The Four Daughters of Andrew Reid and Isabella Niven
Andrew Reid (1696–1741) was a
maltman (or brewer) in Glasgow, the son of Patrick Reid and Agnes Mitchell. On
17 February, 1777, he married Isabella Niven (1701–1739), the daughter of
William Niven and Margaret Sheils. A printed family tree suggests Margaret was
the granddaughter of another William Niven, the covenanter, who was imprisoned
and then banished to the American plantations in 1684. Andrew and Isabella appear
to have had seven children, but it is their four surviving daughters who prove
to have led well-documented and interesting lives.
Agnes was the eldest of the
daughters, born about 1728; Isabella, the third daughter, was born about 1732;
Elizabeth, my 4x great-grandmother, was baptized 10 February, 1734 and the
youngest daughter, Janet, was baptized 13 February, 1739, her mother dying
immediately after birth.[i]
Their father died in 1741, leaving four orphans aged between two and 13.
The four are described at this time
as keeping house together at the south corner of Cow Loan (now Glasgow’s Queen
Street). Robert Reid, Elizabeth’s son, who became a well-known historian of
Glasgow, gives a vivid description in his autobiography of one episode in the
Reid sisters’ lives there. It was December 1745, when Prince Charles Edward
Stuart, the Young Pretender or Bonnie Prince Charlie, arrived in Glasgow after
his retreat from Derbyshire. Two highland soldiers were billeted on these
unprotected young girls.
The soldiers so quartered on
the said misses were two poor ragged creatures without shoes or stockings, who
could not speak a word of English; but, fortunately, they were very civil, and
gave little trouble to the misses, who, on their part, treated them kindly. All
that these soldiers required was a bed, and liberty to dress their meals at the
kitchen fire, which meals consisted almost wholly of oat meal porridge and
barley bannocks.[ii]
The girls had the opportunity to
watch the various regiments as they marched daily along the Westergate and
turned up the Cow Loan right before the door of their home. Elizabeth recounted
years later to her son that once, when Prince Charles was marching at the head
of one such detachment of soldiers, she stood so close to him that she could have
touched him with her hand.
She also stated that he was a handsome good-looking man, but that his countenance appeared rather sombre and melancholy.[iii]
None the worse, apparently, from
this experience, the Reid daughters went on to marry and to live to the grand
age of 83, 82, 82, and 84 respectively.
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