General Musings

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by LuRose Williams on January 10, 2010 at 10:04am

Hello...
I am in the same boat so it seems. For two hundred plus years we were accepted as Williams from the Flatlands of VA...Now that DNA is apparent, we are not Williams...we are MacNeill from the Isles. I loved the History of Ayrshire, the coal mines, the shoemaker....what happened..?

LuRose in Texas

Permalink Reply by John Scott McKay on January 10, 2010 at 10:15am

Hi LuRose: they probably changed there name because of the Clearances. Did not want people to know who they are. I think Williams is a Welch name.Get another DNA test. DNA is not perfect. Anyway you are a Williams now.Also where they lived was propably full of Williams, so they took the name.. Like clans people took the name of Clan Chiefs, but probably were not even of that clan. Just banded together, till the cruddy cheiftains turn there backs on them during the clearances.
Scott

Permalink Reply by William Douglas on January 10, 2010 at 11:34am

Mr Scott,

You raise a number of interesting issues here. I think a reliance on a 'name in the paper' is unlikely to identify anybody living before 1800. Highlanders and, indeed, Lowlanders were mostly God fearing, and so parish registers are the best source of early births (baptisms), deaths and marriages. Cottars, cottagers, or bondsmen are less likely to appear in property deeds than landowners, but this difficulty applies equally to those living in the cities.

Your reference to the Highland Clearances is particularly relevant to Clan MacKay, but, in fact, this can often throw up documentation, eg pasenger lists relating to emigration of Highlanders to North America and Australasia — where today are found considerably more descendants of Highlanders than in Scotland itself.

The Highland Clearances were being enforced with a vengeance in Sutherland in the early 1800s and life was particularly hard for almost everyone. Lord Stafford, later the Earl of Sutherland was the "Great Improver" and was responsible for massive dislocation and hardship in the population. He purchased Lord Reay’s estate in Sutherland, including the Parish of Eddrachillis from the leader of Clan Mackay in 1829 , after which the Clearances probably began in Eddrachillis. By February 1831, the tennants of the parish were petitioning him directly for relief having failed to gain any concessions from his Commissioners. They complained that they were being cramped into coastal settlements and were not allowed to improve the poor soil by adding kelp. In 1832, there was a significant cholera epidemic in the area followed by a famine in 1836. (What happened to the estate records?)

Until that time, fishing, sheep and some tillage (particularly near the coast where the soil could be improved with kelp) were the sole means of survival. The Clearances, which commenced in Sutherland in 1803 were a result of Highland landowners becoming more aware of the commercial benefit of using the land for sheep instead of small farms. This accellerated the decay of Highland society which had been in decline for some time. Population was increasing rapidly due to a decline in infant mortality due to the intorduction of smallpox innoculations. Additionally, competition by Spanish alkali caused the collapse of the kelp industry (dried and burned to produce alkali used in glass and textiles) after the Napoleonic War, with the removal of tariff protection on foreign alkali made from barilla in 1823. For many, it was pure economics that drove people to the cities, or overseas.

You also refer to the Lowlands. Here, too, there was a clearance, sometimes referred as the Lowland Clearances, which was an effect of the British Agricultural Revolution, which changed the traditional system of agriculture which had existed in Lowland Scotland in the seventeenth century. Thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from the southern counties of Scotland migrated from farms and small holdings they had occupied to the new industrial centres of Glasgow, Edinburgh and northern England or abroad. Such migration did not ocur in the same way with the Border battles and shirmishes with the English. Highlanders also found themselves in Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc.

Tracking population movement 200 years ago to identify our ancestors is no easy task.

To get the help of others who are on the same track, post details of the earliest ancestor for whom you have reasonable set of identfying details; spouse, children, dates, locations, employment, etc.

One final point - not everyone is easily identifed, as you will be aware, signing your self Scott, but having John as your first name! Just another hurdle for family historians and genealogists to work around, and it adds to the fun.

Yours aye,

William
www.douglashistory.co.uk