Nurture - John R Scott and Eliza J Campbell

For this week I’m going to write about the family that took my great-great grandmother, Margaret Douglas Scott in after both her parents died young. This is a continuation of last week’s post which told the story of Margaret’s biological parents.

Eliza Jane Campbell Soctt

John R Scott

John R Scott was the first cousin of Margaret’s father John Stewart Scott. They were both grandsons of Alexander Scott, who had moved with his family from Pennsylvania to West Virginia. John R Scott’s parents were William Scott and Nancy Chambers. They lived out their lives in Hancock County and when William died in 1859 he left his land to John on the condition that John’s mother be allowed to live with him and that he pay his brothers legacies. John R Scott fought in the Civil war and soon after married Eliza J Campbell in 1864. They had two sons and three daughters together.

               When John’s cousins, Margaret and Sadie Scott, lost both their parents in 1883 John R Scott was the one who took the children in. Margaret was about the same age as John’s other children and he took her in to his own house. Sadie was younger and John found a relative of his wife’s, Intrepid Young, who lived nearby to care for her. Margaret was part of John’s family for nine years and she developed close relationships with John’s daughters, especially Jeannette, who was two years her senior. In 1892, two days after Christmas, Margaret was married in John R Scott’s home to Cyrus Alexander Ewing. Her third family was to be Cyrus’s large and affectionate Ewing Clan, but that is a subject for another post.

               John R Scott lived to an old age in Hancock County, dying in 1918. He was buried with military honors across the river in Pennsylvania where his daughter, Martha, who died as a young mother, had been buried some years before. Margaret continued her close relationships with John’s children and as did her daughter with John’s grandchildren.

Sadie and Margaret Scott