John Niven was a wholesale grocer, who married Elizabeth Adam McLean in 1885 in Helensburgh: he was 35, Elizabeth was 20.
They began married life at 90 Great Western Road, Glasgow:
Today it looks like this:
John’s business address according to the Post Office Directory of that year was 55 East Howard Street, seen on this map from the 1890s:
St Enoch’s Station is visible with its distinctive east-west platforms before most trains swung sharply south to cross the river (which is just visible in the bottom left corner.)
Their first child, James Niven, was born at 90 Great Western Road on 25th May 1886. On the Bearsden War Memorial he is James D Niven but this middle initial does not appear on his birth record.
By the time a second son, Donald, was born, 29th July 1890, the Niven family was living just round the corner at 4 West Garden Street, by New City Road (now Maryhill Road’s southernmost extension):
Today, this is a north-east extension of Burbank Terrace. It’s possible the Nivens knew the Curries, living in Burnbank Gardens – their son Gilbert was also destined to be named on the Bearsden War Memorial (link).
John’s business must have been prospering because by 1901 the family (children James, Jessie, Donald and Annie) had moved to Crescent Road, New Kilpatrick, or as we know it today, Ledcameroch Crescent, Bearsden. The villa name was Maranham and I believe the street number was 2 (the southern half of a property shared with 5 Ledcameroch Road, named Ellangowan):
The 1905 Valuation Roll suggests the occupant of the other half of the house was one of James’s business partners:
The company was Wilson, Ronald and Co., wholesale grocers; unfortunately, I have not been able to find out any more about them, but 45 Hope Street is now called Atlantic House, a Grade A listed building:
In 1906, John and Elizabeth had a fifth child, Elizabeth (born 25th January). But less than two weeks later (7th February), her father, John Niven was dead aged 56. The cause was meningitis; infection causes inflammation of the brain and spinal chord, and without effective anti-biotic treatment it can cause organ failure. (Daily Record 9th February 1906):
A few weeks later, baby Elizabeth died on 4th March 1907 of the same cause.
In the 1911 Census Elizabeth was a 45-year old widow, living with her sister Jessie and two of her adult children: Jessie who taught domestic science and Donald who was a warehouseman. On Census Day they had a visitor, 19-year old Henrietta Dyson, and a servant, Rachael Hamilton, also 19 and from Lanark.
James was not in Bearsden for the 1911 Census. We do know he trained as a chemical analyst and mining engineer and that at some stage he was in Canada so this may explain his whereabouts in 1911.
In 1913 James married Helen HSB Cairns on 17th September at the Caledonian Station Hotel in Edinburgh. Helen was 25, daughter of a company director, from Edinburgh; James gave his occupation as ‘mining engineer’. The witnesses were William Blackadder and Molly Cairns.
James and Helen moved to Canada and in 1915 they had a daughter, Evelyn Mary, born in Rosland, British Columbia. Sometime in the next year, they returned to the UK and James joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps (could he have been a contemporary of another Bearsden man, William Kirkwood, link?).
He was assigned to the Royal Engineers, as a Second Lieutenant in the 253rd Tunnelling Company. Alongside more general engineering duties, they would have been trained to dig mineshafts from the British front line out under No Man’s Land, fill it with explosives, then detonate it under the Germans.
In May 1917, the company was based near Bethune in northern France. On 3rd May, James was leading a party of men were caught in the open by German shellfire and James was killed, as recorded by the company war diary:
Here is the CWGC record with James and the three other men:
Private Cleghorn was from Fauldhouse in West Lothian; the other two have been beyond my ability to identify.
There is a picture of Bully-Grenay Station showing shell damage although whether this was the incident where James was killed Is unknown:
James is buried in the CWGC Sailly-Labourse Cemetery:
His wife and daughter, Helen and Evelyn, moved back to Edinburgh (to be near Helen’s mother?) at 5 West Mayfield (The Scotsman 15th May 1917):
In 1925 Helen married Thomas Edward Cairns, a seed merchant.
News of James’s death must have reached Bearsden at virtually the same time as the news of Donald’s death.
I cannot find very much about him, but he was serving as a private soldier in the 2nd Battalion, Rhodesia Regiment in Tanzania, a part of the British East African Force. He died on 29th April 1917 and is commemorated on the British and Indian memorial at Dar Es Salaam:
It seems the battalion recruited in Rhodesia where Donald had presumably gone to work. Leaving with 800 men, only 265 returned from Tanzania, mainly the victims of malaria. The CWGC record confirms Donald died of sickness.