Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small issued the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. Each week focus on one ancestor and post something about him or her. Since March is Women's History Month, I'm posting about my female ancestors.
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| Elizabeth in Scotland 1903 |
Elizabeth Danskine is my Scottish great grandmother. She was the 2nd youngest child of William Danskine and Agnes Findlay born in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland on March 12 1858. Elizabeth was one of three sisters in the family who lived beyond the age of 31. Seven of her siblings died from diseases that may have been curable in this time period. Four dying from phthisis (tuberculosis), one from gastric fever (typhoid), one from morbus coxarius (hip disease) and one from peritonitis (inflammation of the abdominal area). How terrible it would have been to watch your siblings pass away.
On July 11, 1883, at the Free High Church in Airdrie, Elizabeth becomes the 2nd wife of Francis Paterson and step mother to his young daughter, Mary. My great grandmother gives birth to seven daughters and one son (my grandfather, Johnston). After her father, William, dies in 1885, Elizabeth's mother, Agnes, moves in with the growing family. Agnes is listed in the 1891 Scottish census as the mother-in-law, a retired grocer living with the family. Agnes dies in 1892.
Elizabeth loses one daughter, Ellen Danskine, at the age of two and her step daughter, Mary, at the age of 14 in Airdrie, Scotland.
In 1907, after hard times hit and the family is left broke, Elizabeth, her husband, and children immigrate to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Elizabeth was a reliant woman and had some business sense from having parents who were grocers. According to family stories, Elizabeth opened a Confectionery & Fruit Store, so her daughters had a place to work. She, also, took in boarders.
Shortly after arriving in Edmonton, Elizabeth's oldest daughter, Agnes, dies from typhoid fever. Then her 2nd oldest, Janet, dies of a appendicitis in 1912 in Provost, Alberta.
Elizabeth's husband, Francis, was not happy in Edmonton, Alberta and wants to move on. The rest of the family resisted and stayed, while he moved to Washington, USA about 1918, alone.
Elizabeth and her youngest daughter, Edith, move to South Cooking Lake to operate the South Cooking Lake Store and Post Office. Elizabeth dies unexpectedly on April 22, 1919 of the Spanish Flu at the age of 61. She was interred in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Edmonton, Alberta beside her daughter, Agnes.
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