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That’s almost everything I know about young George. Aged 10, he was still in school but his oldest brother Jim was already hard at work in the coalfields of Lanarkshire. It’s likely that both John and George followed Jim down the pits, as there was little alternative for a working man at that time in that place. But I don’t know for sure. My granddad John would go on to be a butcher, but that was much later. Before that, the world as the family knew it would change forever following the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914. George was photographed at Gilmore’s in Hamilton looking pensive but smartly dressed in a suit of fine check and a gemstone tie pin. His face is youthful and he has the trademark protruding Somerville ears.

When we see him next, he’s in the uniform of The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles). The origins of the Cameronians are firmly set in Lanarkshire, with the regiment’s first muster taking place on the banks of the Douglas Water in 1689. A declaration was read to the assembled men:

“All shall be well affected, of approved fidelity and of a sober conversation. The cause they are called to appear for, is the service of the King’s Majesty and the defence of the Nation, recovery and preservation of the Protestant Religion; and in particular the work of reformation in Scotland, in opposition to Popery prelacy and arbitrary power in all its branches and steps, until the Government of Church and State be brought back to that lustre and integrity which it had in the best times.”

The soldiers of this regiment were zealous Covenanters, whose devotion to the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League & Covenant of 1643 meant that they would even do battle to defend their freedom to worship as they chose. When the crown ejected ministers from their parishes for refusing to submit to the rule of bishops, the Covenanters followed them to the hills and worshipped at open air services which came to be called conventicles. As the threat from government forces increased the Covenanters began to carry weapons to their conventicles and to post armed pickets to keep a lookout. The Cameronians were a unique part of Scottish history for over three hundred years. Their sad end came with the defence cuts of the 1960s and their name was finally erased from the Army List in 1995.

Since the 1880s, the recruiting base for the Cameronians had been located in Lanarkshire and George probably enlisted in Hamilton. His Battalion, the 10th, was formed at Hamilton in September 1914 and were attached to 46th Brigade, 15th (Scottish) Division. By July of 1915, the battalion was in France.

I don’t have George’s service records, as many were lost in a WWII bombing raid on the War Office in 1940. The surviving service and pension records – or Burnt Documents as they are known – were later microfilmed by the National Archives, but unfortunately George’s is not among them. So I have no idea what battles he fought in.

But I do have the 10th Batallion’s War Diary for March 1918, excerpts of which are given below. The language is military and understated, but it is still compelling reading. Rifleman George Somerville was in C Company.

George Somerville was one of the 113 men (the Other Ranks) who were wounded that day in France. I know that he was taken to a field hospital, but from there it’s unclear what happened. Family legend has it that he contracted pneumonia but the record of his medals gives Died of Wounds as cause of death. The horror of battle conditions and the slaughter of countless young men in the Great War has been well documented. George managed to survive three years at the Front and was 27 years of age when he died, only a few months before the end of hostilities. His brother Jack, my grandfather, who served with the Royal Garrison Artillery, came home safe from the war to marry his sweetheart and live out his life in Lanarkshire. If there was anything to be grateful for in that terrible time, it was that Betsy did not have to mourn the deaths of two sons. Over 7,000 Cameronians lost their lives in the conflict.

The National Archives hold a collection of Medal Record cards for World War I and from this, I know that George was awarded three medals: the ’15 Star, awarded to individuals who saw service from 5 August 1914 to 31 December 1915; the British War medal, which was awarded to eligible service personnel and civilians alike. The basic requirement for army personnel and civilians was that they either entered a theatre of war, or rendered approved service overseas between 5 August 1914 and 11 November 1918; and the Victory Medal, awarded to all eligible personnel who served on the establishment of a unit in an operational theatre.

George lies in Wimereux Cemetery in Northern France. His grave is tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.





And just by where he grew up in Cemetery Road, Blantyre, a monument commemorates the dead of the war to end all wars. My great-uncle George’s name is there.

Being red, it stands out on a page of closely packed type with the scintillating header of COR-CRO: 15 of 385 pages. Being friendly (and equipped with special fins) it catches your eye, waves at you as you try to place where you know it from…

It has a familiar face, it’s got your grandmother’s nose and it says it was born only 10 miles from the birthplace you have on your record – can it be – yes it must be – it’s that long-lost relative you thought you’d never find. Hallelujah.

But beware – red herrings are the cuckoos of the seas. Hidden behind that cuddly exterior is a whole shoal of bogus relations who will, before you realise what’s happening, devour your entire family tree.

How can you spot one of these interlopers? Here’s an example – if Auntie Mabel’s husband Fred appears to have been born before his youngest child, maybe he’s not the Fred you thought he was, the one so beloved by the family who could pull rabbits out of balloons. Or another: you gleefully follow the red herring’s ancestors back two generations to find you’re descended from an Uzbekhi tribesman and everyone knows that the family has always hailed from Nether Wallop.

Having spotted one, what to do? Gentle genealogist, there’s no easy way to say this. Get rid of it. Fling the baby out with the bathwater. Whisper ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to end like this’ as you delete it from your files if you must, but it has to go. Think how much tidier your tree will be without Uncle Willie who seemed to have married 37 women in quick succession. Think how you’ll never again have to search the frozen steppes of Russia in vain for Agnes Macklethwaite who married Ernest Jones.

So your tree is a little bare now and only dates back to 1933 – no matter, now it’s echt, it’s real. Your mother doesn’t talk to you any more since you found that she isn’t the long lost daughter of Frank Sinatra – she’ll get over it, tell her you’re doing it My Way. And all those people on rootsweb lists who embraced you as a long-lost 2nd cousin thrice removed and invited you to their ‘cosy home’ deep in the Catskills will soon find someone else to cherish.

And finally, don’t grieve for the Red Herring. He’s guaranteed to be clasped to the bosoms of the next fleet of genealogists to come along with the words “Henry! it’s You!”

When Elizabeth Somerville was born in 1852, she was the ninth of eleven children born to John Somerville and Jean Wallace. John’s quite an important figure in my Somerville history, and I’ll be coming back to him later. A number of villages clustered around Lanark then and the family moved back and forth between them. Carstairs, Carluke and Cambusnethan. They were part of a generation caught up in Scotland’s inexorable slide from agriculture to industry. John’s father had worked the land, but by the time John was grown, he was toiling in the coalfields of Lanarkshire as a winding engineman.

In the 1861 census for Cambusnethan, there’s seven of them living in one room. Betsy and her two younger sisters are recorded as scholars. This should have meant that they attended school on a regular basis. However, parents were often wary of officials and would say that their children went to school when in reality they didn’t.

By the 1870s, Betsy had lost four of her brothers and sisters to consumption, a disease which spread like wildfire in the overcrowded conditions. Three more had settled down and married. But Betsy remained single. Then, in 1879, she had a child who was named for his father, James Morris. He’s a mystery to me is James Snr – all I know of him is that although he gave the boy his name, he and Betsy never married.

Now with a baby son to look after, Betsy moved in and kept house for her widowed father in Cambusnethan, her mother having died three years earlier. Nine years passed and in 1888, she was living in what was to be the first of several addresses in Blantyre. Her father was slowly, agonisingly dying. And Betsy was pregnant again.

John, her second son (who would be my grandfather) was born on the 18th of August and Betsy’s father died only a month later. I think it’s significant that Betsy didn’t register the birth of the baby until after her father had died.

My grandfather’s birth certificate was the first document I ever saw. It was at the Public Record Office in Edinburgh in pre-computer days. You had to look up the indices, then place your requests to view (written in pencil – no pens were allowed anywhere in the records office)in a little box. Then you waited. Eventually, a wee man in a warehouseman’s coat would lead you up to the stacks high in the dome of the beautiful Georgian building. Placing the relevant volume on a rickety ledge, he’d find the correct page and stand aside while you copied the record. It was rather thrilling and I rather regret that this hands-on experience has vanished.

Copying John Somerville’s birth record, I saw a note scribbled to the side of the record. It said ‘Entry in Register of Corrected Entries’ and I asked my guide what that was. He grinned knowingly, said ‘Aye…come wi’ me’ and led me off to a separate section of the stacks. What I found in that record left me full of admiration for Betsy Somerville.

Not only was she supporting herself by working as a boot merchant on her own account, she had decided to take baby John’s natural father to court to prove paternity. This was an enormous undertaking for a working class woman on her own. The case was heard in the Sherriff Court on the 10th of November and George Dick, a surface worker at the coal pit from Ayrshire, was decreed to be the father. There was no question of money changing hands for the upkeep of the child – George Dick wouldn’t have had any – just a question of honour. And perhaps a healthy dose of rage – had George tried to wash his hands of her and the baby?

George doesn’t appear again in this story, but I traced him in a census three years later. He’s married to one Agnes McCallum – they have no children and are living not far away from Betsy and her boys. And that’s the last we hear of George Dick – or is it?

Fast forward to 1890. Betsy’s now 38. And there’s another baby. Another son. She’s officially a ‘laundress’ – in other words, she’s taking in folk’s washing. Back breaking work but she had little alternative as a single mother with young children. And the name of this new son? George.

Let’s look at the evidence. George Dick is married in 1891, but Betsy’s George is born in November of 1890. No father’s name appears on his birth certificate and there’s to be no taking to court of any man this time.

The final twist is that on the night of the 1901 census, she’s living at yet another address and she has a visitor. George Livingstone, a 29 year old (married) painter from Rothesay. Too young for her? Perhaps – after all, she’s 46 in 1901. But let’s remember that when she had her second boy, John, she was 39 but the father was only 24. A penchant for younger men? I’ll never know.

Most of John Somerville and Jean Wallace’s children were buried with them in a family grave which I’ve visited at Cambusnethan. But Betsy isn’t with them. Her eldest son, James (my great-uncle Jim, who I knew briefly as a little girl) bought a plot for himself and his wife – and there was room for his mother.

I wonder if Betsy kept in touch with her brothers and sisters throughout her life, or whether she was ostracised by the family. If her behaviour was frowned upon, did caring for her ailing father make up for it a bit? Was she then looked on more kindly? I really hope that was the case.

For I’ve a deep fondness for Betsy Somerville, my great-grandmother. She had her weaknesses, plain to see, but by god she paid for them. She never married and her poverty must have been considerable. But she kept her family together somehow until they were men. That took courage and resilience. In some ways, she was a very modern woman.

It was clear that this was a professionally taken photograph and thanks to some terrific help from Angela at the Reference Library in Hamilton, I discovered that it appeared in the Hamilton Advertiser for 13 May 1933, with the caption ‘The Four Robert Bensons’. No story accompanied the photograph, but there were details of who the men were.

The eldest Robert – he of the luxuriant mouser – was 82 here and had outlived two wives, Euphemia Baxter and Agnes Craig. He and Euphemia had 7 children, all boys. This accounts for the masses (and I do mean masses!) of Bensons who followed. Had it not already been a common name in the west of Scotland, Robert’s contribution must have ensured that it became so.

The last of the Bensons to be born in Linlithgow, his father was the first to be named Robert. The male line was vigorous, most of them living into their 80s – the same, alas, can’t be said for their poor wives! According to my mother (who was 17 when her great-grandfather died) Robert Senior was to be approached with caution. As he’s glowering in every photo I have of him, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. He looks trim of figure and rather nattily dressed. I imagine him flinging open the bedroom window to do his callisthenics then shouting to his daughter-in-law ‘Nell! Have my best breeks got a good crease in them? The man frae the Hamilton Advertiser’s coming today.’

The next generation is the craggy-faced gentleman on the left, aged 61. Like his father and grandfather before him, he was a colliery engine keeper at the pit. This Robert married a gentle Irish girl called Nell Wilson on Christmas Day in 1896. (Churches don’t do marriages on Christmas Day anymore, do they?) My mother spoke warmly of her grandparents, although Robert was typically brusque in the way of his generation. Oddly though, Mother never told me that Nell was Irish – I had to find that out for myself and I haven’t yet found a birth record for her.

This Robert had a relatively small family – two daughters Rachel and Euphemia and one son, yes you guessed, Robert. Rachel was known as Retta and I wonder if she was always content with that version – as a Rachel, I must say I would have hated it. Euphemia was of course Effie – my wonderfully characterful great-aunt.

Son Robert (who’s the youngest man in the picture) was named with plenty of reminders of the family’s history. He was Robert Spence Thom Benson. Individuals with multiple names are a godsend in genealogy, with an instant link back through the generations. My Aunt Effie gloried in hers and signed Euphemia Gibb Baxter Benson with a flourish. Robert was my mother’s ‘Uncle Bob’ . He and his wife Barbara were apparently cheerful folk in contrast to the dourness of some of the Bensons – maybe Barbara was responsible for that.

The little boy, the youngest Robert Benson, is aged about 8 here and was instructed to sit on his great-grandfather’s chair. He protested vehemently and with tears, but was told sharply to obey by the old man. You can see just how uncomfortable the poor thing is by the way he’s perching there. In my mind, this boy is always ‘Cousin Bobby’ but he’s actually my mother’s cousin, not mine. He got his share of family names too – Baxter & Hunter (his mother’s maiden name). He would, in his turn, also live at Retta Cottage.

Three piece suits were still required dress for formal occasions, complete with breast-pocket hankies (a patterned one in the case of the young man). This family were never, to my knowledge, poor enough to suffer the ignominy of wearing your best suit to church on a Sunday then pawning it on Monday morning till the next week. The old man’s suit was built to last – the waistcoast is cut high at the neck in the old style. His grandson wears a suit with a bit of a check in it and what looks like a striped shirt (but still with detachable white celluloid collar). The two older men are both wearing fob watches in their waistcoats – these would be handed down through the generations. The youngest man’s hairstyle looks almost modern, and his son’s locks look to have been tamed by Brylcreem.

There are Robert Bensons still in my generation. I hope the name survives, continuing that tradition which began almost two hundred years ago.