George Mclean (born 1830), son of Kenneth Mclean junior
I wrote to the Loftus History Group enquiring about any record of the family of Kenneth Mclean locally. Unfortunately the group folded over a year ago, however, they kindly passed my query onto Rodney Begg from the Loftus History Group who was able to provide some very interesting information, both on George Mclean and the alum industry in and around Loftus. Here is what he says:
'George McLean (born 1830) was at Darlington in 1851, as a servant to a master Miller. From this I would assume that he was apprenticed about 1845 (I haven’t studied the indenture terms for a miller, but i would assume 5 – 7 years. As his brother John is with George at Spite Mill, Osmotherley in 1861, 2 years before George’s death, but at home with his parents in 1851, then it is fair to assume that as he gives his profession as Miller then he was apprenticed to his brother George.
(Although he worked for a miller called Thomas) Taylors, (Rodney hasn't) found any trace of a relationship (between these Taylors and the family of Barbra / Barbara Taylor (born Dalton on Tees))'.
The census is difficult to read, but the mill may be called Steam Mill
'The alum works stretched from Hummersea to Boulby, along the cliffs. I would recommend “The Loftus Alum Makers” by Peter Appleton, a local researcher, as an easy-to-read non-technical book. Although specifically about the Hunton family (who would be Alum Managers when your relative was the clerk of the Alum Works), it gives a good overview of the declining years of the Alum Industry – your relative was to be the last manager of the Alum Works – it was closed between 1861 and 1871 as the process became redundant, superseded by the Sulphuric Acid process which was much more efficient and it too was to become redundant with the invention of Aniline Dyes, which didn’t require fixing!
There were millers at the Alum Works – not corn millers, but cement millers! The process is the same, only a local cementite rock is ground down between the stones to make the cement dust to cast into conduits and channels used in the making of the Alum. They would find it very easy to adapt to corn milling when the works closed.
Gallihow (where Kenneth Mclean lived near Loftus) is in the middle of the Boulby Alum Working area and cottages exist there to this day, still inhabited.'
Belem