Son of Alexander Anderson (6). b.1808 d.1884 and Mary Gavin b.1806 d. 1864 aged 57, the third of eleven children of Dr Alexander Gavin, R.N., medical practitioner at Strichen, naval surgeon on H.M. Frigate "Arrow". More information
Married in 1872 Gabrielle Coudron of France b.1850 d.1929 aged 79 [pictures], daughter of Amédée Coudron [picture].
They had the following children:
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M i Cecil Ford b.1872 d.1946 [picture] . Royal Engineers, built the railway up the Khyber Pass.
Married [picture] in 1910 Maud Alice Bellingham, daughter of Major Sydney Edwin Bellingham, Middlesex Regiment. They had the following children:
Alan Ford b.1910;
Eric Ronald Ford b.1919 [picture].F ii Eliane Gabrielle Ford b.1875 at Belsize Park, London d.1964 at Worthing, Sussex, known as 'Aunt Lulla'.
Married 15 September 1908 at St Peter's Church, Hampstead Frederick Bovet b.4 September 1878 at 3 Victoria Street, London SW d.1956 at Worthing, Sussex.F iii Marion Gabrielle Ford b.1879 unmarried [pictures]. Known to me as 'Aunt Mingo'.
M iv Lieutenant-Commander John "Jack" Frances Ford RN b.1882 d.1939 unmarried [pictures]. Retired 1914 but came out of retirement to become a Captain in Inland Transport during WWI. F v Norah Ford. b.1891, who married in 1918 Ronald Brymer Beckett.
John Ford Anderson was LRCS Edinburgh 1861. MD Aberdeen1863. MRCP London 1926
at the age of 86. After leaving Edinburgh he was resident physician Middlesex
Hospital. London 1863-64 and studied in Paris and Vienna. He served in the Red
Cross with the German army in the Franco-Prussian war 1870-1 when he met his
wife. He then took a practice in Hampstead, London from which he retired in
1925. Chairman Hampstead Division of BMA for several years. President, Metropolitan
Counties Branch BMA 1904-5. In addition to his other work, he held charge of
St Marylebone Workhouse during two years of the First World War, operating several
times under fire during air raids.
Gabrielle Coudron John Ford met during the siege of Paris September 19, 1870
– January 28, 1871, where John Ford worked for the Red Cross. Gabrielle always
told her children to eat what was on their plate as much of Paris had starved
during the siege. The story went that only men who performed guard duty patrolling
the city walls would receive a bread ration, and this went very badly on those
with families. One night John Ford let a man with children take his place so
he could have the bread ration for his family, and that very night the man was
shot while patrolling.
Gabrielle's mother (the Anderson family tree gives her name as Amédée
Coudron but Elisabeth Beckett called her Cécile) was supposed to have
been a 'warming pan baby' of the King of France, who needed a male heir. She
was therefore exchanged for an acceptable boy child and brought up by her supposed
mother, whose miniature is shown below.
Amédée Coudron
Dr JOHN FORD ANDERSON ( 1840 - 1933 )
Distinguished Son of Boyndie Manse
by
DR ALEXANDER A. CORMACK
His great grandfather was Alexander Anderson, medical practitioner, Jamaica Street, Peterhead, 6ft 3in in height, 23 stones in weight, known as Nosey by reason of a prominent feature - who, having served as surgeon on board the flagship of Admiral John Ford, called his son John Ford Anderson.
His grand-father, John Ford Anderson, 1784-1812, M.A., Marischal College, 1802, at age 18, M.D., medical practitioner in Peterhead, died tragically at age 28 of typhus, a scourge of Europe in those days. In the old churchyard of Peterhead I found his grave, covered by a lovely polished red granite stone inscribed: "To the beloved memory of John Ford Anderson, M.D., who died of fever, 27th April 1812, aged 28. His wife, Margaret Skelton died 9th December 1876, aged 86". erected by their children, Alexander, of Chanonry, Old Aberdeen; Mary, wife of Andrew Murray, advocate, Aberdeen; James, shipowner, London; Joan Ford, wife of James Yuill, minister of the Free Church, Peterhead.
The Skeltons of Invernettie were shipowners in Peterhead, where in 1961 you will still find a Skelton Street. Of the four orphan children, Alexander became minister of Boyndie 1830-1843; James was a cofounder of the Orient Shipping Company, and proprietor of Hilton and Middlefield estates, Aberdeen (a fine investment for feuing); a granddaughter of Joan, daughter of George Skelton Yuill, shipowner, became Countess of Portarlington.
We note that with better housing, better sanitation, clean water and clean food, medical science has conquered cholera, typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis and to some extent venereal diseases. Because Civil Registration began in Scotland only on lst January 1855, we have no records of deaths caused by those virulent diseases. But in Fraserburgh I found there was in 1866 a very high deathrate from Asiatic Cholera, an epidemic intestinal disease; of 57 deaths registered from 21st July to 14th October, 44 were due to cholera. Buckpool had a small cottage cholera hospital for incoming sailors. Banffshire used to keep a portable isolation hospital for infectious diseases. The small isolation hospitals in Braemar, Ballater, Forgue, etc., are now used to house district nurses. The Aberdeen City Fever Hospital, opened in 1877, to replace temporary hospital huts on the links, is now serving in 1961 as a General Hospital, mostly for the aged, like the Campbell Hospital at Portsoy. So too the small rural gifted hospital with half a dozen mixed beds, ill-equipped by modem standards, and expensive to staff night and day, is giving way slowly to the larger well-equipped hospital, with modern ambulances at the ready, and helicopters in the near future.
In exactly the same way, small schools cannot give their pupils a modern standard of education. With both nurses and teachers very scarce, we must change our outlook.
John Ford Anderson, M.D., who died of typhus at the age of 28 in 1812, would not have so died in 1961. His widow with her four very young cliildren went to St Andrews to serve as housekeeper to her oncle, Rev. Francis Nicoll, D.D., brother of her mother and Principal of St Andrew's University, son of a merchant in Lossiemouth, M.A. King's College, Aberdeen, 1789.
The older son, Alexander, was sent early life to work in an Edinburgh law office. Meeting in Edinburgh, James A. Haldane, ex-naval officer and minister of a Baptist Church, he returned to St Andrews to study Arts and Divinity. There he came under the influence of Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., professor of Moral Philosophy, who in 1843 became the first Moderator of the Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1826 at age of 18, he graduated M.A., brilliantly, and in 1830 when not quite 22, he was presented to the parish of Boyndie by the earl of Seafield, patron of the parish, in whose family (Sir James Grant of Grant, Bart.) his grand uncle, Principal Nicoll, had served as a family tutor. He had been licensed as competent by the Church of Scotland Presbytery of Deer, which included his native parish of Peterhead. Up till 1874, when patronage was abolished with financial compensation to patrons for loss of privileges, a parish church congregation did not elect its ministers.
It was the parish patron who selected a safe man of his own political and social persuasion, whom he expected to support his own private views at all times. In this case the Earl of Seafield caught a Tartar, who led the Disruption Revolt in Banffshire in 1843. Himself descended from a naval surgeon, Alexander Anderson, minister of Boyndie married Mary Gavin (1806-1864), the third of eleven children of Dr Alexander Gavin, R.N., medical practitioner at Strichen, naval surgeon on H.M. Frigate "Arrow".
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John Ford Anderson (2) b.1840 d.1933 and Gabrielle Coudron d.1929 aged 79
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Taken at Olive Galsworthy's house just before the radio broadcast by J.F.A.
From left: Unknown lady, Mr Galsworthy, Olive Galsworthy, John Ford Anderson, ? Milne, with Marion Anderson standing at the back.
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John Ford Anderson with Auckland and Belle Geddes
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Gabrielle Coudron d.1929 aged 79
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Gabrielle Coudron d.1929 aged 79
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Cecil Ford Anderson b.1872 d.1946
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Cecil Ford Anderson b.1872 d.1946 and Maud Alice Bellingham on their weddng day. Marion Ford Anderson is second from the left.
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Cecil Ford Anderson b.1872 d.1946 and Maud Alice Bellingham with their children Eric Ronald Ford Anderson b.1919 and Alan Ford Anderson b.1910
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Cecil Ford Anderson, Mrs Bellingham, Gela, Maud holding Robin, Alan Anderson.
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Eliane Gabrielle Ford Anderson b.1875
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Marion Gabrielle Ford Anderson b.1879 Maggie
Smith, Cecily Booth, Marion Anderson, Henrietta Livingstone, 4 schoolchums at
54 Belsize Park
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Left: Mr Cuchullain, Gabrielle Coudron and Marion Ford Anderson outside 41 Belsize Park, the Ford Anderson home, and (right) Robert Bevan's painting of 'A street scene in Belsize', 1917, thought to be the same building.
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Young John "Jack" Frances Ford Anderson b.1882 d.1939
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Lieutenant-Commander John "Jack" Frances Ford Anderson RN b.1882 d.1939
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Norah Ford Anderson b.188 d.19
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Eric Ford Anderson b.1919