All posts by Andrew

Edinburgh

Edinburgh: A City of Villages

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As Edinburgh has grown organically over the years many small ancient hamlets and villages have become part of the city. Thankfully in many cases, a bit of their original character has been preserved and we can still imagine the original settlement.

Most notable of all is perhaps the royal burgh of Canongate. From the 12th century onwards, the area around the bottom half of the Royal Mile was an independent burgh. It had its own council, burgesses and trade guilds.  It took until 1856 before it was formally fully integrated as part of Edinburgh.  The Canongate Tolbooth shown below (built in 1591) is an impressive reminder of this once powerful burgh.

A well known ‘village’ within Edinburgh today is of course the Dean Village. Renowned as the home of flour mills on the Water of Leith for hundreds of years, the village has now become a much photographed and fashionable part of the city. Some of the former mill buildings and housing for mill workers have been repurposed as can be seen in this photo.

Gary Campbell-Hall from Edinburgh, UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On the Firth of Forth, there is still clear evidence of the ancient fishing villages of Wardie and Newhaven.  The ‘New’ in Newhaven was thus named in 1504 by James IV who needed a harbour suitable for his navy. And on the other side of the city, Swanston Village was beautifully restored in post-war years using traditional materials. It is well worth a visit. Robert Louis Stevenson spent many holidays in the village during his youth.

Swanston cottages by kim traynor, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Even when all vestiges of the original  settlement has gone,the history can live on in the names of the streets and districts.  Little France, where the Royal Infirmary stands today, was the district where French courtiers lived close to Craigmillar Castle in the time of Mary Queen of Scots.  The suburb of Burdiehouse was a corruption of the name Bordeaux House which can be seen on 18th century maps.  There is some doubt however about the origins of this name.

Edinburgh’s seaside village is of course Portobello.  The successful siege of Porto Bello in Central America by Admiral Edward Vernon of the Royal Navy was a notable victory for the nascent British Empire in 1739.  George Hamilton, one of the sailors from that victory returned home and built a small home on the coast which he called Portobello Hut in 1742.  It was not long before other houses grew up around it. The name can be seen on Laurie’s map of 1763. It officially became part of Edinburgh in 1896.

Picardy Place which runs into Queen Street celebrates the home of a group of French cambric weavers who were brought to Scotland to improve the quality of Scotland’s linen exports in the early 18th century.  The village of ‘Pickardy’ appears on a Cooper map of Edinburgh and Leith dated 1759.

Unlike Canongate, the Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh was demolished in 1817. However the location was marked by a mosaic in the shape of a heart in the street cobbles, known as the Heart of Midlothian. This somewhat romantic name gave rise to one of Sir Walter Scott’s major novels in 1818 and of course the football team of the same name in 1874.

Many have written about this aspect of Edinburgh’s past.  If you’d like to learn more then I’d refer you to the 2 volumes of ‘Villages of Edinburgh’ by Malcolm Cant. The story of Canongate is excellently told by E.Patricia Dennison in her ‘Holyrood and Canongate’ book first published by Birlinn in 2005. Also you can check out the ‘Edinburgh Suburbs’ section of https://www.allaboutedinburgh.co.uk/

Dumfries

Eskdale: Not just Beatties and Littles

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Samye Ling Tibetan Monastery, Eskdalemuir

Eskdale in Dumfriesshire is to some, a rather out of the way, insignificant place. However, it’s contribution to humanity has certainly been impressive ; the birthplace of Scots language poet and co-founder of the Scottish National Party Hugh MacDiarmid; the birthplace of arguably Britain’s greatest ever civil engineer Thomas Telford; and the amazing Buddhist centre of Samye Ling which has been attracting a huge range of visitors including major celebrities since its inception in the 1960s.

For those of us interested in family history, it is home to the Beattie and Little families with others like Telfer, Glendinning, Armstrong, Laidlaw and Scott prominent as well. One of the other influences across most of Eskdale are the Buccleuch Estates. The Dukes of Buccleuch have owned a large portion of farms across the four parishes of Langholm, Westerkirk, Eskdalemuir and Ewes for over 400 years. And whatever you think of that form of ownership, we genealogists are grateful for the historical record keeping associated with it. Rentals give us details of farm tenants in particular years and in some cases we get additional information about relatives – mothers, brothers, uncles etc. Buccleuch Estates preferred to support single family succession in many of their farms which means that we often find the same family surname in a farm over a lengthy period. I’ve been able to transcribe a number of rentals for Eskdale farms covering the years of 1714, 1766 and 1814 which in many cases allow us to see family succession over an extended period. If your ancestor was a Buccleuch farm tenant then there’s an excellent chance that you can learn something new about the family from some of these rentals, recorded at a time before decennial censuses were started.

As the title of this piece suggests, there were a considerable number of farm tenants in Eskdale named Beattie or Little. However there are at least 30 other surnames included in the rental documents. These documents are available HERE at a small cost and join a growing collection of transcribed rental documents covering Dumfriesshire and Roxburghshire parishes available from Relatively Scottish. I hope they may prove to be useful for you.

Scottish Borders

Bondagers in South-East Scotland & Northumberland

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Hinds and Bondagers in Lowixk, Northumberland 1906

Hinds & Bondagers in Lowick, Northumberland circa 1906 [photo – Mrs Hetha Bruce, Lowick]

Back in 2015 I featured a post about the life of the Bondager in rural S.E.Scotland.  For family historians it was a fascinating and tough lifestyle and following a recent project I was involved in, I’d like to revisit the topic with some updated information.

One of the fascinating things about looking at old censuses is the glimpse that you get into a world which has entirely disappeared. Return to around 1860 and large numbers of rural women and girls were working as bondagers in a system peculiar to the Eastern Borders and Northumberland. A married ploughman (known as a hind) would require to engage another person willing to work long hours in the fields in order to get a contract of employment with a farmer. This was normally a woman. It could be his wife, daughter or a complete stranger. In the case of a stranger being taken on, the hind was required to provide bed and board for the woman and pay her for work done. This ancient feudal system was deeply unpopular with the hinds who felt they got a raw deal. They often only had one room for the whole family and the bondager to live in and were expected to provide her with food and clean her clothes too.  After much unrest in the middle of the 19th century, matters came to a head in 1866 and finally the system of bondage started to be done away with, with the women continuing to work hard outdoors, but with a direct contract of employment with the farmer. They were then normally referred to as ‘out workers’.

One notable feature of the bondager was the distinctive costume that they wore with extravagant hats and often colourful skirts and wraps. Intriguingly, some of their distinctive attractive hats were known as Uglies! The picture below shows an example of an ‘East Lothian Ugly’ being modelled in the modern day. The costume continued beyond the end of the bondage system and could be seen in Border fields up until the period between the 2 World Wars. More information on The Bondagers website which is being developed and maintained by Bondager expert Dinah Iredale.

An Example of the traditional headwear known as the Ugly [photo – Brendan Kenny, Berwick-upon-Tweed]

If you had ancestors who were agricultural labourers in the arable fields of East Lothian, Berwickshire or Roxburghshire in the 19th century then it’s quite likely that they will have been involved in this system. The census enumerator doesn’t always use the term ‘bondager’ but when you find a record of a family of agricultural labourers apparently with an unrelated servant girl living with them, then that is very likely to be a bondager household.

Border Reivers

Hot Trod into Liddesdale

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Here’s a tale that’s got pretty much all the elements which made the Border Reivers so infamous in the 16th century. Cross-border cattle stealing in Northumberland by classic reiver names, hot trod, and an end in Liddesdale where murder and revenge are cruelly meted out.

Lonely Pundershaw farm today deep in the heart of Kielder Forest [Photo:Oliver Dixon]

In July bygaine a year, the Kynmonts now in prison with their complices to the number of 16 men or thereabouts, did steale out of the lands of Pundershaw in Northumberland four score of kye and oxen, appertaining to Mr Cuthbert Hearon of Chipchase which goods the friends and servants of the said Mr Cuthbert Hearon to the number of thrie score of men or thereabout did follow into the Debatable land whom the stealers pursuing to be comed amongst them; John Armstrong called of Parknow and Geordie Armstrong his brother, being comed from that road immediately before, did goe out of Geordie’s house, set upon Edward Charleton of Antoun Hill one of the followers upon whom the said John discharged two pistols and mist him, but the said Anton Hill discharging a carrabine upon John, killed him.

Hereupon the whole crew of Kinmonts and the rest of the country people did rise, followed Anton Hill who did flie more than two myles up Carshope, took him, brought him back through Liddell until they came to the Burnmouth on Tinnisburn.  And being informed there that Parknow was dead, four of the Kinmonts to wit Geordie, Francie, Gleed Jamie Armstrong and Will. Armstrong of Woodhead fell upon the said Anton Hill, and most cruelly murthered him. Of this fact Robert Scott called of Headshaw, William Armstrong called Will of the Harelaw, Jamie Wilson son to Geordie Wilson alias Boots shoemaker in Burnmouth and John Armstrong son in law to the said Geordie Wilson in Burnmouth were eye witnesses.

Immediatlie after, the same four Kinmonts fell upon one [blank] Thompson at the Demainholme, whom they also killed, and then they came to other two of the followers called Carshope’s brethren, one of which they killed outright, the other they left for dead. Of this slaughter William Ellott then dwelling in Demainholme, now in Northumberland and Christie Thomson brother to Edward Thomson in Geilfoot were eye witnesses.

This is a true story as told by the English authorities. However it took place around 1644 when the reiving days were thought to be long gone. It seems that the ‘Middle Shires’ had not totally cast off the reiving past. These bands of lawless men became widely known as the Mosstroopers. Story transcribed from the Buccleuch Muniments in the National Records of Scotland.

Buccleuch, Dumfries, Scottish Borders

Buccleuch Estate Maps

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Relatively Scottish has always been very interested in the family histories of those who lived on the Buccleuch Estates sometime in the last 300 years. I think that old maps are an important means of helping to understand the lives of our ancestors.

Those of you with an interest in historical maps of the Buccleuch/Queensberry Estates in Nithsdale may be aware that there’s an excellent collection of such maps on a farm by farm basis available online at the National Library of Scotland website (maps.nls.uk). These cover both 18th and 19th centuries and are a great insight into how our ancestors may have farmed the land.

Unfortunately though, the NLS collection doesn’t cover all the farms of the Border Estates of Roxburghshire, Eastern Dumfriesshire and Selkirkshire. There is however an alternative resource available online called Charting the Nation: Maps of Scotland and Associated Archives 1550-1740. The University of Edinburgh put this collection together back in 2014. Amongst thousands of high quality map images are individual farm maps of all Buccleuch farms which were surveyed back in 1718 as part of an extensive programme of agricultural improvement.

The example image above shows the map of the farm of Bowanhill at Teviothead in Roxburghshire. This shows the shape of the whole farm including buildings, rivers and enclosures where appropriate. It names all the bordering properties and offers a withering verdict on the quality of the land in many cases. Here we have ‘indifferent good corn land’ and ‘sorry pasture’.

These maps are all part of the Buccleuch Muniments kept at the National Records of Scotland. But here they are conveniently available to a worldwide audience through the University of Edinburgh website. Explore them yourself at Charting the Nation. Select ‘Browse All’ to view the full collection. Please comment if you find them useful at all.

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What’s in a name ?

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Emily Atack was the latest celebrity to feature on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are programme this week.  It was very interesting to hear the revelation that her relative Sir Paul McCartney could easily have been known as Sir Paul McCarthy if his Irish ancestor’s name had not been misheard by an official when they came to Liverpool.

And it set me thinking about the undue importance that many of us attribute to spelling or pronounciation of our surnames. There are some great examples with some traditional Border surnames. For example, is it Home or Hume ?  Ker or Kerr ?  The difference in spelling comes down to the way that different landed branches of the family chose to identify themselves in the 17th century.

Over the years there’s been a lot of speculation about the different forms of the surname Elliot and the number of L’s and T’s in the name. And that once again was influenced by how a landed branch of the family styled themselves. But of more interest for me was where did the ‘i’ in the name come from.  Back in the 16th and the first half of the 17th century the name was almost always written as ‘Ellot’ or sometimes ‘Ellott’. 

For example, here’s the name of Thomas Ellott represented in a Liddesdale rental document from 1646

Once again in another rental document several years later in 1654 almost all the tenant names are spelled ‘Ellott’ as above although one of the signatures on the document ‘Eliott’ is a sign of things to come.

But by 1675 the ‘i’ has become the norm e.g here we see Gavin Elliott of Midlemylne mentioned.

So we can fairly accurately pinpoint when the change came about, and guess that it was perhaps down to local pronounciation that the ‘i’ emerged.

And my own surname is not immune either.  References to the name in the 17th century and earlier were appropriate for a name which describes a physical attribute i.e. the name was spelled as it was pronounced in the Scots dialect i.e. Armstrang.  Most early OPR entries are indeed for Armstrang but by the late 18th century the name had become anglicised to Armstrong.

Many Irvings fled from Dumfriesshire to Ireland at the time of the Ulster plantation. The surname seems to have got corrupted and changed there so that Irwin, Erwin and Ervine were all variants that emerged and can now be found in many English-speaking countries.

Johnston(e) is another very popular Dumfriesshire name and has quite a different origin to the English surname Johnson.  However it transpires that US President Lyndon Baines Johnson actually had a Scottish Johnston ancestor who became known as Johnson after he emigrated to America.

So whatever your name is today, there’s a good chance that your paternal ancestors surname may have been slightly different.

[You can find more old rental documents at https://relativelyscottish.com/rentals-of-the-buccleuch-estates-1630-1833/]

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Gone but not forgotten

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Adamsrow, Newton, Midlothian around 1900

From time to time, I find that my clients in USA, Canada or Australia had ancestors who lived in miners’ rows in Ayrshire or Midlothian. Understandably, they often plan to come back to Scotland to see where their ancestors lived. But I often have to tell them that they’ll find little or no evidence of their ancestors. In many cases with the demise of mining, these habitations have been wiped off the face of the earth.

Midlothian

Rows like Adamsrow, Squaretown and Redrow in Newton parish, Midlothian were first established in the 18th century when coal was first mined commercially in the area. Squaretown disappeared during the 19th century with Adamsrow and Redrow surviving until WW2. The quality of the housing, originally built by the mining companies, became subject to greater scrutiny during the Victorian era. A fascinating glimpse of the harsh reality of life in one of these dwellings is given in the 1875 Notes on Miners’ Houses. This was originally published in the Glasgow Herald and has been reproduced on the fascinating Scottish Mining Website. Many specific locations are featured including Adamsrow. It is noted there that there are no closets or ashpits provided for any of the houses although there was a plan to build closets. No trace remains of Adamsrow which was located close to what is now Shawfair railway station.

Ayrshire

I think that where possible, it is essential to try to keep the memory of these forgotten communities alive. I am therefore delighted to see the efforts being made to record oral history of some of the rows and villages in East Ayrshire, many of which have now been lost. The University of Strathclyde is closely involved here.

One such community stands out due to the fame of one of its former residents. In 1913, Bill Shankly was born in the Ayrshire mining settlement of Glenbuck. As well as being an international footballer he went on to become a legendary Liverpool FC manager. He built the club up, brought English League and UEFA Cup success, and commanded huge respect from the fans. A memorial stone to him has been erected at the site of Glenbuck village.

Dumfries

Annan – gateway to a new life in Canada

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In an era before railways, moving around Scotland and England was not easy and in general was prohibitively expensive for many. When times were tough and agricultural labourers were finding it hard to feed their families, their thoughts turned to making a new start by emigrating to the New World. In some cases, financial help with the cost of the passage to the New World was available through emigration societies or local landowners.  But this help rarely extended to the cost of surface transport to the port of departure. Consequently, it made sense to depart from a port as close to home as possible.

Annan Waterfoot as painted by W.H.Nutter in 1868

It was for that reason that Annan Waterfoot became important for emigration from the Borders in the early years of the 19th century.  At Waterfoot, about a mile downstream of the town at the mouth of the River Annan, there was sufficient draft to allow reasonably sized sea-going vessels to berth at the piers there. Sailing ships of 200-300 tons departed regularly for ports like St Johns and Quebec in Canada with perhaps 150 souls on board seeking a new life.

An 1832 report in the Carlisle Patriot newspaper describes emigrants departing from Annan to join an emigrant ship at Maryport, a port on the other side of the Solway Firth.   ‘Emigrants for Canada to sail by the Donegal of Maryport have, during the first 2 days of this week, arrived at Annan, principally  from Roxburghshire and the neighbourhood of Hawick and Jedburgh. They were of all ages, from infants hanging at the breast, to old men and women of apparently 70 and 80 years of age; and many of them seemingly opulent farmers and their families. On Tuesday nearly 30 carts heavily laden with luggage passed through this place. The whole sailed this morning in four vessels previously engaged to convey them. The numbers are computed at 150 or 160; and it is also said that squad is only the advance guard of the body preparing to follow them.’

Undoubtedly, many of those who emigrated to Canada from Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire around the 1820s would have joined their ship at Annan for the 6 week journey to Canada.

By the middle of the 1830s, larger steamships up to 500 tons were introduced to provide a twice-weekly passenger service to Liverpool. I became aware of this when a family history client came to me to discover more about the links between Annan and Liverpool in his own family.  Family members from Annan travelled back and forth regularly in the 1830s and 1840s operating as ‘travelling drapers’.  With the coming of the railways by the end of the 1840s, steamships became uncompetitive and the service ceased operation although cargo ships continued to run from Annan to Liverpool for many years to follow.

There was an attempt to revive a passenger service in 1899 but it failed to receive the backing it needed. Annan remained as a fishing port but it’s importance as a trading port declined significantly thereafter.

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Postcards from the Past

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My father died earlier this year and I inherited a huge pile of Edwardian postcards which had been handed down the generations. Most of the cards were published by Raphael Tuck and Sons. I decided to find out a bit more about the company.

Raphael Tuck was a Prussian immigrant who, together with his wife, started up a business in London in 1866 publishing and selling pictures and greeting cards. the business grew steadily over the years but the master stroke came when they introduced coloured art postcards into their catalogue. At that time the format of postcards was strictly controlled by the Universal Postal Union and only allowed a brief message on the picture side which limited the size of the picture. After lengthy negotiations, Tuck was able to convince the British Postmaster General to accept both the name and address coupled with the message on one side and a full size picture on the other. This revolutionary agreement in 1898, opened up great opportunities for the company to sell postcards featuring the artwork of many contemporary artists. They created a hugely successful collectibles market by selling themed cards in packs of 6. As well as more conventional views of beauty spots and iconic buildings across the world they developed cards featuring occupational and military subjects. For we genealogists, these are of much more interest. Their Scottish subjects for example included ‘A Scottish Washing’ and ‘Scottish Fisher Life’ in their Oilette range. The range was introduced in 1903 and designed to look like oil paintings. Two of the Scottish Washing theme are illustrated here and provide an interesting impression about how a wash day might have been conducted in different settings.

It makes an interesting contrast to the rather straight-laced posed family photographs which dominated the later Victorian period.

Dumfries

Eskdalemuir Roots of an Empire

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General Sir Charles William Pasley (1780 – 1861) was a distinguished British soldier and military engineer. He had a brilliant mind and his writings are generally considered to have influenced the development of the British Empire. He was fundamental in setting up the Royal Engineers regiment.

He was born in Eskdalemuir in Dumfriesshire on 8th September 1780. However, you’ll not find the birth of a Charles Pasley if you look in the Old Parish Registers. He was born illegitimate as Charles Dixon with just his mother Bessy (or Betty) Dixon listed. It is the minutes of Eskdalemuir Kirk Session which tells us the real story.

“Compeared Bessy Dixon and confessed she had brought forth a child in uncleanness to Charles Pasley now residing in Lisbon. She was rebuked according to her confession and was appointed to enter upon a course of satisfaction and to appear before the congregation next Lord’s day; in regard that the Moderator reported that the said Charles had confessed to him and others of his friends before he left the country that he was the father of that child.”

The Kirk Session record shows that both mother and father have separately confessed their guilt to the minister. His father Charles Pasley was a merchant in Lisbon with a family link to Craig in neighbouring Westerkirk parish. His uncle was Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley RN who served with distinction in a number of 18th century naval campaigns.

This is one of the many insights that only the minutes of the Kirk Session can give us about Scottish historical figures. These Kirk Session minutes are freely available at scotlandspeople.gov.uk. You’ll also find a list elsewhere on this site (available for a small charge) which indexes all illegitimate births, irregular marriages and antenuptial fornications which were exposed by Eskdalemuir kirk session between 1703 and 1823.