The Ewing Lineage from 1793

Jane Ewing (née Gray) with two of her sons, John and David Ewing c.1930s.

Scone to Dysart

Currently, the earliest known event in this Ewing ancestry is the marriage between James Ewing (or Ewen), a tenant farmer at Limepotts, and Helen Clark at Scone in Perthshire on 7th July in 1793. Several children are known to this couple, my 5x great grandparents, but only one, James, is not shrouded in the mysteries of time accorded to his siblings.

James Ewing was born at Limepotts on 13 June 1803, and a week short of his 20th birthday he married Margaret Todd at Dysart in Fife, an area his descendants would call home for many decades to come. Eleven children are known to this couple including John who would go to sea, Alexander who later ran his own grocery in Burntisland just along the coast, and Peter - who may have been a bit of a rascal if it is him, as is thought, to be found in a local jail at Scoonie on the night of 5 April 1891.

Dysart to Dundee

Their eldest son was James Ewing, born in Dysart three months after the marriage of his parents, and who would enjoy a variety of occupations in his 87 years, including that of linen weaver, vegetable salesman, floorcloth worker, labourer at a linoleum factory and a gardener in his twilight years. Back in 1852 he married 24 year old Jane Wright-Hammond, whose mother was an 'outdoor worker' and who bore two illegitimate children - Jane (the father being one Thomas Levil Hammond, possibly from England), and William Penman (to a father of the same name). James, born to the couple within a year of their marriage, would only survive 6 years, dying from whooping cough a week before Christmas 1859. The mantle of eldest son then rested upon David Ewing who would work as a linen 'tear boy' in his youth before taking the Ewing name to Dundee and entering the lemonade business. In 1881 he married Jane Gray, the daughter of a master grocer from Errol and in June of 1882, a son, James, was born.

Magdalene Yard Road, Dundee - this building is almost certainly the Dundee Aerated Water Manufacturing Company.

Ewing Tragedies

1883 was a sad year for the Ewing clan as David's grandfather was the victim of a terrible accident. One misty February night James the elder had been visiting his son, Alexander, at Burntisland and during the evening went out to see a friend residing in Leven Street. Returning to his son's, he became lost in the fog and fell over the precipitous Lammerlaws rocks. His body was found the next morning at the foot of the cliffs. Further tragedy was to come when Alexander was killed ten years later after he lay himself in front of the express train at Bentfield, distraught at the decline of his grocery business. And another tragic family death occurred in 1912, when James Ewing's grandaughter, Mary, picked up the lodger's shotgun from the kitchen bed and it fired into her chest. She staggered a few feet and then died as her shocked husband gently lowered her to the floor. The lodger was Joseph Smith, and just a few weeks later, while out walking, he was shot by the same gun when it went off as he bent to tie his boot lace...

Making lemonade

The Dundee Aerated Water Manufacturing Company Ltd. was managed by Henry Blackwood, a Kirkcaldy man, which is perhaps where David Ewing knew him from. David worked there from at least 1881, and right up until his death in 1902 at the relatively young age of just 47. The business resided on Magdalene Yard Road and was a fairly shabby building compared to the walled and gardened residencies that made up the majority of its neighbours. While David's eldest son, James, studied to become a teacher, his second son, George went to work with his father and in about 1909 became manager of the Dundee Aerated Water Co himself. His stature in the business was such that in 1952 (by which time the company was at Roseangle) he became the president of the Dundee & District Aerated Water Manufacturers' and Beer Bottlers' Trade Association, and was a delegate to the National Federation.

This photo from around 1920 shows the Kinnell school, schoolhouse and church, all still in existance today, though the church is now in disrepair.

Loch Ness Monster

His elder brother, James Ewing, married a stone mason's daughter, Jemima Rough Phillip, in Dundee. Her father owned an orchard and market garden on Blackness Avenue, and built the cottage there. James became the schoolmaster in the tiny village of Kinnell in the first decade of the twentieth century, where the couple had three of their four children, including their only boy - my grandfather, James David Ewing - also known as Jim.

In 1939 Jim married Margaret Horsburgh Cameron at St Andrew's Church in Dundee. After the war the family left Dundee when he became the West of England Area Secretary for the Electrical Power Engineer's Association. This brought them to Bristol in 1947, then to Reading by 1950 where he became heavily involved in the local St. Andrew's Church (he fell off the roof whilst helping with repairs). Jim also held a keen interest in the fabled Loch Ness Monster, lending his boat to Tim Dinsdale, an author and researcher into the mystery. He died in Selsea in 1984.