A recent series of posts on lodgers who are possibly relatives hit close to home in my search for information about my wife's great-grandfather. In three consecutive Scotland census reports he is listed first as boarder, then as son, and finally lodger. It took some digging to sort this out.
John Faulds (1870-1951) emigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1893. The passenger list for his arrival in New York from Glasgow shows that he was a baker. No doubt he entered that profession when he settled in the Chicago area. However, his interests soon turned to the equipment side of the baking industry, and he went to work for the Middleby Marshall company, which was founded in 1888 in Chicago to make commercial bake ovens and equipment.1 Credited along with John Marshall, a licensed engineer, John Faulds received U.S. patents for improvement in bake oven designs in 1900 and 1909. The first patent was filed in 1899, only six years after John arrived in the United States. In 1932, he used his expertise in equipment and mechanical design to launch his own company, the Faulds Oven and Equipment Co. His continued oven improvements resulted in five more patents, in his name only, for bake oven designs. The company stopped making ovens in the 1970s, but as of 2016, there were at least eleven Faulds ovens still in use in Chicago, and several in Washington State.2 Many of these in are in pizzerias due to the fact that they can hold thirty pizzas at a time, using a stack of revolving oven trays similar to a Lazy Susan.
John got his start in baking early in life. We have a picture of him at age eleven at the Galston Cooperation Bakery in Galston, Ayrshire. He is wearing an apron and holding loaves of bread. We decided to find out more about the Faulds family in Scotland and, stimulated by the 2022 NEHGS course Researching Scottish History, we made a digital bee line to ScotlandsPeople.gov.UK.
We knew from his naturalization papers and a U.S. passport application that John was born on September 10, 1870, in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, and that his father’s name was David Faulds. Working backwards from his arrival in 1893, we found John Faulds at age twenty-one in the 1891 Govan, Lanarkshire census, working as a baker and lodging with other bakers. He apparently had left home and had struck out on his own, as confirmed by his departure for the United States three years later.
The 1881 census for Galston, Ayrshire (where the photograph was taken) lists him as a ten year-old son in the Faulds family, with father David, a baker, his mother Margaret and an older sister Martha. The previous decennial census, 1871, shows the Faulds family in Irvine, Ayrshire, with David, Margaret and Martha, but no John Faulds. This is John’s birth place, and the census was taken in the Spring, so he should be listed there at an age of less than one. But hold on—right under Martha’s name is listed a six month-old male child named John Smith, “boarder.” Was this our John, or another child entirely?
The term “boarder” in this census might be a reflection of the term “boarding-out”, the practice of that time of placing orphaned or deserted children in good homes with foster parents. Perhaps John Smith fell into this category. After much searching, we put together a trail of records that clearly shows that John Faulds and John Smith were one and the same.
The statutory registry of birth for John Smith records him as being born “illegitimate” to Catherine Smith in Irvine on September 10, 1870. Two and a half months later, the Sheriff Court (civil) found one John Humphrey, photographer of King Street Kilmarnock, to be the father of a male child born to Catherine Smith on September 10, 1870, and ordered him to pay his share of “inlying, nursing, clothing and alimenting expenses” for said child. Furthermore, he was to continue paying for the support until the child obtained the age of twelve.
However, four months after that court case, John Smith is listed as a six month-old boarder living with David Faulds’ family. It is not clear what the processes were that placed John Smith in the Faulds home. There was no legal procedure for adoption in Scotland until 1930. What is clear is that on documents from his later life, John listed David Faulds as his father. He may not have known of his true origins—or perhaps he did, but still chose to claim the father who raised him. Of the many records we have for him, most show no middle name or initial, except for two federal records which show a middle initial “S,” possibly reflecting the surname of his mother. In any case, we use this middle initial in our genealogical records to distinguish him from a son, grandson, and great grandson who each share the name John Faulds.
Questions still remain. How soon after birth was John placed in the Faulds family, and when did this happen relative to the court ruling? Who nursed John? Who was Catherine Smith, and what happened to her? The birth and court records have no information, such as age, address, or other family names, that would connect her to any one of the many Catherine Smiths recorded in that area. It is possible that Smith was not her real surname at all.
On the other hand, “King street photographer” John Humphrey is well-identified in records.3 John Humphrey was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland in 1840. In September of 1868, he married Mary Gemmell. Nearly four months later, their first child was born. Mary died in early January, 1869, apparently from birth complications. One year and nine months later, John Smith was born to John Humphrey and Catherine Smith. In April of 1871, John Humphrey married Helen Boyle, and their first child was born six months later. My wife’s good ol’ blood line great-great-grandfather was responsible for three children born to three different women in under three years. He married the first and third, but not Catherine, and died at age 49 due to alcoholism.
At the moment, we are not moved to do more research on John Humphrey—but we would like to know more about Catherine. In those times, she surely would have paid the bigger price of the two for having a baby out of wedlock. What was her fate?
Notes
1 Middleby Marshall is still making ovens today, but has expanded into making equipment for other areas of food service.
2 See https://fooditor.com/restoring-badass-chicago-pizza-oven-ord-pizzeria/
3 The court record identifies him as John Humphrey, Photographer King Street Kilmarnock, defender. An internet search on “John Humphrey Kilmarnock” takes one to several websites where examples of his tin-types and “cartes de visite” (visiting cards with photographs) can be found.
