Today we tend to think of mainly rural areas like the Scottish Borders as areas that have suffered from depopulation as people have moved out to find suitable employment. It’s not somewhere that you’d choose to find lots of skilled jobs and good prospects. However, one hundred and fifty years ago, things were very different. Galashiels and Hawick were the prime locations for what was termed as ‘Scotch tweed’ not just in Scotland but in the whole of Britain. As the major manufacturing centres in the country, the opportunities available in the scores of working woollen mills attracted skilled workers from all over the country.
If you take a look at any census for Galashiels and Hawick in the later part of the 19th century, what you’ll find is a significant number of residents were born in Clackmannanshire. The towns of Alva,Tillicoultry and Alloa there also had woollen mills and therefore a skilled workforce who were attracted to the Borders.
The image above is of a fairly typical page in the 1891 Census for Galashiels. Three families are listed on the page and They all have family members working in the tweed/woollen industry. The first family the Fenwicks were all born in Tillicoultry and the male head of the second household John Millar, a woollen weaver, was also born there. It’s likely that a large number of Hawick and Galashiels residents today do have at least some of their family roots in the Hillfoot towns of Clackmannanshire.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the largest single landowner in Dumfriesshire and the Scottish Borders was (and still is) the Duke of Buccleuch. Many ordinary people made their living on the Buccleuch estates – perhaps directly employed to serve in the castles and gardens, to provide labour for estate improvements , or to farm the land as tenants or sub-tenants of the Duke. It is therefore natural to consider what evidence might be left of such an ancestor in the archives of the estates.
Estates as large as Buccleuch generated a substantial amount of paperwork in routine administration on a day to day basis. Indeed the burden of administration was often contracted out to a range of parties including chamberlains and solicitors. As a result, there is very much a mixed picture of records across the estates – some have been kept meticulously and survived over hundreds of years. Others are sporadic and incomplete.
For those in the direct employ of the estate, the records are patchy. Some records of wages for named individuals for certain periods do survive but many have been lost. There are also some records of piece payments for specific work undertaken by contractors like quarrying or forestry.
The area which has perhaps been best preserved are the rental rolls for the farm tenancies which cover a period from around 1630 through to the 20th century. Many of these rolls are now in the care of the National Records of Scotland in a collection known as the ‘Buccleuch Muniments’. These include the estates of Dalkeith, Melrose, Eckford, Ettrick Forest and Kirkurd, Hassendean and Hawick, Teviotdalehead, Eskdale, Ewesdale, Westerkirk, Eskdalemuir, Liddesdale and Canonbie.
A rental document details the name of tenants and the amount which they were due to pay on an annual basis. On the face of it, that may not seem to be of much value to a family historian. However, the chamberlain who was responsible for drawing up the rental document would often add little snippets of helpful family information e.g. ‘George Armstrang, son to the old tenant’ can be very useful information when we have the possibility of consulting an earlier rental to find a ‘Robert Armstrang’ as the tenant at that particular farm several years before. If we read the tenants as ‘Jean Thomson and her son Robert Elliot’ then we can deduce that Jean Thomson’s husband was a Mr Elliot who was the former tenant and has now died (women are always given their maiden name in these rental documents) and Jean and Robert are now joint tenants. Brothers and uncles are also often mentioned too. There was a strong tradition of keeping tenancies in a family wherever possible in the Buccleuch Estates. I know this as my own ancestors were tenants at a single Buccleuch property for over 250 years.
Part of a 1711 rental record
In normal times, records held by the National Records of Scotland can be consulted if you can visit Register House in Edinburgh. But with Register House having been closed since March 2020, these are definitely not normal times. I have therefore made transcriptions of some Buccleuch rental rolls that I hold available for download on this website. These cover just two of the estates – Canonbie and Liddesdale. Some are free of charge and there is a small charge for others. I believe however that they will be of considerable value for people who have farming ancestors from this area. Years available at present are 1630, 1766-67 and 1814-15 for both Liddesdale and Canonbie and also 1792-93 for Canonbie. The later rolls in particular often feature not just main tenants but sub-tenants and cottars too with perhaps just a house and a very small patch of land for themselves. Further Canonbie rolls for 1683 and 1701 have just been added to the collection.
Records pertaining to the Queensberry Estate (surrounding Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire) remain with the Duke and so tracing ancestors on this estate is not as simple. However, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be able to offer some transcripted rentals for Queensberry Estate very soon.
2020 has been a tough year for everyone and that includes those researching their family history. At last we have the hope of vaccinating the whole population within the next year so perhaps better times lie ahead. For many though, archives and family history centres have been closed for months and all those plans we had have had to take our research further have had to be put on ice.
Here at Relatively Scottish this year we’ve done our best to make some of our resources available more widely to help those of you with an interest in Liddesdale and Canonbie in particular. These are normally only available to those who visit archives like the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh (closed since March 2020) in person. Estate records and Kirk Session records can be a great resource to use for those who have exhausted more conventional resources like Old Parish Registers and Monumental Inscriptions.
In addition to the 15 documents that we currently have online, we’ve just added two more. We’ve now made available a full transcription of the Canonbie parish rental for the year 1792-1793 based on the records of the Buccleuch Estates. This is possibly the most detailed Buccleuch rental document with everything from the largest farms down to the most basic cottar’s cottage included.
AND we’re delighted to include a very early Communion roll for Canonbie covering the years 1749-1760 free of charge. The communion roll is one of the gems contained within the kirk session records. There are many communion rolls within kirk session records but most date from no earlier than the mid-19th century. So a mid-18th century roll is rather special !
We’ve heard that Scotlandspeople will be making the kirk session records searchable free of charge online sometime during 2021 which is exciting news. However at this stage there are no plans for Scotlandspeople to provide any indexing which can mean that searches can potentially take a long time (many of the kirk session minutes are very wordy and not always written in the best handwriting). All of our index documents based on kirk session minutes (irregular marriages, illegitimate births etc) include page references to the the original records which will allow users to access the full original documentation easily and quickly once the kirk session records are made available online.
And look out for a further index document on illegitimate births to appear here shortly. It will be for the adjacent Dumfriesshire parish of Kirkpatrick-Fleming. There are over 400 illegitimate births for Bells, Irvings and Carruthers to name but a few !
Last time I talked about the value of Kirk Session records and how they can help to fill the gaps in the information provided by more conventional resources that we know like Old Parish Registers and Monumental Inscriptions. One of the drawbacks of the Kirk Session records is that they require computer access to the imaging network of the National Records of Scotland either in Edinburgh or in one of the satellite hubs in heritage centres elsewhere in Scotland. With these centres having now been closed for many months, we can see the deficiencies in current provision very plainly. And don’t even mention access for those further afield outside of Scotland !
However, I’m delighted to announce that I’ve completed indexing of Canonbie kirk session records and am making full indexes available on this site. Three indexes will be available – one covers 975 illegitimate births between 1708 and 1855 and the name of the father is almost always included. The kirk session records show that most of the named fathers do acknowlege their ‘guilt’ to the church. A few do initially dispute the fact that they were in fact the father but after a de facto trial process which the kirk session invoked, most do in fact finally agree (and were thus liable to pay some maintenance to the mother).
There were around 250 so-called ‘irregular marriages’ – marriages which were legal in the eyes of the law but frowned on by the church. Canonbie was in an ideal location for irregular marriages to happen. In the early 18th century, runaway couples from Canonbie just had to cross the border into England and there were clergymen who could marry them there in front of witnesses without all the palaver of a Church wedding. However, with the introduction of Hardwicke’s Act of 1753 in England, it was no longer possible to get married there without residence requirements and banns being read. Very quickly, Scottish marriage law suddenly became exceptional in not requiring residence and nor did it need a clergyman to perform the service. A whole industry came to be set up in the neighbouring parish of Gretna targeted at eloping couples from England. However, it was also very simple for couples from Canonbie to find a suitable marriage ‘celebrant’ there and continue to defy the kirk. Time and time again we find reference to Gretna irregular marriages within Canonbie Kirk Session records.
The third classification singled out for rebuke and fine by the kirk session was ‘ante-nuptial fornication’. This was encountered when a couple conceived a child out of wedlock but then got married, normally before the child was born. Over 250 instances of this occurs in the records between 1708 and 1855. In reality, there would have been many more but records don’t survive for that entire period – there are some gaps. A particular value of these records is where they indicate a marriage prior to 1768. There are no OPR marriage records for Canonbie parish prior to 1768.
Along with the Kirk Session records, a number of indexes of farm rental records for Canonbie are also being made available covering different rental years between 1630 (the earliest available Buccleuch rental document) and 1815.
Download documents are variously available for free, or for a small charge of £5 or £10. This will help support further transcriptions for this and other parishes. Visit the Canonbie Download page here
All too often, searching in the Old Parish Registers (OPRs) fails to produce the proof that we’re looking for in terms of a birth or a marriage in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. Now it could be that the ancestors concerned had seceded from the Established Church of Scotland and their records therefore do not feature in the OPRs or the records have not survived or were never properly recorded in the first place. But, particularly for births and marriages in Dumfriesshire and other parts of south Scotland, the Kirk Session records provide an alternative gold mine for genealogists.
The Kirk Session could be regarded as the management committee for the parish and one of their primary objectives was to pay close attention the the morals of their congregation. While they did record and discipline behaviours like drunkenness and failing to observe the Sabbath properly, they were generally much more interested in sexual transgressions. Normally, all such activity was recorded in some detail for which we genealogists are eternally grateful.
Robert Burns appearing before the Kirk Session
One of the basic sins was an irregular marriage i.e. a couple could legally get married outside the church – particularly common for parishes close to the English border where they were able to nip across and get married by either English clergy or lay-men. These marriages were legal in the eyes of the law but the Church did not approve and would discipline any participants. This disciplinary process is fully recorded in the kirk session minutes. These marriages do not generally appear in the OPRs.
The Elders (members of the Kirk Session) would typically keep their eyes open for any single women in the parish who appeared to be pregnant and any such women would be referred to the Session. They would be required to come before a meeting of the Session and confirm their pregnancy and name the father, and where the activity took place. The suspected father would then be summoned to appear also and in most cases, accepted that they were the father. Both parties would then be subject to a disciplinary process requiring them to be rebuked in front of the whole congregation perhaps several Sundays in a row depending on the particular circumstances. In some cases they could pay an additional fine in order to avoid the repetitive and presumably embarrassing process of rebuke.
In rural Dumfriesshire where there was a large population of young farmworkers, both male and female, living away from home, there were a large number of these cases which means that the kirk session records can often be very extensive. Minutes for Canonbie parish for example extend to over 1000 pages even with some dates missing. In some cases, the expectant couple would choose to get married by the church but often this didn’t happen. The church itself was particularly concerned that the father would accept responsibility for the child which meant that he would be expected to provide something for the child financially. This meant that the parish would not be responsible for supporting the child.
Although there was talk of Kirk Session records being made available via Scotlandspeople, this is not the case today and there are no immediate plans that I’m aware of to do so. Consultation therefore of the Kirk Session records (which have been fully imaged) requires a visit to the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh or one of the satellite access points elsewhere in Scotland. The online NRS catalogue (https://catalogue.nrscotland.gov.uk/nrsonlinecatalogue/welcome.aspx) can be used to check the kirk session minutes coverage for each parish. Enter ‘CH2’ in the reference field when searching. Relatively Scottish can search kirk session records for you at the NRS – please get in touch to learn more.
Did you know that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s ancestors were Ulster Scots? Scots who had moved to Ulster and may have been there for as long as two hundred years before coming back to settle on Ayrshire soil around 1847. Robert Sturgeon was the son of weaver William Sturgeon and his wife Mary Stevenson who lived in County Down. It seems highly likely that it was the famine caused by the potato blight that caused Robert Sturgeon and his wife Mary Cochrane and their family of 5 or 6 to make the journey to Scotland to seek a better life. Robert found work as an agricultural labourer in Dailly in South Ayrshire and the family remained in Ayrshire thereafter.
But what of the origins of the family ? Why did they move to Ulster in the first place ? The Sturgeon name has its origins firmly in and around Dumfries and the eastern part of the Stewartry. And Sturgeons do crop up associated with a number of historical events associated with the area..
In an epic power struggle during the regency period when
James VI was just a boy in 1585, John Maxwell, the Earl of Morton, attacked
Stirling Castle with a large number of his tenants from Dumfriesshire. Among
them were 15 Sturgeons.
Sturgeons appeared on both sides of the Covenanting argument. In 1644, Sir John Sturgeon of Torrorie (near Kirkbean in Galloway pictured above) was tried in Edinburgh with a number of other lairds for his Royalist sympathies. Some of his co-accused ended up losing their heads but Sir John seems to have been a little more fortunate. Forty years later, when Covenanters were being hunted high and low during the ‘Killing Times’ , a William Sturgeon of Barncrosh (near Ringford in Galloway) was accused of conversing with Covenanting fugitives.
It’s not inconceivable that Nicola Sturgeon’s ancestors may have moved to Ulster to enjoy greater religious freedom during the 1680s when the South West of Scotland was a dangerous place for Covenanters. Perhaps we shall never know.
I’ve often seen it suggested that what with the wholesale hanging of reivers in the years following 1605 and the considerable exodus of reiver names to the Ulster Plantation after 1609, that areas like Liddesdale and the Debateable Lands of Canonbie were radically changed in the years that followed. And indeed most of the killing, plundering, blackmail and moonlight riding did stop. But what if we were able to see what families were living there in place of the reivers some twenty years later ?
By 1621, the Earl of Buccleuch had acquired pretty much all of Canonbie and much of Liddesdale. And thanks to the historical rental records of the Buccleuch estates we can see exactly who was tenanting all their farms in Liddesdale and Canonbie as early as 1630. I have transcribed the information as best as I can and the results may surprise you. The rental lists are shown in the two links below.
In Liddesdale you can see that it’s pretty much all Armstrongs and Ellotts with some Crosers , Nixons and Hendersons
In Canonbie it’s Armstrongs, Irvings and Bells with a few Grahams, Beatties and Littles for good measure. So pretty much the same mix of names that would have been found 30 years earlier.
What’s also noticeable is a smattering of the most infamous reiver families live on – there’s no less than 3 sons of Kinmont Willie and also Lancie Armstrong of Whithaugh. There’s a Clement and a Quentin Croser – definite echoes of their distinctively named reiver forebears.
For some families at least tenanting under Buccleuch estate management brought stability and longevity. My own family were Buccleuch tenants in Canonbie for at least 250 years.
Following on from my last post regarding the militia lists for Roxburghshire in 1802, I have found the following information which was transcribed by R.A.Shannon and made available in the Covenant and Hearth series Vol VIII in 1973 available in the Ewart Library in Dumfries.
The original data was taken from the Lieutenancy minutes for the sub-division of Eskdale under the terms of the Militia act 1797. This originally required that a record was made of eligible men in the parish from age 19-23, although by 1802 this had been extended upwards to age 45.
This can be considered as a census substitute for Canonbie parish in Dumfriesshire with all men aged 19-45 in Canonbie parish in 1802. The third person on this list is my own great great great great grandfather who would have been 39 or 40 at the time.
At the end of the 18th century, there was considerable concern in Great Britain that the post-revolution French might attempt to invade the country. As a result, names were collected locally, parish by parish , of able-bodied men who could form a militia if required to do so. At first it was a voluntary activity, until by 1802, it was expected that all 18-45 year old men would have their names put forward in the parish for a ballot to form a local militia. A very few occupations were exempt such as doctors.
Quite a number of these parish militia lists survive today, sometimes in local archives, or sometimes buried in estate papers and the like. Roxburghshire is extremely fortunate in that not only has an entire Lieutenancy Record book survived with militia lists from all parishes in the county from 1797 through to 1802, but it’s all posted online as part of the Scottish Archive Network resource at http://www.scan.org.uk/researchrtools/lieutenancy.htm . Have a look for your own family – all the common Border names feature heavily.
The extract above shows an example from the Kelso parish list – we see names and occupations, sometimes family relationships are mentioned and sometimes employers are named. It really is a valuable ‘census substitute’ for family historians. I was intrigued by no. 172 shown in the extract described as ‘William Young Mugger’ .
It turns out that William was not someone who hung around dark alleys waiting for a victim, but , as I learned from the Concise Scots dictionary, was in fact an itinerant tinker. The name derived from someone who at one time sold earthenware mugs.
In the last few months I’ve received a lot of enquiries from descendants of people who left the Borders and emigrated overseas. They left for their own reasons and frustratingly we don’t always know why that was.
But while the largely forced departure from the Highlands is widely known about and understood as ‘The Clearances’, much less is known about emigration from the South of Scotland which has been going on since about 1600. In the Highlands , we know that many of the landowners (often clan chiefs) chose to evict their tenants so that sheep could make more money for them. In the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, there were many different reasons for departure and it happened over more than 300 years.
After 1603, the Border crackdown by King James VI & I meant that many former reivers were forced to leave hurriedly for the Ulster plantation to avoid possible execution. Many of their descendants chose to emigrate to the United States or Canada in the 18th century. Military service often gave Borderers a taste of life and opportunities in other parts of the world and I believe this to be fairly significant when viewed over a 250 year window from 1700 through to 1950.
Many whose families had been pretty much static over hundreds of years moved from rural parts into the bustling mill towns like Hawick, Galashiels and Selkirk in the 19th century. Having made that initial move, there was then less reluctance to consider a move further afield, particularly with any downturn in the wool industry over the years. Of course it wasn’t just one way as the later 19th century saw immigration into important woollen centres like Hawick and Galashiels from other mill towns in Scotland like the Hillfoot villages of Clackmannanshire and Stirling and places like Lanark. Quite a number also came north from Cumbria and Yorkshire. Just take a look at the different places of birth of the residents of Hawick in the 1871 or 1881 census and you will see what I mean.
But if you have a story or even a mystery about your own ancestors leaving the Borders then please share it with us by replying to this post.
Family History Research for Scots and those of Scottish Heritage
