Quixotic – “preoccupied with an unrealistically optimistic or chivalrous approach to life; impractically idealistic” – a fair word to describe William M Groundwater, my great great uncle?

Don Quixote -source of the adjective ‘quixotic’

William Moncrieff Groundwater was born on 11 March 1849 in Orphir, Orkney, first child of John Groundwater and Williamina Moncrieff, and died on 16 October 1936 at Cruan Cottage, Firth, Orkney. That seems quite ordinary, but it’s some of his actions and claims that make me want to describe him as “quixotic”.

Quixotic or not?

I’m still researching him but here are a few examples that may justify my description:

• Horace Ossian Ritch Groundwater – the name of his first son, born in 1876 in Salford, Lancashire. Ritch was his mother’s maiden name, an Orkney surname, so not unusual for me. But Horace Ossian?? Poor lad died at Spion Kop, 1900, in the Boer War.
• “Tailor’s shopman, Freethought lect[ure]r, L.L.D (W.S.)” – his occupation in the 1881 census (Greengate, Salford, Lancashire. ED 1 p 14). LL.D is usually a Doctor of Laws; WS a writer to the signet, a Scottish legal office. Combined, they were postnominals for top lawyers, not our man. In later censuses he was a rather more ordinary music seller (1891), tailor’s shop assistant (1901), master tailor (1911).
• ‘one of the original Glasgow Rangers footballers’ (Portsmouth Evening News 11 March 1929). He was recorded in Glasgow in the 1871 census, Glasgow Rangers started in 1872, however William married Eliza Ritch in Salford in the second half of 1875. Update (Aug 2018): he was definitely not in the first team but could have played for the second or third teams (no records survive for them).
• ‘Britain’s oldest working tailor’ – the headline from the People’s Jourmal, 15 March 1930, when William claimed to be 101! He was in Pendlebury, Manchester then. Variants on this claim to be over 100 appeared in various newspapers over the next years. In 1932 he retired reputedly aged 103 (Aberdeen Press & Journal, 20 July 1932). Family dismissed this however: “Och, that wisna right. He wis only aboot 90″, said my great grandmother, his sister. Newspapers picked up on that too. ‘Death after a walk, man who claimed to be 107” (Gloucestershire Echo, 17 October 1936) “it is thought locally that his age was about ninety”.

The verdict

Did he even believe all the hype about his age?

The Scotsman, 12 March 1935 (British Newspapers, www.findmypast.co.uk)

Maybe a sad rather than quixotic man by the end of his life as his wife and their three children, Horace, Eliza and William, all died before him.