Partner Mairi Chisholm
Queer Places:
Rhysnant Hall, Four Crosses, Llanymynech SY22 6RB
Cnoc an Fhurain, A828, Rhugarbh, Barcaldine in Argyll
Edith May Davidson (born June 2, 1892) was a British farmer.
Edith May Davidson was born at Rhysnant Hall, near Oswestry, on June 2, 1892, the only daughter of Captain Hugh Davidson (1857-1910), 6th of Cantray, and Harriet or Harriette King Hugonin, fifth daughter of Roderick Hugonin of Kinmylies. Her father had fought in the Afghan campaign of 1886 as adjutant of the 3rd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment before joining the Seaforth Highlanders, where he met Mairi Chisholm's father shortly before May was born. A handsome and eligible bachelor, and heir to thousands of Scottish acres, he had married Harriette, whose father was also a landowner and whose mother was from Nova Scotia.
In April 1910, when May was eighteen, her father died suddenly at home in his early fifties of kidney disease, leaving her two estates amounting to 8,000 acres, heiress to a substantial fortune when she became twenty-one. In the years leading up to the outbreak of WWI, Mrs Davidson was busy gathering intelligence on a suitable husband for her daughter. Mother and daughter were spotted in Nairn in August 1912 for the amateur golf tournament, at the Ross County Ball at the Ben Wyvis Hotel in Strathpeffer in October and at the Second Ball of the Argyllshire Gathering.
Partly on doctors' advice, after WWI, Mairi Chisholm returned to Nairn, where, it was hoped, she would lead a quieter life. There she became a successful poultry breeder with her childhood friend, Edith May Davidson, on the Davidson's family estate. In the 1930s they relocated their business to Jersey.[11]. Her final move was to Cnoc an Fhurain, Rhugarbh, Barcaldine in Argyll where she, May, Catherine Bridget "Bird" Partridge and Grace Barbara "John" Johnstone, ran a poultry farm for decades.
May Davidson sold her lands of Clava in 1926, followed by those of Cantray which were purchased by Captain Oldfield of Coull in 1931, the old mansion house there having previously been entirely destroyed by fire on Saturday October 1, 1921.
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