Now that I’ve managed (with much help) to discover my maternal great grandparents (here), I’d like to record what details I have found out concerning their lives and that of their forebears. As explained in my earlier article, my grandfather was the son of Peter Campbell and Mary Mcmartin, who had married at Killin church on January 12, 1866. They had both been born in the neighbourhood, Peter at Ledchary just to the south-west of Killin, and Mary at Craignavie, a short distance from the town, on the left bank of the river Dochart.
Peter and Mary had eleven children, all but two early daughters surviving into adulthood. They were; John (1866-1913), Christian (b & d 1868), Mary (1869-70), Finlay (1871-1946) Peter (1872-1935), Mary Christina (b 1874) Janet (1878-1946), Elizabeth (1879-1949), James (b 1882), Ann (1885-1939) and William (1887-1930). As we shall see, the family, in the main followed the traditional naming pattern, still usual in Scotland although it seems to have died out earlier in the century in England. The sequence is eldest son, named for paternal grandfather, second son for maternal grandfather, eldest daughter for maternal grandmother and second for maternal grandmother and so on.
Peter was born in about 1831/2, judging by his age in later census records. No record of his baptism is recorded and the first we can see of him is in the 1841 census when he is living with his parents at Easter Auchmore which, although in the parish of Weem, lies just a couple of fields to the east of Killin. I can’t find him in 1851 (he is not at the parental home), but ten years later he is living in at the Killin Hotel, employed as a postboy, aged 29. At first I was puzzled by this job description, but it was, in fact, a synonym for a postillion or one who attended and drove horses. This was reinforced when, ten year later he is described as a coachman. He was, no doubt, in charge of the hotel’s horse and carriage, much required until the railway reached the town in 1886. The status of ‘postboy’ was enough for his daughter to describe him as such on her mother’s death certificate.
By the time of the 1871 census, Peter had been married and presumably moved out of the hotel. No address is given on the form (apart from ‘Killin’), but it appears to be in Main Street as two shops are nearby. With Peter and Mary is their eldest son, John aged 4, his two younger sisters having already died. The next two censuses record a change in Peter’s employment as well as the regular addition of further children. In 1881 he is described as a ‘farm servant’, ie. agricultural labourer, and by 1891 he is a general labourer. At his death in 1899, his son Peter the informant, refers to him as a crofter, although not all the information on this document is to be trusted as Peter junior has confused his grandmothers (Scottish death certificates are so much more informative than English ones, giving the time of death, wife’s maiden name as well as the parents of the deceased, and his mother’s maiden name too). Peter died of Brights Disease and Oedema, at 5.00pm on August 9th.
Main Street, Killin. I imagine the Campbells lived on the right of this view
Information on earlier members of the family is thin on the ground. Peter’s father is given on marriage and census records as John. However when John was baptised, on January 12th 1783, his parents are recorded as Duncan McIllhuaish and Janet McNaughton, and other register entries indicate that Duncan used both surnames. Even as late as this, surname usage in the Highlands was not fixed, and the use of aliases for one reason or another was quite common; the case of the surname McGregor is well known. Land documents of 1769 list a Duncan McIlluas as a tenant in Carwhin near Killin, which is where Duncan’s abode is given in the baptism register. John’s death certificate gives Duncan’s occupation as farmer. John is variously listed as a shepherd or cowherd; he died in 1859 of ‘general debility’ at Gray Street, Killin. It has not been possible to trace back much further than this so far. John’s wife was Mary Campbell, the daughter of James Campbell, a farmer and Elizabeth McLellan and they had married at Killin in 1815 and had nine children. Mary died at Gray Street in 1870 of apoplexy. Interestingly the informant is given as Patrick Campbell, son, who is presumably the same person as Peter the postboy. Given that this family spoke Gaelic it is most likely that the registrar used his own anglicisation of the name Peadar, which could be represented by either Peter or Patrick. The name is rendered Peter on his father’s death certificate1.
Gray Street and the Falls of Dochart
Returning to my great grandmother Mary Campbell, she was the daughter of Finlay MacMartin and Christian McLellan, who had married at Kenmore church on January 10th, 1836. Kenmore is a small village at the north end of Loch Tay, whereas Killin lies at the southern end. Finlay had been born in Kenmore parish according to some census records, but in Weem or Killin in others. The complex distribution of parish boundaries may have led to this confusion2.
Finlay is always described as an agricultural labourer in census records, but when registering his wife’s death in 1872, he described himself as a ‘dyke builder’. After his marriage the family lived at Craignavie in the valley of the Dochart river, just outside Killin, where they are found in the census years of 1841, 1851 and 1861. Between then and 1871 they had moved to Monomore, a little closer to the town, if not part of it as it is nowadays, and just adjacent to the Falls of Dochart, and across the river from Gray Street, Killin. They had a smaller family than usual in those times, just four children, Christian (1838-1902), Duncan (1840-1924), Mary (1843-1923) and Elizabeth (1849-1888). Both Finlay and Christian died at Monomore, Finlay in 1886 of ‘senile decay’ and Christian in 1872 of Scirrhus of the rectum – a carcinoma.
Finlay’s parents were Peter McMartin (born 1787) a farmer, and Christian McDiarmid, who had married at Killin in 1811. His wife, Christian McLellan’s family can be taken back a little further; her parents were John McLellan (born around 1771) and Mary McKercher (born around 1788). John was a farmer (I imagine the usage refers to a crofter) and was the son of a Donald McLellan and Catherine Menzies who married in 1758 at Fortingall3. This was another village near Kenmore at the entrance to Glen Lyon. They lived at a farm named Craigelig, which was further up the glen, and Donald was originally from Roromore, another farm quite close-by. So, ancestors who would have been alive during the ’45 uprising; I wonder if it affected this part of rural Perthshire?
As Peter Campbell, my great grandfather has been the one whose life has left the greater part of the information I’ve found (mostly through the research of others) so far, I’ll finish with a summary of what had been discovered of his family.
The eldest son, John was a gardener who at some point moved south to the Glasgow area. In 1898 he married Janet McGibbon, who, although born in Buenos Aires, Argentina hailed from a Perthshire family from Crieff. They had four children, three boys and a girl. The middle boy, Lewis McGibbon Campbell (1901-1961) lived in Lanarkshire most of his life and worked as a miner, whilst the other three siblings all moved to Kent, Ontario, Canada in the 1920s. It is their descendants who are my closest DNA matches, and who are still residents of Kent. John died as the result of a railway accident in 1913. He was living in Bellshill near Motherwell and was returning, late at night from visiting a friend when he was struck by a locomotive on a level crossing. His wife had to apply for poor relief for a time until the two eldest boys could provide for the family. She died in 1952. Strangely enough, both the boys in Canada died within a month of each other in 1937. John appears so far, to have been the only son of the family who married.
The fourth child of Peter and Mary Campbell, following the early deaths of two daughters, was Finlay. He too moved away from Killin. He was in Edinburgh in 1891 aged 19, working as a waiter in a public house, but twenty years later found him in Glasgow still in the ‘spirit trade’. However, by 1921 he had moved into the tobacco industry and was a warehouseman employed by the Glasgow Tobacco Warehouse Company. He died in 1946 of a heart attack, still listed as a ‘bond storeman’.
The third son, Peter lived most of his life in Killin, and is found in Census records along with his parents and then his widowed mother, firstly as a shoemaker, then in 1911 as a ploughman. He is not with his mother in 1921, but in 1935 he was working at a slate quarry in Aberfoyle, Perthshire when he was killed in a rock fall.
Mary Christina, the eldest surviving daughter was living with her uncle, Duncan McMartin in Monomore, the McMartin family home no doubt, in 1891, described as a dressmakers apprentice. She appears to have married in 1915, her husband being a William Brown Dick. I haven’t been able to confirm this yet, or check if they had any family. The next daughter Janet, like her eldest brother, moved south to Glasgow where she was living in 1901. The following year she married William John Tulloch. I don’t know what happened to him, but in 1915 Janet married James Bannatyne Thor Glass in Edinburgh. She was living at Dunoon in 1930, when she was the informant at her brother William’s death. She died in 1946.
Elizabeth appears to have moved into the same area of Lanarkshire as her eldest brother John, as in 1909 she married Samuel Brown in Bellshill. She had at least one daughter, Mary McMartin Brown, and died at Uddingston, Lanarkshire in 1949. The next child, James is the mystery man of the family. It is a very common name and the way Scottish records are organised make it difficult to track him down. He is with his family in Killin 1891, but thereafter I can find no trace of him. Possibly he died young, but it would take great expense and much time to identify a record of such an event. He seems to be the most likely candidate for my grandfather, if he lived long enough.
Ann, or Annie was the youngest daughter and was still with her mother in 1921 aged 36. She appears to have died in the Motherwell area in 1939.
William was the youngest son, and he too seems to have moved to Lanarkshire at some point. In 1921 he is recorded as a steel worker, living in Uddingston, near Bothwell but in 1930 he died in the County Hospital, Motherwell of pneumonia, aged 42. His occupation is recorded as a works storekeeper.
One final note which appealed to me as a golfer; on the census return of 1921, Mary Campbell, the widow of Peter, and their daughter, Annie are living in Main Street, Killin. Next door is John King with his wife and a visitor. John was employed as a greenkeeper at Killin Golf Club. Mary Campbell née MacMartin died on October 7th 1923 at her home on Main Street, Killin.
1. In the nineteenth century, as we have seen above, many of the inhabitants of the area spoke Gaelic as well as English (some of the older ones may well have spoken Gaelic only). Here is a short list of some of the names mentioned and their Gaelic equivalents:
John: Iain
Peter: Peadar or Padair
Mary: Mairi
Finlay: Fionnlagh
Christian: Cairistiona
Elizabeth: Ealasaid
Janet: Seonaid
James: Seumas
Duncan: Donnchadh
Donald: Domhnall
2. For some reason this area of western Perthshire had extremely complicated parish boundaries in historic times, with many unconnected outliers. See map below
3. Scottish records are quite different to English ones. Civil registration was introduced later there (1855 instead of 1837) but the details given are much more informative. Earlier church registers, which are our main source of information prior to 1855 are normally not as useful as their English equivalents. Baptisms are haphazard and burials often non-existent. As marriages in Scottish law did not always involve a church ceremony (swearing oaths before witnesses was all that was required) many weddings escaped being recorded in the register. The marriage of Donald McLellan and Catherine (Katrin) Menzies is a happy exception (although his surname is given as McLallan!). Regarding the note on parish boundaries above, it is interesting that Donald’s residence is in Weem parish and Catherine’s in Fortingall although neither is near the villages so named.
A modern map of the area. showing Ledcharrie (Ledchary) and Auchmore. Craignavie was situated on the north of the river Dochart, between Killin and Bovain. Carwhin was where Carie now appears on the north side of Loch Tay.
bumsteadhistory 
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