My grandmother Helen Worthington never knew her maternal grandparents. Her grandmother Jenny Scott died before she was born, and she apparently had no contact with her grandfather James. But she had heard a family story about them, probably from her mother Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s father was James F. Scott. He was in business in Philadelphia with his brothers. His first wife, Jenny, died when Elizabeth was young. When James remarried, to the sister of his first wife, the new wife did not want the baby, and Elizabeth was sent away to be raised in a Catholic orphanage.1

So far the story seems mostly true.2 Elizabeth’s father was in fact James F. Scott.3 In 1880 she was not living with her father and stepmother, but in a residential school for girls run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.4 When she died in 1911, Elizabeth was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Glenside.5 The open question is whether his first and second wives were sisters. They were both born in New York, which is unusual for wives of a man living in Philadelphia.

Scott Brothers is listed in city directories of Philadelphia between 1872 and 1902. Variously described as express, teams, carmen, and livery, it was a delivery service, in business for over 30 years, first at 146 South Street, and later at 1529 S. Front.6 From the directories the brothers were James, Samuel, and Ezekiel.

They came from northern Ireland, near Newtown Limavady in County Derry. Samuel and Dorothea Scott had five sons there: Ezekiel, James, Samuel, Joseph, and Alexander. They were Presbyterians, and attended a church in Carbullion, a few miles north of Newtown Limavady.7 They all emigrated together in 1851 on the Superior out of Londonderry, and arrived on May 5.8 The ship carried 217 passengers, all Irish, and mostly farmers and laborers. In Philadelphia, the parents died before the 1860 census was taken, and the brothers scattered. James lived with his brother Samuel, boarding in the “eating house” of John and Sarah Gallagher.9 (Samuel would later marry their daughter Sallie Gallagher.) By 1867 James was married, to the first of his three wives.10 Her name was Jennie.11 She was born about 1843, and was just a few years younger than James. They had one known child, a daughter Elizabeth, born about 1867, probably in August.12 In 1870 James, Jennie and Elizabeth were living a few houses away from James’ brother Ezekiel, his wife Ellen and their young sons Samuel and Ezekiel, surrounded by other Irish immigrants in Philadelphia’s rough-and-tumble 4^th ward.13 The 4^th ward was just south of the 5^th ward, “Bloody 5th”, and probably shared its character. “Poor newcomers to the Fifth Ward lived in and amid crowded streets and alleys, apartments, taprooms, cheap rooming houses, warehouses, and small stores. In this increasingly marginalized district, murder and prostitution became chronic, and law enforcement nonexistent.”14 On Election Day 1871 riots spread through both wards as Irish clashed with African Americans and police over the blacks’ right to vote.15 Brick-throwing Irish mobs erupted on Election Day 1871, causing deaths and injuries among blacks attempting to vote. The Irish were led by their “ward boss”, William McMullen, who controlled the 4^th ward for almost fifty years.16 McMullen was “certainly behind much of what happened in the Fourth Ward…. He was the key to the riot.”17 After that incident, political deals kept the wards quiet on election days.18 Unemployment made it easy to exploit discontent. “Irish males carried bricks, portered goods, and produced textiles and clothing, while women worked largely as housekeepers and maids. Employment was at best sporadic, too frequently leaving Irish males out of work and in the streets.”19

James and Jennie had only the daughter Elizabeth, before Jennie’s death in August 1875.20 She was 32 years old, buried at Mt Moriah, a large non-sectarian cemetery along Cobbs Creek in southwestern Philadelphia.21 James remarried on October 10, 1877, at the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.22 His wife was Mary Maxwell. She was 28 years old, and born in Bath, New York.23 This was an unlikely match. Bath is in Steuben County, upstate New York, largely rural and agricultural in the 1800s. It was not a core destination for Irish immigration, yet in the 1850 census, there was a cluster of Scots-Irish families living near the family of James and Sarah Maxwell, possible parents of Mary.24

In 1880, when the census was taken, James and Mary were living on Federal Street.25 This was south of his old location in the 4^th ward. Elizabeth was not living with them. She was a resident in a school on the corner of 39^th and Pine, the Immaculate Conception School run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.26 In 1880 the school housed girls between the ages of seven and twenty-two; it must have served as an orphanage as well as a school, although the girls were taught housekeeping, sewing, and a “good English education”, presumably reading, writing and arithmetic.27 Elizabeth was 14 years old, and probably stayed in the school until she was 17 or so, or old enough to find a job as a domestic servant or similar occupation. There is no way to know whether she had any contact with her father or stepmother during this time.

James and Mary had a daughter Sarah, born on September 20, 1878.28 She is probably the same as the daughter Asseth listed in the 1880 census, age one. There are no further records of her, suggesting that she died young. At the time infant mortality was high. In 1880 an infant in Philadelphia had a one in six chance of dying before its first birthday.29 This rate was probably higher for poor Irish families such as the Scotts. James’ brother Samuel and his wife Sallie buried at least six of their children, most of them less than a year old. Mothers sometimes stopped breastfeeding early and fed their children bottled milk, which was often adulterated, infected with bacteria, or taken from tubercular cows. The city distributed forty thousand copies of a circular urging mothers to breastfeed their babies longer, especially through the summer months when the milk supply was more at risk due to the lack of refrigeration, but more babies still died in the summer until the early 1920s.30

In January 1882 James and Mary had another child, named Fannie.31 Like her half-sister Elizabeth, she would survive to marry. In February 1885 Mary died at age 39.32 She was buried at Mt Moriah, like Jennie ten years before her. Her death left James with little Fannie, just three years old, and Elizabeth, who was by then 17 years old. Instead of bringing Elizabeth back to keep house for him James remarried, for the third and final time around 1886.33  His wife was Martha Maxwell, probably the younger sister of his second wife Mary.34 They lived on Federal Street, where they owned the house. James worked as a contractor, still part of Scott Brothers. James and Martha had two children together, James F. and Cora Ferguson.35 Little James was stillborn in February 1888 and buried at Mt Moriah.36 Cora, born in December 1891, would live to marry, the only one of James’ five known children to outlive him. In 1900 James and Martha were still on Federal Street, with Fanny and Cora, as well as a housekeeper Sarah Mason, a widowed cousin.37 By 1910 they had moved north to the Oak Lane neighborhood of north Philadelphia, probably a step up in living conditions.38 In 1912 they were received at the Oak Lane Presbyterian Church, from the Third Presbyterian Church where they were already members.39

In 1911 when Fannie was 29, she made an unusual marriage to a fellow member of the Oak Lane Church, but someone of a different social background.40 John Mahn Thissell had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was on the chess club and the championship bowling team.41 He had both a Bachelor’s and a Law degree and was set to practice law. He and Fannie were married for just three years. She gave birth to their son, John M. Thissell Jr, in October 1914, but she died soon after, from complications of the birth, and the baby died the next month at the age of five weeks.42

The following year Cora married Philip Guckes, probably at Oak Lane Church.43 This was another unexpected marriage for the Scott daughters. Philip was a grandson of Philip Guckes of the International Brewing Company, who built a brewery on School House Lane, produced 2,000 gallons of ale in 1870, lost the brewery to fire in 1881, and lost everything in a sheriff’s sale in 1883.44 Cora and Philip moved to Montgomery County, where they had two sons, Philip and James Ferguson. Cora died in 1965; Philip died in 1974.45

In October 1916, James Scott died, at age 76. He was buried at Mt Moriah, the preferred burial place for his immediate family.46 He had outlived three of his brothers, two of his wives, and most sadly, four of his children.47 After his death Martha lived with Cora and Philip in Montgomery County, until her death in 1928.48 The funeral was held at her home church of Oak Lane Presbyterian.49