Yesterday evening I paid my first visit to Balgray Cemetery in the west of Dundee. Here I encountered the grave of Winifred Wood. She died on the 10th of November (the day before the Armistice) at home at 12 Rosebery Street of influenza and cardiac failure aged only sixteen. She rests with her sister and brother who predeceased her, and her mother Jane.
Winifred was born in the district of St Mary, Dundee on the 4th of September 1902 to hotel waiter Edwin and Jane (nee McLaren). The couple were married on the 17th of June 1891 in Nye, New York, USA. By 1911 Edwin no longer lived with the family at 12 Rosebery Street as Jane was listed as head of the household in the census. She worked as a weaver in one of Dundee’s famous jute mills. Jane aged eight lived with her mother and thirteen year old brother Jack. I could not ascertain what happened to Edwin, he may have returned to the USA before 1911.
Following Winifred’s death, Jane left Rosebery Street. In 1921 she had relocated to nearby Cleghorn Street. Tragically, she would outlive Jack too. He died on the 8th of December 1934 in Blythwood, Glasgow (in an ironic twist also from influenza and associated complications).
Jane herself died on the 4th of May 1939 aged eighty.
Sources: ScotlandsPeople, Ancestry
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