A life in letters: Jackson, Jean Marshall (née Anderson) (1891-1971)

My maternal grandmother.  Jane Marshall Anderson (as she was named on her birth certificate) was born at 6.04pm on 11th December 1891 at 9 Mason Land, Lock Street, Coatbridge, the illegitimate daughter of Alexander Anderson and Mary Marshall who were married six months later on  7th July 1892.

The wedding party outside Annieslea, 7th July 1892

Jean (or Jeanie as she is named on the marriage certificate) married Archibald Jackson (‘Foreman engineer – Fitter’ at the family home, Annieslea, Carlisle Road, Airdrie on 7th June 1922, when she was employed as a ‘grocery saleswoman.’  One of the witnesses at the wedding was Helen Anderson of Annieslea who was possibly the young sister of Jean’s also known as Nellie.

Little detail of Jean Jackson’s life has been recorded. She and Archibald had two daughters, my mother Helen, born 1923 and Jean, born 1929. A son was still-born in the mid-20s.

My aunt Jean recalls that the atmosphere of the family home at 172b Clark Street was not warm or affirming, and that my grandmother was indisputably in charge.  Family lore has it that each day after lunch she would retreat to bed for a nap before rising, and attiring herself suitably to venture out for the day’s shopping.  There’s also a story about her standing at the window of the big front room on a Sunday evening, watching the inhabitants of the Burgh promenading up to the Terminus and back as was their custom and muttering with a snobbish derision ‘There go the street walkers!’

My own recollections of my grandmother are few – my family visited Clark Street regularly; all four grandparents joined us for Christmas dinner and came to Seamill Hydro on the middle Saturday of our annual fortnight there in the late 1950s/early 1960s.  But gran made little impression on me. By the late 1960s, she was afflicted with arthritis and seemed to complain frequently. She wore a copper bangle which was thought to relieve the condition, and my grandfather also attached a slender chain to the rear of their car which reached the road, the theory being that an earthed car made for healthier passengers.

My grandparents

My grandparents were caught up in the national enthusiasm for John Galsworthy’s Forstye Saga in the 1967 television dramatization (which, a minister friend tells me only half in jest, put paid to evening church attendance in Scotland.) I remember gran sitting with the paperback tie-in edition of the novels on the arm of the chair beside the fire in which she always sat.

It’s so sad that there is nothing more to record of the hopes and fears of this woman, or of her loves and joys or of her character. 

Jean Marshall Jackson died in 1971.