Douglas Bruce helped me fix an error with daughter Bathia’s death year and also managed to bring her alive by providing fascinating details of her life and connection with his Bruce family ancestors:

I was asked by my cousin in Fraserburgh to see what I could find out about Bathia Mutch who looked after the children in the Bruce household in Fraserburgh after about 1905.

She looked after the youngest children, including my uncle Ernest, and Bathia was an important and much loved member of the Bruce household from 1905 to ~ 1920. My cousin in Fraserburgh also remembers her mother regularly visiting Bathia in Strichen when she was visiting her oldest sister in a house called “Windrush” also in Strichen. My cousin also remembers that Bathia shared a house with members of the Tarras family who may have been a branch of the Andrew Tarras family in Fraserburgh. He was a writer and also Town Clerk, his son James Wallace Tarras was also a journalist who I believe owned the Fraserburgh Times in its early days.

Bathia Mutch married a Wm Will on 16th Nov 1899, he was a widower aged 62 and she was a spinster aged 52. One of the witnesses, I found on certificate, was my grandfather Alexander Bruce who next appears as the executor of Wm Will’s estate after his death in 1905. He is stated as having his butcher’s business at 58 Cross Street Fraserburgh,which was correct.

Joseph Mutch, Bathia’s father, was born in Lonmay although he farmed in and around Tyrie. The Bruce origins are St Combs/Lonmay so it is not beyond reason that Mutch and Bruce family members knew each other.

I really appreciate you taking the time and effort to fix Bathia’s story Douglas