Margaretta GILLESPIE (née ROWLANDS) (1853-1926)

Margaretta Gillespie, née Rowlands (1853-1926), was the aunt of Mary Christabel Williams who married Arthur Sladden in April 1914.

Margaretta Rowlands was born in 1853 at Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, the eldest of seven children of Daniel Rowlands, an Excise Officer, and his wife, Sarah Jane.  By the late 1850s they had moved to Cardigan.  At the time of the 1861 census they lived at 10 Pendre Street, Cardigan.

Margaretta married Washington Gillespie, a master mariner, in 1876 at Cardigan.  They had one son, Henry Rowlands born in 1877, who sadly died in 1899, lost overboard from SS Burdon off Lisbon.  Margaretta’s husband, Washington, died in 1901 at Karonga, Malawi.

Margaretta lived at Glyncoed, Priory Street, Cardigan, for the rest of her life, dying there on 24th December 1926, aged 73.