Dr Richard Macvean Nicholson and Family.

my 1st Cousin 3Times Removed

Richard is a cousin of Alexander Ballantyne Smith Macvean, my Great-grandfather whom I have been posting about recently.

Richard’s mother was Margaret Macvean, sister to Alexander Macvean my 2x Great-Grandfather (father of Alexander above). Daughter of Hannah Macvean, nee Hill, and John Hugh Macvean (my 3x Great-Grandparents).

Richard’s father was Dr John Nicholson MB. (Medicinae Baccalaureus)https://www.cpsbc.ca/public/registrant-directory/credentials

Margaret and John married on the 2nd of April 1878 in Brunswick Victoria.

What a family affair. Margaret and John were married by her Uncle, the Rev. Allan Macvean brother to John Hugh above, and her brother, Alexander’s father-in-law, the Rev. David Hunter Ballantyne, my 3x Great-grandfather, father to my 2x Great-grandmother, Jessie Davina Ballantyne.

I discovered the most wonderful photo of the church, which according to an article printed in The Argus, opened in November 1865. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5785509/210612#

This photo was taken in 1866. Even though it is 12 years before the wedding I’m sure it looked very similar to this at the time of Richard’s parent’s big day.

I recently had the great fortune of visiting the church (yes, it is still standing) and stood right where the ceremony took place. It is the bluestone church on the right in the photo below.

From the time of its opening, the size of the congregation grew, and it was decided to build a new church right next door to the original one. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/67429509#

This photo below is from 1914 and even though it’s a little blurry I still think it is a great comparison to the one I took above. I’m pretty sure I inadvertently stood in the same place as the 1914 photographer.

The construction of the new church wasn’t started till 1884, so Margaret, John, and the family most likely would recognise the church as it appears in Figure 7 above.

As I mentioned I got to stand right where Margaret and John stood for their ceremony.

This view is looking towards the front entrance on Sydney Road from the altar area. I couldn’t take a photo of the altar area as people were using it to have their morning tea. Amongst other things, the building is used as a community drop-in centre today. It was such a gift to just stand there and drink in the family history. (Thanks to Cousin, Ann Macvean for organising.)

I haven’t had any luck in finding an article describing Richard’s parent’s wedding but I’m sure the family would have all been there. All the cast members featured above were still well and truly alive.

Margaret had five brothers and one sister alive at the time of the wedding and I’m sure if they could have, they would have all been sitting there in the church.

From what I have uncovered so far, it seems that John, unfortunately, had no family in Australia at this time. John was born in the county of Cumberland in England in 1839. He had five sisters and two brothers and he was the only one out of the eight siblings to make the trek out to Australia.

Richards ‘ father’s family, the Nicholson’s came from a small area in Cumberland called Kirkland and Blencare. The map below shows the area and it is from 1576. 447 years ago, damn!

I learned where the family came from by finding one of Richard’s Aunt’s headstones on the Find A Grave website, showing that she was buried in the graveyard of St Cuthbert’s in Milburn (Milborne).

Anne Nicholson is John’s (don’t forget, he is Richard’s father) elder sister, and she never married. Census records show that she was born, raised, and lived on the family farm in Lownthwaite for almost 40 years.

Below is a copy of the 1841 Census for the family, you’ll notice that it doesn’t have a specific address for where the family lived just a notation of the township of Kirkland and Blencarn and stating that William is a farmer. Exact addresses became a requirement for the next Census in 1851, but if the household was rural, the only information given might again be just a village or parish name. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/census-records/

William Nicholson, Richard’s grandfather, noted as Farmaer above, passed away in 1848 and the family doesn’t appear anywhere in the 1851 census that I can find.

I discovered these next photos in a family history treasure trove I had forgotten about, and they were marked as possibly being Richard’s grandparents.

The family reappears in the 1861 census, minus John, who has already departed the farm. The copy of the admission ticket below gives us a good indication of where he was at the time.

Sarah, Richard’s grandmother is now the head of the family. We also get our first mention of Lownthwaite (the Farm) as mentioned on Anne’s headstone in Figure 12. A copy of the census is pictured below.

Then 1871, James took over from his mother Sarah as head of the family and presumably the running of the farm. William their brother is now off at school and Mary Jane their other sister has returned from her schooling, the reason why she was missing on the 1861 census.

Then by 1881, Sarah (Richard’s grandmother) had passed away (1879) and only James and Anne remained with the assistance of four servants.

Again you’ll note the name Lownthwaite on the census forms which matches perfectly with the inscription on Ann’s headstone. This is where Richard’s grandfather William was from.

According to “A Topographical Dictionary of England…” printed in 1848, Lownthwaite was a farm on the estate of the Earl of Thanet. https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/milburn-westmorland-1848/

As I mentioned, William died in 1848 and even though the farm is not noted on the census form in 1841 I think it would be safe to assume that this is where the family were living. Both of Williams’ parents, that is Richard’s great-grandparents, Sarah and William were born in the 1770s not 20 miles away from Lownthwaite.

It took me a while to confirm exactly where the farm was, but Lownthwaite sits between the villages of Milborn to the south and Blencarne to the northwest. I found it on this Ordinance Map from 1859.

If you go back to Figure 11, you will see I have placed a black dot in the approximate location of the farm. Here is an aerial shot of the area from 2021 thanks to Google Maps. And yep, you guessed it, the farm is still going. I have placed a blue line above it in the photo below.

What a find, Richard’s family’s history and their farm!

Another link to the property has just revealed itself. It too is from that forgotten treasure trove I had. Specifically, it was resources shared with me by my cousin, something times removed, Sally, over ten years ago. I have mentioned this treasure trove many times before. In it, I found some information from a descendant of John Nicholson and his third wife, Frances Coster, a Peter McNab. The link? specifically some information from John’s will, which was printed in a document created by the Benalla Historical Society.

It shows, that Emma, one of John’s daughters is bequeathed a property called Lownthwaite in Benalla. Emma is John and his third wife, Frances Coster’s youngest daughter. She is Richard’s step-sister. He was twelve years of age when she was born in 1894.

As you can see the scan of the Benalla Historical Society document above was not the best so I went looking for the property, and here it is straddling the parishes of Goomalibee and Benalla as stated.

The fact that John named it Lownthwaite shows how important the original farm from Cumberland was to him.

There is a reason I’m sharing this background history with you. Not only is it fascinating but parts of it figure in Richard’s story, which I know we haven’t actually touched on yet.

So let us start at the beginning, which is the same way Richard’s story ends, with tragedy.

Yes, Margaret gives birth to Richard on the 6th of April and then passes away five days later. Margaret was 26 years of age. I can’t help but think, how sad that this family notice is, the birth and death notice printed together.

Margaret and John had three children together. Richard, his elder sister, Elizabeth Atkinson Nicholson and a newborn baby daughter they lost the year before Richard’s birth in 1881.

John married five years later for the third time in 1887 when Richard was five years old and Elizabeth was eight. This is when he marries Frances Coster, Emmie’s (Figure 19b), mother.

Here is a beautiful photo of Frances.

How lucky for us, Peter McNab’s folder just keeps giving and to think that it has been sitting in my Dropbox for a decade.

I have no information on what Richard and Elizabeth’s circumstances were from the time of Margaret’s death to when Frances joined the family in 1887. I’m assuming they remained with their father. Perhaps the Macveans might have circled in and helped out or other family and friends who might have been closer. The Macveans were all in the New South Wales Riverina area and west in Howlong at this stage.

I went looking for census information for Victoria for the 1890s, to see if I could confirm the family were together. I assumed the Colonial Census probably followed the UK schedule of the first year of the new decade, so 1891 would be the first one to happen since Margaret died in 1882. (I know, controversial but the Gregorian calendar follows that the new decade starts on the 1, not the 0. The 0 is the end of the previous decade.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade)

Well was I in for a disappointment? This is at the top of the State Library of Victoria website on their page for the Census data.

Oh damn, that stings so much and what a loss for our history especially when you take into account that New South Wales too lost most of their early census records in the huge fire that ripped through the Garden Palace on the 22nd September 1882. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/fire

I jumped to the next census, 1901. No luck, nothing came up for Richard, his sister Elizabeth or their father John. I did however find John listed in an Electoral role listing for 1905 along with some other family members.

That is John, his third wife Frances and John’s eldest daughter, Richard’s other step-sister, Mary Emily from his first marriage to Euphemia Kyle Mceachern.

Peter McNab had a photo of Euphemia in the file as well, which was just amazing. It looks like it was taken on what looks to be her wedding day. He also had one of Mary Emily as a child.

I’m going to take a stab here and firm up a theory about what happened with Richard and Elizabeth after their mother’s death.

On closer inspection of Peter’s file, he had another photo of a baby that had been cropped from this photo of Mary above. You can see she is clearly holding the baby when you match the two up and the baby is labelled in the file as Baby Elizabeth.

I think we can safely assume that Richard and Elizabeth stayed on with John, their father, and their step-sister Mary Emily and then Frances would have taken over their care once she and John married. To cement this theory I just found a transcript of a couple of letters that Richard sent home from Edinburgh, (yes our Richard) dated the 7th of October 1902 and the 10th of October. (How great is that?, we have found Richard, and he is in Edinburgh.) Back to the letters.

Wow, pinpointing where Richard is and then reading that he is writing the letter three days later to “my Dear Mater” that is his stepmother, Frances, I think we can safely assume they had a close relationship. This probably came about because they lived together in Benalla as a family.

Did you also notice Richard sending the best love to all at “Kyle”? That is the name of the house in Benalla, and it is also Euphemia’s second name. That is Richard’s father’s first wife. Wow, the sentimentality is just flowing. I love it when you can make these connections.

And here is the house, Kyle and standing out the front is Richard’s other step-sister and brother, Emma (Emmie) and William and I’m pretty sure that is Frances their mother with them.

Before we started delving into Mary Emily, Euphemia and the children, we were looking at the Electoral role for 1905 and this stemmed from my search for a mention of the family in the census of 1901.

With this in mind, I thought searching the UK Census for 1901 might be a good idea. Especially now we know Richard was in Edinburgh in 1902, (from his letter above) and also that other great piece of information about Aunty Anne and Bibbie and that they would be returning back to Clifton, these will be John’s sisters. I was hoping these clues combined might give us the chance to uncover something.

Armed with this new information I started searching, and look what came up almost immediately.

There listed, are three of Richard’s Aunts, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth, (I think she might be Aunt Bibbie), all living at Clifton or more precisely, Carlton House. And there on that last line of the Nicholson listings is their “niece” from Benalla, Victoria, Richard’s sister, Elizabeth Atkinson Nicholson. Just brilliant.

Aunt Anne, I discovered at this stage is actually living with her brother William on a Farm in Milburn but obviously would be joining the sisters at Clifton the following year, going from the information in Richard’s letter above.

It is sad but I was able to confirm that they weren’t on their father’s beloved Lownthwaite any longer. After more than a century Lownthwaite passed into the hands of one Thomas Wales sometime before the 1891 census.

I think the Nicholsons all moved to the new farm on mass when this handover to Thomas Wales happened. I found them in 1891 with no address or farm name mentioned.

Going back to Figure 23, we are so lucky, Carlton House still stands today and is about 11 miles from the Lownthwaite farm, so the family is still very much keeping to the area.

Now the 1901 UK Census had more to share. I actually found a listing for Richard, yay!

Here he is boarding with the Mitchell family in Edinburgh, and he is studying medicine at I’m presuming here, the University of Edinburgh.

Here we are with the luck again. I just checked Google Maps and Richard’s house he was boarding in with the Mitchell family is still standing.

I do have a confession to make here. I was actually aware that Richard was in Edinburgh sometime in the early 1900s and studying to become a Doctor but I didn’t want to share any spoilers earlier in the post. I became aware of what Richard was up to because it was mentioned in his obituary. Yes, here is the bookend tragedy of Richard’s birth, his death, and it was a tragedy.

I put together a few of the headlines of the day, that were printed about the incident. It was obviously big news as it featured in most of the nation’s papers over the next couple of days from its initial reporting.

Tiled Gallery 1: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

This is how I first learned of Richard, through these headlines. I was searching for other nieces and nephews of Jessie and Alexander Macvean when I was researching for a post on them and came across this really sad story.

The article below is the obituary I first discovered.

How bloody sad is that just about to find out if he passed all his exams and hopes to come back and take over the medical practice from his father in Australia, and he dies.

This obituary is a little nugget of gold as it is the only article that I have come across that mentions when Richard and Elizabeth leave for the UK. I unfortunately can’t find either of them on a passenger list anywhere but of course, counting back twelve years from Richard’s death in 1910 this means they would have set out from Australia and headed for England sometime in 1898. Richard would have been sixteen and Elizabeth eighteen years old at the time.

With Richard passing away in January 1910, he obviously missed the next census taken in 1911, which is useless to us. I did however find a medical student registration for him from 1904 on Ancestry.com.

This is the only register he appears in despite the fact he is studying up until the time of his death, six years later.

Now this is interesting, having just shared with you that I couldn’t find Richard or Elizabeth on a passenger list anywhere, I ditched the official lists and thought I might see if they appeared in the newspaper lists and you guessed it, I found them.

Because I didn’t know what month in 1898 they might have departed, I just had to start searching in January of that year. Of course, there were no guarantees they would be listed, I mean a couple of teenage kids, why would they be listed? But I was wrong. This took a couple of hours to find but when I saw it, it was the same old feeling of excitement and as usual, it was like early in the morning again so no Alex to share it with.

The Gera, the ship the siblings travelled aboard, was a City Class ship belonging to the Northern German Lloyd shipping company. It was launched in November 1890, sold to an Italian shipping company in 1909, renamed the “Valparaiso“ and torpedoed by a German U Boat in October 1917 off the coast of Libia and sunk. https://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Gera_(Schiff)

The photo above shows the Gera operating as a hospital ship to German troops involved in the Boxer Rebellion, just four years after the Nicholson siblings were aboard.

The other surprising thing here is the extra, Miss E Nicholson on the list. Miss E. A. Nicholson is Richard’s sister but who is the other Miss E? I then remember I read somewhere and of course, I can’t find it now, that their elder sister Mary Emilie was known as Emily in the family. It looks like all three siblings took the journey together.

I found a passenger list that suggests Richard, Elizabeth, and Emily actually boarded the ship from Sydney on April 20th. But I think maybe the newspapers printed the full list of passengers not worrying about who was joining at what port, as Benalla, where they were living, is so much closer to Melbourne’s port than it is to Sydney.

I next tracked them onboard the Gera, to Adelaide, and then Fremantle, and then eventually they arrived at Colombo on the morning of the 16th of May.

I found this very interesting advertisement for the company running the Gera showing exactly the route the ship took to get to the UK.

Aden the first stop after leaving Colombo in Sri Lanka, is a coastal port in the country of Yemen, the ship then travels the Suez Canal stopping at Suez, Port Said and then traversing the Mediterranean reaching Naples and Genoa in Italy.

It looks like the ship then travels the length of the East coasts of France, and Spain passing through the Straits of Gibraltar and then heading back up the west coast of Portugal and straight on to England.

That is a voyage of 52 days from Sydney to Southampton. What a trip and all without any other family to accompany them.

I didn’t need to wonder too long to find out if Emily joined them on the voyage. I found a listing from the 1911 UK census that maybe confirms that it was.

Here is a close-up for us of the names.

There is Mary Emilie Nicholson, Richard and Elizabeth’s older sister living with her younger sister and her family at 42 Ravensdale Mansions, Haringey Park, Crouch End, London N. How fantastic. I know this is thirteen years after that journey in 1898 but it shows that Emily had made the journey and I’m happy to call it that she did it earlier as well.

There is also a great example here of exactly how much Richard obviously meant to his sister Elizabeth. She and her husband, Richard, (I know damn confusing, the husband is Richard too) named their firstborn son after him and that was four years before his death. Richard Macvean Graham Pole.

Also, did you note her husband’s last name? Graham Pole. You might recall from Figure 22g above that in Richard’s letter to home, in 1902, he mentioned that he took a clerking job for his friend David Graham Pole, who the author of that note, assumed to be a relation to Richard Graham Pole. And here he is finally turning up in 1911. We don’t need to assume that he is related anymore, I found an article on Elizabeth and Richard Graham Pole’s wedding and David Graham Pole is mentioned as a brother to Richard and his best man.

This article has so many wonderful links to the information we already know. First, Elizabeth and Richard are married in St Cuthbert’s Church at Clifton.

And of course, you will remember that Clifton is where Carlton House is, where most of the Nicholson Aunts live. In fact, you can see the house from the front entrance of the church.

The wedding article also tells us that this is where Elizabeth and her new husband, Richard have their wedding reception, hosted by the Aunts and Uncle Willie.

Talking of the Aunts and Uncle Willie, Peter McNab’s folder had a few other photos in it that could possibly be Uncle Willie and his sisters. Except Elizabeth (Aunt Bibby). There doesn’t seem to be a photo of her, unfortunately.

This section of the post that you are reading I wrote weeks ago from what I’m typing now. I have actually finished the post and am doing my final grammar and spelling checks but then I just stumbled upon another amazing discovery. It is concerning Elizabeth and Richard’s wedding, hence the reason for the interruption from the future.

I was browsing through hints on Ancestry that had come up for the Graham Pole brothers, David and Richard and this phenomenal montage of information popped up.

A wedding photo for Elizabeth and Richard, a handwritten note of those people in the photo and a copy of the wedding article I posted above. It was shared by another Ancestry user named Dorothy Lander, from Canada and it was over a year ago. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before this.

This is a phenomenal find as not only does it give us our second photograph of Richard, and our first of Aunt Bibby (Elizabeth) but it also features nearly all the main cast from the family. In case you can’t read the handwriting above:

Back row: Aunt Maggie (Margaret), Aunt Cloie (Sarah), Uncle Mac, (Richard Macvean Nicholson) Georgia (Elizabeth and Mac’s cousin), Aunt Phennie (unsure who this is), Uncle Willie, (William Atkinson Nicholson), Uncle David, (David Graham Pole), Aunt Mary, Wilbert (Wilbert Gordon, Georgia’s father and Aunt Sarah’s husband) and Aunt Ann.

Sitting: Mrs Pole (David and Richard’s mother) Richard Graham Pole (Groom), Elizabeth Nicholson (Bride) and Aunt Bibby (Elizabeth)

I did send Dorothy a message thanking her for this amazing find. She replied which was wonderful and explained that she married the son of Richard Macvean Graham Pole, the son of Elizabeth and Richard, bride and groom above and below, in later life.

Dorothy also had a couple of photos of her father-in-law, Richard Macvean Graham Pole, Uncle Mac’s nephew. On the left is what he looked like around the time Uncle Mac drowned and on the right is when he was at London University in 1925 posing with his football team.

With the next find, well I’m just going to share it. There is no point in summarising as it is an amazing article describing the circumstances of this tragic event, Richard’s death.

What an amazing record to have and so detailed.

I’m just picking out those addresses mentioned for Richard in the article above. Here is 9 Alvanley Terrace in Edinburgh. This is where Richard and Roland Bell set off from on the Friday before the duck shooting trip. I can’t find a historic photo of the building, but lucky for us once again, it is still standing.

And here is a beautiful black and white shot of Gillespie’s Terrace where Richard was staying while studying. This one is dated circa 1900, so definitely Richard’s time. Gillespie’s Terrace is the row of terraces on the right of the photograph funnily enough.

And here is a amazing aerial shot of the full terrace, it is 38 years after Richard’s time but I’m sure this view would have been familiar to him. Not the aerial view of course.

I next went looking for Barnbougle Castle, where Richard’s body was discovered and I found it. The castle sits on the shores of the Firth of Forth in between the towns of Cramond and Queensferry. It is about a nine-mile journey from Mrs Bell’s house in Alvaney Terrace where Richard and Roland set off from. I also found an amazing photo of the castle from 1895, just fifteen years before Richard and Ronald’s visit. I can imagine this view probably didn’t change much in that time.

The castle stands today too. It has been restored and is now a function centre.

It is funny to think that within 600 yards of this function centre, somewhere on that shoreline Mr John Ballie found Richard’s lifeless body over a century ago. A fact that none of these couples would be aware of at all today.

Tiled Gallery 1

https://blueskyphotography.co.uk/wedding/barnbougle-castle-wedding-5455/

https://tietheknot.scot/tag/barnbougle-castle/

https://luxuryscottishwedding.com/blog

https://www.facebook.com/RoseberyVenues/

https://martinvenherm.com/wedding-photography/barnbougle-castle-wedding/ 

https://www.alijayphotography.com/blog/barnbougle-castle-wedding-venue-photography

I know, you are probably thinking, what the hell John! I know, but I think this just highlights in a small way how life just keeps moving on and it really struck a chord with me when I started searching for information on the castle. Something as traumatic as losing a son, nephew, brother, friend and the place where he actually died becames a beautiful vista for newly wedded couples.

I have an amazing obituary for Richard and his friend Ronald Bell, which was printed in “The Student” a campus publication from Edinburgh University. It was shared with me by the same generous Cousin who started me on this family history journey, Sally. It is also where the wonderful photo of Richard comes from.

And there in those few lines was another gift, just sitting there for us, a description of Richard. Or more specifically a mention of his cheerfulness and him having a hearty laugh. They are slivers of information but they say so much about him in the absence of anything else.

The other sliver of gold that stands out for me from this article is the fact that it states that Richard was a Lieutenant in the Edinburgh Queen’s Rifles. This started me on a search for information on what the Edinburgh Queen’s Rifles actually was and in the process of this search I discovered a few other sources I already had that confirmed Richard’s links with the organisation. The first source is Richard’s headstone.

You might recognise it from earlier in this post, yes, Richard shares his final resting place with his Aunt, Anne Nicholson.

Now the link with the Rifles is in his inscription. It is a bit hard to read so I played around with the brightness in the photo to see if that would help and I think it did.

It reads:

DIED JAN 8TH 1910 AGED 26 YEARS.

That second line of the inscription is our link, after the C.H.B EDIN which refers to Richards Bachelor of Surgery from Edinburgh University “ChB.” Merriam-Webster.com Medical Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/ChB. Accessed 13 Dec. 2023.

The next part of the inscription refers to Richard being a Lieutenant of the Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade, Royal Scots. This matches with the Queen’s Rifle services mentioned in the Uni Obit article above.

The second source is an article describing Richard’s funeral, I know I can’t believe we got this as well. I will share the whole article further down but for the sake of this discussion, I’m just sharing the final paragraph to highlight the relevant information.

There is the link with the Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade, with the mention of the volunteer forces. The link is also highlighted with the description of Richard’s funeral as being a semi-military one.

The third source was a phenomenal find from Peter McNab’s folder again. A snippet of a letter from Richard Graham Pole this time, (our Richard’s brother-in-law) to his father-in-law, John Nicholson about Richard’s (or Mac as we already knew the family called him), funeral.

First off, how lucky! The picture of Richard and his life that we are building up is just amazing, thanks to all these resources that are coming to light. Secondly, “Dear Daddie”. Now I promise you, I’m not dissing Richard Graham Pole at all, but I’m so glad things have changed in 113 years. There is no way I could ever see myself addressing a letter, text, or email to my father-in-law in such a way.

All of these sources combined and the Uni obituary above sent me down a rabbit hole of history on the Volunteer services. Obviously, it meant a great deal to Richard or presumably to the person who approved the inscription, as they obviously knew what it meant to Richard to have it put on the headstone. This spurred me on to find out as much as I could, and wow, there are reams of information out there, but let me share just a small amount of what I did discover.

The Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade Royal Scots was originally called The Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles when it was formed in 1859. After many reviews and the merging of several brigades into one single regiment, the unit was designated Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade Royal Scots on the 1st of April 1886. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Edinburgh_Rifles#Localisation

I stumbled upon an amazing resource, a 504-page PDF document shared on the Electric Scotland Website, a copy of a book published in 1909 detailing the records of the Volunteer Forces from the previous fifty years.

Thanks to Major-General Grierson we can confirm the exact details of the Brigade and Regiment that Richard was a part of.

(Plate X) refers to the most wonderful hand-illustrated and coloured drawing of the Brigade’s uniforms. I’m presuming that Richard would have been wearing a version of the last two.

Under another reform in 1908, the volunteer brigades were subsumed into the new Territorial Force and the battalions of the Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade were reorganised to form the 4th and 5th Battalions of the Royal Scots, Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Edinburgh_Rifles#Localisation

This is presumably both the battalions that Richard Graham Pole refers to in his letter above, that attend Richard’s funeral. I found a photo on the National Museums Scotland Flickr account of members of the actual two battalions and what they would have looked like.

What a gift to see this. Richard would likely have known these faces. I know Richard’s face isn’t there but we can now picture him in the uniform. The full dress uniform, (that David referred to in his letter that members of the brigade dressed in for Richard’s funeral) would have looked more like those pictured below in this stunning photograph. Oh, to unearth an actual photo of his funeral would be amazing.

It has been a couple of days since I typed the above paragraphs. The break from writing is because I resubscribed to the “Find My Past” website and have been down that rabbit hole of searching ever since. Stay with me, there is a reason why I’m sharing this with you.

Find My Past has links to online Newspaper archives of the UK so I started fishing around the date of Richard’s funeral to see if there were any reports listed. Wow, I got so many bites not just on the funeral but on other information that relates to Richard and his time in Scotland but first the funeral.

This article came up in the Edinburgh Evening News dated the 12th January 1910 and is full of new information for us.

The first thing that stands out for me, is the misogyny, in the way Richard’s aunts and sisters are referred to in one mass description. God forbid that we actually waste our time naming them. Sorry, it is hard not to view these past attitudes through today’s lens.

It is great to see the actual battalion that Richard was part of confirmed. I must admit it has taken me a while to get my head around the different battalion names and when they actually changed. So I can now confirm that Richard’s battalion is the 4th Battalion (Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles) The Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment) so named in 1908 when the Volunteer Force was reorganised to become the new Territorial Force. The 5th being its sister battalion. https://assets.website-files.com/615ff7b6816bc2319b961674/61a22791b4f9a1644d8e172e_20210708-6SCOTS_AR_Lineage_v6.pdf

How wonderful to get those few extra details, like Richard’s coffin being placed in the centre of the hall and covered by the Union Jack. Also, his funeral being held in the Drill Hall at Forrest Road Edinburgh. This was the headquarters of the Queens Rifle Volunteer Brigade, The Royal Scots as confirmed in Major-General Grierson’s description of the Brigade in Figure 38b. That Richard’s coffin was conveyed on an open hearse to the station and that it was transported back to his Aunt’s house in Cliford, Carelton House, as mentioned earlier in this post. Also, that the family had a private funeral service at Milburn, at another church named St Cuthbert’s. This is where Richard’s body is buried.

I think Richard’s paternal grandmother’s side of the family might be long term worshippers at St Cuthbert’s like the Nicholsons. Alex managed to get a photo of this tablet on the wall of the church.

Did you also notice the names of the three officers who accompanied Richard’s body in the funeral article above? The one that stood out for me, was Captain Graham Pole. That is Richard’s brother-in-law’s last name. This is the Richard who marries our Richard’s sister Elizabeth and pens the dear Daddie letter back to Richard Nicholson Snr about Mac’s funeral.

I can confirm after some Googling, that this is referring to Captain David Graham Pole. You might recall that back in Figure 22g above I showed an excerpt of a letter that Richard wrote to his father back in Benalla explaining that his friend David had lost his clerk and that he would be taking that position. The letter was sent on letterhead from the office of D. Graham Pole. And here is a brilliant photo of David.

David studied at Edinburgh University and was a Solicitor of the Supreme Courts of Scotland in 1901, hence the reason he needed a clerk. David also joined the Queens Rifle Volunteer Brigade as a Private in 1899, so I think we can safely say that this is where he and Richard met and then obviously at some later stage, Elizabeth, Richard’s sister meets David’s brother Richard Graham Pole which leads to their marriage. https://borthcat.york.ac.uk/index.php/pole-david-graham-1877-1952-major

And of course, now that we have the photo of Elizabeth and Richard’s wedding, thanks to Dorothy Lander we have another photo of David when he was performing his best man duties for his brother.

I found an online biography from the University of York on David. He joins the regular army when WW1 breaks out and rises to the rank of Major. After the war in 1918, David became Vice-Chairman and Honorary Secretary of the British Commission on Indian and Burma Affairs. He held this position for twenty years and then became Chairman of the Commission in 1940. He was also a member of parliament for South Derbyshire for three years in the 1930s. https://borthcat.york.ac.uk/index.php/pole-david-graham-1877-1952-major

How wonderful to confirm these links and to know that Richard obviously had a good friend looking after him on his final journey to St Cuthberts in Milburn.

Picking up on those other extra details from the funeral article, the Drill Hall where the funeral was held. This is the only historic photo I can find of the hall taken from the opposite side to the main entrance in Forrest Hill Road. You can see the Drill Hall is the section to the right of the building with the long-tiered roof. Inside here is where Richard’s coffin sat.

The Headquarters building and the Drill Hall are still standing. Here is a great aerial shot thanks to Google Maps showing the building from the Forrest Hill Road entrance.

I found one photograph of the interior of the Drill Hall just before it was refurbished into a Computer Lab for the University of Edinburgh in 2015. The Royal Scots vacated the building in 1982 after 110 years of use. Their use of the Drill Hall dates from 1872. http://www.hypostyle.co.uk/projects/educational/forresthillrefurbishmentandalterations-84.html

I know these photos are from 105 years after Richard’s coffin lay there, but to see inside the actual space where it was is pretty special. What is just as special is that I started finding a few other notices in my search on the Find My Past website concerning the funeral. Each with its own unique piece of information. This notice was printed the night before the funeral on the 11th of January, 1910, in the Edinburgh Evening News.

This article from The Scotsman printed the next day gave an update on Richard’s friend, Ronald Bell who was presumed drowned as well.

This is what remains of the Caledonian Station, where the cortege proceeded to, at the western end of Princes Street in Edinburgh

On the map below I have highlighted where the hotel sits from this view above. The hotel was built in 1903.

I wonder if Richard’s cortege made its way through the Rutland Street entrance and down Cab Road to board Richard’s coffin onto the train bound for Milburn.

In regards to the Ministers who conducted Richard’s funeral, mentioned back in Figure 44, there is no photo of Reverend Arthur Gordon online, unfortunately. I discovered that an actual photograph of the Reverend exists, but it is held at the UK National Archives in Kew, and it hasn’t been digitised as yet.

It costs about A$20.00 to have an archivist check to see if it can be digitised and it can take up to four weeks to get an answer. Might leave that one for the next pay. It would be great to actually see the face of one of the men who performed Richard’s funeral service. I did find this nice little listing for Rev. Arthur Gordon from one of the other family trees in Ancestry. It comes from a publication titled, Gordons Under Arms’; a biographical muster roll of officers named Gordon in the navies and armies of Britain, Europe, America and the Jacobite risings. By Skelton, Constance Oliver, Mrs Bulloch, John Malcolm.

Well, here in the post we didn’t have to wait very long to uncover a face. We were very lucky with the Reverend James Fergusson, I found one small photograph of him online. This did however take many hours of searching online to uncover.

It is so special when you can put a face to the name of people involved in the relative’s story you are researching. Of course, you have to be mindful of checking the details of the photo or picture you have found as it is so easy to take a wrong turn and end up with the wrong person in your story. There were four other Rev. James Fergusson or Ferguson coming up in my research at the same time. The Corstorphine phrase in the funeral article was the term I started searching for first as I didn’t know what it was referring to.

I found this photo of Rev. James in an online PDF document titled “Corstorphine Parish Church Souvenir Almanac” There were no source details with it but there was the potential link, Corstorphine in the title. It looked like the original almanac was printed in 1910, so it fitted with Richard’s timeline. I started digging.

Corstorphine was an ancient village to the West of Edinburgh and is now a suburb of the city. Corstorphine Old Parish Church is the Church where this Rev. James ministered. The original section of the church, which still stands today, was built in the early 1400s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corstorphine_Old_Parish_Church

The Church has an online presence, so I sent them an email asking if the PDF I had found referred to their church and if they could confirm that this photo was the Rev. James who ministered at Corstorphine? I explained that I was trying to link it to the reference in Richard’s funeral article of “…Rev. James Fergusson, Corstorphine…” The current Minister, Moira McDonald very kindly emailed me back and confirmed that this photo did indeed match with a photo the church had of Rev. James in their vestry. So I’m happy to say that this is the Rev. James Fergusson who celebrated Richard’s funeral alongside Rev. Arthur Gordon.

What is just as thrilling as finding a photo of a face is uncovering a specific photo of an event. Especially one that I might have just said, “…I would love to find a photo of that…”

Yep, this next absolute gem popped up last night and I will admit, the tears sprang into my eyes when I realised what I was looking at.

I know, it is a crappy newspaper copy but there is Richard’s coffin, containing his body, draped with the Union Jack being conveyed on an open hearse and followed by members of his battalion, the Queens Rifle Volunteer Brigade, Royal Scots, just as described in the funeral article above. It was part of the article below.

I’m sure that the first figure following the hearse in the photo would be Captain David Graham Pole. And it is wonderful to see that those uniforms look like the ones from Figure 40. I know that it is dark but you can just make out the plumage on the hats.

I wonder if this might have been the route the cortege took and right past Edinburgh Castle sitting above on the hill. You will notice that the finish of the route now says the Waldorf Astoria, this is the current tenant of the old Caledonian Hotel building and station.

A notice printed in The Scotsman that morning of the 12th of January leaves no doubt as to who was the master of ceremonies.

This really was so special to find, this article with the photo. I so hope that Richard’s Dad got to see it as there was no way that he could have been there. He was at the very least a 65-day ocean voyage away, back in Benalla, Victoria.

Referring back to Figure 41 for a moment, another item that caught my eye was the reference to Richard having South African friends. I wondered, what did this refer to, how did he come to have South African friends? I came up with two options.

It of course was only seven years, at the time of Richard’s funeral since the second Boer War concluded. My mind started racing, could Richard have been involved as a part of the Volunteer brigade? If so, how likely is it that he made friends with people over in South Africa whilst fighting, and then somehow they made it back to Edinburgh to be included in his funeral article?

The second option came from a mention back in Figure 37 above, that he was part of the South African club in Edinburgh. The University of Edinburgh has a section on its website titled “Uncovered”. In it, they discuss the achievements of past students. In one of his posts, Tom Cunningham highlights a contemporary of Richard’s, named Arthur Cecil Alport who happened to be a white South African.

Tom shares that there were apparently a large number of white South African students studying medicine at Edinburgh University, in the years before the First World War. Like the large number of Australian students there, they had a well-established social club on campus catering to these colonial elements. https://www.ed.ac.uk/global/uncovered/1900/arthur-cecil-alport

This seems a much more likely way for Richard to have a contingent of South African friends, from the University rather than connections he might have made whilst fighting in the Boer War, but I’m still intrigued to find out if he did serve.

The issue that intrigues me the most here is Richard’s timeline. He “caps out” in December 1909, meaning that he had graduated with his degrees. I was trying to find some information on what the general length of study was at the time for the medical degree to see how that would fit with him serving in the Boer War, but I could find nothing. The closest I got was that the University increased the length of study for medicine from three to four years in 1833. This is seventy years before Richard had presumably started. So assuming that it had increased in that time to today’s 6 years of study that means Richard is enrolling in either 1903 or 1904. We know that he arrived in the UK in 1898, so what had he been doing in those earlier years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_Medical_School

This is where I’m going to share some of the other information I discovered. Hold on to the hypothesis about the Boer War for the moment, because I discovered why Richard travelled out to the UK in 1898.

This popped up after about twenty pages of Google results for Richard’s full name. It just goes to show that you just need to keep scrolling sometimes. This is a listing of past students for Epsom College and it confirms that Richard was there from 1898-1900. We know from Figure 28a7 above that Richard and his sisters arrived in Southhampton on 11th July 1898, so it must have been a mid-year semester start. I even found one enrolment registration for Richard that confirms the 1898 start date.

I found this great little advert from the Civil and Military Gazette Lahore printed on the 21st of June 1898, giving a great description of the College, confirming the mid-year intake, (this fits with Richard’s arrival just twenty days after this article) and hinting at why Richard might be attending the college.

Epsom College was set up in 1855 by Dr John Propert as a direct result of the high death rates experienced by Doctors in the early 19th century and the perilous financial states of the widowed medical families. The idea was to educate the children of doctors who had died, provide support to the families and arrange housing for older members of the medical profession. The college was given royal approval and opened by Prince Albert and originally called The Royal Benevolent College. https://www.epsomcollege.org.uk/about-us/our-history/

The College was able to provide this charitable support by encouraging potential benefactors, mainly from the medical profession to contribute to the funds. https://eehe.org.uk/?p=25022

I found some fantastic photos of the college that I’m sure would be recognisable to Richard.

So now we can be confident in saying that Richard was sent to study at Epsom College to get that specialist preparatory medical education in readiness for his medical degree studies at Edinburgh University. The College had a reputation for developing undergraduates with a high standard of education for medical courses. https://eehe.org.uk/?p=25022

I can find no graduation notice for Richard from Epsom but we can assume that he would have finished mid-1900. My next move was to see if I could find out when he joined the Queens Rifle Volunteer Brigade. No luck with an attestation paper but I did find a couple of mentions that give us a few dates to fill in on the timeline.

First off, let us take a closer look at that one and only Student Registration I shared earlier for Richard at Edinburgh University, in what we can now confirm, was his nine years on campus.

Looking at this registration allows us to firm up a few of the details on the timeline. We know from way back in Figure 26 from the 1901 Census, that Richard was living at 75 Morningside Road with the Mitchell family. If I’m reading the registration correctly it looks like Richard was at this time completing a preliminary course from October 1901 to October 1904 for his entrance into the Uni course. The actual Uni degree he commenced on October the 18th 1904. This fits with his Medical Student title on the Census.

This does lengthen the odds that Richard was a part of the troops serving in the Boer war. The 1901 Census was taken on the evening of Sunday, March 31st so he would have to have departed from South Africa, if he was there, at least three weeks before this date to make it back in time for the census count. I saw a report discussing the late arrival of the ship, the Majestic from Liverpool to the Cape in South Africa, confirming the travel time between the two countries.

Roughly seventeen days. I found one listing for an R Nicholson on a Boer War Registration site that fit with the correct battalion that Richard most likely would have been part of. The 1st Battalion The Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment)

Remember back in Figure 38b Major-General Grierson confirms on the first page of the Queens Rifle Volunteer Brigade that they actually saw service in South Africa from 1900 – 1901. This fits with what we know of Richard’s timeline.

I was also able to confirm that Richard’s volunteer brigade was part of the 1st Battalion that actually went to South Africa.

I spent a couple of dollars and purchased the original medal records for this R Nicholson (Figure 62) and it all but confirms that he wasn’t ours. He is noted as a sergeant and my understanding is that Richard would have been a Cadet Recruit/ Private at this stage of his enlistment. His travel dates confirm that our Richard could have possibly been there though. Departure to the Cape in June 1900 and departure back to England in April 1901. So our Richard could definitely have been travelling with this group of soldiers.

It is a shame we can’t confirm if Richard was there but it is so interesting finding out that some members of his brigade did see action in the Boer War.

Back to the other information I uncovered on Richard for the timeline. With this next article, all I can say is, wow! What a moment in time for Richard to potentially be involved in. The coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

We had a name at least in this article. There, of course, is no way to be certain that this is Richard, but we are close. I think the D in D Nicholson is short for Dick, which is the shortened version of his name, Richard, and there is the 4th Royal Scots, which we now know was Richard’s brigade.

It could be that Richard was somewhere in this crowd or somewhere along the route.

There is no doubt that this next article is referring to Richard.

And here he is two years later going up a rank to Lieutenant in July 1905.

This next article was so out of left field for me. It mentions the wedding of Margaret Fell Christy and Mr William Fletcher Boadle and the fact that Richard acted as best man for William. Again there is no doubt that it is our Richard they are referring to, which is great.

Here is a photo of the church the wedding took place in. It still stands today and is now referred to as the cathedral.

The reason this article was so out of left field for me, I recognised the name of the groom, Boadle. I knew we had some Boadle’s as part of the family in Australia but not in the UK. I started digging and you wouldn’t believe it they are the same. William Boadle is the brother of this bloke below, John Boadle. The reason I have a photo of John is that he is Richard’s Uncle, by marriage.

John married Richard’s Aunt, Mary (Molly) Macvean, sister to his mother Margaret.

I just put in this small section of the family tree to help visualise. Richard was best man to his mother’s brother-in-law’s brother. How the hell did this friendship happen let alone develop to the point of Richard acting as best man for William, who was 18 years his senior. Oh, I would love to uncover that long-lost story.

The next article is a nice little example of army life at the time and gives us a bit more insight into what Richard was like as a person. We already have heard him described as having a hearty laugh and being cheerful and now we know, he had the confidence to act as an MC for a formal event such as this.

This lodge where Richard was MCing on the night of the 21st of November is reputed to be the oldest Masonic lodge in the entire world. This building was erected in the 1820s. https://www.flickr.com/photos/davids_leicas/10653630434

I was very lucky to find this next article considering that it just sort of finishes things off nicely for us in terms of Richard’s military career.

I wonder if it was the workload of his medical and surgical studies at this stage of his degree that required Richard to give up on his Volunteering? He’d potentially been serving for 6-8 years depending on just when he joined up.

This next article shows he obviously made the correct decision in resigning his commission, a pass in forensic medicine and public health in July 1908, the second last year of his studies.

I thought it would be great to see exactly where Richard was undertaking all this study and found this amazing photo of the old Medical School at Edinburgh University. I can just imagine Richard dashing through the gates there and up the boulevard to a lecture room.

And here in this next article is the final payoff for Richard and all his hard work since his enrolment in Epsom College back in 1898 and after a decade of study.

It is so sad to think that just three weeks after this notice was printed Richard was dead and all that potential and future was gone. What heartbreak losing him like that must have been for his family, my family.

A fitting way to finish this post is to know that Richard is not resting alone in St Cuthbert’s graveyard at Milburn. He is with his Grandparents, Sarah & William. His two Uncles, James & William and three of his five Aunts. Ann, Margaret and Mary.

And they all lay at rest here in the grounds behind St Cuthbert’s church in Milburn, a mile away from their ancestral farm Lownthwaite.