Glad they weren't my parents...

[Shona]

Searching my McNair branch, I came across this advertisement:

Edinburgh Evening Courant of 28th October 1758

Glasgow Oct 23rd 1758

We Robert McNair and Jean Holmes, having taken into our consideration the way and manner our daughter, Jean, acted in her marriage that she took none of our advice nor advised us before she married for which reason we discharge her from our family for more than twelve months and being afraid that some or other of our family may also presume to marry without duly advising us thereof, we taking the affair into our serious consideration hereby discbarge all and every one of our children from offering to marry without our special advice and consent first asked and obtained and if any of our children should propose or presume to offer marriage to any without as aforesaid our advice and consent they in that case shall be banished from our family twelve months and if they should go so far as to marry without our advice and consent in that case they are to be banished from the family seven years but whoever advises us of their intention to marry and obtains our consent shall not only remain children of the family but also shall have a due proportion of our goods gear and estate as we shall think convenient and as the bargain requires and farther if any of our children shall marry clandestinely they by so doing shall lose all claim or title to our effects goods gear or estate And we intimate this to all concerned that none may pretend ignorance

[kiterunner]

I hope the rest of their children took no notice and married whoever they wanted to!

[Merry]

lol Kite!! Agreed :D

[Kit]

What horrid parents. I wonder if they had much to leave anyway?

[Shona]

What horrid parents. I wonder if they had much to leave anyway?

They had a lot of dosh to dole out to their offspring...

From "The Glasgow Story" by Irene Mawer

Jean Holmes (b 1703) was one of Glasgow's best-known 18th-century businesswomen who, along with her husband, Robert McNair (1703-1779), built up a considerable fortune in the grocery trade. Robert started as a small-scale orange seller and quickly developed a flair for salesmanship and self-promotion. He made his wife an equal partner in the firm of Robert McNair, Jean Holmes & Company. The arrangement was sufficiently unusual to get the couple noticed in Glasgow.

The journalist Robert Reid (1773-1865) had a fund of stories about the McNairs. He described their grocer's shop in King Street as painted bright green, with two bow windows. The couple dressed flamboyantly, and Jean, who kept the accounts, "rustled through the premises in a dashing silk gown".

The McNairs believed in the power of advertising and the Glasgow Courant newspaper promoted their merchandise, much of it imported from the Mediterranean. It was high-quality fare, including such luxury items as citrus fruit, nuts, raisins, figs, olives and wine. The McNairs also became the proprietors of the Eastern Sugar House in the Gallowgate, which allowed them to sell a range of refined sugar products, such as candies, syrup and treacle.

While the couple's joint enterprise reflected a liberated approach to women in society, they were surprisingly inflexible when it came to their own daughter's life choices. In 1758 Jean, junior (b 1727), was openly reprimanded in a newspaper advertisement for marrying without consulting her parents.

This was the same year that the McNairs purchased the estate of Little Hill, off the Camlachie Road, which they renamed Jeanfield. By 1764 a two-storey house had been erected, designed to Jean's specifications and noted as an architectural curiosity because of its irregular windows and "corkscrew" stairs.

During the course of the 19th century "Jeanfield" became "Janefield", and from 1847 part of its grounds formed a cemetery. In the 1880s Janefield also had the distinction of providing the first playing field for Celtic football club.

[JBee]

Wow - so they must have left a will - that would be interesting reading.

[kiterunner]

Wow - so they must have left a will - that would be interesting reading.

There is this on Scotland's People - possible?
MCNAIR ROBERT 09/06/1781 FLESHER IN GLASGOW TESTAMENT DATIVE AND INVENTORY GLASGOW COMMISSARY COURT CC9/7/71

[tenterfieldjulie]

Was it normal in those days for parents to choose the husband? Lots of cultures have arranged marriages and still do. Was it part Scottish culture in the 1700s?

[Shona]

There is this on Scotland's People - possible?
MCNAIR ROBERT 09/06/1781 FLESHER IN GLASGOW TESTAMENT DATIVE AND INVENTORY GLASGOW COMMISSARY COURT CC9/7/71

Robert McNair died at the age of 76 on 7 June 1779 at Jeanfield House. The house and estate stayed with in the family until 1797 when it was sold to John Mennons, editor and printer of the Glasgow Advertiser. However, he quickly sold on to John Finlayson, who was married to one Robert and Jean McNair's daughters. As far as I can make out, the family fortune went to a son named Robert and was eventually lost in speculative coal mining ventures.

[Just Gillian]

Fascinating article Shona! Amazing that they should have been so ahead of their times in terms of equal business rights for the wife, and yet so backward in wanting to control their childrens' choice of partners. I can only assume that daughter Jean had made a really, really bad choice.

[Shona]

Was it normal in those days for parents to choose the husband? Lots of cultures have arranged marriages and still do. Was it part Scottish culture in the 1700s?

Royalty and nobility had arranged marriages to enhance power and protect land and property - same all over the UK. The merchant classes in Scotland tried to do the same, particularly if they'd made money, as the McNair's had. But is that any different from anywhere else? It would have been unlikely that the daughter of a solicitor married the son of an illiterate agricultural labourer. Even if the McNairs disapproved of Jean's marriage, it seems a bit much to me to denounce her and threaten the other children via an advert in the newspaper.

[tenterfieldjulie]

You don't think that it could have been a clever ploy to get publicity!!!
These days it is scandal etc that makes the news .. and it certainly would have brought people into the shop ......

[BlueSavannah]

I am curious to what the parents' 'special advice' was that they wanted to give to their offspring along with their consent :)

[gentlemuse]

I am a descendant of Robert McNair and Jean Holmes. In fact the John Mennons mentioned here was also a descendant - he was a son of the very same Jean they complained about. When Robert McNair died in 1779 he left a will designed to give money to his descendants in perpetuity! In other words every year all the cousins had to get together for a handout - so he was not as much of a tyrant as he might at first appear. However the will was considered unworkable by his sons and grandsons (I have a miniature of one grandson, John, who was my 3x greatgrandfather) and was set aside shortly after the birth of my great great grandfather Robert in 1795. Of the 3 grandsons one, another Robert, built Belvedere which is now a hospital and another, James, built Calder Park which is now the zoo.

Nicholas McNair

Robert McNair died at the age of 76 on 7 June 1779 at Jeanfield House. The house and estate stayed with in the family until 1797 when it was sold to John Mennons, editor and printer of the Glasgow Advertiser. However, he quickly sold on to John Finlayson, who was married to one Robert and Jean McNair's daughters. As far as I can make out, the family fortune went to a son named Robert and was eventually lost in speculative coal mining ventures.

[tenterfieldjulie]

Welcome Nicholas,
Thank you for very kindly replying to our interest in your ancestors. They were certainly very intriguing complex characters.
Can you tell us what the family thought about putting that item in the newspaper? Did the marriage that they didn't approve of work out?
It appears that their descendants not only worked hard, but contributed generously to their communities, which I am sure Robert McNair and Jean Holmes would have been very proud of. Cheers Julie G

[strikealimey]

Hi ,I think I may be a descendant of Robert McNair and Jean Holmes as well.One of my paternal great-grandmothers was Harriet Rosa McNair (B-01 Sep 1845 • Umballa , India.D-30 October 1882 • Canterbury, Kent, England).Her father was LT Col Robert Nelson McNair , grandfather was Robert MacNair who married Helen McCall and great great grandparents were Robert McNair and Jean Holmes.

by the way my name is Michael Dennis

[strikealimey]

No reply, sad

[Merry]

Michael, perhaps send Shona a personal message? Just click her user name and you will see the option.

[kiterunner]

Or was it gentlemuse you were trying to contact, Michael? In which case the same applies.

[Shona]

Sorry. Not been too well of late, hence my lack of activity on the forum. But thank you for posting and for sharing the information.

[strikealimey]

Or was it gentlemuse you were trying to contact, Michael? In which case the same applies.


I just made comment which wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, to see what kind of reply I might receive.The Dennis/Vine side of my tree come from the South east of England(Essex, Kent) where Rosa McNair relocated having married my great grandfather Reverend Francis T Vine.I have some distant McNair cousins living not too far from me, although we have never met

[strikealimey]

There is an eBook by the name of mcNair, mcNear, and mcnear geneologies which has lists of family members pertaining to particular family trees one of which i belong to myself as did Robert McNair and Jean Holmes
The lists were complied by James Birtley Mcnair

[strikealimey]

Jean McNair (Robert[4]2Duncan[i]1) wasbap¬ tized in Glasgow January 30, 1737. She was married to James Steedman, who seems to have been unsatisfactory and left her a widow at an early age. She died in 1786 of pulmonary tuberculosis and was buried in the High Kirkyard in Glasgow June 4, 1786, aged 30.50 She had a small grocery business; and John Swanston, the grocer, was appointed to wind it up
as principal creditor, she dying intestate.51 She seems to have owed Swanston £35-17/-, and after paying rent and funeral expenses, he realized only £6-4/9 from the sale of her effects. Apparently her nephews, who were men of means, did little for her.

[Kit]

I have a minor connection to the Macnairs - Mary Jane Hirschfield married Alexander Hill Macnair.