Author Topic: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location  (Read 11503 times)

Offline Skoosh

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Kailey, Port Lair on Loch Torridon, a house west of Inveralligin & south of Lower Diabeg. Two Gaelic speaking households in 1891.

Skoosh.

Marvelous website,  ;D     www.stevecarter.com/ansh/ansh2.htm


Offline Forfarian

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In order to get my own thoughts sorted out, I am summarising what definite information is available about Norman Morrison.

From the index at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
The marriage of Normand Morison to Isabel MacLenan was recorded in the Applecross parish register on 1 July 1813.
They had seven children whose baptisms were recorded in the Applecross parish register.
Ann, 13 July 1814
Janet, 20 July 1826
Abigail, 26 August 1820
Murdoch, 9 June 1823
Catherine, 26 March 1826
William, 26 March 1826
John, 22 June 1830

From the transcription at www.freecen.org.uk, the family were living in Portlair, parish of Applecross, on 7 June 1841
Norman Morison, 50, agricultural labourer
Janet Morison, 25
William Morison, 10
John Morison, 7
Ishabella Maclennen, 55
all listed as born in the same county (whether it was the county of Ross and Cromarty, or merely the county of Ross, in 1841, is immaterial; the point is that it was in the same county)

Adults' ages were supposed to be rounded down to the nearest 5 years in the 1841 census, so if their ages in the census had been accurate, this would imply that Norman was born between 8 June 1786 and 7 June 1791, and Isabella between 8 June 1781 and 7 June 1786. However the ages listed for Janet, William and John are clearly wrong if compared to their dates of baptism. If they were baptised within say three months of their births, then on the day of the 1841 census Janet would have been 23 and should have been recorded as 20, William would have been 15 and John would have been 10. Therefore you cannot rely on either Norman's or Isabella's age being accurate.

Now, Portlair. This is listed in Enumeration District 15 of the parish of Applecross. The other places in ED15 are A(i)rard and Diabaig. Diabaig is on the west end of the north side of Loch Torridon.
See http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=14&lat=57.5706&lon=-5.6867&layers=5&b=1 which shows all three places (you will have to zoom in and pan around).

http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG7960
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG7959 and
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG7958 which shows Araid/Araird/Airaird
Port Laire is marked on the present maps
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG7957 and there is still a house there
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG8057

If you look carefully at the old map, you will see a double dotted line following the burn between the word 'Lower' and the word 'Diabaig'. This is the boundary between the parish of Applecross and the parish of Gairloch. Checking FreeCEN, several households in Diabag are indeed enumerated in ED1 of the parish of Gairloch.

So it is perfectly possible that Norman lived his entire life in the Diabaig area, being born in Applecross and dying in Gairloch, without ever moving more than a few miles from there, and the marriages in the parish of Gairloch could have taken place in Lower Diabaig, north of the burn/parish boundary.

Therefore I think that the family of Murdoch Morrison and Christian Mackay, all born in the county of Sutherland, are a complete red herring.





Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline whatkaileysaid

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #38 on: Thursday 21 June 18 03:36 BST (UK) »
Phew Forfarian, you are spectacular. I had no idea about the census age rounding (and therefore did not realize the discrepancies in all of their ages). While it certainly throws up the reliability of the little information we do have on Norman, it also widens the search a bit. It gives me a little bit of extra hope I may be able to figure out who he was.

Thanks to you and Skoosh also for identifying Portlair. WOW. Before I get ahead of myself, given that there were only 2 Gaelic speaking families (which they certainly were - Skoosh, where did you find that info?) listed from being there in 1880s, there's a chance that the croft house in that picture was my families? It's VERY interesting to me because there is a photo that my 87-year-old grandmother has of an old white croft on the coast (looks to me taken from a different angle, and obviously this is a common scene) that she has never known who took it or what it was (other than in the north west highlands). We suspected it was perhaps the family home. I'm going to ask her to send me a copy so I can post it here. This would solve about a 50 year family mystery.

I have booked an appt with the curator at the Gairloch Museum, do you think there would be any relevant records I could confirm this with? Rent records or something?

Your explanation regarding the changing of areas - that in fact, he likely stayed more or less put, makes entirely more sense to me. This is very clarifying and can't express how appreciative I am that you've taken the time to sort through this. Will also take the broadening of ages in mind and search for him again. I never would have gotten to this point by myself. THANK YOU!!

Morison (Isle of Lewis), Mclennan (Torridon), Mcleod (Scourie), McCallum (Durness), McInnes (Harris), McGillivray / McIntosh (Daviot & Dunlichity)

Offline whatkaileysaid

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #39 on: Thursday 21 June 18 04:34 BST (UK) »
I think I found it on Google Earth: https://goo.gl/maps/CUj53GUj3iB2

Morison (Isle of Lewis), Mclennan (Torridon), Mcleod (Scourie), McCallum (Durness), McInnes (Harris), McGillivray / McIntosh (Daviot & Dunlichity)


Offline Forfarian

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #40 on: Thursday 21 June 18 09:26 BST (UK) »
It has since occurred to me to wonder about those baptism dates.

Diabaig is about as far as it is possible to be from the kirk, and therefore the manse, of Applecross and still be in the parish. The most practical way to get a baby and a minister together would be for one or the other to travel by boat.

I speculate that the minister seldom made it to the furthest reaches of his parish, and that if and when he did make it there, he probably had to baptise all the babies born since his previous visit. So it could be that some were no longer babies by the time he got there.

It is also possible that when the minister of Gairloch made an almost equally rare visit to his part of Diabaig, he might have baptised some of the babies from the Applecross side. They would still need to be recorded in Applecross, because that was their parish of residence.

To test this hypothesis, one would need to go through the Applecross parish register and note all the dates when a Diabaig baby was baptised, and see if there was a pattern.

Things changed in 1827 when a Parliamentary kirk was set up at Shieldaig**, but this was still a long way on foot and the most practical means of travel from Diabaig to Shieldaig would still have been by boat, so the change was probably only marginal for the residents of Diabaig.

** See http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Thomas-Telfords-Parliamentary-Kirks and don't confuse Shieldaig in the parish of Applecross http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG8153 with the other Shieldaig in the parish of Gairloch http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NG8072 

Is there any other information in any of the other baptism records on the same pages as the ones you have for your Mor(r)isons?

I recommend reading the New Statistical Accounts of both Applecross
http://stataccscot.edina.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/viewer/nsa-vol14-Parish_record_for_Applecross_in_the_county_of_Ross_and_Cromarty_in_volume_14_of_account_2/
and Gairloch
http://stataccscot.edina.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/viewer/nsa-vol14-Parish_record_for_Gairloch_in_the_county_of_Ross_and_Cromarty_in_volume_14_of_account_2/
for background.

Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline Skoosh

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #41 on: Thursday 21 June 18 09:41 BST (UK) »
Kailey, the note of two Gaelic-speaking households there will be from the census of 1891, found that searching about!  It might be that there were two thatched "Black Houses" there then, the stones of which which have been used to build the present house?


Skoosh.

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #42 on: Thursday 21 June 18 10:36 BST (UK) »
The chances are that there were only two households at Port Làir, so it's not a case of two households being the only ones in the village who spoke Gaelic - more likely that everyone spoke Gaelic. You'd need to have a look at the rest of the enumeration district and see if the households at A(i)rdard and Diabaig also spoke Gaelic.
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline Skoosh

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #43 on: Thursday 21 June 18 12:40 BST (UK) »
The Torridon estate laird was the very progressive Duncan Darroch of Gourock who bought the property in 1873. Darroch restored lands to the crofters which had been cleared for sheep & shepherds. Sheep prices collapsed shortly after that date due to imports of frozen lamb from Oz & NZ. The first refrigerated ship being built on the Clyde. All over the Highlands sheep were taken off the hill & replaced by deer. Robert Darroch carried out many improvements on the estate & possibly had the Port Lair house built, the tenants thought very highly of him, he died in 1910.

Skoosh.

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Norman Morrison b1790 Applecross/Gairloch - looking for parents/birth location
« Reply #44 on: Thursday 21 June 18 13:04 BST (UK) »
Skoosh, do you know who owned the estate before Duncan Darroch, at the time when the Morrison family was living at Port Làir? The New Statistical Account implies that it must have been Thomas Mackenzie of Applecross.

(It also repeats an entertaining story from the Statistical Account of the origin of the name Applecross, which is inconsistent with the conventional version that it is an anglicisation of 'Apor Crossan'.)
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.