The “Granite Men” of Aberdeen

Aberdeen is known as the Granite City, and earned that honorific on the strength of a granite industry that built so much more than Aberdeen itself. Cities in the U.K. and internationally depended on the export of granite from Aberdeenshire, along with the stonemasons that were expert at cutting and finishing this mighty building stone. The “Granite Men” of Aberdeen were valued for their strength, precision, and artistry, though the modest stonemason did not often achieve fame in the manner of a fine art sculptor.

John Cromar joined the ranks of the Granite Men sometime in the mid-1860’s after first trying his hand at the cotton manufacturing trade. His introduction to stonemasonry may have happened right around the time of his marriage to Ann George, whose brother Alexander was a mason. John found a specialty in stone polishing, an arduous, dusty task, and to ply his trade he and Ann moved to the center of the granite universe, Aberdeen, after spending some time in Coull and Kincardine O’Neil.

Living and working in the city

By 1868, when their son Theodore James Cromar was born, the family lived at 12 Wales Street in the heart of town. Theodore was christened at Saint Nicholas Kirk on August 31, 1868, just a few minutes away from their home. It’s likely John’s place of work was near their residence as well. He may have worked at the Garden & Co. Victoria Granite Works, a few minutes walk up King Street, since it was not uncommon to find a place to live close to a place of employment in this pre-motorized era.

Tuberculosis

Fate ushered in an untimely end to the urban Aberdeen life that seemed to suit the family. Stone polishing work is hazardous, and the fine silicate powder loosened into the air from grinding the granite easily fosters a condition known as silicosis, which often degrades into tuberculosis. John’s struggle with phthisis pulmonalis, an old-fashioned term for the disease, appears to have been a gradual fight with an inevitable end. He knew he was dying, and this explains a perhaps reluctant but necessary move back to the Howe to set things up for his family.

They had enough time to make plans to provide for Ann and young Theodore through their extended family. John died in his birthplace of Lumphanan, in the house of his brother George, on November 10, 1870, at the early age of 47. Theodore was only 2. Now a young widow, Ann had to fend for herself and her son in a world where women had few options.

Ann and Theodore on their own

Ann had a taste for Industrial Revolution opportunity in the city from her earlier experience, and she probably needed more money to raise her son alone than she could earn as a domestic in a ferm-toun, if such work was even available. So back to the city she went—not to Aberdeen this time, but south to Glasgow. She evidently had a wanderlust that rural life couldn’t satisfy in any event, a trait we’ll discover it seems she passed down to Theodore. We find her in tenement housing at 35 Parliamentary Road, Glasgow in January of 1873, possibly working in the cotton industry her husband had abandoned. We know Ann must have left as early as 1871, though, because Theodore had been living since that time in the home of his grandfather, Alexander George, in Cuttieshillock, Coull.

Cuttieshillock

The George ferm-toun was sizable: 45 acres of land, about equal to 34 American football fields, and Alexander was doing well enough (and, at 69, was old enough) to hire a farm laborer. His son, also Alexander, seemed to be doing as well, conducting business as a mason master employing 4 men. Theodore was not the only grandson in the house—he joined Alexander Charles, Alexander Begg, Richard Green, and John Sim, ranging in age from 17 to newborn. The grandsons made up the majority portion of this 9 member, 3-generation extended family.

Family roll call

The matriarch of the brood was Ann Alexander, confusing since she was married to Alexander (and her son was Alexander). Mary and Jane George, their daughters, lived at home.

Jane had married Robert Lumsden Charles in 1870 and given birth to Alexander Charles at the age of 20. We are not sure whether Robert, like Theodore’s mother, was seeking the family fortune or instead had, like his father, met an unfortunate early demise, but infant Alexander’s father was not present in the house as of the 1871 Census.

Alexander Begg, 17, was listed as a mason and was likely under apprenticeship to Alexander George the younger (so many Alexanders!). At 14, Richard had employment as a farm laborer, though it’s not clear if he’s employed by his grandfather or another farmer. John at 6 was too young for school or farm labor, and it’s not clear why his parents are not present, though as we will see, the Sims were another family of masons that married into the Cromar web. Between the Georges, Sims, and Cromars, there were quite a few members of the trade.

Cuttieshillock, center mid-right, is a ferm-toun, part of Coull. Note the proximity of Tomnaverie Stone Circle to the north. The tongue-shaped plot of land to the west of Tomnaverie is a stone quarry that almost destroyed the Bronze Age monument. | Aberdeenshire, sheet LXXXI (includes: Aboyne And Glen Tanar; Coull, etc.) Survey date: 1866-1867, Publication date: 1870 | National Library of Scotland CC-BY

Tomnaverie Stone Circle

It’s almost certain that Alexander George the younger and his employees had some relationship with the quarry near Tomnaverie Stone Circle. The quarry, in fact, almost led to the demise of the monument. Stone from the quarry was used to build many of the structures in nearby Tarland. It isn’t hard to imagine how these ancient stones stirred the imagination of the young “Thuddie,” as he was nicknamed, even in their relatively dilapidated state. The circle was later rescued and restored in the early 21st Century.

1 | Sketch of Tomnaverie by archaeologist Frederick Coles, 1905, showing eastern flanker on the ground (left), recumbent (centre), stone I (now missing) and stone VIII (right foreground) | Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
2 | View of Tomnaverie by Tom Parnell, 2019, Coles stone VIII to the left, and showing the restored upright flanker | Flickr photostream CC-BY-SA

Roots in stone-masonry

By 1881, grandfather Alexander George the elder had passed away, and Theodore was now a 12-year-old student living with his stonemason uncle Alexander George. Given that grandmother Ann Alexander (still alive at 74), sister Mary (now 35), Alexander Begg (a 27 year old mason in his own right), and Richard Green (who, by 24, had moved from farming to masonry) all still lived together, it seems they may have retained the property at Cuttieshillock, though the Census record only mentions the more generic Coull.

We can imagine this former farming-intensive property now outfitted to handle the professional needs of three masons—plus another mason-in-waiting in the person of Thuddie, who even as a student might have been considering an apprenticeship, since such routinely got their start around age 14.

We see also in 1881 that Jane George and her son Alexander Charles have moved on, though we don’t know to where, as has the young John Sim, though we have circumstantial evidence he may have moved with other Sim family members in Waterside near Aboyne. There is, however, an interesting new addition to the household… and a still-curious absence.

Theodore’s half-brother

Charles Wilson Lennie George was born January 26, 1873, in Glasgow, and may have been moved to Coull soon after his birth. We don’t know the circumstances under which the elusive Ann George conceived of Theodore’s half-brother in Glasgow, whether happy or tragic, but we do know that John Cromar, long buried, could not have been the father, in spite of some records listing him as such. We are not aware of who the father was because of this perhaps-face-saving record-keeping scheme, but it’s clear that mother Ann’s restlessness had not abated.

After her sojourn in Glasgow, we find Ann by 1881 in Lasswade, Midlothian, a town near Edinburgh, recorded under the name Ann Cromar. She could have been employed at the paper mill in town, though it’s conceivable she could have commuted by rail to work in Edinburgh. At any rate, she had missed the upbringing of Thuddie for a decade, and possibly of Charles by up to 7 years. What kind of relationship did she have with her sons in that span of time? We can only be sure this was not an ideal arrangement.

Military enlistment

Five years later, on May 19, 1886, Theodore enlists for military service at the age of 17 years, 9 months (surprisingly, the UK is the only country in Europe where minors as young as 16 can still enlist). We don’t know a lot about the nature or duration of his service, but we do know the tendency of men like Thuddie to favor service in the Militia of the United Kingdom. It may have been during his duty in the military that he got into the habit of keeping a moustache, since these were mandatory between 1860 and 1916.

Full army pay for 8 weeks of training and a retainer thereafter was an attractive addition to the wage of an agricultural worker, herdsman, or journeyman in the tough economy Scotland was experiencing at the time. It was unlikely Thuddie joined the Volunteer Force, which typically drew from persons of higher socio-economic standing, or the Regular Reserve, which often attracted former Regular Army personnel.

Balancing a commission and an apprenticship?

After initiation training, the Militia tour of duty was 3 to 4 weeks of annual booster training, and any deployment beyond that was probably domestic in scope. U.K. foreign expeditions were rare between the First Boer War ending in 1881 and Second starting in 1899. So this time obligation would have allowed Thuddie to continue his apprenticeship as a mason. We do know that he was employed as a mason by 1891, so a full military commission would likely not have provided enough time as a civilian to learn a trade.

Nor would full-time soldiering have given him enough time for courtship. It’s unclear where and when Thuddie met his future bride, Christiana “Teenie” Berry Robb, but we do know that she lived with her parents, Charles Robb and Ann Spence, in Glenmuick, near Ballater. Thuddie, meanwhile, spent time in Waterside, near Aboyne, 9 miles downriver from Glenmuick, a 3 hour journey on foot. There were few social centers like Aboyne or Tarland between the two residences, so it’s hard to make an educated guess regarding their meeting.

Waterside

In any event, Waterside was the home of his uncle, William Sim, who was a quarryman. We encountered the Sim surname earlier, and we’re meeting cousin John Sim again now in 1891, along with his mother Janet George, sister of Ann George, and several Sim siblings: William the younger, Janet the younger, Richard, David, and Christina. While the older brothers were not granite men, they were in the construction trades, John a road laborer and William a plasterer.

It’s likely that Thuddie was more than a boarder at Waterside, and probably had a working relationship with his uncle. Across the river Dee, in nearby Birse, was a quarry where Birsemore granite, a pink and grey stone prized for ornamental work, was excavated. This quarry seems to have opened in the 1870s, and was worked under lease by John Burgess & Sons of Aboyne, who also held a lease on the Cambus O’ May quarry. It’s probable that the Sims and Thuddie had some kind of working relationship with this and other quarries nearby.

Working stone

The work of quarrying and dressing blocks of granite was as backbreaking as it was exacting:

But the work was increasingly more difficult to find. The economy of Scotland was struggling with the Long Depression. In fact, the economy had been a poor one for all of Thuddie’s life. The Panic of 1873 had led to the 1878 failure of the Bank of Glasgow which, combined with the rise of cheap grain and transportation in the United States, led to a collapse in Scotland felt most acutely in rural, agricultural areas like Cromar. Our masons served farming communities, but those communities couldn’t afford their services.

The call of the New World

Although the economy of the United States was also affected by the Long Depression, it was seen as a place of opportunity by the granite men. Many stonemasons would travel seasonally to North America for work during the Aberdeenshire winter. Some would make the move permanent. Such was the case with Thuddie.

In the Spring of 1891, Theodore Cromar boarded a train in Aberdeen, bound for the great transatlantic seaport of Liverpool. The trains deposited steamship passengers right at the dock in this large, multimodal transit hub. From there, Thuddie boarded the S.S. Alaska, bound for New York City, but he may have had a long wait. There were typically a host of delays: paperwork, health inspections, and train schedules which were not necessarily coordinated with ship departure and arrival.

Steerage class

The cost of Thuddie’s steerage class ticket was about $30, about $850 in 2021 terms.(by comparison, today’s airfare can range from $400 to over $1000 depending on many variables). With the ancillary costs of train transit, accommodation, and adequate transportation money upon arrival, this sum represented for most immigrants their entire net worth. Steerage passengers got a 5-to-6-day less-than-glamorous experience for their money:

The open deck space reserved for steerage passengers is usually very limited, and situated in the worst part of the ship, subject to the most violent motion, to the dirt from the stacks and the odors from the hold and galleys… the only provisions for eating are frequently shelves or benches along the sides or in the passages of sleeping compartments. Dining rooms are rare and, if found, are often shared with berths installed along the walls. Toilets and washrooms are completely inadequate; saltwater only is available.

The ventilation is almost always inadequate, and the air soon becomes foul. The unattended vomit of the seasick, the odors of not too clean bodies, the reek of food and the awful stench of the nearby toilet rooms make the atmosphere of the steerage such that it is a marvel that human flesh can endure it… Most immigrants lie in their berths for most of the voyage, in a stupor caused by the foul air. The food often repels them… It is almost impossible to keep personally clean. All of these conditions are naturally aggravated by the crowding.

United States Immigration Commission

Castle Clinton

Ellis Island, the famous immigration processing station near the Statue of Liberty, was under construction until 1892, so when Thuddie arrived he was processed at Castle Clinton at the southern tip of Manhattan. New York State’s handling of immigration was so slipshod and corrupt that the federal government had taken over the operation and was winding down operations at Castle Clinton, which was also known as Castle Garden. Thuddie was among the last wave of immigrants processed here.

His plan upon arrival was evidently to travel to New England, specifically Boston. Many Aberdeenshire granite men had made the trek to the granite producing states of Vermont, New Hampshire (the Granite State, so nicknamed), Maine, and Massachusetts, so it’s likely Thuddie had a network of contacts to help set him up professionally. But he had personal as well as professional aspirations; he meant this to be a move for life and family.

Family plans

His Aberdeenshire sweetheart, Christiana, was still in Scotland in 1891, but we’ll see that she and Thuddie had made plans for him to secure stable employment while she waited to emigrate in 1893 and get married. He probably sent money home to help her save for the journey.

Meanwhile, his mother Ann was as on the move as ever: in 1891 we find her in Haddington, East Lothian, in the home of Agnes Geroge—I believe this to be a mis-recording of the family name George by the Census clerk, and that Agnes was likely a relative. Since Ann was listed as a “visitor” in the Census, this may reveal one of the eccentricities of the Scottish census, which was that a person’s location at the time of the record was listed, as opposed to their permanent address.

It remains a mystery how much interaction Ann had with Theodore in the 20 or so years she was residing in the Central Belt of Scotland, but we’ll find they reunite by 1899, when the peripatetic Ann emigrates to the Unites States to join the Cromar family in Boston.

In a future post, we’ll explore the lives of Thuddie and Teenie together as they seek their fortunes in the New World.