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Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Banffshire => Topic started by: Jackson_search on Sunday 18 March 07 14:23 GMT (UK)
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Hello,
I'm looking for the occupants of the home next to the Bridge of Brown. It might be a tea room and craft shop today.
Bridge of Brown, Tomintoul, Ballindalloch, Banffshire, AB37 9HR
My orphaned McDonald ancestors were taken in by a Maggie Grant. They lived with her from about 1907 until about 1920. The only other information was that Maggie Grant was a Spinster.
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Sadly, the 1901 Scottish Census is only available on the pay to view site Scotlands People. You can only search the index by surname, not address.
Regards.
Monica
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Maybe a different approach would be to look for deaths in Tomintoul of Margaret Grants. Between 1920 and 1956 (cut-off date to view images on line on SP), there are only two deaths showing of a Margaret Grant without additional surnames (normally implying they were married):
1946 GRANT MARGARET age 69 @ KIRKMICHAEL /BANFF 160/01 0003
1943 GRANT MARGARET ANN age 60 @ TOMINTOUL /BANFF 160/02 0006
I'll have a quick look now at the 1891 Census (available through another index) and see if anything jumps out.
Regards.
Monica
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Two main households coming up in the 1891 census, with a Maggie (rather than Margaret) so happens!
Margaret Grant 42, postmistress, b. Kirkmichael
Maggie Grant 13
Alexander Grant 10
Donald Grant 5
Address: Bridge of Avon, Kirkmichael
and:
John Grant 64, Farmer and Registrar
Jane Grant 50
John Grant 20
Mary Jane Grant 18
Peter Grant 16
Charles Phillips 15
Elsie Maggie Grant 14
Catherine Isabella Grant 13
William Alexander Grant 9
Charles Grant 7
Address: Fordmouth, Tomintoul, Kirkmichael
Both households seem very respectable and upstanding! Whether they are the right Maggies, you would still need to verify. Hopefully, you have some additional info for background.
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Thank you Monica.
I'll keep a record of these just in case. Unfortunately I don't know anymore about Maggie. I tried looking up burial records as well but it was really just a shot in the dark. There were a couple of possibilities but since I don't know when she was born I'm only guessing at the results. I'll go ahead and look though Scotspeople and see what comes up.
I would also like to add that there must have been some sort of family connection to her. My McDonald ancestors were sent to live with Maggie when both their parents died in separate accidents in Glasgow. It seems a drastic move to be sent all the way up to Tomintoul. Perhaps when I can make better headway finding my McDonald relatives I'll find the answer to Maggie Grant.
By the way, can you tell me what local cemeteries I should concentrate on ?
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Sorry, not an expert on the local cemeteries - hopefully someone else can comment.
Regards.
Monica :)
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We have known close family (McIntoshes) living in a croft very close to Bridge of Brown, Banff, only a few miles from Tomintoul) and we have also found the curious young 'boarders' from Glasgow. In this small area in 1901 we found there were 17 Glaswegian youngsters:
14 children at school boarding with a total of 5 families, one 2-year-old and 2 lads aged 15 working on farms.
So we would be very interested if anyone can find out how this came about. It's a different matter from the WW2 evacuees which was a govenrment scheme.
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as regards the large numbers of boarders form glasgow. many of these if not all were placed in this area by the glasgow parish poor relief. i have discovered this researching this into my own grandfathers past arthur mcguigan. he was boarded in incnacape farm by widow gordon. boarding out was a common practice as opposed to keeping people in poor houses in scotland (although this still went on). it was seen as a way of taking young people away from the "corrupting" influences of the slums and giving them "work experience" on farms. many of the boarders sent to tomintoul and the surrounding area were catholic and it was the case that there was a convent in this area at the time and a catholic school in tombae i think. i would be interested to here if anyone has additional information on the experiences of these young people in the area between 1898 and 1908. if you want access to the parish poor relief records for glasgow you should visit the archive room in the mitchell library in glasgow. the records often contain details on the circumstances why the relief was given.
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many of the boarders sent to tomintoul and the surrounding area were catholic and it was the case that there was a convent in this area at the time and a catholic school in tombae i think.
The Glenlivet area continued to have a strong Roman Catholic population right through the 18th century, when there was a clandestine seminary (not quite a convent) at Scalan where young priests were trained, and there is still a significant proportion of Roman Catholics in the area. There are RC churches at Tomintoul, Tombae and Chapeltown in the Braes of Glenlivet.
See http://www.scalan.co.uk/ for fascinating information about Scalan. Photographs also at http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NJ2419
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Hello, I was interested in your discussion re Maggie Grant and the mention of Foordmouth (Fordmouth), Tomintoul.
My father's Grandmother, Elspet Grant was born there, also her sister Isabella, Jean an older sister, birth not reg, plus a younger brother Peter. Elspet's parents were Jean Gordon and John Grant, the farm appeared to belong to the Gordon family, in the 1841 census, the older Jean Gordon is living there with 2 sons, Jon and Charles. I wrote to the farmer living there now, and enclosed a SAE, but he didn't reply. I've seen the farm and wondered if it was the same building. It is very idyllic and beautiful, but I think my ancestors John and Jean left due to poverty, the land could not support everyone. They went to live in Craig, Montrose. Is my GGreat Grandfather related to your Grants? he was born in Inveravon, 1804.
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the farm appeared to belong to the Gordon family
I'd be very surprised if that were the case. Most farmers were tenants, and very few indeed owned their land, and I am fairly sure that Fordmouth would have been a tenanted farm. It would be easy enough to find out - a look at a valuation roll woul tell you who the proprietor was.
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Thanks very much for your reply.
I asked about John Grant at the tourist office and was told that looking for John Grants were like looking for a needle in a haystack up in that part of the world.
However, the second time I visited Tomintoul, the lady at the tourist info office told me and my Aussie cousins that if some of my family were Gordons in the early 1800's that they would have come to Tomintoul with General John Gordon of Glenbucket (look him and his son up on the internet, they sounded great to know) following the Jacobite uprising. I doubt that he was related to my own ancestor, again John Gordon was a common name. There is a map in the tourist info plan of the houses and land with the names of the tenants or owners, way back, and there was a Gordon, but not at Foordmouth. I don't know if many people know that Tomintoul is not a particularly old place?, it had some remote cottages around, but the actual village was more or less planned, and is only just over 200 years old or so. Foordmouth was where the men also drove their cattle over from the other side. Sorry to bore anyone reading this, but it's a beautiful place to visit and the drive over the mountains is like a rollercoaster. Does anyone know how people like my own anscestors came down from Tomintoul? The road is so steep I could not picture a cart and horse negotiating the route, I don't know if there was another route south?
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Tomintoul was founded in 1776. It is one of many planned villages all over Scotland built in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was fashionable for enlightened landowners to lay out new villages and towns with straight streets at right angles to one another, and a central square, as opposed to the mediaeval street plan where the main street widened out to accommodate the kirk and the market, and people lived along lots of little lanes leading out from the street into the fields. Elgin and Forres are mediaeval; Keith, Fochabers, Tomintoul, Rothes, Grantown, Buckie, Lossiemouth, Cullen upper town etc are all planned towns/villages.
The steep road over the Lecht from the south was one of the military roads built after the 1745 Rising so that soldiers could more easily be moved around the country. Before that, anyone travelling anywhere would have gone on foot or on horseback, and goods would have been transported on a pack horse. The old bridge at Bridge of Livet was such a bridge, probably too narrow for a cart. In any case, I think it is quite likely that the people of the parish of Kirkmichael (where Tomintoul is) tended to head north towards Strathspey rather than south over the mountains if they travelled at all.
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Thank you Forfarian for your reply, I had wondered if they went eastwards then down to Montrose, however they travelled it must have been horrible with at least 4 or 5 children.
I noticed that among the list of names you are researching there is a Burgess.
My ancestor John Grant's parents were John Grant and Isabel Burgis (her name spelt when she married) her name was given as Isabella Burgess when John Grant died himself. He was born in Inveravon, I don't know if you have any connections with that Burgess line.
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My ancestor John Grant's parents were John Grant and Isabel Burgis (her name spelt when she married) her name was given as Isabella Burgess when John Grant died himself. He was born in Inveravon, I don't know if you have any connections with that Burgess line.
Not as far as I know. There were quite a few of the name in Inveravon, Tomintoul and Cromdale etc, and mine are from Mortlach. I have yet to find any connections, but I rather doubt that the evidence has survived, if it ever existed. In particular I don't know what the wife of John Grant was. I would not read anything significant into the spelling.
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I think there must have been many births unrecorded. I ploughed through the Grants looking for brothers and sisters for John and couldn't find one. His marriage was unrecorded as were his wife's parents John and Jean Gordon,her own birth, the first child's birth was unrecorded and John Grant and his wife's ages differed constantly on certificates and census forms. If I went by one of the ages given, Jean Grant would be 14 when her first child was born.
After I was told about my Gordon relatives being remnants of the Jacobite uprising I noticed a number of children named Charles, obviously named after Bonnie Prince Charlie. Do you know much about how wide spread the use of Gaelic was? I had wanted to know if my relatives spoke Gaelic in the 1820's and 30's in the Kirkmichael parish
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Alison, have you considered the possibility that your relatives were Roman Catholic? There was and still is quite a strong RC congregation in the Tomintoul/Glenlivet area, and this might help to explain the low level or recording of baptisms and marriages.
Roman Catholic records for that area have survived from the 1800s onwards, but not from the 18th century. The Statistical Account of Kirkmichael (written by the Rev John Grant in 1791-3) says that the parish contained 1276 inhabitants, of whom 384 were Roman Catholics. The reverend gentleman evidently resents the influence of the RC priest, complaining that "the priest generally takes the liberty of sharing in the functions that belong to the Protestant clergyman". He adds, in a footnote, that there will consequently be several marriages and baptisms unknown to the Session and hence not in its records, and he goes on to congratulate himself is being so tolerant as to have allowed the RC priest to "marry and baptize, impose penalties, and exact them among his own people, in the same manner as if he were of the Established Church".
Later on he writes, "The common idiom of this country, is a dialect of the ancient Celtic .... The young people speak Gaelic and English indifferently, and with equal impropriety .... Some of the old people speak the Gaelic, and consequently with a degree of propriety".
In the New Statistical Account of 1834-5, the Rev Alexander Tulloch writes, "The language generally spoken is the Gaelic, but it has decreased very considerably in the last forty years. There is no an individual between twelve and forty years of age who cannot speak English. They all read English, and there are many of the rising generation who cannot speak Gaelic". In that year there were 1722 people in the parish, of whom 485 were Roman Catholic.
So I think you can be pretty certain that your own 18th century ancestors in Kirkmichael did speak Gaelic, and it is likely that they still did so in the 1830s.
In fact, if you are interested in the social and economic background to your ancestors' lives, I stongly recommend reading the relevant Statistical Accounts. These accounts were written for each parish by the minister, and some of them, of which the Kirkmichael one is a shining example, digress into all sorts of related and even some unrelated matters which are highly entertaining as well as informative.
The Statistical Accounts can be read online at http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/. You can browse them without being a subscriber - the browse link is at the foot of the page.
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Thanks a lot Forfarian,
I greatly enjoyed reading the account especially from Kirkmichael, I loved the way the recorder relapsed into latin and quoted notes you wouldn't expect, also interested re Ossian, as I thought that was a part of folklore that modern day hippies had latched on to. I didn't know Adam was 123 feet tall, or Eve being 118 feet, quite remarkable.
I looked up Benholm and will read later re Bervie, my father's male line came from there, but the Benholm account couldn't match amusing account of Kirkmichael. I read before that Queen Victoria had said that it was the most 'pitiful place she had even seen etc' I don't know if you read yourself as far as notes re a sort of mythical creature which roamed around the Highlands? Bigger than a mole, with a large head etc. Also that wolves may still have been up in that part of the world longer than was officially thought. Very interesting, I will read up on it again and I did come across the bit about the language, I suppose they would have to have learned English at some time. I'm not sure about them being Catholic though it may have been possible, the place they moved to, Craig, only seemed to have one Chuch, so they may have been lapsed Catholics.
I did read somewhere else that the people, knowing that they were living in the highest village, thought that they could more or less do what they wanted and get away with it. Thanks again.
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Hello
I saw your query re Maggie Grant at Fordmouth.
My ancestors Peter/John and Jean Gordon ms Cummin/g lived there in the early 1800's; their 2 sons took over the farm, John and Charles. John married a Margaret Ness/ or Innes, who was much younger than him.
John had a sister, Jean, who married John Grant from Inveravon, the two of them lived at Fordmouth then Gaulrig before leaving to live for the rest of their lives in Craig, Montrose.
I can only presume that the Grants who moved in later on were related to this John Grant? John's mother was Isabel Burgis/ Isabella Burgess, his father was John Grant, I could not find any brothers or sisters listed.
I don't know if you have seen the farm? It is in a very beautiful setting. Unfortunately the farmer living there declined to answer my letter to him, I just wanted to know if the house was the original one.