Sarah Clark (1826 - 1885)

Born 12 Jun 1826 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Wife of Peter Johnston — married 4 Apr 1844 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, United Kingdom

Descendants

Died 3 May 1885 at age 58 in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Sukie Hunter [send private message]

Biography

Sarah was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland on 12 June 1826, the daughter of Duncan Clark and Jean Campbell. ^[1] She died of diabetes in Anderston, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, on 3 May 1885, aged 58. ^[2] She married Peter Johnston in Greenock on 4 April 1844 aged 17 ^[3] and they had three children. Peter died some time at the end of the 1850s and Sarah’s daughter told her children that he had been lost at sea and that her mother, being Highland and having the second sight, had had a vision of his ship going down and had woken the children up in the night to tell them so. ^[4] However, it has not been possible to find any evidence of any suitable Peter Johnston being lost in a shipwreck between 1851 and 1861.

Sarah was calling herself Brown in 1866 ^[5] and when she died her daughter Elizabeth (the informant on the death certificate) said that she was the widow of John Brown (although this was not mentioned in the death notice in the Greenock newspaper, where she is called Sarah Johnstone). No marriage with any one called Brown has ever been traced and who this John Brown was is likely to remain a total mystery.

Sarah worked as a midwife in Anderston, and took in an unwanted child she delivered in 1866, Elizabeth McNeil, who was brought up as one of the family and was universally known to the younger members of the family as ‘Wee Auntie Lizzie’. But in truth she was no relation.

Sources

1. ↑ OPR Births and Baptisms: CLARK SARAH, DUNCAN CLARK /JEAN CAMPBELL FR1401 (FR1401), F, 25/06/1826, 564/3 50 248, Greenock Old or West (text reads: 12 June 1826. Sarah, daughter to Duncan Clark, Ship’s Carpenter, and Jean Campbell Born … baptized 25th June); from www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
2. ↑ Source: Death certificate, viewed at New Register House, Edinburgh, by Sukie Hunter in the late 1970s. Scotland: Statutory Register of Deaths: JOHNSTON SARAH, 56, CAMPBELL, 1885 644/10 346, Anderston; from www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
3. ↑ OPR Marriages: CLARK SARAH, PETER JOHNSTON, FR1281 (FR1281), 29/03/1844, 564/1 60 195, Greenock New or Middle; from www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
4. ↑ Family tradition passed on to Sukie Hunter in the 1980s by Sarah's great-granddaughter, Pearl Hunter, who had been told it by her grandmother.
5. ↑ Scotland: Statutory Register of Marriages; Lanarkshire, Scotland: HUNTER ADAM, JOHNSTON JANE, 1866 644/8 305, Anderston (the bride's mother's name is given as ‘Sarah Brown, formerly Johnston, m.s. Clark’; www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk