My Great, Great, Great, Grandmother Jean

2190 blips is usually the 6 year anniversary but it has taken me 7 and a half years to get here. To mark this occasion, I am sharing a drawing of my Great, Great, Great Granny, Jean Hill (born Jean Young).

Jean was born in 1797 and lived to be 100. I know a lot about her life as there were articles about her in the Dundee courier on her 97th (including this picture) and 100th birthdays.  She lived under four British Sovereigns, three Kings and a Queen, she was a young woman when Waterloo was fought and out of her teens when Queen Victoria was born. During her lifetime the steam engine was developed and railways, telegraphs and telephones were introduced.

She was born in the parish of Glamis and travelled no further than Arbroath or Perth in her long life. In the 1894 interview she meets the interviewer outside her house “takin’ a wander’, a tall slight figure, upright with blue eyes and a rose in her cheeks. She learned to read from the Bible and she was familiar with the works of Rabbie Burns. She talks about how newspapers would be passed around the village when she was a girl and at one point the interviewer asks her about Waterloo and she says “Bless me! I was 16 years auld at the time. There was great rejoicing when Boney wis taen to the island o’ Elba. He wis feared they wad pushion (poison) him, an’ wad tak’ naethin’ but eggs.”

On being asked about George the Third’s jubilee she reminisces that every household got four pound of beef and they joined together and had a grand supper. Her Mother (Jean Spaldon born 1755) made the kail and the bread and then they had fun and dancing.

Jean Hill married in her 20s and her husband was a ploughman, he walked 15 miles to court her. They had six sons (two survived) and three daughters (all survived) and Jean was widowed at the age of 40, pregnant at the time.  She rented a cottage with a kailyard attached and brought up her children on her own, at this point she had at least one daughter who was 16 who presumably helped with the younger children and probably even went out to work. Jean also could spin, very well, and this may have been a source of income. She did spinning until she was 83. She was a proud lady and when a relative in better circumstances than her offered money, at the time of her husband’s death, she told him “Keep your pound note, you may need it before me”. At the time of the article she had 30 grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren. I may have a lot of distant relatives out there that I have never met!

When asked about the most wonderful sight she has seen she replies “ Ae Sabbath night I gaed to the door and I saw a fiery dragon in the sky. It filled the whole air. Ye never saw sic a sicht, Ise warrant”. Perhaps this was a comet or the aurora borealis.

I wonder if Jean Hill could ever have imagined her story being read more than 120 years after her death by blippers around the world. Somehow, reading about this grand old lady, I think she might have taken it in her stride.

Thank you for following my journal. More than ever in these troubled times I love being part of a global community and constantly learn from, and get inspired by, your journals.