I have a wonderful photo of my 3x great-grandmother Mary Ritchie nee Joss, which was shared with me by a second cousin. It’s from Mary’s later years, probably taken in the mid to late 1920s, and shows her knitting. I love being able to see this image of her, an ancestor I never met, appearing relaxed and at leisure.

Mary Joss was born in a cottage near Haddo in Scotland’s Banffshire at the beginning of August 1855. She was the fourth of twelve children of James Joss and his wife Helen Addison. When Mary was about sixteen her family moved south for her father to take a job at Sunnyside, outside Montrose.

Mary worked in Arbroath as a domestic servant, then at 23 she married William Ritchie. After raising their five children including my 2x great-grandfather David, in St Vigeans, Inverkeillor and Thornton, Mary and her husband returned to Hillside, with some of their children and an adopted son. They settled there in 1902 and William opened his own business.

Mary and William were were well known and active in the Hillside community over the following couple of decades. In February 1929, they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Just a few months later, in June 1929, Mary died of ovarian cancer in Edinburgh’s Queen Mary Nursing Home. She was 73.