Moir Family Photographs

Whilst making preparations to mark the centenary of the start of World War One, we started transcribing diaries in our collections which had belonged to Ethel Moir, a member of the Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH). The two diaries together with a photo album had been gifted to us in 1968 by a 'Miss Moir', presumed to be, Ethel herself. The diaries, covered in purple cloth with the initials E.M. hand sewn on the cover, contained the handwritten account of her time with a SWH Unit including drawings, photos and newspaper clippings.

We wanted to find out more about how this 32 year old middle class doctor's daughter from Inverness, came to give up presumably a rather comfortable life to join the SWH in war-torn Serbia.

Initial online searches, including on Findmypast brought up several results. One of the earliest records, was a New York Passenger List from 17 April 1884, where a 3 month old Ethel was leaving her birthplace Belize, British Honduras, on board the S.S. Loch Tay, headed for Scotland via New York! She was travelling with her mother and father (a doctor) and sister "Nellie".
Another passenger list, this time from 1888 showed the 4 year old Ethel, travelling with her mother Jessie and siblings Helen (Nellie), twin sisters Ida and Olive and a brother John en route on the S.S. Aguan from Port Antonio, Jamaica heading for Boston, Massachusetts.

In the 1891 Census we found the family, minus father John, staying with Ethel's grandfather, a farmer in Dairsie, Fife. I now discovered that Jessie (Ethel's mother) had been born in Forfarshire. The 1901 Census has the family staying at Ardross Terrace in Inverness. This census gives information for Douglas, a new brother for Ethel, who had been born 6 years earlier. The last available Census in 1911 finds the family still at Ardross Terrace, and gives yet more information. The Census for 1911 asked additional questions, the number of persons in the house (8) and "particulars as to the marriage". Included in this were the questions, "how many children born alive" (7) and "how many still living" (6). We therefore discovered that Ethel had another sibling who died in infancy.

Of all the siblings, only two had married, John Ernest and Olive. We decided to see if we could trace offspring of John or Olive to a living relative. During a visit to the National Records of Scotland, we were able to view Ethel's will, where she lists bequests to various members of her family, including Olive (then Mrs Calder) and a nephew and niece. It took us some time to unravel, but eventually we matched the Jill Calder, wife of nephew Allan and named in the will, to a newspaper obituary for an Isobel Margaret Calder. It wasn't long then until we managed to trace Isobel's daughter, Maureen, to let her know about her remarkable great-aunt Ethel.

We're indebted to Maureen and the Calder Family for kindly allowing us to reproduce these wonderful family photos on Capital Collections.

You can browse all three volumes of Ethel Moir's diaries online too:
The diaries of Ethel Mary Moir (volume 1)

The diaries of Ethel Mary Moir (volume 2)

The diaries of Ethel Mary Moir (volume 3)