Mollie, Countess Russell

ueries MOLLIE, COUNTESS RUSSELL Ian Watson Sociology / Rutgers U. Pósthólf 451, 121 Reykjavík, Iceland ian.watson@post.harvard.edu arion (Mollie) Cooke was born in Ireland about 1857–58, the Mdaughter of George Cooke, master shoemaker, and Mary Mitchell. She may have been born at Brackernagh, Ballinasloe (east of Galway) where her father once lived. Her father had moved to Logan Place, Cumbernauld (near Stirling), Scotland by 1889 and died there 6 November 1891. Mollie had a brother John, living in 1891 in Dublin, and a sister Ellen. She married her first husband, my great-grandfather James Watson, on 28 February 1881 in Glasgow, Scotland. He was born in Dundee, Scotland on 8 June 1851. He had attended the Albert Agricultural Training Establishment in Dublin in 1874–75, and several of his siblings also had close Irish connections. His father, also James Watson, was for many years treasurer of the Dundee Harbour Trust. James and Mollie had a son Stanley James Watson, born 3 April 1881 in Glasgow. The marriage broke down when James Watson’s interest in spiritualism (not shared by Mollie, but more mainstream at the time than it would be today) led him to join a utopian spiritualist community called “Shalam” which was forming near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He left for America on 3 October 1884, without Mollie. From Mollie’s testimony in the divorce proceedings, it appears that it was left unsettled whether he intended to send for her later; in any case, he did not. There are many books and articles about the colony, which was headed by a New York dentist named John B. Newbrough, and which, like many such communities , soon broke up. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 23 (summer 2003): 65–8 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631 66 Queries In 1888, by then living in Aberdeen, Scotland with their son, Mollie filed for divorce, which was granted the following year. On 30 June 1889 in Chicago, James Watson married Nellie Florence Jones, who had also been a member of the Shalam colony. They moved to Los Angeles, where they had two children, the eldest being my grandfather James M. Watson. They were divorced in Los Angeles in 1903. James Watson died at his son’s home in Los Angeles on 12 April 1935. On 23 July 1889 in Aberdeen, Mollie married George John Somerville , an electrician. Their son John Alec Somerville was born in Aberdeen on 29 September 1889, and their son George Cooke Somerville on 19 July 1890. At this point the family disappears from Scottish records, and it seems likely that they moved to England around this time. George Santayana describes Mollie in his memoirs Persons and Places as “a fat, florid, coarse Irishwoman of forty [in 1895], with black curls, friendly manners and emotional opinions; a political agitator and reformer”: Mollie was a good soul. I think it was a relief to her to give up her politics and “social work”; she retained only a natural motherly kindness to servants and to village children, and to me also, for which I was grateful. She knew what poverty was, and didn’t overdo acting the grand lady; remained simple and active, and ready, as it were, to relapse at any moment into her native paddydom without much minding it. She had been an orphan or a foundling, picked up and adopted by a small Irish official or tradesman, who married her later; and she had a grown-up son who bore his name. The old man had died, and now she had two small boys by a second husband, who had brought her to live in London and introduced her to politics and social reform. In those circles she had caught sight of Russell, and Cupid had done the rest.1 I have not tried to find the record of Mollie’s divorce from George John Somerville. He is likely the George J. Somerville, electrical engineer , age 50, born in Scotland, living alone at 23 Calthorpe Street, St. Pancras, London, in the 1901 census. By the late 1890s Mollie was living near London where she met...

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