Family History

Well, I intended to do blog posts on churches and history before doing this one on my family history but since I've taken so long to write the next post I thought I would finish our Scotland trip with this post on a bit of my family history.

My father's parents were both born in Scotland. My grandfather Stewart was born in Kirkintilloch which is outside of Glasgow. My dad's mother, who was born a Templeton, was born on the Isle of Arran. When I was posted to England, I knew that she had been born in the town of Kilmory on the Isle of Arran but not exactly where. In this digital age, I found her birth record on the website Scotland's People, which showed where she was born. From her birth record, I found that she was born on a farm named Clachaig. Her older sister Jane and brother Gilbert were also born on this farm. 

The farm is still a working farm although the working name of the farm has changed. On our drive around Arran, one of our stops was at this farm.  At first it seemed as if there was no one there as the only ones to greet us at the honesty box was a pack of border collies.

But a few minutes after we arrived, the owner drove down from the upper fields.  He was very hospitable and invited us to walk around and take pictures. He told us there was a farm cottage nearer the village and some cottage ruins in the upper fields but as our great-grandfather was listed as a ploughman and not a farmer, it was likely that our grandmother had been born in the bothy. In the picture above, the bothy is the one story extension to the house and it is where the farm labourers lived. It is just three rooms, the main room had a large fireplace; there was a large communal kitchen right next door in the house. The bothy has been renovated and is now a vacation rental.

The current owner told us, when my great-grandfather worked there, the farm was run by a tenant farmer named Spears. He tried to find the deed from that time to show us but couldn't locate the paperwork. He did tell us that same family bought the farm in the mid 1950's and said it was one of the first farms in the area that the government sold to private owners. 

Current owner - Peter Brown

Clachaig Farm House

It was kind of strange walking around that farm, thinking my great-grandparents and their children had lived and worked there. I doubt my grandmother would have remembered this place as she would have been very young when they moved away. Her youngest sister Janet (called Jenny) was born on a farm near Ayr, Scotland.

Fields - Clachaig Farm

Clachaig Farm - driveway

LtoR Helen, Janet, Gilbert and Jane, the four youngest Templeton children

I wish I had  talked to my grandmother more about her childhood, perhaps she did recall some things about those days on the farms. I'm sure she could have told stories about their lives in Scotland as she was a teenager before the family moved to Canada.