Ann's infancy

I don't have any additional information about Ann to add other than what I gave you in her mother and father's biographies. She was probably conceived in April, 1853 in Fredericton, shortly after John Baxter Wighton and Catherine Latta wed in March. She was probably born in February 1854, again in Fredericton where John's regiment was stationed.

We're on firmer ground on what happened next. Five or six months after Ann was born, John's tour of duty in Canada came to an end and his regiment sailed for Limerick, Ireland where it arrived on October 24, 1854. The regiment was slated to be transferred to Malta soon afterwards, and given Ann's young age (6 months), it appears likely that John and Catherine decided that it would be better for Catherine and Ann to stay in Dundee with John's parents. Catherine would have travelled from Ireland to Dundee, perhaps arriving in December, 1854.

Ann died February 16th, 1855 at Overgate, the address of Catherine's in-laws. Her father-in-law, John Wighton, (the shoemaker), provided the entry for the death certificate. Little Ann died of consumption, the name that was being used at the time for Tuberculosis. It was called consumption because it seemed to consume people from within, with a bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting. Tuberculosis is infectious, so Ann must have come into contact with someone with TB, probably some time after arriving in Ireland. Ann was buried in Old Howff Cemetery, Dundee. The name Ann was an unlucky choice for the Wightons; another Ann Wighton (sister of John Baxter Wighton) died at an early age of tuberculosis in 1834.

Sources

A 1971 report commissioned from the Scots Ancestry Research Society by John Latta Wighton and Ella Peterson on the paternal ancestry of Harry Latta Wighton

Letter from the Public Record Office, London (the depository of UK army records). This letter described John Baxter Wighton's service record, medals, promotions, transfers, and discharge.

Various websites, including:

Historical Record of the 72nd Foot Regiment, or the Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders, 1778-1848. http://ia311524.us.archive.org/0/items/recordofseventys00canniala/recordofseventys00canniala.pdf

Howff Cemetery Records: http://www.fdca.org.uk/HowffInitW.pdf

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/72nd_Regiment_of_Foot

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