I think that our biggest challenge is understanding why our James Montgomery (born 1810) would have decided to get on a boat and come to Canada sometime between let's say 1830-1834 -- and we think that is the right date range only because he married a local Irish-Quebec lady in 1835.
Our theory is that James wanted to OWN his own farm -- which he eventually did. I believe that he owned around 100-200 acres, as that was about what everyone had in the neighbourhood.
Was there something happening in Camelon/Falkirk area that made it difficult at that time for a young man to purchase his own farm?
Some of his relatives who stayed in the Camelon/Falkirk area are shown in the census records as farming "23 acres" or farming without specification of the actual size of the farm. And others seem to be operating either boarding room houses or some type of inn (according to census records of 1841 and 1851). In other words, it seems as if our James came from a reasonably prosperous and hard working family and probably could managed to be a farmer in Scotland. But I am missing something?
I'm aware that there were two canals in the area, several nail factories; several whisky distilleries, etc. and that with the Carron Works north of Falkirk was the beginning of the industrialization of this area. I've also had a look at the archives of the Callendar Estate and William Forbes -- but I haven't got an answer back from my query to the Falkirk Archives about whether there were Montgomery's who were tenants on their farmland.
James' mother, Agnes Davidson Montgomery, was a widow by the 1851 census and her occupation is "cow feeder". Would that generally be a term used by someone who was an agricultural labourer on someone else's farm?
James' dad, also called James, listed his occupation as "merchant" in the 1841 census, and he had died before the 1851 census. But other records (his wife's death certificate, for example) refer to him as "farmer".
