Chalmers is an
ancient name associated with the islands off Scotland. Our first known
Chalmers, David, was however born
about 1761 in a small village in Fife County (now Region) on the east coast of
Scotland. An agricultural labourer, he
married Betty Barron in 1786 in Flisk, Fife, and she had five children.
One of these children, also David Chalmers,
born 1799, recorded as a distillery foreman, married Allison Brown in
Falkirk, Scotland in 1826. Shortly after the marriage, the pair moved to
Ireland where they stayed for some fourteen years. In an unrecorded place in
Ireland they had seven children. Two of these, David and John, would migrate to
the USA. Another son, George, born in Alva, Clackmannan County/Region after the
return of his parents to Scotland, also migrated to, probably, the USA.
Another son, James
Brown Chalmers, born in Ireland in 1837, a weaver and sometime tanner,
married Catherine McSwain Dougal, whose father was a builder/master
mason, in 1860 in Bannockburn, Scotland. James and Catherine had seven
children.
Their son, David
Chalmers, became a master tailor[1]
in Bannockburn. David’s grandson, David Roy Chalmers, currently lives in
Stirling, Scotland. We are grateful to David Roy for much new Chalmers’ data
that he provided in early 2001.
Another son of James
Chalmers and Catherine Dougal, Tom Chalmers, who did not marry, was both an
avid photographer and an “engineer.” He amassed considerable property and when
he died in Bannockburn in 1940 he left legacies to a number of relatives
including his sister Catherine and her two sons William and James Dewar all of
whom were at that time in Victoria, BC.
A daughter of James
Chalmers and Catherine Dougal, Mary Chalmers, married Tom Mailer, a coal miner,
in Bannockburn[2] in 1904.
Three children grew to maturity. Son James Mailer (1904-1965) became a
headmaster at Ballingry, Fife. Daughter Nellie Mailer lived from 1907 until
1966 and died in Fife. The third child, Catherine Dougal Mailer (1907-1966),
married Adam Buchanan of Bannockburn and had three children. Adam subsequently
left his wife and moved to South Africa.[3]
Their two daughters and eventually Catherine herself would migrate to Canada.
Catherine remarried in Canada about 1966 but died in 1980 in a hospital in
Burnaby, BC. Catherine’s eldest
daughter, Mary Chalmers Buchanan, migrated to marry an old friend from
Scotland, Ian Main, who had preceded her to Canada. The marriage took place in
Vancouver, BC in 1960. They lived for more than 20 years in New Westminster, BC
but subsequently moved to Chilliwack, BC. They have two daughters, both living
in BC. Catherine’s younger daughter, Isabella, married John Craig in Ontario,
had three children, and currently lives in the Haliburton region of Ontario.
Another daughter of
James and Catherine, Helen Chalmers, married a wool weaver named John Stevenson
in 1887. A son, William Stevenson, became a clergyman in Fife and in
Edinburgh.
Alice Chalmers
married James Scott, a joiner, in Falkirk in 1896, but had no children.
John Chalmers
(1869-1892) is thought to be the son who anecdotal history says died from a
fall into a ditch – presumably from having one drink too many.
The youngest daughter
of David Chalmers and Allison Brown was Catherine
Chalmers, a sometime milliner, who like other members of her family lived
at the “Firs” in Bannockburn, buildings since torn down. She married James
Dewar, at the time a butcher, in 1902. This couple had two children, William
Dewar and James Brown Dewar, both born in Scotland. The family moved from
Bannockburn, Scotland to Wainwright, Alberta in 1906, but relocated to
Victoria, British Columbia six years later.
Catherine Chalmers is buried near her husband at Hatley Memorial Park,
Colwood, BC. Her son, William Dewar, married Freda Haddad in Merritt, BC in
1928.
See also Our Dewars.
Sources: Recollections of Gloria Catherine Dewar
and Mary Chalmers Buchanan; Scots Ancestry Research Society report on the
Chalmers and Dewar families dated 26 August 1996; IGI; David Roy Chalmers of Stirling,
Scotland; BC Archives.
[1] David taught his nephew William Dewar how to sew on
buttons during Bill’s visit with his parents to Scotland about 1913.
[2] James
Dewar and his wife Catherine Chalmers, who was Mary’s youngest sister,
attended the wedding.
[3] During World War 2 Catherine sent her sister Mary much-appreciated food parcels from Victoria, Canada. The food was shared with Mary’s daughter Catherine and Catherine’s two daughters all of whom lived with Mary at the time.