Lookup request for book "Pre-1855 gravestone inscriptions in Bute & Arran"

[usaPetticrew]

Book:  Pre-1855 gravestone inscriptions in Bute & Arran /
Author: Mitchell, Alison.; Mitchell, Angus.

I am seeking all inscriptions for surname Petticrew, Pettecrew, Pettigrew, or any variant of these.

If you can supply some or all of inscriptions for these assorted surnames, I would be most grateful.

I know ancestors of this surname were in the Isle of Arran at least as early as 1639.  Then the spelling was Pettecrew but it changed over time.

Thank you for any help.

[Little Nell]

Parish of Kilmory, Arran, kirkyard at the south of the island.
One headstone:
John Pettigrew late tent Torrylinn Mill d 31 Dec 1787 aged 59, son James d 13 Dec 1783 age 21.
Wm Pettigrew tack(sman in) Torrylinn Mill d 1801? age 36, wife Agnes McDougal

Nothing in any of the other kirkyards in either parish on Arran.

Nothing on Bute

Nell

[usaPetticrew]

I am very grateful for this information, as I didn't find OPR birth/baptism records for John and William.  This helps me greatly.

Thank you for your help.

[hdw]

This is not relevant to your researches but I am also a Pettigrew/Petticrew researcher. My Pettigrews were Ulster Presbyterians in the County Down, but as you are probably aware the surname was common in Lanarkshire from an early date and is also found in Ayrshire, from where it probably got to Arran.

My wife and I were once on Arran - for our honeymoon in 1973 - and we haven't been back since I'm ashamed to say.

Harry
(in Edinburgh)

[Skoosh]

Tacksman William Petigrew of Torrylinn Mill?  A miller was generally a tacksman & held a tack of the mill & croft!

Skoosh.

[usaPetticrew]

Please help this unversed American understand exactly what you mean when you said the miller held a tack of the mill.  What was a tack?  This is an unfamiliar term to me, not recognizable in American historical context.

Thank you.

[Skoosh]

A "tack" is a lease, in the case of a miller's tack, the tenants on an estate were "thirled" to that mill & could use no other. They also had to provide so many days free labour to the miller to maintain the mill fabric & the dam etc. In addition to this the miller had the power to break hand-querns if he suspected they were being used by the tenants. The miller extracted "multures," a per-centage of the meal ground, this amount varied, from 10% to 20% plus a little for his assistant. This not only paid the millers rent to the laird but the surplus was carried to market & sold. A miller therefore needed a horse & a croft to maintain this & the family. Millers were noted for their livestock, therefore "fat as a millers pig!"
 Meal, was also a substitute for cash, rents etc' both oatmeal & beremeal, a type of barley,  farm servants were partly paid in meal but wanted it as required so the miller was a busy man preparing batches for each farm. Wheat was generally not used much in Scotland until later in the 18th century.

Bests,
Skoosh.

[hdw]

You will also come across the word "tacksman" if you read about the Highlands in the old days. Once again it refers to someone holding a lease, in this case of land. This is from Scotlandspeople -

"Tacksman    

A person who holds a lease and sublets land to others. (tacksmen were found mostly in the highlands from the 17th century, and were often a close relative of the chief. Although some of them farmed the land themselves, most lived off the difference between the low rent they paid to the chief and the rents they charged to sublet the land.)"

Harry

[Skoosh]

That is the case relating to land being let to a tacksman for rent, where the clan gentry lived off the sub-tenants & paid a rent to the laird. In the case of the estate mill, the miller has no tenants but lives off their produce by providing a compulsory service!

Skoosh.