Maclean Family Tree
Children of 
William Maclean
and 
Clara Hogg

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Alan Douglas Maclean

Born in 1888 in West Hartlepool, the youngest child of William Maclean. In around 1910 he married Elizabeth Braithwaite Grainger, known as Lizzie or Kitty. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Jane Braithwaite and Barton Grainger, a prominent and rather colourful Hartlepool citizen. A butcher by trade, he was also involved in local property and politics. He and Thomas English Pyman II were on Hartlepool's first town council. Granger married three times, and outlived each of his wives. (By odd coincidence, his third wife Jane Clark was also a relative on the other side of my family, and as a result has the distinction of being great-great-aunt to both my grandfather and my grandmother!)

Soon after their marriage, Alan and Kitty moved to Jesmond in Newcastle, and appear in the 1911 Census as boarders with the Symons family. Alan is described as an electrical engineering student. They are joined by the first of two daughters, Kitty Pera Maclean (b 1910), later to be followed by Clara (or Clare) Imogen Maclean (b 1912). (Kitty's unusual middle name Pera was chosen in honour of her aunt Mabel Pera Maclean).

Subsequently, Alan became an engineer for a petroleum company. Certainly, he and Lizzie appear to have been frequent travellers. In June 1926, Mr & Mrs Alan Douglas Maclean were First Class passengers on the Johan De Witt steamship bound for Genoa. The following July they were accompanied, again in First Class, by their daughters on the steamship Highland Laddie, bound for Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. In the ship's register their address was listed as The Bungalow, Marsh Lane, Fawley, Hants. The following year, Alan & Kitty were en route for Gibraltar. By 1936 they were resident at 71 Latymer Court, Hammersmith in London. But in May of that year, they and daughter Clare boarded the steamship Costa Rica bound for Trinidad, with the intention of settling there. They returned at a later date. 

Apparently Lizzie's nieces in West Hartlepool always looked forward to her visits, because she came swathed in expensive furs and in a large car, although this was usually parked well away from the house. Alan died in Kilburn, West London in 1955. Lizzie in Bexhill On Sea in 1977. Their daughter Kitty Pera Maclean married David Luke Vernon Hanson in 1932. (Thanks to Vicky Tomlinson for these details).

Alan obviously had other interests as well. In November 1927, he filed a patent for the invention of improvements to the apparatus used to pull the artificial hare traditionally used as a lure in dog racing. Perhaps it was Alan's familiarity with dog racing rather than his career in the oil industry that paid for Lizzie's expensive furs and large car...

 

 

 

  Do you have any further information on any of the other people mentioned on this page? Please contact me at simon@tesler.co.uk. My full family tree, which contains almost 5000 individuals, is posted at GenesReunited and Ancestry. Contact me for access.