The Beveridge Family and The Carluke Gazette

On 11th July, 1867, Andrew Beveridge married Hannah Dixon Clugston at 365 Bath Street, Glasgow. He was a 35 year old compositor foreman and she was a 26 year old spinster living with her widowed father, James, a bookkeeper.
Four years later, the couple had moved to Carluke and were living in Market Place in a house with two rooms with windows according to the census taken in 1871. It is interesting to note that this dwelling was considered large enough also to house their daughter, Agnes, aged 3, Hannah’s 19 year old sister, Agnes, and a 14 year old domestic servant called Margaret. The census tells us that Andrew Beveridge was now a printer, wholesale and retail stationer, bookseller and newsagent employing one boy.

Two more girls were added to the family when Elizabeth Drummond Beveridge was born in 1873 and then Hannah Andrew in 1875. However 1875 turned out to be a tragic year for the Beveridge family. On 4th February at 4.15am, their first child, Agnes, now age 6, died of croup. Eight days later, Elizabeth also died of croup. She was only eighteen months old. [probably croup from viral diptheria] Both girls were interred at Tullibody Churchyard in Clackmannanshire. This was probably because their father, Andrew, had been born in Alloa.

The couple’s first son, Andrew, was born in 1877. He was followed by James Alexander in 1879 and Elizabeth Clydesdale in 1881, the year of the next national census. The family were now living in High Street. As their neighbours were the family of William Gegg, a publican, it would seem that they were now living in the what we know today as the Gazette Office building with the Geggs probably in the Wee Thackit. They still had a domestic servant who was now Catherine Webster, born in Airdrie.

Ten years later, the family is alive and well at the same address. By now father, Andrew is 59 and he is still printing. However, on 27th December, 1892, he died of acute bronchitis and was buried in the newer part of the old Carluke Cemetery. This Andrew Beveridge obviously cannot then be the founder of the Gazette which did not begin until five years later in 1906!

Andrew, his elder son, was only 14 when his father died but at the next census in 1901, he is described as a 23 year old printer and stationer. Who ran the business after the father’s death cannot be found out from the official records. Perhaps Mrs Beveridge carried on and Andrew left school at 14 to help, eventually taking over when he became of age. Whatever did happen in the years from 1892 to 1906, the Beveridge printing business carried on.

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