Elizabeth Ramsay

Elizabeth Ramsay was born in Glasgow circa 1837, the daughter of a blacksmith, Lucis Ramsay, and Susan Williams. In 1854, as a domestic servant age 17, she left Dublin and embarked on Marion at Liverpool, arriving in Adelaide in December that year. Also on board were Margaret Ramsay, domestic servant age 19, Thomas Ramsay, a carpenter from Fife and his wife Janet age 18. We do not know if they were related, but Margaret may have been her sister.
Elizabeth spent two years in South Australia before coming to Melbourne where she lived for a while in a tent on the banks of the Yarra.
She married Charles William Vail in 1857 when he was working as a tailor in Collingwood. They had two sons, the second one dying when he was only eleven months old.
Elizabeth was widowed in 1888. By this time her son had married and had a growing family. She is listed in 1895 Trades directory as a greengrocer at Glenferry road in Malvern, where the family had their tailoring business.
In 1898 Elizabeth remarried. Her second husband William Knight Vail, was also a tailor and probably a cousin of Charles. His father, also WKV and a tailor, died in 1826 in Kent, soon after he was born. His wife had died three years earlier and his three children had also predeceased him. It may have been a marriage of convenience if they were living in the same house. William died three years later and was buried with Elizabeth's family at St Kilda cemetery.
When her daughter-in-law died in childbirth in 1899, her son Luke disappeared and Elizabeth raised the children with the help of her eldest granddaughter Elizabeth, who married in 1912. In later years of her life she lived in Caulfield with her other granddaughter Amy who married in 1918.
There was no record of the second marriage on her death certificate or tombstone when she died in 1921.

This unlabelled photo may be of Elizabeth, with granddaughter Amy Vail [just guessing at this stage]