Christine Sutherland, left Golspie as teenagers and went to Edinburgh to look for work. Mother became a house maid/governess until, in 1907, she had earned enough money for her passage to America. She, her brother Aleck, and Christine sailed from Glasgow on the S.S. Caledonia, April 6, 1907. They entered the United States through Ellis Island on April 15, 1907. After being processed, they were put directly aboard a train for Youngstown, Ohio, where their sponsor lived. My mother went to work as a governess for the Hamilton family. Their daughter, Margaret, became a noted concert pianist. When the Hamilton's moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to further their daughter's music education, they took my mother with them.
In 1909, Henry (Harry) Anderson, who was to become my father, followed Williamina to Pittsburgh. They had met while she was in Edinburgh and he was attending Edinburgh College of Agriculture. [And therein lays a whole other story...]. He and my mother were married on July 17, 1913 in Pittsburgh and subsequently became naturalized citizens there. They had three children. In1920, when I was just a year and a half old, my father passed away after he was involved in a streetcar accident with complications from spinal meningitis. My mother was left to support us three small children. She was advised to use the money my father left her and buy a boarding house. This was a catastrophe! She was too soft-hearted to insist on the rent from various tenants with endless hard luck stories. Instead of making money, she started using what was left of her savings. Her parents wanted us to come to Golspie to live with them. So after three years of trying to make a go of it on her own, Mother sold our house and returned to Golspie with us in 1923.
One of the stories told about our trip was that in Glasgow, she went into a store to buy some crackers for my brother, my sister and I to eat on the long trip north. The storekeeper looked at her rather peculiarly and said "Crackers?" She said "Yes, for the youngsters." He went off to the back of the store with a puzzled look and shortly returned with a box of firecrackers. Mother really had to laugh. She had forgotten that in Scotland, they call crackers for eating "biscuits." I guess the storekeeper wondered what her children were going to do with firecrackers on the train!
In Golspie, she had to depend on her parents for support since she could find no employment. We attended the same elementary school that all the Sutherland children had attended. We had the same teacher our mother had - Miss Sellars. Discipline was very strict in the school. If you were not obedient, the teacher would go out and get a switch from the tree and use it across your knuckles. On the other hand, if you did something that really pleased her, she always had a "sweetie" (a piece of candy) for you.
The people of the town were very religious and Sunday was a complete day of rest. They attended morning and evening church services. The evening service was conducted in Gaelic. No cooking was done on Sunday, so a pot of broth (a thick soup) was made on Saturday and kept heated for Sunday lunch and dinner. In those days, drinking water was drawn from the town pump. Sunday's water had to be drawn on Saturday. We children slept upstairs, while our grandparents had their bedroom on the first floor. One Sunday morning, we woke up early and decided to play the gramophone - which had to be wound up with a crank. Grandfather was so shocked that we would play records on a Sunday that he took the crank from the machine and never let us have it again!
In 1924, after ten months in Golspie, my mother decided she would return to America. So with three children, three trunks, twenty dollars and tickets to Pittsburgh, she landed in New York. We were met by her sister, Jean, who helped us get back to Pittsburgh. Mother immediately went out and found herself a job after registering us in Liberty Elementary School. As her financial condition improved, she looked for a place with a little more room. It was hard to find a reasonable place to live as no one wanted to rent to a widow with three children. Finally, she found a place where the people rented her two rooms on the third floor of a house. We stayed here a couple of months. Then she heard of a small house on a street that was just one block long, Selma Street. The house had a large kitchen and a livingroom with a fireplace on the first floor, and a large and a small bedroom on the second floor. The house had no electricity. Gas was used for lighting as well as for heating. The street was a true cross-section of America's melting pot, with families of Swedish, English, Irish, German, Scottish, Italian and African roots. The faiths represented were just as diverse. We were all poor, but every one of the parents had great pride in wanting their children to be American.
Mother went out and did day work as a domestic to earn a living. She worked for some of the wealthiest families in the country - Mellons, Scaifes, and D.M. Clemson, who was a partner of Andrew Carnegie. (When Mr. Clemson died, he left her a small amount in his will. Coincidentally, this was the first estate my father had worked for as a landscape gardener when he came from Scotland.) As we children grew, our family prospered and kept moving to better homes. We eventually lived in a duplex on Columbo Street across the street from the site where she and Henry Anderson had lived when my brother, their first child, was born.
In the late 1940s, my Mother, my sister and I moved to California because of Mother's health. She worked as a cook for some of the famous people of Beverly Hills: Tom May of the May Company, Jack Warner the movie producer, Gary Cooper the movie star, and the Battsons--owners of Union Oil Company. Eventually she worked as a housekeeper for Jose Iturbi, the world famous pianist. She was still working part-time for Mr. Iturbi when she passed away. She is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale near the Wee Kirk-o-the-Heather in the section known as Everlasting Love...
Narrative by Harriet Brown Anderson, 1987 [1918-1997]
Edited by her niece, Carole E. Anderson
