The Blacks of Port Appin … postscript

Having published the previous post, I started to wonder what happened to Duncan and Mary Black’s other children, besides Archibald.  I went back to the records in Scotlands People to try to discover more.

The informant for Duncan’s death registration was his eldest son John.  John married Rachel / Rachael Crichton (or Crighton) who came from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.  They appear not to have had any children, but were living with Duncan at Port Appin Crofts at the time of the 1871 census, two years after Mary Black (nee MacKay) had died.  After Duncan died in 1873, they continued to live at Port Appin, with John working as a crofter and labourer until the 1901 census when his occupation is listed as ‘estate carter’, and in the 1911 census he is a retired carter.  Rachael died in 1901 and when John passed away in 1914, the informant for his death registration was his neighbour, Alexander Matheson.  There appear to have been no close Black relatives living locally.

The second son Archibald, LIam’s 4 x g grandfather, moved to Aberdeen as a young man – his story will be in a later post.  But of note in relation to Archibald, his birth registration in 1828 indicates that the family was then living at “Loch(?) Inverfolla”.  Inverfolla is a village three miles east of Port Appin, close to Loch Creran, so I assume that this is what is meant by this location.

Birth registration for Archibald Black 1828

The two youngest children, Duncan and Mary, both died as young adults of consumption (tuberculosis).  Duncan was aged 24 and had consumption “of one year’s duration”; Mary also had the disease for one year; she had worked as a housemaid at the age of 14 and was 19 when she died.  Duncan had been employed on his father’s farm as a labourer.  Both were single.  Both were buried in the churchyard at Appin.

George Black, the third son, was born about 1832 but to date I have been unable to trace him beyond his listing as an 8 year old in the 1841 census, living with the family at Port Appin.  He is not living with the family at the 1851 census, and being a common name, there are a multitude of George Blacks elsewhere in Scotland at that time, but the census indexes provide no information which can specifically identify a George Black born at Port Appin, Argyll (that is, without purchasing all the records to find out!).  I have also been unable to locate a death record for him.

So at this stage it appears that the only one of Duncan and Mary’s children to continue the Black family into a further generation was Archibald.

Updated chart for Duncan and Mary Black’s family

The loss of two children to tuberculosis was probably not unusual.  According to Wikipedia: “Tuberculosis caused the most widespread public concern in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an endemic disease of the urban poor. In 1815, one in four deaths in England was due to ‘consumption’.”  TB was not determined to be contagious until the 1880s, and it was not until 1946, that “the development of the antibiotic streptomycin made effective treatment and cure of TB a reality”.

The Blacks of Port Appin

Duncan Black, born 1797, is Liam’s great, great, great, great, great grandfather, or for easier reference, his 5 x great grandfather. He was born and died in Port Appin, Argyll (or Argyleshire), just north of Oban on the western coast of Scotland.  He was a crofter, a term for a farmer in a small landholding and also worked as an agricultural labourer.

Castle Stalker at Port Appin; James at Port Appin, September 2010.

Not much is yet known about his parents apart from their names – father John Black, a wood cutter and mother, Euphemia Black, whose maiden surname was Colquhoun. She must have been known as ‘Euphie’, as that is how she was named on son Duncan’s baptismal record. Duncan married Mary McKay on the 19th December 1824 at the age of 27 in the Parish of Lismore, Appin & Duror, Argyll.

They had at least five children including John, Archibald (Liam’s 4 x g grandfather), George, Duncan, and Mary Black.  Duncan was the last of the ancestral line of Blacks to have lived his life out in Port Appin.   Archibald moved to Aberdeen as a young man to work in a chemical works and married there, without returning to Port Appin to live.

Duncan lived to the age of 76, dying on 21 March 1873.  His wife Mary had died in 1869, aged 70. In Duncan’s lifetime, from the early 19th century, Scotland experienced the “clearing” of the highlands, the removal of tenanted farmers in preference for the widespread grazing of sheep.  Lismore was particularly badly affected by this.  But in Port Appin, Duncan seems to have been able to maintain his occupation of crofter and labourer, at least from the census of 1841 where he is the head of the household working as a labourer, to the census of 1871 where he is still the head of the household working as labourer and crofter.

Nowadays, Port Appin relies on tourism, fish farming, quarrying and forestry.  On the day we visited Port Appin it was a bright sunny day, made even better by a very pleasant lunch at the PierHouse Hotel, before moving on to Oban.  A ferry was leaving regularly to take the occasional passenger the short distance across the water to the island of Lismore.  Lismore, according to the gift shop assistant, had plenty of Blacks.  We’ll have to include it in a return visit.

Of course, Duncan is only one of Liam’s 64 great, great, great, great, great grandparents!  More about some of the others in the Black family later …

PS Castle Stalker – the current structure was built circa 1440 but it’s famous for being in the final scenes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

PierHouse Hotel and view from its restaurant at Port Appin; view to the island of Lismore from Port Appin

Duncan Black and family – two generations down, and one up. Family details current as of September 2014.