Ordnance Survey Map showing the Isle of Barra
Last week it seemed like I had found another source to pinpoint John Breac MacNeil's place of origin. There it was in black and white in the first volume of Donald Whyte's Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to Canada Before Confederation, further proof that John had come from Knoydart in Scotland. I set off on a quest to find out what the reference HCA stood for. I found volume 1 at the BC Genealogical Society's library. To my disgust, HCA was not the hoped for, Highland Archive Council or other unknown source. The abbreviation stood for A History of the County of Antigonish, Nova Scotia (1929), Rankin's book, my first source for the Knoydart origin. I never would have guessed. So, two sources turned into one and I was no further ahead.
I guess that is a lesson to always check your sources. I still hold some hopes for checking out the Highland Archive Council in Inverness but wouldn't go there just to check out possible information on Knoydart. Fortunately, I have other Highland research to do and a visit to that archive is in future plans.
What my search for the Scottish origins of this MacNeil family has led me to is the story of emigration and clearances in Scotland, specifically in both Knoydart and the Isle of Barra.
Voluntary emigration from the Isle of Barra had reduced the population to a great extent. But many of the people left behind were destitute and in poor condition to undertake a voyage across the seas to establish themselves in a new land. After the island was sold to a new owner, John Gordon, in the late 1840s he began to clear them off the land by force, if necessary. The poor were targeted, tenants deemed a better risk, were allowed to stay.
This would argue detailed information about the population at the time of the evictions. Some information was sited but the examples in The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed are not from Barra, unfortunately. Nor do they appear to be from Knoydart, although on the subject of emigration from the Knoydart Peninsula in the period from 1841 to 1861 page 321 of the same book says the following: "At Knoydart, in western mainland Inverness-shire, a series of particularly brutal removals reduced the numbers on the estate from 600 to little more than seventy over a five-year period."
This looks to be a much larger story than that of John Breac MacNeil. One that I would like to find out more about especially since many of my family lines come from areas in Scotland most directly affected by emigration and the more brutal practice of land clearance. This loss of people in the places I am researching seems to be another reason for the dearth of records to search for John's origins in Scotland.
Sources:
Devine, T.M. The Scottish Clearances A History of the
Dispossessed. Penguin Random House, Milton Keynes, UK. 2018 p 321 & p323
Rankin, Rev. D.J., A History of the County of Antigonish, Nova
Scotia (1929). Global Heritage Press/GlobalGenealogy.com Inc., Milton,
Ontario, 2003.
Whyte, Donald, Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to Canada
Before Confederation Vol 1. Ontario Genealogical Society, 1986
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