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William Ralston
b.Est 1824 Lanarkshire, Scotland
d.25 Aug 1854 Manhattan, New York, New York, America
Family tree▼ (edit)
m. 25 Nov 1845
Facts and Events
[edit] LanarkshireWilliam was a stone mason born in about 1824 in the county of Lanarkshire in Scotland. His first confirmed sighting is in the 1841 census as an apprentice mason at Bellshill, in the parish of Bothwell, Lanarkshire. William claimed on his marriage certificate to be the son of another William Ralston who was also a stone mason. One possibility for his parents is a couple named William Ralston and Christian Chalmers who married in the parish of Dalziel in Lanarkshire, immediately south of Bothwell, in 1821. This could explain the unusual name Christiana that William gave to one of his own daughters - a variation of the Scottish female name Christian? Only one baptism for a child of William Ralston and Christian Chalmers has been found - a daughter Helen in Dalziel in 1822 - but there was also a John Ralston born about 1825 at Motherwell (which is in the parish of Dalziel) who stayed in Scotland and worked as a stone mason, whose death certificate of 1902 claims his parents were William Ralston and Helen Chalmers. It is therefore plausible that William's childhood family comprised parents William Ralston and Christian Chalmers with at least three children, being Helen born 1822, William born about 1824 and John born about 1825. However, the evidence is not sufficiently conclusive to be sure. [edit] BirkenheadSome time between 1841 and 1845, William left Lanarkshire and moved to Birkenhead, Cheshire, where he married Ellen Coghlan at St Werburgh’s Catholic Church on 25th November 1845. Birkenhead at this time was growing extremely rapidly. Until the 1820s it was a tiny rural hamlet – in the 1821 census it had a population of just 200. With the advent of steam ferries across the Mersey in 1817 the area suddenly became much more accessible. Shipyards were established at Birkenhead in 1824 by William Laird, and by 1831 the population had grown to 2,569. Over the next twenty years the population increased nearly tenfold – in 1851 it was 24,860. There would have been plenty of work for masons. William Laird had grand ideas about making Birkenhead his own version of Edinburgh’s New Town, and laid out plans based on a regular grid of streets to be lined with impressive stone-built houses. The centrepiece was Hamilton Square, built between 1825 and 1844 (with a space left for a town hall which came in the 1870s). Hamilton Square was a great success and today has England’s greatest concentration of Grade I listed buildings after Trafalgar Square in London. The town also boasts the world’s first public park created by a municipal authority: the 125 acre Birkenhead Park, opened in 1847. Outside Hamilton Square the original aspiration of grand stone-built houses was often neglected in the interests of cost. The Ralstons settled at 3 St Anne Street (later renumbered 5 St Anne Street), a modest terraced house near the corner of Park Street and St Anne Street - almost adjoining the Duke of Connaught public house. The whole block was demolished in 1958. The 1851 census shows the family living at 3 St Anne Street, Birkenhead: William and Ellen (who were both 26), their four young children, Ellen’s mother, who was a midwife also called Ellen Coghlan, a cousin Bartholomew Coghlan and two lodgers. [edit] New YorkBy early 1854, William and Ellen had five children and were expecting their sixth. At this point, William left Birkenhead and sailed to New York. Quite likely he took advantage of the new steam ships which had just started plying the transatlantic route. The older sailing ships had taken five or six weeks to reach New York and were dependent upon favourable winds, whereas steam ships were both less at the mercy of the wind and faster. By the mid 1850s, steam ships were making the crossing in about 12 days. William was clearly not averse to travelling significant distances, having already moved over 200 miles from Lanarkshire to Birkenhead (and there were no long-distance railways connecting Scotland to England at that point). Maybe William hoped to get himself established and then send for Ellen and the children to join him. New York was probably a tempting attraction for a young mason – it was another town which was booming, having received massive immigration during the 1840s, particularly from Ireland and the parts of central Europe which would later become Germany. Also, a delegation from New York had visited Birkenhead in the early 1850s, having heard of the newly-created Birkenhead Park. They were impressed, and on their return home set about campaigning for a similar park in New York. In 1853 the City of New York started acquiring land to create their own version of it, on a larger scale: Central Park. In New York, William lived at 243 First Avenue – the easternmost of the long avenues laid out after 1811 which stretch the length of Manhattan Island north of the original city. Summer 1854 in New York saw a remarkable heat wave. The New York Times of 22nd August 1854 records that even in the evening the temperatures were still in excess of 90 degrees Farenheit. There had been no rain in the city for eight weeks. As a mason, William would have been working out of doors in the remarkable heat. He succumbed to the heat and died of congestion of the brain caused by sun stroke on 25th August 1854. He was only 29. That evening, the weather in New York broke – the New York Times the following morning ran the following article on its front page: "Important Arrival – Rain The City was very much astonished last evening by a heavy fall of rain. An event so totally unexpected could scarcely have done otherwise than fill it with amazement. Men stood aghast at the unwonted sounds of rambling, crackling and smashing in the clouds; and when the lightning and the water gave tokens of what was coming, there was great thankfulness. It was a most refreshing night. The rain-drops came down for half an hour as though in haste to apologize for having been so long away. Intermittent showers fell during the evening, cooling the air, inspiring hopes for the corn and potatoes, (provided the storm reached the country,) and occasioning a brisk run upon the closets about the house, wherein have mouldered for dusty weeks the overalls, umbrellas and old caps, which were getting to be unserviceable through lack of wear. The eighth week of the drouth [sic] has actually brought us rain. Long may it reign." William was buried over 3000 miles from home, at New York’s main Catholic cemetery: Calvary Cemetery, in Queens. [edit] EpilogueBack in Birkenhead, it would have been some time, probably several weeks, before Ellen heard of William’s death. Messages depended upon ships to transport them – the first transatlantic telegraph cable was not established until 1866. Ellen gave birth at home on 28th September 1854 to a son, Joseph Alexander. Joseph’s birth certificate simply records his father as ‘William Ralston, stone mason’, with no indication that he was deceased, suggesting that Ellen was as yet unaware of her husband’s death. Ellen only outlived her husband by four years, dying aged 32 leaving six orphaned children who were then variously looked after by their maternal grandmother and the Liverpool Orphanage. The local vicar, Rev. C.J. Hamilton was also apparently supportive of the family, whom he knew because the children attended his school. References
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