Driven Out of Our Ancestral Home by Sheep
By: Joanne Reid
Tags: Culture, Immigration, Genealogy, Family, History

Driven Out of Our Ancestral Home by Sheep

How the Reids came to Canada

Photo by Nick Dietrich on Unsplash

Recently, a cousin asked me about the Reid family history — her mother, my father’s only surviving sibling turns a century old this year. I’m the family genealogist. It’s a bit of a hidden hobby. I write. I write a lot. I have been writing about writing and about coming to terms with life. I’m not sure why, but I have some ideas about the causes, but I always wanted to live two lives. When I turned 70, I started pulling the two sides of my life together.

This involved looking at the threads that have followed me throughout my life. My first passion was genealogy. It began when I was eight and looking at my grandmother’s big family Bible in the parlor where kids were not supposed to play. When I was 35, I went back to school and got a master’s degree in history. Do I write about history?

No. But that is about to change.

Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal (Highland Clearances)

During what became known as the ‘’Highland Clearances’’, it was not just a hundred or so victims who suffered eviction, but tens of thousands of men, women and children alike often violently, from their homes to make way for large scale sheep farming. ~ Crann Tara

If you have been enthralled by the Outlander series and Diana Galbadon’s books, you know about the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and the ensuing efforts of the British to eradicate the clans of Scotland.

John Reid was born on the 14th of August 1777 on Kilmaveonaig Farm in Blair Atholl Parish, Perth, Scotland to John Reid and Ann McLaren. His father was 31 and his mother was 22.

James Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl was located “about 400 yards off the public road near the Tilt Hotel, and about half-a-mile from the Blair-Atholl Station”, according to Facts and Fancies Linked with Folk-Lore about Kilmaveonaig by Christopher Bowstead. It’s about half a mile from Blair Castle.

Google Maps screenshot February 2020

In 1746, James Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl, the chief of Clan Murray, had his seat at Blair Castle. He supported the British Government, although the majority of the clan of Murray supported the Jacobite House of Stuart. It was a complicated time and James’ brother Lord George Murray was a Jacobite leader.

John Reid, his wife Betty Stewart, and their two children, Alexander and Ann, emigrated in 1803 on the Commerce. The reason provided for their emigration to Canada was “Farm taken from them.” John was 25, Betty was 23, Alexander was 3 and Ann was a year old.

John was born in 1777. His father was born between 1746 and 1748. Culloden was before their time. However, the traditional way of life for a farmer in the Perth Atholl area was over. The British way of governing the area put an end to tartans, bagpipes, and the Gaelic language.

The small farm allotments where they eked out an existence and paid their rents with produce and labor were being transformed into pasture land for the more profitable business of sheep herding. Gone were the huts and the small crops of flax and grain.

While I have not yet found records of what exactly drove John and Ann and their babies to Prince Edward Island, it had to be a variation on the theme of turning their ancestral huts and crops into sheep pastures. Their farm was taken from them.

The lairds of the land they farmed did often try to help families to relocate. Some times, the laird chose to provide passage to the Americas for the families rather than send them to cities which were becoming overcrowded or to land that could not be farmed.

John Reid’s family left Perthshire on August 10, 1803 on the Commerce and landed in Pictou, Nova Scotia. Such a transatlantic journey would have taken five or six weeks, depending on the wind and weather. From there they were transported across the Northumberland Strait to Murray Harbour North where they were provided with 100 acres of land.

By the end of September, Prince Edward Island starts to get chilly. Their next child, Charlotte, was born in 1804. They were not the only Scottish immigrants to land in the area that fall. Skye pioneers were brought over to Prince Edward Island, known then as St. John’s Island, in 1803 by Thomas Douglas, the 5th Earl of Selkirk.

The Earl was the seventh son of the 4th Earl of Selkirk who inherited the title when his six older brothers died. He used his money and his status to buy land on the Island and find ways to help displaced crofters resettle in the new land.

This description below of how the Skye pioneers made their homes on the Island is likely how my ancestors made their home in the fall of 1803.

As summer was almost over when the settlers landed they erected at once rude cabins to shelter them from the bitter cold of winter then approaching. These were built of logs squared and dovetailed at the ends. The spaces between were filled with moss or clay. The seams were covered with birch bark. Over all a ply of boards was nailed. The roof was covered with pine shingles. The nails used in this work were of iron, made by a blacksmith in the settlement. The windows in these little cabins were few and small as glass was dear. It took iron courage to face the first winter in this inhospitable climate, and until the harvest was garnered next autumn their minds were harassed often by the grim spectre of want hovering about their kitchen door. ~Malcolm A. MacQueen, Skye Pioneers and “the Island”.

We all have stories and we all have back stories. I am blessed to know as much as I do about the Reid family back story. It is worthwhile to look back at the reality of pioneer life on the Island. We sit around and discuss the benefits of heat pumps in a chilly Island fall. John and Betty didn’t have that luxury but they managed a long, healthy and relatively prosperous life from their beginnings there in the chilly fall of 1803.