The maiden surname of Alexander Fleming’s mother, Grace Stirling, was Morton.
Grace Morton married Hugh Fleming, a farmer at Lochfield in Ayrshire, Scotland. After their marriage she was commonly identified as Grace Fleming; fuller biographical accounts give her name as Grace Stirling Morton. Alexander was the third of their four children and was born in 1881.
Fleming’s father had four surviving children from an earlier marriage, so Alexander grew up in a large blended family. Hugh Fleming died when Alexander was seven, leaving Grace to help manage the family and farm. This rural Ayrshire upbringing is often linked to Fleming’s keen powers of observation.
A common mix-up is confusing Morton with Stirling. Stirling appears in Grace’s full name, but Morton is the family surname by which she is identified in biographies as Hugh Fleming’s second wife. Alexander later became famous for discovering penicillin at St Mary’s Hospital in London in 1928.