Part of the Earley family tree
Little is known about Thomas Rutherford, who had a brief relationship with Isabella Pryde leading to the birth of a son, also named Thomas, in 1862.
Family background and early life
Thomas Rutherford was born in 1840 in the very rural Portmoak district of Kinross-shire, Scotland near the shores of Loch Leven. He was the son of Andrew Rutherford (c.1815–1892), an agricultural labourer, and his wife Catherine née Gordon (c.1813–1889), who had married in Kinross in November 1837.
At the first national census in June 1841, Thomas, aged less than a year old, and his 3-year old brother Robert, were living with their parents in Cavelstone, a small farm south of Kinross town. Ten years later, the family (with three further children) had moved ten miles south to Parkend Farm, two miles north-west of Aberdour in Fifeshire.
Isabella Pryde
By 1860, Thomas had found employment as a porter at the recently opened Kilconquhar station on The Leven and East of Fife Railway line to Anstruther.
At the 1861 census, Thomas, aged 21, was lodging in the home of Margaret Pryde, a widowed grocer, in Kilconquhar, together with her 37-year old daughter, Isabella Allan (also a widow) and three grandsons.
Isabella and Thomas had a brief relationship, resulting in the birth of their son on 18 August 1862. The son’s birth certificate records his name as Thomas Rutherford (illegitimate) with Thomas Rutherford [senior] recorded as the father.
Nothing further has been discovered about Thomas Rutherford, and it is not known when or where he died, nor whether he married and/or had further children. When the younger Thomas Rutherford married Alison Ewart on 6 November 1885, his father was recorded as “Thomas Rutherford, railway clerk. Deceased”.
Sources
Ancestry.co.uk:
1841 Scotland Census
1851 Scotland Census
1861 Scotland Census
Scotland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950
1861 Scotland census (436/4/2)
1862 Statutory registers births (436/48)