Thomas Dickson was my paternal grandmother’s little brother. He was born on 21 July 1912. I had no idea that my granny had a brother. She died before I was born but from what my father had told me my granny, Margaret Dickson had just the one sibling, her sister Annie.

I found out about Thomas when I was walking through Cambusnethan Cemetery looking for the grave of my maternal great grandparents when I happened to spot this headstone

It’s not very clear but underneath the names of my great great grandparents Thomas Dickson and Ann Shaw Russell I saw that buried along with them was “their grandson TOM”.

It was only when I checked birth and death records that I found out that Tom was the son of my great grandparents, Livingston Russell Dickson and Mary Lockie Calderhead.

Looking at the death register I see he died of whooping cough which he suffered from for 1 month and 8 days which is such a large part of his wee life. At the time of his death my granny was 6 years old so would have been aware of her baby brother’s passing. What a tragic time for the family.

Digging further into the records I discovered that Livingston and Mary had two other babies. I found the burial record of an unnamed child who was stillborn in August 1909. This baby was buried in a public unmarked plot in Cambusnethan Cemetery.

On 11 November 1917 5 day old Elizabeth Stevenson Dickson died at the family home in West Academy Street.

Elizabeth was buried along with her brother Tom and grandparents but her name has not been added to the headstone. I wonder why that was.