No record of Elizabeth Chapman’s birth or baptism can be found but on the evidence of her 1870 marriage certificate, the census records and her 1927 death certificate, she was born in Bathgate Parish c. 1853. In 1861, she was a scholar, aged 8, living at Bridgend, Bathgate, with her parents, elder sister Marion and younger brother Mungo. At the time of her marriage to Peter Stuart Brown on 19th January 1870 in the Parish of Bathgate, Elizabeth Chapman was a spinster aged 17. Elizabeth’s usual residence was entered as Millburn Cottage. She was styled ‘Elizabeth Brown MS Chapman’ on her son George’s 1879 birth certificate. Whether she ever took ‘Stuart Brown’ as a married name is therefore at best ambivalent. ‘Mrs Elizabeth Chapman or Brown’ was named as a trustee and executor, alongside her sons, Henry, Charles and George, in her husband’s 1907 Trust Disposition and Settlement, and accepted office upon his death in 1916. This deed gave her a liferent interest in the testator’s whole estate, so that she was comfortably provided for during the ten-and-a-half years in which she survived him. Elizabeth ‘Stuart-Brown’ MS Chapman died on 11th April 1927, aged 74, at seven o’clock in the morning. The place of her death was Dunavon, Strathaven, although her normal residence was Firenze, 46, Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh. The cause of death was a cerebral haemorrhage. The death was registered at Strathaven by Matthew B. Baird, her son-in-law, who was present. It is probable that Elizabeth was staying with Matthew’s family at the time of her death. (His middle initial stands for ‘Barr’.)

Inventory

The following entry appears in Confirmations & Inventories, 1927 A-L, B 91:

BROWN, Elizabeth Chapman or STUART, Firenze, 46 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh, widow, died 11 April 1927 at Strathaven intestate. Confirmation Edinburgh, 20 June, to Henry James Stuart Brown, Manufacturer, Glasgow, residing at Cathlaw, West Lothian, and Charles Stuart Brown, Manufacturer, Glasgow, residing at Auchengrange, Lochwinnoch, her sons, next of kin. Value of Estate, £24,309: 7: 2.

Brothers and Sisters

Kirkton Old Parish Church, 44, Inch Crescent, Bathgate (Billion Graves)

Elizabeth was the seventh of nine known children. The first four are known from the Bathgate Parish Register:

John was born on 1^st January 1844 and was a scholar aged 7 in the 1851 census; he died on 27^th (25^th according to the gravestone) February 1853, aged 8, of scarletina.

Marion was born on 16^th March 1845 and died on 31^st January 1846, aged ten months, of whooping cough.

Of the first six children of the family, only Marion Waddell Chapman, born in 1846, survived into adulthood. The other five, of whom only John survived infancy, are commemorated on the family gravestone.

The first James was born on 6^th April 1850 and was baptised by the Rev^d. Alex^r. Cuthbert. He died on 26^th October 1850 of an inflammation; he was entered as aged one year but was in fact only a little over six months.

Jessie Chapman, on the evidence of her 1855 death certificate, was born in the High Street, Bathgate, c. August 1854, aged eight months. She died on 15^th April 1855 at 9^h 50^m pm, also in the High Street, Bathgate. The cause of death was certified as bronchitis, from which she had been suffering for five days. She was buried in the Old Church Yard, Bathgate, as certified by John Speirs, Undertaker. The informant on the 23^rd at Bathgate was the child’s father, Mungo Chapman.

Henry Chapman was born in 1856 and died in 1857.

Elizabeth and three siblings were still alive when their father subscribed his Trust Disposition and Deed of Settlement in 1879. In addition to Marion Waddell Chapman, there were two younger brothers, Mungo, born in 1858, who, when appointed as one of three trustees, was ‘presently residing in London’ and a second James, born in 1861, ‘at present residing with me’.

This artist’s impression, presently understood to be of Elizabeth Chapman (left) and her sister Marion in their flat in Morningside, Edinburgh, was executed by Elizabeth’s son, Henry James Stuart Brown.