A KINTYRE FAMILY’S CONTRIBUTION TO AUSTRALIA
Douglas Johnston
Andrew McGill was born at Amod in Barr Glen on 22 September 1797, the eighth child and second son to Neil McGill and Barbara Stewart. The McGills are traditionally said to have been based in Kilcalmonell Parish, but they were well-established in Killean and Kilchenzie in the 18th century.
Neil McGill’s grandfather, also Neil McGill, was a tenant in Amod of sufficient standing in his community to be appointed by the Commission of Supply on 22 June 1749 as one of the three overseers of the work on the ‘road leading from Barrbridge towards Ronadil in Carradil’. It is not known for how long before then the McGills had been in Amod, but they had a long association with it.
The first Neil’s son, Archibald, married Jane Smylie of Barr. The Smylies were one of the Lowland families introduced to Kintyre in the 17th century and, like other such families living in the north of Kintyre, they had been absorbed into the Gaelic culture. Archibald and Jane’s son Neil followed in his forebears’ footsteps as a tenant in Amod. He married Barbara Stewart of Park, and their family of 14 children were all born at Amod. Perhaps to make room for Neil and his family, Archibald moved to neighbouring Arnicle.
Andrew grew up in a large family and in a tightly-knit community. He went to school at Barr, a tramp of several miles each way, and learned to read and write in English, gaining a working knowledge of mathematics with perhaps a smattering of other subjects. And each day the knowledge of the changing weather patterns of earth and sky and of their seasonal cycle, of the plants and animal life in the glen, and of his ancestral background and culture was becoming part of his very being.
A Changing World
The world into which he was born was one of change. We sometimes think of change as a modern phenomenon, but all through history change, or ‘progress’, has inexorably destroyed the lifestyle that preceded it. Change may have been slower then but no less certain. In Kintyre the old way of farming was giving place to a new with enclosures which would lead to better farming practice and the need for less labour; thus the death knell to the old way of life in the heavily populated rural areas of Kintyre. Emigration would be a way out for those whose labour was no longer needed, and the reduced population would lead to a weakening of the old ties when so many families worked each farm, sharing life together in their little communities, with church on Sunday and the occasional fair day the only variations.
In 1821 Andrew married Jean McNiven of South Muasdale. Like the McGills in Amod, the McNivens had a long connection with Muasdale. Jean’s great-grandfather is listed as a tenant there in 1729 in the earliest record of the Duke of Argyll’s leases. Jean’s father James and his brother Angus were tenants there. James McNiven and Mary McSporran had a family of 10 daughters, but Jean also had a large number of relatives in Muasdale - Taylors, Curries and Armours as well as McNivens.
Andrew and Jean set up home in Amod with Andrew working for his father. The next year was a dramatic one for the McGills in Amod - after long years and several generations the family left forever. Perhaps he was outbid for the lease, but whatever the reason Neil McGill moved south to Kilwhipnach where he took up a 19-year lease from the Duke of Argyll for £75 per annum. Neil, Barbara and the younger members of the family moved there. Several of the daughters were married and eldest son Archibald had also married and moved to Killean where he was at one time the miller. Third son Alexander went to Kilwhipnach to work the farm with his father, while Andrew and Jean and infant son went to Muasdale. At some stage, Andrew took over the tenancy of the 100-acre farm of Mid Muasdale, Jean’s cousin Donald McNiven being the tenant on South Muasdale.
From his later life in Australia, we know that Andrew had a talent for stockbreeding, so he would have embraced the changes taking place - the Ayrshire cattle, the black-faced sheep and the great Clydesdale horses which led to the extinction of the black cattle, the white-faced sheep and the native horses - and practised his skills in breeding improved types. His family was increasing at intervals of 18 months or so, and he would have been looking for opportunities for improving their lot. A tenant farmer had a reasonable lifestyle, well above the hand-to-mouth existence of the labourers, but where would one find tenancies for all the sons?
The reason for taking up the lease on Braids, then owned by Captain Malcolm McNeill of Gallochoilly, is not known, but Andrew, brother Archibald, and Donald McLean, Jean’s sister Mary’s husband, were co-tenants in 1831. Perhaps it was to help one of the others, as he did not live there himself. The financial return was disappointing, and concern for his family’s future must have led him to think of migration. Ever since the 18th century, when Kintyre migrants had gone to North Carolina, there had been a steady trickle of migration to the Americas. Andrew now resolved to take his family to Canada and give up the lease.
There was consternation when news of McGill’s impending departure reached the trustee of the Gallochoilly estate. He claimed that McGill was planning to flee the country without paying his due debts and petitioned the Sheriff of Argyll to arrest him, which was done on 24 April 1835. And so to McGill’s surprise he found himself incarcerated in the Campbeltown tolbooth, there to stay until he found security not only for current arrears of rent but also for the 15 years of the lease yet to run. He spent 49 days in gaol before his lawyer had him freed on 12 June on a bill of suspension and liberation. Now he sought to repair the damage to his good name, as well as his physical suffering, by taking an action for damages for ‘illegal and wrongous imprisonment’.
Litigation
When the case came for trial, evidence was given that although McGill and his partners were in arrears with the rent, they had offered to leave their stock on the farm as security. The sticking point was the demand for security for the 15 years lease. Further evidence showed that the trustee had refused an offer to lease the farm, and subsequently had accepted a further offer. Lord Justice Clark agreed it would be absurd to pay rent for 15 years that you had not used, and the jury decided in favour of McGill, setting damages at £200, a goodly sum in those days. Charles Ferrier, the Edinburgh accountant who was trustee for McNeill, appealed against the verdict and the case was set for re-trial.
The second trial was held before four judges and the case became deadlocked, two judges deciding on technical points that the previous verdict was wrong and submitting a claim for a new trial, the other two deciding in favour of McGill. The case was placed before seven other judges for their opinion, but, when court resumed, the judges retained their original opinions. An interesting point is that Ferrier claimed that if the tenant could get rid of the contract under his lease by leaving the country, the doctrine would have serious consequences throughout the West Highlands where emigration was prevalent.
This was probably the nub of the whole affair. Crofters and cottars at that time were being forcibly evicted from their homes throughout the Highlands as money could not be made from them, but could be from sheep; on the other hand, tenants, from whom money could be made, had to be compelled to stay or pay the last farthing.
Andrew McGill now had the option of a third trial, but he had had enough. The costs were ruinous and the prospect of vindication receding. Three long years of litigation and worry had passed and he was determined to leave. (A postscript of the case was on 16 May, 1839, when, because Andrew McGill, late tenant on Midmuasdale in the Parish of Killean, ‘did not proceed to trial and [because] of his failure to insist on the cause for more than a year and a day since the Judgment of the Court on the tenth day of March 1838’, he was ordered to pay £260.14.3 to Ferrier for his expenses.)
The goal now was Australia. Why Australia, when Canada and the United States had always been the destination of choice for migrants from Kintyre? The answer probably lies with Dr John Dunmore Lang, ‘that fiery Presbyterian cleric’ who, from when he arrived in Australia in 1824, vigorously espoused any cause he felt would lead to progress: the division of the colonies into smaller units, land reform, education and immigration, among others. In 1837 he was back in Scotland recruiting migrants for Australia from the Highlands. With so many Highlanders being forced off their land, this was an opportunity to transplant a way of life to a new land.
Lang had an ally in Dr Norman MacLeod, past minister of Campbeltown. He too saw emigration as an opportunity to break the poverty trap and the dispossession of the Highlanders. Both men urged migration to Australia not only as a material benefit to the people, but also as a spiritual and moral obligation to maintain their race and culture in a new land. Neil McGill had sat under Dr MacLeod’s ministry in Campbeltown’s Highland Parish Church after moving to Kilwhipnach, so there was undoubtedly a strong influence there. The following year, the New South Wales government had its own agents in Scotland to organise a shipload of migrants, particularly those with rural skills. The old convict colony was looking for free settlers who would give a great impetus to its development.
So great was the success in Scotland of the Colonial Emigration Agent, Dr. Charles Boyter, that it led to the complaint by Munro of Dingwall: ‘If Boyter were ridding the country of its scum, we should be obliged to him, but he is depriving us of the very flower of the land. I don’t know one bad man he has taken from this country.’
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No 53 Spring 2003