Thanks for sharing this with us, Russ.  I'm enjoying the photos of our "old" gatherings, and playing a guessing game with myself - trying to put names to the faces, before I cheat and read them!

I've been re-reading some books lately about Islay emigrants, especially those who settled in Ontario.  John Murdoch certainly was against the barbaric removal of Scottish peasants, and focused on the hardships they endured when they finally got to their promised land. John Ramsay of Kildalton visited many of his ex-tenants in Ontario in 1870, who all appeared to be doing very well in their new situations, and were thankful for the opportunity to bring their families to Ontario.  Of course, he was a landlord.  John McKorkindale from Islay came to Canada in 1855 (later than many emigrants), and visited many old friends and relatives.  From  observations written in his journal, he found both good and bad, but seemed appalled that that there was too much drinking at the barn raisings, and not enough church-going.  "Let's Reminisce about Nottawasaga", and "The Beaverton Story" both tell of early Islay pioneer life, their hardships and their triumphs.  What I find most interesting is that they clung together in these new settlements, helped each other, their children often married into other Islay families, and later even migrated to the U.S. or to Western Canada, still together.   Sadly, Scotland sent away some of its best sons and daughters, often with little regard as to what would happen to them.  Lucky Canada.
My thoughts,
Toni S.

Thank you, Russ. Unless you saved it many of the useful databases were lost in transition. Hopefully together we have most of them. Your databases with sources and notes will be a big help. Families are so intermarried that I have found so much info by cross referencing sources. Thanks for giving us all another leg up!!!

Back in 2006 I created a database of McGilvrays of Islay and put it on Rootsweb WorldConnect. After Ancestry took over Rootsweb the site was degraded by stripping out the sources and notes, and covering half the screen with ads. I have deleted that site and ported it over to TribalPages. The link is https://www.tribalpages.com/tribe/browse?userid=islaymcgilvrays

Russ

Clearances in Scotland, evictions in Ireland and enclosures in England -- different names for the same phenomenon. Subsistence farmers were removed from the land, forced into towns or to emigrate, so that the land could be turned over to sheep whose wool fed the looms of the industrializing midlands, along with the cotton produced by slaves in the American south and Britain's Caribbean islands. Sheep were highly profitable and didn't rebel. Scottish Land Commission: "It found that about 1,125 owners, including Highland lairds and major public bodies such as Forest Enterprise and the National Trust for Scotland, own 70% of Scotland’s rural land, covering more than 4.1m hectares (10m acres) of countryside." And these days those "lairds" are mostly of English descent. 

Here is an Islay-specific piece:
https://www.islayinfo.com/islay_clearances.html

My family (McKellars) moved in to Islay around 1840 when many others were being moved out, to live at Kilbranan (where four farmers had been evicted), working as shepherds, I believe, for the under-factor Webster who appears to have been one of the main villains of the piece.

I have just finished reading The Highland Clearances by TM Devine and wanted to share it . Following this note is a review I wrote.




In The Scottish Clearances, TM Devine argues the Highland clearances are quite misunderstood. Popular fiction, sensationalist accounts and sentimental story telling have created a myth that clouds the facts and hides the truth behind a mist of romanticism. In this book Devine takes on the task of setting the record straight.

Devine believes the highland clearances were not a singular event, but a part of a broader action that covered the entire country. He studied the removal of people from land worked by generations of their ancestors across the whole of Scotland. Historical events of the time, as well as the social history and the economic patterns of the time are marshalled together to support his claim.

In anticipation of counter arguments, Devine looked at his thesis from many perspectives. Several times I formed an argument against his thesis only to read his response in a later chapter.

Because of the broad approach which Devine takes to his topic he provides the reader with an excellent view of life in 18^th and 19^th Century rural Scotland. For someone interested in genealogy, the opportunity to learn about farming practices and life on the croft is appreciated.

According to Devine, economic forces were the cause of the clearances, not only in the Highlands, but in the rest of Scotland as well. They were inevitable and lacked any moral concern. While hard on tenants, land owners had little choice and were forced to remove people from their land in order to play a role in the new agricultural economy.

This is where I diverge from Devine’s thesis. His history is sound, but he approaches it from a mechanistic viewpoint supporting free market capitalism. He assigns no blame to land owners, in their callous disregard for their farmers, because the impartial broom of the free market swept people away in an amoral pursuit of progress.

He doesn’t consider the theft of the land by the landlords as a concern. He accepts that as a given. But it is that theft which lies behind the problems faced by the tenant farmers who were removed from their land.

In an earlier time, clan chiefs were not the owners of land, but the leaders of a community. The land was owned by that community and the produce from it was shared among everyone, including the chiefs who didn’t actually work the land. Land was owned by the community and the chiefs were responsible to administer its use. So social was the community resource that individual farmers worked different patches of land from year to year in order to share the good and the bad land in a fair manner. For those farmers to be forced from their land so the descendants of the former chiefs could claim the land and increase their wealth was treachery on a grand scale.

For people who are interested in Scottish history and who wish to understand the lives of their ancestors this book is a must read. It is the story of the people of Scotland caught up in a changing world and forced to contend with forces beyond their control. With a stoic manner and the fortitude gained from a lifetime of suffering and hard work, they met the challenge thrown at them and persevered. That is the legacy they have left to us, their descendants.

 

Devine, T.M. The Scottish Clearances, Penguin Books, 2019.

I have just finished reading The Highland Clearances by TM Devine and wanted to share it . Following this note is a review I wrote.




In The Scottish Clearances, TM Devine argues the Highland clearances are quite misunderstood. Popular fiction, sensationalist accounts and sentimental story telling have created a myth that clouds the facts and hides the truth behind a mist of romanticism. In this book Devine takes on the task of setting the record straight.

Devine believes the highland clearances were not a singular event, but a part of a broader action that covered the entire country. He studied the removal of people from land worked by generations of their ancestors across the whole of Scotland. Historical events of the time, as well as the social history and the economic patterns of the time are marshalled together to support his claim.

In anticipation of counter arguments, Devine looked at his thesis from many perspectives. Several times I formed an argument against his thesis only to read his response in a later chapter.

Because of the broad approach which Devine takes to his topic he provides the reader with an excellent view of life in 18^th and 19^th Century rural Scotland. For someone interested in genealogy, the opportunity to learn about farming practices and life on the croft is appreciated.

According to Devine, economic forces were the cause of the clearances, not only in the Highlands, but in the rest of Scotland as well. They were inevitable and lacked any moral concern. While hard on tenants, land owners had little choice and were forced to remove people from their land in order to play a role in the new agricultural economy.

This is where I diverge from Devine’s thesis. His history is sound, but he approaches it from a mechanistic viewpoint supporting free market capitalism. He assigns no blame to land owners, in their callous disregard for their farmers, because the impartial broom of the free market swept people away in an amoral pursuit of progress.

He doesn’t consider the theft of the land by the landlords as a concern. He accepts that as a given. But it is that theft which lies behind the problems faced by the tenant farmers who were removed from their land.

In an earlier time, clan chiefs were not the owners of land, but the leaders of a community. The land was owned by that community and the produce from it was shared among everyone, including the chiefs who didn’t actually work the land. Land was owned by the community and the chiefs were responsible to administer its use. So social was the community resource that individual farmers worked different patches of land from year to year in order to share the good and the bad land in a fair manner. For those farmers to be forced from their land so the descendants of the former chiefs could claim the land and increase their wealth was treachery on a grand scale.

For people who are interested in Scottish history and who wish to understand the lives of their ancestors this book is a must read. It is the story of the people of Scotland caught up in a changing world and forced to contend with forces beyond their control. With a stoic manner and the fortitude gained from a lifetime of suffering and hard work, they met the challenge thrown at them and persevered. That is the legacy they have left to us, their descendants.

 

Devine, T.M. The Scottish Clearances, Penguin Books, 2019.

Hi Ken;

i don't think I posted this already. You had stated that the McVorran name was changed to Morrison.  I have been reviewing the family tree.  I have a Neil Morrison whose spouse was Mary Cameron 1793 - 1865.  I don't have any dates for Neil. They came from Kildalton to Onatrio.   They may have come with her brother Hugh and his family in 1847.  Do you recognize these names?

Donald Young

I have completed  a spread sheet based on the 1871 Census for an Islay farm. It raises a number of interesting questions. I wonder if anyone can add to or modify my thoughts.
The term "farm" has two different usages here. The first use describes the entire piece of land used by a small community of people. The second use describes a small piece of that land, farmed by one farmer.
The farm community had 74 people living in 16 family groupings listed in the census. Not everyone had a job listed. I wonder if they would have been working together on a family farm.
9 people were listed as farmers. Each had a piece of land varying from 20 to 60 acres. However, only a small piece of each farm was arable land varying from 5 to 10 acres. In fact of the total 320 acres available for farming, only 92 were arable land suited for crops.
1 person was listed as a crofter and 1 was listed as a herdsman.
I wonder what the difference between the crofter and the farmers would be.
Would the herdsman be responsible for a community herd? Or would that herd belong to an absentee person, the land owner or the tacksman?
Presumably the land was owned by an aristocratic landlord, such as the Campbells and was managed by a tacksman who would not have lived there. I wonder about differing social status levels of the people living on the farm. Would the farmers be considered the highest status people in the community?
Would people move onto and off of the farm at frequent intervals, or would most of them be inclined to live on the farm for life?
If anyone could help me to learn about this life style I would appreciate it. Possibly there are other readers who would find it interesting as well.
Glynn