Charles McClelland was born in Glencraig, Scotland, in 1919 and lived until 2015. His long life carried him from a small mining town in Fife to the coal country of Carbondale, Pennsylvania. His recollections, preserved by his daughter Jean, give us a vivid glimpse of what it meant to grow up in a Scottish mining family, experience Atlantic migration, survive the Depression years, and build a new life in America.
Charles’s story echoes the experience of many Scottish families who crossed the Atlantic in the 1920s. It is a family recollection, but it is also a genealogy story about place, memory, work, hardship, music, faith, and community.
Life in Glencraig, Fife
Glencraig was a company town built around the coal pits of Fife. Families lived in stone row houses, often one room deep, with a fireplace on one side and a bed built into the opposite wall. Charles remembered the mantel where stockings hung at Christmas, the long stool by the fire, and the chickens his father kept in a wire coop out back.
Drinking water came from a rain barrel, and outdoor toilets, or middens, stood behind the row. Life was simple, but the details remained clear in his memory. He also recalled an accident at age three or four, when boiling water from a teapot spilled on his side and left a scar he carried for life. That scar became one of his earliest memories of how quickly ordinary life in a miner’s household could leave a permanent mark.
Childhood Adventures in Scotland
Glencraig was not only about hardship. Children found ways to play, explore, and mark their days with small adventures. Charles remembered going to the cooperative store to bring back items for his mother. He was fascinated by a tiny bottle of liquid coffee. On the main road, a bridge crossed the burn, and hazelnut trees grew along its edges. Children picked the nuts too early and baked them in the oven to harden.
Nearby was a swimming hole where children leapt into cold water and caught small fish in pails before being told to return them to the stream.
The community came alive each summer for Gala Day, which Charles compared to the Highland Games. Soldiers tossed cabers, pipers played, and children danced. Charles and his cousin Douglas Fraser posed for a photograph, one dressed as an Indian and the other as a clown. These celebrations stitched the community together, even as the pits below ground shaped the hard working life of the village.
Charles often visited Edinburgh with his mother, traveling by train and streetcar. He remembered the thrill of seeing the Queen pass by in an open carriage. He also recalled the sight of workers painting the Forth Bridge, a job famously said to take a lifetime. Trips to Lochgelly to see his grandparents were frequent. Their house had a wrought iron fence, homing pigeons, and a greyhound dog.
Other memories were smaller but just as vivid: jelly jars traded with the ragman for chalk to whiten scullery steps, fishmongers pushing barrows with live fish, and neighbors gathering around wireless radios.
Family Ties and Early Schooling
Charles also spent time with his McClelland grandparents, whose house always smelled of soup simmering and potatoes roasting. Sweet peas grew on a trellis out back. Charles kept himself occupied by writing down car license plates from the stoop.
School was strict. He remembered Miss Spike, the teacher who carried the leather strap in her mouth while walking the aisles. Before Charles left Scotland, she gave him a copy of Rob Roy to take to America.
Miners’ strikes disrupted life repeatedly. Soup kitchens provided food, with families lining up for milk and broth. Charles’s father used a motorcycle to support strike activities. The motorcycle was eventually raffled off to pay for his passage to America in 1927.
A year later, Charles, his mother, and siblings followed aboard the Cunard liner Transylvania. He recalled exploring the ship with his cousin Douglas and hiding from adults until mealtimes. Storms kept them below deck, but the excitement of crossing the Atlantic outweighed the fear.
Arriving in Carbondale, Pennsylvania
Charles’s father and uncle met the family at the dock. They likely ferried to Hoboken before catching the Delaware and Hudson train to Carbondale. Their first apartment stood across from the silk mill on Eighth Avenue.
Charles’s first errand ended in confusion when he left an ice cream shop by the wrong door and found himself lost on Main Street. In Carbondale, he quickly earned the nickname “Scotty,” which stayed with him for years.
He remembered his first fishing trip with friend Joe Casper over Salem Mountain, where he caught a 22-inch pickerel. Joe’s family stew, eaten from a communal bowl, introduced him to mushrooms for the first time. In those moments, Carbondale began to feel like home.
Hard Times and Depression Survival
The late 1920s brought brief prosperity, but the Wall Street crash of 1929 pulled everything down. Mines closed, families were forced onto relief, and survival required creativity. Charles remembered entire families picking coal scraps from slag heaps, growing vegetables, and canning fruit.
They baked bread, rolls, bread pudding, and tapioca using government-issued flour. They never went hungry, but no one was overweight either. His father worked in wildcat mines, took WPA jobs, and even washed dishes at tourist camps to keep food on the table.
Music and the Salvation Army Band
At about ten years old, Charles joined the Salvation Army Band. He learned the cornet and played in concerts across eastern Pennsylvania. One highlight was a massed band festival in Brooklyn, New York, where more than a thousand brass players performed under John Philip Sousa. Charles also sang his first solo, “Abide With Me,” at a Salvation Army citadel in Brooklyn. These experiences shaped his lifelong love of music and performance.
By the early 1930s, the family joined the Presbyterian Church, and Charles added choir singing to his music-making. He later studied voice with Leon Bly, conductor of the Wayne County Symphony Orchestra. Music provided both solace and opportunity in an otherwise harsh decade.
Adolescence, Work, and Stability
The family moved often before finally settling at 61 Belmont Street in 1935. Charles’s father found work at Russell’s Dairy. Charles took on odd jobs caring for lawns and delivering groceries before graduating to clerk work at the A&P store.
At high school he attempted bass violin, though the instrument proved too large to lug around. He played in a dance orchestra for a time, then focused on voice lessons and choir singing.
By the late 1930s, Charles left school for an apprenticeship at Hendrick Manufacturing Company, earning 31 cents an hour with raises every six months. For a young man raised through strikes, immigration, and Depression survival, steady wages meant stability.
What Charles McClelland’s Story Preserves
Charles McClelland lived a long life, passing away in 2015 at the age of 96. His memories from Glencraig to Carbondale illustrate one family’s journey, but they also tell the broader story of Scottish immigrants who carried mining skills, cultural traditions, music, faith, and resilience across the Atlantic.
His boyhood scar, strike years, soup kitchens, coal picking, music, apprenticeship, and church life all help show how hardship and joy often lived side by side. Endurance came not from wealth or ease, but from family bonds, cultural traditions, community, and the ability to adapt.
Why Recollections Like This Matter for Genealogy
Charles’s recollections remind us that family history is not only found in official records. It also survives in remembered rooms, nicknames, childhood errands, schoolteachers, songs, scars, migration stories, and the details children noticed before they understood what those details meant.
For family historians, stories like this can point toward passenger lists, school records, church records, city directories, employment histories, local newspapers, and photographs. They also preserve the texture of daily life that documents rarely capture.
Charles’s story stands as a gift to descendants. It links the Scottish coalfields to Pennsylvania’s valleys and keeps one boy’s memories from 1919 Glencraig alive as part of a larger Scottish American heritage.
More Scottish Immigrant and Family History Stories
For more related family history stories, read Discovering Family Ties Through James Slimming’s Photography, Covey and Donlan Family Connection: DNA, Fraser Roots, and a 1944 Easter Photo, Two Coal Fields, One Life: My Father the Miner, and What Motivated My Grandfathers to Move to America?.
Discover more from Irish Scottish Roots
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
