Introduction / Margaret Gray and Thomas Reid / William Reid and Janet Wards / Margaret Reid and Andrew James Wilson

Andrew James Wilson

Andrew was born the 6th of April 1859 at Taing Farm, on the small Shetland Island of Fair Isle (half way between Orkney and the Shetland Mainland), where his family had lived for many generations. His parents, Andrew Wilson and Barbara Wilson, were first cousins as their fathers were brothers. Like most residents of Fair Isle, the senior Andrew earned his living from a combination of fishing and crofting. During this period of young Andrew's childhood, life on Fair Isle was becoming much more difficult for the tenant farmers. Farmland available for each croft was getting smaller as it was divided among more men. The price of the fish controlled by the landlord was very low. Consequently, incomes earned by the residents, despite being derived from two or three sources, including knitting of hosiery done by the women, was not sufficient to allow the tenants to pay their rents. Over the years several Fair Isle families had emigrated to Orkney and more distant locations. In the late 1860s the senior Andrew's brother Thomas had been one of the first Wilsons to leave, moving to Kirkwall on the Orkney mainland. In the late 1870s Andrew and Barbara followed with their family. By the 1881 census, young Andrew was a 21-year old shopman at a grocery store and he was living with his parents and three sisters at 54 Victoria Street, Kirkwall.