This image was posted by Kenny Speirs on the Old Maryhill and Old Glasgow Facebook page in February 2025. Kenny thought the location was Maryhill Road and the number 1856 above the shop window suggests an address.
The first map I know of with street numbering shown is from the late 1940s but it suggests 1856 Maryhill Road was close to the junction with Duncruin Street:
Note the Garven Public House on the other corner was latterly known as the Maryhill Tavern:
In messages posted on Kenny’s original post, Maureen Smyth and Helen Mulligan suggested from the fashion that the date would have been the 1920s or 1920s. Armed with this information, I searched the Valuation Rolls available online at the Scotland’s People website for 1856 Maryhill Road.
In the record for 1935 I found the following:
The confectioner’s shop at 1856 is run by Mrs Annie Burns, and we can link her surname back to the sign above the door in the original image which reads “BUR…” and we can deduce said “BURNS”.
For completeness I checked the 1940 Roll and found a new name at 1856, Beatrice Burns:
I followed a hunch that Beatrice was Annie’s daughter and searched the 1921 Census for a Beatrice Burns and specifying the first name Annie had to appear on the same page. I was lucky.
In 1921 John and Annie Burns lived at 1899 Maryhill Road in a 3-room dwelling with their 12 children, ages ranging 21 to 2. Amongst the children (8th of 12) was seven-year old Beatrice. What’s more, older sister Mary was a confectioner at Pullers Confectionary Works.
There are so many children that Stephen and Joseph (aged 4 and 2) are on the next page of the Census!
1899 would have been a small house of three rooms:
Blackadder the Butchers is at 1901 Maryhill Road, Glasgow Tyre Centre is just to the left. The walk to 1856 would have taken 30 seconds. (Note that Blackadder’s shop was a butchers in 1925 as well, run by John Lothian).
And that could have been that – to make a little extra money, a mother takes on the rent of a local shop selling sweets and cigarettes which she then hands on to her daughter. The only problem is the gap between 1921 (the Census) and 1935 (when Annie, the mother, runs 1865 Maryhill Road).
To try to fill the gap, I used the family history website, Ancestry, and found the family in 1930 … in America. Initially I thought it must be a coincidence because it seemed so unlikely and the names of the parents, James and Annie Burns, are not unusual. But here are the Burns family (or most of them) at 4258 Humboldt Avenue, Detroit, Michigan:
Events seem to have been started by a daughter, Annie (known as Nan, not at home at the time of the 1921 Census) who emigrated to Canada in 1923 (aged 18) paid for by her uncle in Winnipeg:
Within 18 months she was in Detroit, Michigan, marrying a Scottish emigrant, James Conner.
From the 1925 Valuation Roll we know her parents were still at 1899 Maryhill Road at the time. But they followed her, possibly with James and Annie going first to secure work and a place to live. Then in 1927 Margaret, aged 18, travelled with five of her younger brothers and sisters. They sailed on the Leviathan from Southampton to New York, leaving on 9th August 1927 and taking ten days:
Hence we find them in Detroit in 1930 on the Census date of 1st April, but look again at the Census record above, the right hand column showing their occupation – only James is in work (as a painter). I assume they were victims of the Great Depression that began in 1929.
I have found Beatrice returning with her brother Andrew five months later:
They sailed from Montreal to Glasgow on the Minnedosa, arriving on either the 19th or 21st September 1930 (sources vary, possibly because the ship stopped in Belfast and Liverpool first). They are described as students, and their address will be 2 Cowal Street, Maryhill. The final column on the page suggests they intended at the time to return to America; I have not found any evidence that they ever did. (In the 1930 Valuation Roll, one of the tenants at 2 Cowal Street was James Rafferty, husband of Mary Burns, Beatrice and Andrew’s elder sister.)
I believe this is the correct view – but please tell me if I am wrong. Maryhill Road is to the right (the top half of a bus is visible) and number 2 is to the rear of the tall building in the centre of the photo with the domed turret.
At some stage before 1935 her parents, James and Annie, also returned. By 1939 James was working as a machineman at the paper mill (presumably at Dalsholm) and the family lived at 1752 Maryhill Road which can be seen in the map above, just across Maryhill Road from the junction with Cowal Street.
And here, with many thanks to Ancestry user Brian Hadfield, we can finally meet the Burns family, James, Annie, and their 13 children:
This seems to be on the occasion of Andrew’s wedding to Flora Cameron White of 10 Cottar Street, Maryhill.
This photo proves to me that the lady in the photo outside 1856 Maryhill Road is Beatrice – probably sitting between her parents in the centre of the front row.
Beatrice Burns was born on 14th January 1914, 7 o’clock in the evening, at 191 Main Street, Maryhill. We now know she moved to America with her parents aged 13 and returned aged 16. In her twenties she ran a sweet shop at 1856 Maryhill Road. She probably married William Grant Paterson in 1950 in Maryhill.
Finally, here is a photo which looks to be from around 1920 (based on my limited knowledge of cars):
We’re looking south down Maryhill Road with Celtic Street, then a major tram depot, on the right (looks to be an inspector standing waiting in the bottom right). On the left hand side about halfway down you can see the ‘steeple’ of St Marys Roman Catholic Church (built 1851, damaged by the landmine on Kimun Street on 14th March 1941 and subsequently demolished). Number 1856 would have been just after that.
Here’s the same view today:
Here are James and Annie in the 1901 Census, just three years after their marriage, living at Dalsholm Paper Mill:
