| 1751
Treasury minute of 10th July records that General Churchill advised
the Prime Minister that the "forfeited lands of the late Cameron's
of Locheil, Mc Donal (sic) of Kinlochmoydarts (sic), Stewart of
Ardshiel etc Cameron of Callarts are possessed by Jacobites, most
of whom were in the late rebellion". The Appin Murder, William
MacArthur, p 20.
1751
Turnpike Act 1751, Farmers and landowners to maintain roads
1751 In November, Lord Glenorchy (later, 3rd Earl of Breadalbane)
wrote supporting the good name of a factor administrating Jacobite
supporters' forfeited estates and in passing stated that "Mr Campbell
of Gleneure (half brother to Campbell of Barcaldine) is a factor
of that part of the estate of late Cameron of Locheil which holds
of the Duke of Gordon, & of the very small estate of Stuart of Ardshiel.
Another Campbell, whom Glenorchy does not know (in fact, Peter Campbell)
is factor of the other part of Locheil's Estate holding of the Duke
of Argyll, & of the Estate of MacDonald of Kinlochmoydart". The
Appin Murder, William MacArthur, p24.
1751
"At an early age there was a small property cutting like a wedge
into the Kinlochmoidart estate, and reserved by Clanranald for his
Moidart bailiff or "maor". It is called Lochans, and was held for
several generations by the same family of McIsaacs. All minor disputes
amongst the natives were referred to the bailiff for settlement,
and all questions connected with land, such as the disposal of vacant
farms, or payment of rent, came under his cognisance. At stated
intervals he held court in open air, sometimes near Leadnacloiche,
but more frequently at Torr-na-breith, a spot situated midway between
Brunery and Dalelea". Moidart Among the Clanranalds, p142 Charles
MacDonald, Ed John Watts
Note: Torr a Bhreitheimh can be seen on modern OS map, as described..
1753
Bunawe Smelting works opened at Taynuilt. "Local timber at first
was sufficient to meet demand, but later saw timber from as far
as Moidart, Morvern and Lochaber being used". Moidart Among the
Clanranalds, p140 Charles MacDonald, Ed John Watts.
1755
Webster's census put the population of Scotland at 1,234,575. ..Estimates
are that the population at the beginning of the century was about
1,072,00. The census in 1801 showed it to have grown to 1,608,420…The
growth was patchy. Between 1755 and 1801, the population in the
West Coast of Scotland grew by 83%, three times as fast as the rate
for Scotland as a whole…The West in this instance included
Glasgow…The Highland-born population of Greenock, for example,
rose from 410 in 1755 to 5,100 in 1801, when it was 29% of the total…Over
the whole of the eighteenth century, 80,000 Scots went to North
America, two-thirds of them from the lowlands. Eighteenth Century
Scotland, New Perspectives, TM Devine and JR Young, page 195, Essay
by Robert E Tyson
1755 "At
4 o'clock in the afternoon I Sett out for Moydart, But before I
had travelled a quarter of a mile, there began to fall a very heavy
Rain, which Continued till I arrived at Kinlochmoydart, Eight computed
miles from Strontian. The Country through which I travelled was
extremely wild. The Road led me either over high mountains, or through
deep mosses intercepted by many Rapid Streams that were swelled
by the Rains, and which I Crossed with great difficulty. I was Carried
over LochShiell in a Boat at Portneill, where there is an Island
in the middle of the Loch which Serves as a Burying place to the
Inhabitants of the neighbouring Country. When I came to the head
of LochMoydart, I found the houses Situated on the North side of
a River that emptys itself into the Loch, and which was so Swelled
with the Rains that were told it was impassable, But there being
no Shelter on this side, and the Rain continuing, I being Still
on foot was persuaded by my Guide to attempt to cross it, and which
we accordingly did fastned in one anothers arms after the Custom
of the Inhabitants, though the Stream was excessively rapid, and
covered us to the Breast…. ….The Salt water of Moydart
runs four miles up the Country, where it opens to the Sea there
is Situated a Small Island called Shuna at each end of which there
is a narrow neck where Shipping may come in. At the head of the
Loch is the Ruins of the House of McDonald of Kinlochmoydart situated
upon a small plain upwards of a mile long, and three quarters of
a mile Broad divided by a River and surrounded with high hills….
The whole Country is very mountaineous, and only fitt for breeding
and Grassing of Cattle…. ….The oats are sown betwixt the
midle of March and the midle of April, and a little Barley about
the beginning of May. The Harvest begins about the middle of September.
The oats which are of a Small grey kind produce about Three fold
and for these two or three years bypast there have been planted
a few potatoes. This Country produces very little meal but great
abundance of Beef and Goats and a little Mutton. Likewise as much
Butter and Cheese as Serves its Inhabitants, and all along the Coast
there are to be had white fish of various sorts in great plenty.
The ordinary price paid for Grassing of a Cow is four or five merks
p. Annum. Some of the Cottars are allowed a little Cottage with
Grassing for two or three Cows. They are obliged to manure the Arable
Ground of the farm on their own Charge, being further allowed the
fourth part of the Corn produced. Others of them are allowed a Small
piece of Ground (which they labour on their own account) and the
Grassing of two or three Cows, for which they are obliged to labour
the Landlords arable Ground on their proper Charge, but when otherwise
imployed in his Service, he is obliged to maintain them. The Inhabitants
are all McDonalds followers of Clanronald, and said to be of the
Roman Catholic Religion except one family. I could not procure an
exact List of their Numbers, but on taking the Account of each farm
the number of familys they might contain, and reckoning the number
of persons that may reasonably be Expected to be in Each family,
I presume there will be about 8 or 900 persons, who all Speak Irish,
there being no English Schools as yet Settled among them. These
people are principally Supplyed with meal from Banff and Aberdeen
Shire, or from the Islands of Egg and Muck which are very fertile
and not far distant from their coast. From these Islands likewise
they are plentifully supplied with Potatoes….Peat is the only
fireing used with which they are Commodiously Servd from the mosses
that are every where to be found. The access into the Country by
water is from the est Sea up Loch Moydart and Loch Hallyort. The
Ships that bring meal from Aberdeenshire have 8 to 10 pence p. Boll
freight. The Roads Leading into it by Land are almost yea altogether
impassable even for the little Country Horses when Loaded. The Black
Cattle are either sold to the Drovers in the month of May, or towards
the latter end of the Season who carry them to the fairs of Falkirk
and Crieff. The Horses are sold at the fairs of Inverness and Moss
of Balloch. Upon the Coast there is Burnt a little Kelp and Fearn
ashes which are sold to the people who call for them from Ireland
and Liverpool…. ….The Houses are generally made of wood
and Turf as in Sunart, within the last two or three years there
are a few Built of Stone. They are made by the Tennents who have
no other assistance from the Landlord than the liberty of cutting
what wood grows upon his Estate fit for that purpose and even if
the farmer removes he has no allowance for his trouble either from
the Landlord or Incoming Tenent. There is not in this Country any
Limestone, but it is to be got in Ardnamurchan at the distance of
Three Leagues from Kinlochmoydart. There is some finall oak wood,
but none of it fit for buildings of any Consequence."… MS.
La . 11.623 Second Report to the Commissioners and Trustees for
Improving Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland. by Richard Neilson.
1755 (exerpts) - Extract by Jean Lawson
1755
"There was a Dr MacIntyre living at Glenforslan probably of the
great piping family" Glenmoidart Notes, Bonallie/Impey Papers
Ref 16
1755
Roy Maps created, showing habitation clusters in Kinlochmoidart
and surrounds. British Library, ref c9b William Roy, Survey of
Scotland pages 12:9/1,12:9/2, 22:2/3.
1755
A research paper on the Roy Map states, "Maps, by their very nature
make statements about phenomena and their spatial relatioships are
only partial truth. Maps demand omission….Expectations of the
Roy Map must be tempered with the intentions of its creators….Firstly,
what purpose was the Map designed to fulfil and what was its origin,
history and perceived function…." ….Roy wrote subsequently
"The rise and progression of the rebellion which broke out in the
Highlands of Scotland in 1745, and which was finally suppressed
by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Culloden
in the following year, convinced the Government of what infinite
importance it would be to the State that a country, so very inaccessible
by nature, should be thouroughly explores and laid open, by establishing
military posts in its inmost recesses, and carrying roads of communications
to its remotest parts." The survey started in 1747 in the Highlands,
eventually extending by 1755 to the Lowlands. For the first two
years Roy was the only technical surveyor, but subsequently upon
the expansion of the Ordnance Survey, Roy was able to organise six
parties."For Roy,…. certain aspects of landscape were of vital
importance…..Thus knowledge of major roads and bridges was
crucial whereas the numerous rough tracks which passed for rural
roads was not….The detailed morphology of fermtouns and villages
was probably of no tactical importance, but the knowledge of their
existence and nature was….The instruments used were a forty
five or fifty foot chain for measurements and a circumferentor,
i.e. a surveying compass, without any telescopic aid, for obtaining
bearings….The progress of the surveying party through the country
was directed by the existence of roads, rivers, coastlines and loch
shores. These features were followed and measured by a series of
backsights and foresights from the circumferentor on to staffs positioned
at prominent points." Historical Research Series, The Military
Survey of Scotland 1747-1755: A Crtique by G Whittington and AJS
Gibson ISBN 1 870074 00 9.
1755
Father Alexander Forrester, fugitive in Moidart John Dye records.
1755
Population of the Highlands estimated at 257,153 by a Doctor Webster.
Highland Folk Ways, IF Grant, page 53.
1755
By this date, potatoes had become established in the Highlands.
When the oat crop failed in Skye in 1771, Thomas Pennant noted that
potatoes had been the saviour of the people. Twenty years earlier,
they had merely been a curiosity growing in rich men's gardens.
TC Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 p 271 The point
in the eighteenth century, however, where the potato ceased to be
a vegetable grown in the kitchen garden or the kailyards of the
principal farm tenants and became widely recognised as a field crop
is difficult to pinpoint. Certainly by 1755 the Annexed Estates
factors advocated in their reports to their Edinburgh headquarters
the cultivation of potatoes beyond the garden and the kailyard…The
potential of the potato to solve the shortage of pasture and animal
foodstuffs during the winter months must have been influenced by
the impact that the potato was already making on the human population
by then. It has been claimed that the potato was the single most
important innovation in basic diet between 1600 and 1800… Unknowingly
the humble potato was to be a god-send, for a crop which produced
tenfold yields in comparison to the threefold returns of the oats
and the fourfold returns of the bear permitted population growth
without necessitating an accompanying rise in the amount of land
under cultivation and helped to stave off hunger and starvation
when grain harvests were poor or failed in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. The Shieling 1600-1840, The Case
of the Central Scottish Highlands, Albert Bil, page 288.
1760
The Agricultural Revolution of the generations after 1760 enclosed
the Scottish fields, broke down the rigs, consolidated the strips,
drained the stagnant mosses, took in common, changed the crops and
the rotations, and destroyed for ever the traditions of husbandry
which, hallowed and inefficient as it was, had dictated the framework
of life for most Scots for as long as our knowledge of agrarian
history goes back. TC Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830
p 302.
Note: Traces of runrig still exist at Moidart and can be seen in
low-angled sunlight in many places. "Periodic Runrig" comprises
strips reallocated at intervals amongst husbandmen; "Fixed Runrig"
were strips permanently associated with a single holding; "Rundale"
was where some strips had been consolidated into blocks which themselves
lay intermingled with those of other joint tenants.TC Smout,
A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 p 122.
1760
Within two decades of Culloden, the changing economic circumstances
of the whole country transmitted a rising demand for Highland products,
particularly cattle. This brought the promise of material rewards
for the exploiter of Highland resources on a scale quite without
parallel in previous history. Cattle were the export and oats the
import, but between 1740 and 1790 the price of cattle rose by 300%,
whilst oats did not quite double. The price of wool began to rise
too. The organising of sheep farming, unlike cattle, was incompatible
with peasant husbandry and any response to the rising demand for
wool would entail a basic change in land and tenure. TC Smout,
A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 p 345.
1760
George II dies, to be succeeded by George III, who was to reign
for sixty years.
1760
The rental of the land was paid chiefly in kind, and
was exacted in ingeniously vexatious ways. Money was extremely scarce
in Scotland amongst every class. An estate of £300 yearly
rental would often have only £40 paid in money, the rest was
paid in so many bolls of meal, so many sheep, hens and eggs, butter
and cheese, besides so many days ploughing and reaping. The result
of this method was that money was too rare with lairds and provisions
were too copious. It is evident that the massive hospitality rife
amongst the landed gentry of olden times was greatly owing to those
inconvenient superabundant supplies of grain, mutton, poultry and
fish.
Stewart of Appin was said to have received in rent an ox for every
week, and a goat or sheep for every day of the year. It was a relief
for such proprietors to dispense them to the guests that filled
their houses and emptied their larders. The exactions to which the
tenants were subject were hard to bear. While the tenants were poor
and oppressed - yet less by the tyranny of superiors than by the
tyranny of custom - the landowners themselves were deplorably poor
and needy, for being paid chiefly in kind, they had little silver
to spend. The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century.
Page 162 H. Grey Graham.
1761 Records of rents in Brunery, Assary and Glen Forslan and
Duliad farm in the glen . (Patrick McIntyre, surgeon in Strontian,
part owner of Glenforslan). Clanranald & Robertson MacDonald
papers ref E 482 MFS ms3987 Nat Lib Scot
1761
Bishop Hugh MacDonald (see 1731) had to wait until 1761 for his
coadjutor, who was his nephew John MacDonald…yet another MacDonald,
Alexander MacDonald, succeeded Bishop John MacDonald in 1780 Eighteenth
Century Scotland, New Perspectives, TM Devine and JR Young, page
96, Essay by James F McMillan
1763
By the Treaty of Paris, Canada passed to the British.
1763
The British obtained the Island of St John from the French and
renamed it Prince Edward Island. Having done so, almost immediately,
tracts of land were given out to people who were thought to deserve
patronage from the British Crown. Thus the island was taken out
of the reach of ordinary settlers and given to the privileged few,
most of whom had little interest in settling the land. As a result
the Island was saddled with a dysfunctional land system and the
population grew only slowly. It was only 1,700 in the late 1770's.
"A very Fine Class of Emigrants", Prince Edward Island's
Scottish Pioneers 1770-1850, Lucille H Campey, page17.
1765 The croft at Duilad, Glenmoidart was tenanted along with
Glenforslan by Capt Alexander MacDonald. Glenmoidart Notes, Bonallie/Impey
Papers Ref 16
1770
Henry Butter factor 1770-1784. Jacobite Estates of the Forty
Five Annette M Smith Donald 1982 P242.
1770
Samalaman House was occupied by the Highland Bishops. They had,
after the burning of the small houses on the island at the foot
of Loch Morar (in 1745) removed to Buorblach nearer to the coast.
(Note: The editor's notes suggest that the school on Eilean Ban,
Loch Morar had not been used after 1737, when the seminary moved
to Guidale at Arisag. Both places were destroyed by government forces
in 1746. There was no seminary in the west until 1768 when one was
briefly established at Glenfinnan. The farm at Buorblach was used
1770-1779 and the house at Samalaman from 1783-1803) Here, in poor
conditions they taught students English Literature, Latin and Greek
and then sent them abroad to the Scots Colleges at Paris, Ratisbon,
Valladolid and Rome where they undertook fuller studies, often for
as long as ten years before returning to their own country as priests.
Buorblach was closed under Bishop Alexander and the centre transferred
to his house at Samalaman, which was extended for the purpose. In
1804 the Bishop and his residents were further transferred to Lismore
which was thought to be more accessible and the house was let by
Clanranald to a Mr Chisholm. Chisholm amassed a considerable fortune
with which he subsequently bought Glenmoidart, or Lochans, for the
benefit of his son Lachlan (see later). Moidart Among the Clanranalds,
Charles MacDonald, Ed John Watts.
1770
By 1770, tacksmen's rents were being raised sharply by chiefs who,
were ceasing to be patriarchal rulers and instead becoming rapacious
landlords. Soon more and more tacksmen were responding to such exactions
by surrendering their tenancies and taking themselves off to North
America…..As late as 1770, when its inhabitants were reported
to be growing oats and raising cattle much as they had always done,
there were few signs that Glencoe was about to become depopulated.
But the next half century was to witness the virtual eradication
of the people who had earlier survived extinction. The sheep farming
system had done the work more effectively than the massacre and
there were but faint traces remaining of the warlike tribes by the
early part of the nineteenth century. Glencoe and the Indians,
James Hunter, page 70.
1770
John Macdonald of Glenaladale bought land on St John's Nova Scotia
and started persuading people on his estates who were Catholic and
being persecuted by Macdonald of Boisdale, to consider mass emigration.
This happened two years later. Moidart Among the Clanranalds,
p182 Charles MacDonald, Ed John Watts.
[Steven
MacDonald, a visitor to the site from Prince Edward Island (PEI)
in Canada, has advised that in 1770 St. John's was actually the
island now known as Prince Edward Island. It was called St John's
Island between 1758-1799 after which the name was changed.
]
1772
Thomas Pennant, coming to Skye, wrote about the poor as "being left
to Providence's care. They prowl like other animals along the shore
to pick up limpets and other shell fish, the casual repasts of hundreds
during the part of the year in these unhappy islands" TC Smout,
A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 p 351.
1772
Thomas Pennant reported that as many as 3,000 head of cattle were
exported annually from Lochaber. Their sale brought a gross income
of £7,500; but of this sum rents claimed £3,000, and imported oatmeal
about £4,000 "so that the tenants must content themselves with a
very scanty subsistence, without the prospect of saving the least
against unfortunate accidents." He also added, "The houses of the
peasants in Lochaber are the most wretched that can be imagined;
framed of upright wooden poles, which are wattled; the roof is formed
of boughs like a wigwam, and the whole is covered with sods; so
that in this moist climate their cottages have a perpetual and much
finer verdure than the rest of the country" The Highlands of
Scotland, W Douglas Simpson, page 205.
1772
John Macdonald of Glenaladale sold his estate to Alexander Macdonald
of Borrodale and then assembled many tenants from Moidart and other
places and led a mass emigration. He spent a lot of his own money
in paying the passage of his poorer companions, and in helping them
make a successful beginning after reaching the American shore. Some
210 people, about half from Moidart and the rest from South Uist,
crossed the Atlantic on the brig Alexander, with a priest and a
doctor in the party. John joined them in 1773, settling at Tracadie.
His plan to have tenants on his land did not prove satisfactory,
and in time many moved away to Nova Scotia where Crown grants of
land were available. His brother, Father Hustian Macdonald, a priest
in Moidart for many years living at Altegil, afterwards went to
join him on Prince Edward Island. Moidart Among the Clanranalds,
p200 Charles MacDonald, Ed John Watts.
1772
Tenants of the MacDonalds on South Uist were put under pressure
to convert to Presbyterianism by their laird. But they resisted
and, led by John MacDonald of Glenaladale (in west Inverness-shire)
and, assisted behind the scenes by Bishop John MacDonald, the Roman
Catholic Bishop in the area, 200 of them sailed in the brig Alexander
and settled mainly at Scotchfort on Prince Edward Island. "A
very Fine Class of Emigrants", Prince Edward Island's Scottish
Pioneers 1770-1850, Lucille H Campey, page 23.
However, Allan J Gillis of Ottawa draws attention
to the following: "There were not 200 settlers from South Uist
on the ship "Alexander". Many of those slated to go changed
their minds when MacDonald of Boisdale promised to cease persecuting
them for maintaining their Catholic faith. Glenaladale made up the
difference by taking on emigrants from Eigg and Barra. This
is all documented in an article in the Island
Register website."
1772 In this year, an emigrant ship was stormbound in Lerwick
and thirty one heads of household were interviewed. They were more
or less unanimous that what was driving them out were the oppressive
services demanded by the landlords and raised rents. They cited
the thirty or forty days a year service required of their servants
and horses. They gave as an example the unfair behaviour of the
tacksmen who took cattle at their own prices (about half of what
could be obtained in the market). They complained of raised rents
caused by competing with soldiers returning from military service
with money saved. These emigrants, like many on boats at this time
when emigration mania had seized twenty thousand Scotsmen, were
far from destitute and, some were small employers. They said that
they never would have thought of leaving their native country, could
they have provided for their families in it, but now they had to
make room for Shepherds and the land available for cattle and grain
was shrinking fast. When their descendants were interviewed in the
twentieth century in Canada, it was emphasised by them that their
forebears had not been cleared, but had come out with a bit of money
or some gold. On the Crofters' Trail, David Craig, page 191
1773
The Hector sailed from Loch Broom to Nova Scotia. - John Dye
1773 The natives of the hamlet of Druim-a-laoigh, almost to
a man going away to America. Moidart Among the Clanranalds, p182
Charles MacDonald, Ed John Watts.
1773
Despite the ban on the philibeg in 1747, which was not to be repealed
until 1782, it seems that it was worn by Alan Macdonald of Kingsburgh,
married to Flora Macdonald, whom Dr Johnson and Boswell visited
in 1773. "I was highly pleased to see Dr Johnson safely arrived
at Kingsburgh, and received by the hospitable Mr Macdonald. He had
his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot
of black ribbon like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of
duffil. A Tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button holes,
a bluish philibeg, and tartan hose". Journal of a Tour of the
Hebrides, Boswell, page 184.
1773
Through the SSPCK the Board of Trustees of Manufacturers, and the
Committee of Forfeited Estates, new and more strenuous efforts were
made to convert the Highland population to Lowland values. The result,
ultimately was the extirpation of disorder. Deprived of their leaders,
their minds benumbed by the defeat at Culloden and their will to
resist eroded by the ideological campaign against them, the wilder
and more traditional clans succumbed at last to the rule of law.
When in 1773, Dr Johnson and James Boswell wandered through the
glens in search of a vanishing patriarchal society, they regarded
themselves as a great deal more secure than if they had been alone
and unarmed on Hampstead Heath: the only clan feuds they found were
commercial ones, as on Coll where local Macleans were prepared to
pay excessive rent to keep a Campbell tacksman from exercising supervision
over them. TC Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830
p 226.
1774
Commerce, and in particular the export of cattle and import of meal,
had long been vital to Gaelic Society…in this period southern
markets began to exert such a dominant influence that the Highland
region became an economic satellite…Starting in the 1760s,
but speeding up drastically during the Napoleonic Wars, rentals
throughout the region soared to unprecedented levels to catch the
surplus from rising prices. It was the speed and scale of rent inflation
that was new and different from the earlier eighteenth century and,
in addition, most of it reflected surging external demand rather
than a return on landlord improvement investment….On the Lochshiel
Estate in Inverness, the rental jumped from £560 in the 1760s to
£863 in 1774, an increase of 54%, with even more dramatic rises
later. The Scottish Nation 1700-2000, TM Devine, Page 173
1775
Crofting began to be introduced and was a radical innovation. In
the middle decades of the century the joint tenancy was still the
dominant social formation in the western Highlands with land cultivated
in runrig, pasture held in common and strong communal traditions
associated with the tasks of herding, harvesting, peat cutting and
repair. Over less than three generations the joint farms were removed
and replaced by a structure of separate smallholdings or crofts…According
to propagandists at this time such as Sir John Sinclair, it was
explicit in the new order, that straths would become sheep runs
and that the people should be relocated on crofts on the coast and
earn their living primarily by fishing, kelping and other bi-employments
… indeed the crofts were planned at such a size that the occupants
would need to look for new jobs…. Eighteenth Century Scotland,
New Perspectives, TM Devine and JR Young, page 231, Essay by Thomas
M Devine…As rents were modified from payments in kind,
to money, the relationship with the landlords during the period
of "improvement" fundamentally changed. Rents on Highland Estates
increased dramatically throughout the century, for instance, Lochaber
1750 @ £392; 1762 @ £553; 1772 @ £1,213; 1784 @ £1,338; 1795 @ £1,585;
1800 @ 2,960 a total increase of 655% (sometimes, faced with resistance,
there were rent reductions, for instance 1770/1773 Lochaber abated
£1,234 by £382)….Many of the tenantry responded by organising
themselves and voluntarily emigrating, principally to North America.
The tacksmen were often at the centre of the plan to leave and at
this time most of those who went paid their own passage….Often
there was a link between subtenant groups; for instance, during
the 1770's a military survey showed that a mere five Lochaber tacksmen
had 159 men between 16 and 60 residing on their farms ….Even
on the estate of Clanranald, dominated as it was with kelping concerns,
an acceptance of emigration under poor economic conditions was evident
in the 1770's. Thus Colin Macdonald of Boisdale noted that "I believe
the country would greatly be the better if a third of the peoples
being away, since there was no public way of employing many of them".
Eighteenth Century Scotland, New Perspectives, TM Devine and
JR Young, page 248, Essay by Andrew Mackillop
1775
Plan and estimate for bridge measuring 35 ft diameter, 18 ft breadth,
£109.16.0. Clanranald & Robertson MacDonald papers ref E 482
MFS Nat Lib Scot.
1775 Population of Scotland estimated by Webster at 1,608,000.
Cargoes of Despair and Hope, Scottish Emigration to North America,
Ian Adams and Meredyth Somerville, Page 2. |
1776-1800