Category: ROSS

  • Layers

    Thirty-eight and fifteen Robert St, Glasgow. My great-grandparents Archie and Jane Rowley lived here and raised twelve children from 19111 until their deaths in 19322 and 19423. Today it is a car park in a light industrial area, a candle workshop and a retail outlet4.[4] I do not see the carpark. I see nineteenth-century tenements…

  • Sounds and Smells of Glasgow

    Archibald Rowley1, was born in 1897 in the very small village of Forgandenny near Perth in Scotland. His father, the local policeman died a mere two and a half years after Archie’s birth2. Sometime after that, his mother moved her family to Perth, where she worked as a laundress3. The next place we find Archie…

  • Crisis of Faith

    A fanciful account She genuflected, crossed herself, then followed the line to the priest. In a trance, her body seemed a second or two behind her, unattached and out of reach. Her mind, on the other hand was razor sharp. “Hell, hell,” she thought, “what would a bloody priest ken aboot hell? The hardest thing…

  • Finished Map

    This was an assignment as part of the Diploma of Family History I am studying at the University of Tasmania. I chose my paternal great-grandparents, Archie and Jane Rowley, as the subjects for this map. Glasgow is the place of my childhood, and so I chose to draw with children’s crayons. Archie worked in the…

  • Annotated Map

    I am constructing an annotated map for part of my Family History studies. The unit, Place, Image, and Object requires that I create a representation of a place of significance to myself or my family. All my ancestors are either Scots or Irish and the little I know about them all centres around Glasgow. That…