Chapter 5A: The Glennies and Reids in the New World

The Glennie Homestead

The photos above are of the first Glennie homestead in America, located in North Andover, Massachusetts. The one above was taken by me in 1985, and my children, Justina and Reid, are in the foreground. The lower one was taken sometime early in the 20th century, not too long after the Glennies moved in. I found it in some family photos dated from about 1910 - 1935, so assume it is from this time frame. As you can see, the property has not changed much at all over the years although it is no longer owned by Glennie descendents.

A. Great Grand Parents James & Isabella and their Daughter, Isabella.

The Glennies did not have to wait long to change their fortunes and fates in the New World. As we have seen already, James and Isabella became land owners within days of their arrival in North Andover and soon their property, through the sweat of their children’s labor, had been transformed into a farm that provided both comfortable lodging and bountiful harvests. Uncle Charlie, in his Family History, cites in particular the financial boosts that came from being first to market with their potato harvest and fortuitous sale of timber from pine trees. In fact, produce from the farm was so abundant and prices so good that the Glennies, for the first time ever in their history, found themselves on the cusp of affluence.

Alexander Glennie, always ready with pen to celebrate family joys and lament family trials, authored a delightful poem to celebrate the Glennies’ attaining the status of landowner. It was obviously written after his parents had died, but nevertheless includes them as part of the celebration of good fortune. He writes:

To the Finest Family In the Finest House in Andover[1]

We wish ye gude luck in year braw new hoose

Sae trig and sae trim; sae canty an croose

An as yer desert, sae be yer reward

A big peatstack an a green kailyard.

May the years chase ane anither like lammies at their play

A’ white and licht an gladsome throu a’ life’s happy day

An ne’er may fa’ the shadow o’ tragedy or shame

Till the SHEPHERD comes in the gloaming, to ca’ the lammies hame.

There’s twa fine faces missin, twa sovereign hairts are still

The finest twa that ever saw the Sun come o’er the hill:

Oh, Father, ye wid clap yer hans wi a hairty “Dere a Boy”

An Mither she wid hide her face and greet wi every joy.

Ye’ve clum’t the lang, land hill, and ye’re stannin at the Kern

An the Future whines afore ye spreadin doonward to the burn

An han in han thegither, may ye toddle doon the brae

As the gloaming shadows gaither at the ein o’ a perfect day.

Alexander Glennie

Yet, setbacks emerged that affected all family members, and fortune did not shine on all in equal measure. James and Isabella faced the afflictions, physical and emotional, common to old age not long after their arrival. One of the Glennie children died in circumstances that were the saddest of any about which I have read of the family. The American dream, while captured by several beyond what must have been their wildest expectations, was cruelly elusive to others.

We turn next to the fates of the family members, both Glennie and Reid, who migrated to the New World.

As we already know, James and Isabella arrived in North Andover in 1887 at advanced ages for the time. Their first years must have been satisfying ones, seeing their children take up lives in North America which could either be described as successful or at least promising. The family farm was bought, renovated, and provided them with a home infinitely more comfortable than their Lochrie dwelling.

James, however, was to fall ill with some now unknown malady that, while apparently not quick, was fatal. He died in 1901. Alexander, in one of the 3 poems he wrote concerning his father’s death, has this to say:

Why should we sorrow when an old man dies

Whose day has dawned on the Eternal deep,

Whose soul for Death’s emancipation cries,

And whose tired body longs to sleep;[2]

William, in his previously mentioned letters to Annie while she was visiting family in Aberdeen, writes on July 17, 1901, “Father don’t improve very much am afraid he will not get over this attack if he keeps….” By the time of his September 6^th letter to Annie, William’s father has died and he laments, “I am sure you was sorry when you heard of my poor old father being taken away from us.” He goes on to say that the great consolation in his father’s death is that he is “better off” and then relates how the minister told them (the family members) at the funeral, “that he quoted Scripture to him whey last met and so much he had by heart.” William describes there being more flowers than he had seen before at a funeral and the people attending showing “greatest respect.” The whole family, except Mary Ann and Maggie, was at James’ bedside at his death and at the funeral.

Interestingly, William apologizes to Annie for not having written on black stationery, customary then in times of mourning. In his words, “You might wonder how I have not wrote you in black but the truth of it is we have only one black sheet here, and I want to write you now. Of course I make you just as one of ourselves and you must not think that I am slighting you at all.” This seems to be another clue that Annie is already assimilating into the Glennie family with, as noted before, marriage to William now on the horizon.

Isabella lived several years after James’ death, but they were not good years. We know of her trials in her last years through Alexander’s poems and Uncle Charlie’s History. In Father’s Grave, Alexander writes in his last verse:

Oh Mither, Mither dinna greet

Nor let yer grief gang ower ye

To miss his kindly words and sweet

He’s only gane afore ye

Your ups and downs sinee first ye met

He’s nae the kind that can forget

He minds them fine and winners yet

When he’ll be comin for ye.

In a poem focused on Isabella’s grieving in the winter after James died, Alexander portrays his mother as alone, lonely, and infirm. Her children would gladly take her in, he says in MOTHER: The Winter After Father Died, but:

She fears she might be a burden so here she’d rather stay.

And she must be near the cemetery where Father lies at rest

And she keeps his chair and the Bible his constant touch had blessed

And the room they used to sleep in, she likes it still the best.

The house is growing colder, the midnight hour has tolled

Her hands are shaking with palsy, and her feet are numb with cold

And she sways and moans in anguish, and weeps in her apron’s fold.

And still she’s sitting greetin as lonely as can be

With her poor old head in her apron and her elbow on her knee

Old and withered and wrinkled, and thinking o’ you and me.

Isabella spent her last 2 years bedridden, following a stroke that left her immobile and unable to speak. Her daughter, also named Isabella, took, in Uncle Charlie’s words, “splendid care of mother.” Daughter Isabella’s fate, however, was a sad one. Overworked caring for her mother, she took sick. Her physician had her placed in the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she underwent surgery from which she never regained consciousness. Not sure that their mother could understand from their words and gestures that Isabella had died, her children carried Isabella’s body into her mother’s room so she could see that her daughter was dead. Mother Isabella died three weeks later, on Christmas Day, 1907.

James and Isabella were a remarkable couple, beloved by their children and respected by those who knew them. James seems to have been the more gregarious, with Isabella reserved and modest. Their accomplishments were prodigious. They raised a large family of their own plus a niece and nephew and, through example and their love, taught them to be good, to care for one another, to love and respect their parents, and to endure hardship uncomplainingly in the quest of worthwhile ends. We see these qualities in many ways – in their children’s remaking their new farm in North Andover into a comfortable and productive home for them, in Alexander’s poems about his parents alive and in death, in William’s telling Annie of his father’s death and how the family coped with it, and most of all in daughter Isabella’s caring for her mother in her last years at great sacrifice to herself.

James and Isabella managed, in spite of limited formal education, their large family size, and humble status as tenant farmers, to accumulate the means to buy their own farm upon arriving in North Andover. At advanced ages, they had the unusual capability to look to the future rather than the past as they transplanted their roots deeply embedded in Strathdon, joined their children, and set off for a land unknown to them except for the promise of a better life for all.

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[1] These are selected stanzas, not the entire poem.

[2] This is from Father Dead. Alexander’s other 2 poems about James’ death are Father and Father’s Grave.