RootsChat.Com
Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Perthshire => Topic started by: genegal on Thursday 22 March 12 22:21 GMT (UK)
-
have seen postings where john was a tenant on an 6 acre on the breadalbane estate... thought the name 'laird' meant that you owned the property and were not tenants...could someone please clarify this for me?
thankyou
-
You have touched on an emotive issue which might well upset people if they read the following.
Outside the Cities and Towns land ownership and use was usually documented in terms of:-
The Feu holder-more often than not Nobility
The Feuar-some form of hereditary ownership subject to the Feu Holder
The Tenant-who rented or wadsetted the land from the above
The Cottar-who rented by means of his labour a small holding from the foregoing.
Locally the Feuar would be known as the Laird as he was close to his tenants.
However when people emigrated, and they were often tenants because they had money to pay the fare, they took to aggrandising their status by calling themselves Lairds.The locals back home would have laughed.
At best caution is needed.If the family was involved in a land transaction recorded by the Sasine Register in the NAS then they could use Laird.If they rented or wadsetted Laird was not appropriate.
-
Laird might just have been a nickname here. But, alternatively, there was a class of tenants known as "Bonnet Laird's" who farmed the land at a nominal rent on a long lease or tack (99 years often).
In the Highlands a clan often owned no land at all, the chief was due rent to a feudal superior, (if he paid it at all!) and the land was parcelled out to the clan's "Tacksmen", generally the chief's relatives, who lived off the rents (often in kind) of the tenants, paid the chief his rent and pocketed the difference. Land being a finite resource, when a tack expired it was often re-granted to a nearer relative of the chief, he had to look after the welfare of his own immediate family, so cousins became disposessed.
Rents, or the non-payment of them, was the cause of much conflict. The last clan battle, Mulroy, was fought over this issue.
Skoosh.
-
Laird is also a surname and it's not uncommon to use surnames as middle (or even first) names in Scotland- may indicate a mother's or grandmother's maiden name, etc. or after a friend or other person.
-
thankyou for the info you have given regarding the status and title of laird...my question is how do i go about verifying if john stewart owned the land or just took the title when he immigratde to canada?
thanks again
-
The previous trail on this site on John Laird Stewart quoted extracts from a Canadian publication and William Gillies' In Famed Breadalbane.
As I write this I have page 374 of the latter publication open in front of me.It is quite clear the Stewarts and Crerars you are researching were tenants of the Earl of Breadalbane before they exited en masse to Canada.This is a famous episode in the North Perthshire Clearances.
However if you want to research the Perth Sasine records which record land ownership transactions they are in the National Archives Scotland in Edinburgh and are summarised at top level in the online catalogue.
-
Check the county Valuation Rolls,(presumably Perthshire) if they cover the time of his emigration.
The Register of Sasines deal with change in land ownership.
Have a general search through the National Archives, http://www.nas.gov.uk/onlineCatalogue/
Six acres is a very small piece of land, why is the ownership status of this so important.
Skoosh.
This post has clsashed with Cambron's. The Valuation Rolls would not be applicable at that time.
-
wow what fasinating info.... does anybody know why they left enmass? will go to libary and see if i can get a copy of either books....
would love to go to scotland :) sad to say it is not a week-end jaunt for me
thanks for your help
abbotsford bc canada
-
Genegal, a big subject, Google the "Highland Clearances" & "Campbell of Breadalbane", for an insight. Firstly the people were cleared to make way for more profitable sheep, then came the famine of the 1840's, some estates paid the passage of their tenants overseas, it was cheaper than maintaining them. Sheep were in turn replaced by deer with further population loss.
The Campbell's of Breadalbane were one of the wealthier chiefs, with a huge landholding. Due to the usual profligate lifestyle they ended up with nothing. The family still exist in much diminished circumstances, Wales maybe? There's a poem about them which begins "From Ben More to Glen More the land is all the Marquis's", don't remember the rest I'm afraid.
Skoosh.
-
hi.... YES found much info by doing just exactly that research last night.. :) what happened to the scots was very much what happened to the irish.... they were packed up wholesale and shipped out.. :-
There are recorded a couple of clearances: one in 1832-33 where 30 families left of their own accord.
But betwenn 1841-45 there was a mass forced relocation...
I have yet to establish when john stewarts and the crerar's left for canada other than they may have left from glasgow..
as for johns stewart's father and mother ...nothing so far.
the incredible history of scotland is fasincating ! :)
It is truly a miracle they survived the trip to canada let alone what they HAD to do when they arrived there...
thanks for getting back to me and all your help :)
cheers
-
There’s a certain amount of romantic myth and emotional exaggeration about the clearances. One of the inconvenient facts being that during the period when the worst of the Clearances are said to have happened, the population of the crofting counties of the Highlands actually increased from 300,000 to 350,000. Also the biggest stream of emigration actually occurred 100 years after the Clearances had ended. Like Ireland, the population had shot up, and there simply weren’t the jobs or food to support them (in either country). The famine was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The eventual departure of a significant portion of the population of the Highlands was almost inevitable, whether sheep came or not. Most went voluntarily.
If you want to read about it in more detail, a good book is: Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus by Marjory Harper. Here’s a review of it by James Campbell, a former editor of the New Edinburgh Review, which makes a few interesting points:
The story of the exodus from the Scottish Highlands is commonly told in three stages: eviction, destitution and emigration. The Highland clearances, during which thousands of peasants were forced out of their villages, which were then destroyed and the land given over to "sheep walks", are as much a feature of mythology as of history. The mass emigrations, beginning in earnest in the late 18th century and lasting through most of the 19th, are Scotland's diaspora and stand as a defining event in the shaping of the modern nation. Marjory Harper calls frequently on tales of callous evictions, but she has another story to tell: emigration, particularly from the Highlands but also from the Lowlands and the industrial cities, was often voluntary, propelled by a desire to leave "old Scotland" and make a better life in the new world.
Adventurers and Exiles is an academic book camouflaged as a mainstream commercial one - the author is a senior lecturer in history at Aberdeen - but it has enough human interest and narrative force for the disguise to work. Harper draws on a remarkable fund of sources: letters, diaries kept on voyages, orphanage archives and oral testimony, much of it previously unpublished. Canada was the main attraction for emigrants, with Australia and New Zealand next (the US has never been as popular with Scots as with the Irish).
The mythology states that as much as the prosperous settlers of Quebec and New South Wales were keen to find people to work their farms, the landowners of Sutherland and Ross-shire wanted them out. But again Harper contradicts the notion that forced evictions were universal; many Scottish landlords lamented the draining of their workforces. Whether you left by choice or not, the ocean voyage to reach your destination was a dreadful prospect. Thirty days at sea was average to reach North America, twice as long to get to Australia.
The more genteel passengers were put out by the habits of some Highlanders, who were described by one Canadian official as being "like the Indians in that they spend a great deal of time in talking over their grievances, real or fancied". Some used their dinner plates as chamber pots at night, and were not fond of bathing or fresh air. Passengers in cabin class avoided much of the distress but, as Harper says, "seasickness was no respecter of persons".
Among the most affecting documents in the book is a diary kept by Charles Robertson, an articulate and sensitive 13-year-old. He sailed to Quebec in 1846, along with his parents and six siblings. His mother was on the point of giving birth:
Monday 27th. Terrible morning of wind and rain. The pishpots are tumbling everywhere . . . My mother very sick today.
Tuesday 28th. My mother was delivered of a girl during the night. She was not able to nurse it.
Sunday 3rd. Tonight about nine o'clock my poor mother drew her last breath . . . The children little know their want.
The orphanages of William Quarrier and Thomas Barnardo were large suppliers of destitute children to the colonies, where they might enjoy "the reward of hard work". Some stories, such as that of 14-year-old Annie who was worked to the bone, beaten by her mother and forced to sleep on "two pieces of wet and filthy sacking", are reminiscent of recently publicised cases. Despairing parents would bring uncontrollable children to Quarrier, with the recommendation: "Canada's the right place for him." But many Quarrier children wrote letters home full of gratitude for the opportunities the move had given them. "Quarrier was a firm believer in putting the Atlantic between his recruits and the corrupting backgrounds from which they had been rescued," writes Harper.
Harper's academic reserve results in rather a dry tone but her documentary sources, which are in ample supply, are engrossing. The most striking impression made on the reader by Adventurers and Exiles, apart from the scale of the diaspora itself, is of the hardship of life in a cold northern country in the 19th century, especially before the perfection of the steam engine. That was helped along by a Scotsman, of course, and one who stayed at home.
-
genegal, Google "The Lairds & Lands of Loch Tayside" for some info' on Breadalbane. Also some stuff on the Clearances, those in Breadalbane only started in the 1830's under the second marquis.
http://www.highlandclearances.blogspot.com/2011/07/wester-turrerich-township-glen-quaich.html
http://www.fernandocandido.com/scotland/clearances-a-b.html
The Clearances continued up to the 1880's, when following much agitation and the Napier Commission, crofters were at last given security of tenure.
Skoosh.
-
Hi Elwyn.... thank you for the great information.... will go to my local libary and see if they can bring in a copy of the book of which you speak...
From the info I have read so far yes not all those who left for canada did by force...the area where my 3rd grt grandfather was however cleared wholesale to make way for sheep farming plus the as you rightly so pointed out the parcels of land by the time john stewart left had been 'sub-divided' over and over...thanks again for your great info and pls stay in touch
cheers
-
My Stewarts of Perthshire (Caputh and Clunie) are related to Mizarae but I dont yet know how to find a particular thread..I am on WikiTree Stewart-29510
Here is what I have at present:
James Stewart (son of Robert), born Caputh May 26, 1745
father of William Stewart, born Clunie Parish July 26, 1770 (married Isabella Dow); John Stewart baptized Clunie Parish 8 Aug 1772 (married Amelia (Jackson) Stewart 9 Jul 1805 in Caputh, David Stewart, born Clunie Parish 28/04/1774, Janet Stewart born Clunie, 2 May 1779.
The children of William born 1770 are Janet Stewart b 1798, Elizabeth Stewart b 1803, Christian Stewart b 1807, Peter Stewart 19809, David Stewart, John Stewart and William Stewart b 1817.
-
Laird might just have been a nickname here. But, alternatively, there was a class of tenants known as "Bonnet Laird's" who farmed the land at a nominal rent on a long lease or tack (99 years often).
Also (tongue in cheek) the so called "Moss Lairds" of Flanders Moss on the Carse of Stirling: stories here https://www.chuckspeed.com/balquhidder/history/The%20Moss%20Lairds.htm and here https://www.explore-loch-lomond.com/things-to-do/visitor-attractions/the-moss-lairds/
-
Genegal I suggest you join the Stewarts of Balquhidder group on Facebook as this family has been accounted for there.
Lots of info that I'm sure you will enjoy!
-
Interesting article fifer!
Skoosh.