I don't know what made me randomly click on one entry of a Helen Gilmour who died in Aberdeenshire, but it was her. As far as I know we had no Aberdeenshire connections, but who knows....
Nellie died in 1917 three weeks before her 32nd birthday. She died in Kingseat Asylum, Newmachar, Aberdeenshire. Cause of death: Exhaustion from acute resistive Melancholia over 7 years.
I only had snippets of information from my mother. I don't think she knew anything about Nellie's death. My grandmother had told her that Nellie never got over the death of their mother when my grandmother was 11 and Nellie 9 years old, and that Nellie was "delicate".
Their father married within a year of my great-grandmother's death, a much younger woman, and by all accounts she was a bit of a dragon. There were four more children born after the second marriage, only two survived, and their mother was very possessive of them. But I gather relations between her and her step-children were not too good.
Obviously I would like to know more about Nellie of whom I have so often thought about since my childhood. I have a silver brooch with her name on it, inherited from my mother. I may never know why Nellie spent the last years of her life so far from home in Aberdeenshire, rather in a mental institute in Glasgow, poor lass. Or why she went into an asylum at all. It appears to have happened after my grandmother married and left home, and she was very protective of her younger sister. Nellie would have been about 23. By then the older siblings had left home.
But I'm blethering too much.
I am wondering if there is a way of accessing the records from Kingseat Asylum in Aberdeenshire. Who I would contact. I live in the Central Belt, over 100 miles from Aberdeenshire and with health and mobility problems would be unable to travel there to access archives.
I had a quick look through the online Aberdeenshire MI names but no Gilmour. I doubt if Nellie had a headstone, but wonder if there was a graveyard at Newmachar, or where the nearest one would have been. Also what records there might be pertaining to the burial.
If anyone can offer guidance I would be most grateful.
Late last night I subscribed to the Rootsweb Aberdeen mailing list but have not yet been there.
Thanks for listening.
elizaga