I found it tucked down at the bottom of a box of my dad’s assorted photos and papers: A copy of a century-old handwritten letter from my grandfather, William G. “Willie” Lind, to my future grandmother, Jeanie Montgomery, who was preparing for a trip to the U.S. to join him.

Both were born in Scotland. later worked in England, and then migrated to the U.S. Willie came first, later asking Jeanie to join him in the United States and get married.

I never knew my dad’s father, so this letter provides one of my only glimpses of him as a person.

The letter expresses his personal feelings, and also provides detailed instructions for catching a train from New York, entry point into the U.S., to San Francisco, where Willie was living. It also mentions their brief meeting ten years earlier that eventually led to a proposal of marriage.

Dearest Jeanie, I hope you will not be disappointed in, of course I hae changed a little since that night I met you 10 years ago.

But I expect you will have changed a little also, but I can asure you Darling that I will bry my very utmost to make you feel happy and comfortable when we get settled down together.

She made it to San Francisco, they did get married, and they raised a bunch of kids, including my father. But the letter makes it clear that there’s more of a story here.

So I asked my sister, Bonnie, who has assumed the genealogist role, for more information.

She quickly came through with a wonderful narrative.

Read more

William Grace Lind and Jane Galt Montgomery
By Bonnie Stevens

In 1900, Willie Lind, formally William Grace Lind, was a 25-year-old shipwright employed at the Royal Naval Shipyard at Portsmouth, England. He had completed his apprenticeship in the shipyards near Edinburgh, worked in Scotland for bit, then moved south for professional advancement. At nights he was taking courses in Naval Architecture, working towards certification as an Engineer.

In the course of his work Willie met John Lind, a fellow Scotman and retired Royal Marine, who was a paymaster at the shipyard. It is possible – perhaps likely – that the men were related. Both had roots in the countryside between Glasgow and Edinburgh where Midlothian, West Lothian and Lanarkshire meet. Both had family members buried in the churchyard at West Calder. But both were several generations removed from their common ancestor, and it is equally possible that they were not aware of any relationship.
John Lind befriended Willie, who became a regular visitor in the older man’s home. When John Lind died in September 1889, Willie began helping his widow, Lizzie, doing odd jobs around her home.

Lizzie Lind was born Elizabeth McCulloch Montgomery, the daughter of Ayrshire coalminer Hugh Montgomery and his wife Mary Grant. Although her birthplace is recorded at Kilwinning, her family was known to have lived outside town in the company-owned mining communities of Bensley and nearby Fergushill. These were some of the most notoriously wretched of the mining camps, where families with several children were expected to live in one 6’x9’ room with dirt floor, heat from the cookstove, and no running water. Large families might be allotted two rooms. One outhouse might serve 10 or more families. Streets between the rows of buildings (hence the term “Miners Rows” for such communities) were unpaved and muddy because of Scotland’s wet climate. A heap of coal, fuel for the cook stoves, was piled at the ends of each building.

Lizzie’s siblings included a brother, James Grant Montgomery, and sisters Catherine (called Kate) and Janet. Lizzie and Kate both married men serving in the Royal Marines. Eventually the three sisters moved to England.

By 1900 they were all living in or near Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. Kate had health problems, and her brother James had a strong-willed 14-year-old daughter who was causing no end of adolescent friction at home. Perhaps, the sisters thought, everyone would benefit if Janie Montgomery came down to England to work as a housemaid for her Aunt Kate.

So Jane Galt Montgomery, about to celebrate her 15th birthday, traveled by train in April 1900 from Scotland to England to live with her Aunt Kate. Jeanie said she went because she wanted to. “If I was going to be a maid,” she said, “better to be maid in the home of family than in the home of a stranger.” She said her Aunt Janet met her at the station and brought her an Easter egg, as it was the Easter season.

Not long after Janie’s arrival in England, Aunt Lizzie hosted a dinner party for her handyman, Willie Lind. It was, according Jeanie some 70 years later, his last night in Scotland. The guests included Lizzie’s sisters, Kate’s husband Thomas Osborne, and young Janie – who had begun to call herself Jeanie. Jeanie was enchanted by the handsome young bachelor on his way to America. As she was leaving, he kissed her hand. “I didn’t wash my hand for a week!” Jeanie confessed.

Willie went first to Chicago, where his brothers Robert and Johnstone were living with their wives and children. But Chicago had bitterly cold winters, and by the time Willie arrived, the Chicago shipyards were building steel-hulled ships. Ship construction had begun to slow down on the Great Lakes. Willie moved on. He was off to San Francisco where his mother’s aunt and her husband were living. Willie’s sister Bessie, still a spinster although past 30, was also in San Francisco caring for her semi-invalid aunt.
Willie and Jeanie built a friendship through correspondence. They exchanged photographs. In 1910 Willie wrote asking if Jeanie would come to San Francisco and marry him. Jeanie said “Yes!” He sent her passage to California – by ship from Portsmouth, England to New York City, then overland by rail from New York City to Oakland, California.

William Grace Lind and Jane Galt Montgomery were married 2 August 1910 in Oakland, Alameda County, California.

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