Today, I returned to Logie Cemetery to locate the grave of nine-year-old Catherine McNeil Nicoll. Catherine died on the 29th of December 1918 at Mile Brae Cottage, Bridge of Allan, of bronchitis following influenza. She lies in Row D1, grave 46, in the cemetery’s northwest corner. From what I could see, there was no headstone.
Catherine was born in Auchterarder on July 10, 1909, to ploughman Andrew and Catherine Sr (nee McNeill). By 1911, when the Census was conducted, the Nicoll Family had moved west to Dunblane. Catherine, not yet two, was the youngest of the couple’s three children. Between 1911 and Catherine’s death, the family relocated to neighbouring Bridge of Allan.
The Strathearn Herald on the 4th of January contained a brief obituary for Catherine, acknowledging her as the “beloved child” of Andrew and Catherine. Because of her south Perthshire connection, I will add Catherine to the second edition of my book Broken Columns, the Spanish Flu Dead of Rural South Perthshire, 1918-1919.
The family would leave Bridge of Allan after Catherine’s death and return to south Perthshire. In 1921 the Census recorded them as residing at Wallfauld Cottage, Trinity Gask to the north of Auchterarder. By this time, Catherine had three younger siblings.
Sources: ScotlandsPeople, FindAGrave, British Newspaper Achive
Broken Columns 