Eusthia Napier (nee Morrison) rests at the western edge of Dysart Cemetery. The headstone is in good condition, and her details are clear and legible. She succumbed to influenza and pneumonia on October 22nd at home at 12 Doctor’s Row, Gallatown, aged twenty-five (October 25th, according to her headstone).
Eusthia Morrison was born in Dunfermline in 1893 to Thomas, a lime burner, and Annie (nee McNab). Eusthia was born into a large family; Thomas had five children from his first marriage. I believe Eusthia was his only child with Annie.
When the 1901 Census was taken, Eusthia aged seven, resided in her father’s house at 45 Brick Row, Dunfermline. Her family had grown further with the arrival of two more half-siblings.
On October 28th, at age seventeen, Eusthia married coal miner Thomas Napier in Gallatown. He was thirteen years her senior. At the 1911 Census, Thomas and Eusthia resided at 12 Doctor’s Row with Thomas’ father, William Sr., and brother, William Jr. Their first child, Anne, was born on December 7th that year. The couple would have three more daughters, Margaret, Agnes, and Pauline, and a son, Thomas Jr. A tragic irony is that Eusthia passed away two days before Thomas’ first birthday. The influenza pandemic robbed five young children of a mother. A brief obituary was published in the Fife Free Press on Saturday, October 26th – in the same column as the Jack Sisters who were also buried in Dysart Cemetery.
On October 17th 1919, mere days before the first anniversary of Eusthia’s death, Thomas married Barbara Mayne. When the Census was taken in 1921, the family still resided in Doctor’s Row.
Thomas also outlived Barbara. She died in Edinburgh on October 30th, aged sixty-six (relatively close to the thirtieth anniversary of Eusthia’s death). Thomas himself died on 25th May 1959, aged eighty; he was buried with Eusthia, his parents, and his brother in Dysart Cemetery.
Sources: Ancestry, British Newspaper Archive, Scotland’s People.
Broken Columns 