Stewarts of the South – Introduction

Dating

The author claims that the document took two years to write. James Irvine Robertson originally narrowed down the dating to between 1815-1820.

We have been able to identify the following specific references in the collection as to their dating:

• James Stewart in Laggan had his first son baptised in 1821 and this son is mentioned in Stewarts of the South: Section 1 – Ardvorlich.
• John Stewart, son of Peter Stewart in Lochearnhead, son of Donald Stewart in Edinample is described in Stewarts of the South: Section IV – Miscellany as having “two underage children”. OPR records confirm he had a son Peter b 1817 and a daughter Catharine b 1819 in Balquhidder.
• Donald Stewart in Summerline (from Ardvorlich 7.4) died in 1818 and is recorded as deceased in Stewarts of the South.
• Lieut. Alexander Stewart (Ardvorlich 7.4) is recorded in Stewarts of the South as having a son from his second marriage who was a minor. This son is Robert Stewart b 1819 in Comrie.
• Angus Stewart (Glenbuckie IX.3) is recorded in Stewarts of the South as “Angus, who emigrated to North America, and who had three sons.” The eldest of these sons was born in 1827 and Angus did not emigrate until 1828.
• Robert Ban Stewart, son of John Ban Mor Stewart in Auchnahard, is described in Stewarts of the South as having two minor sons. Robert’s third son, Duncan was born 7 AUG 1820 and is not recorded in Stewarts of the South.

Above, we find several items in the range of 1818-1821 which are mentioned in Stewarts of the South and one exceptional item as late as 1828 that appears to be included in Stewarts of the South. Yet we also find entries as early as 1820 that are absent from Stewarts of the South. It is important to remember that this document is actually a collection of letters which the author claims were written over a two year period. If the author’s claim of two years is accurate then it would seem the letters were probably written about 1818-1821 with some exceptional additions made as late as 1828.

Author – Unknown

The identify of author of these letters is unknown. For more than twenty years we believed his identity to be Capt. James Stewart who served as factor to the Duke of Atholl from 1816-1818. This has recently been disproved.

Capt. James Stewart, Factor of Atholl, was not the author of Stewarts of the South.

The author says of himself, “The family that I am of, about five generations back came up from Dunkeld to be factors to the family of Athol.” From this statement, all we can conclude is that the more than one member of the author’s family served as factors to the Duke of Atholl. And those factors lived about five generations before the author, but the author is not sure exactly how many generations. And his family originated in Dunkeld. Nothing in the author’s self description indicates that he himself worked as a factor to the Duke of Atholl, though we had previously and incorrectly jumped to that conclusion.

There is only one family known to have had more than one member serve as factor to the Duke of Atholl, and that is the Bissett family.

The Family of Thomas Bissett

Thomas Bisset Sr. of Glenalbert, (1689-1774) served as Commissary of Dunkeld, and from 1723-1741 he served as a junior factor to the Duke of Atholl under Alexander Murray. In 1741, he succeeded Murray as senior factor until his own retirement in 1766 at the age of 77 at which point he was succeeded by his nephew, Thomas Bissett (the younger).

Thomas Bissett (the younger), (ca. 1720 – ca. 1778) served under his uncle as a factor to the Duke of Atholl beginning about 1750. His specific responsibilities included supervision of the portion of the Atholl estates located in Balquhidder. He succeeded his uncle in 1766 as senior factor and served in that capacity until 1778.

No less than twenty, and possibly more than forty, members of the Bissett family match the author’s self-description any one of whom could be the author of Stewarts of the South.

It is entirely possible that there were other families in addition to the Bissetts, not presently known to us, who also had more than one member of their family who served as one of the many factors to the various Dukes of Atholl. The author of Stewarts of the South could be descended from one of those families.

Given the information available to us at this time, it is impossible to accurately identify the author of Stewarts of the South.

For more information on the search for the author’s identity, click here:

Contents

Stewarts of the South describes many of the Stewarts living in southern Perthshire at the opening of the 19th century, including partial fragments of their ancestry….

Stewarts of the South describes many of the Stewarts living in southern Perthshire at the opening of the 19th century, including partial fragments of their ancestry, sometimes going back a further hundred years or more! The document categorizes each Stewart household of that day according to which branch of which principal Stewart family they belonged, including the origin of the patriarch of that branch. Unfortunately there is often a 100-150 year gap between the origins of each branch and those living at the time of the letters. The challenge is left to the genealogist to fill in the intervening generations — a difficult, but not impossible challenge.

Families

The document describes several branches of the three principal Stewart families of Southern Perthshire:

• the Stewarts of Ardvorlich,
• the Stewarts of Glenbuckie,
• the Stewarts of Gartnafuaran,
• and their cadet branches, as well as many other Stewart families.

Interpretation

The original transcription is extremely difficult to read. It contains almost no punctuation at all (as I believe to be also true of the original letters). It is like reading a 100-page run-on sentence. Just trying to figure out where one sentence should end and the next begins will drive you batty. Furthermore, the author had a habit of seemingly randomly capitalizing words in the middle of sentences (a common style from that era), making it even more difficult to determine breaks in his thought patterns. To complicate matters further, the transcriptions carry no paragraph breaks to indicate where the author has changed from one family branch to the next, thus when the author says something like “James Stewart was the brother of the aforementioned John” you may find that there are three John Stewarts that could be the aforementioned brother, or perhaps one is a father, or an uncle, or…. Trying to find your ancestor and then trying to decipher his relationship to the main family branch can cause premature greying of your hair! However, the value of the information contained in this document makes it worth the effort in the end. That is why the team of researchers here at the Stewarts of Balquhidder Research Group began the long and arduous task of reformatting, editing, analyzing, and providing commentary for this document. It took a team of eight researchers nearly two years just to do the intitial anaysis and commentary.

Editing

Our analysis project, here, includes edits to the original document with punctuation and paragraph breaks added in, in order to make it easier to read and to more easily identify the branches of the family. Our editing also includes updating much of the spelling and grammar to 21st century conventions in order to make the document easier to understand for the modern reader.

In our analysis, the following conventions have been followed:

• words enclosed in round parentheses “( )” that are not italicized represent the original author’s own parenthetical comments, but which were not necessarily marked by parentheses in the original. We have added these parentheses in order to make the document easier to understand.
• words enclosed in round parentheses “( )” or bulleted and italicized represent our own editorial comments
• words in square braces “[ ]” represent our additions, corrections or interpretations of the original text in order to make it easier to read (either for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or logic).
• all headings and sub-headings are our additions to make the text easier to read,
• the numbering system of branches and sub-lines has been preserved from the original document.
• where possible, Gaelic names and phrases have been translated into English (to the best of this web-master’s elementary knowledge of Gaelic)

If you can help to further identify any one of these branches, please contact us so that your information may be added to this site.

Explanatory Notes

The following points will help you to better understand the family references in the document and hopefully help you more accurately identify your own family ancestors. So, please note the following:

Use of Gaelic Names

The author often switches indiscriminately between the English and Gaelic forms of many forenames. Thus, for example, the reader will encounter both John and Iain being used in the same paragraph to refer to the same person. Readers who are not familiar with Gaelic forenames and their English equivalents will be at a distinct disadvantage in trying to understand this text. As such we have included a short list of the most commonly cited forenames in the text in their Gaelic form and their English equivalent. There are often wide variations in spelling used in the text.

• Alasdair (Alistir) = Alexander
• Callum (Challuim) = Malcolm
• Domhnall (Dhomhnaill) = Donald
• Donnchadh (Dhonnchaidh, Donnach)= Duncan
• Iain = John
• Patrick = same, but often rendered as Peter in English
• Rab or Ross = Robert
• Seumas (Seamus, Sheumais, Hamish) = James

Nicknames and Surnames

Where no surname is given in the text then Stewart should be assumed. However, because Gaelic nicknames are used throughout the text, it may be difficult for the reader who is unfamiliar with Gaelic to differentiate between Gaelic nicknames and surnames.

For example: Iain Dubh Mor should be understood as “Big Black John Stewart” — where Iain is the Gaelic form of John, Dubh (“black”) and Mor (“big”) are nicknames, and Mor is not a surname, and the “Stewart” surname is not written, but is just understood.

Wives and Daughters

The author does not discuss wives or daughters except in a handful of cases. Thus, when the document says “so-and-so had four sons” it does not mean that he had only four sons; he may also have had several daughters. Regrettably, the author did not consider women worthy of recording. Aside from the obvious injustice of his approach, it makes research for the modern genealogist more difficult to identify these early families.

Adults vs Minors

The author often distinguishes between adult sons and minor sons. Age of majority in 1820 was 16. If the author mentions “two sons” without qualifying whether they were adult or minor then it is presumed to mean “two sons at least age sixteen.” Don’t count on this being absolutely accurate or consistent.

We believe that the document was written probably somewhere between 1815-1821. Knowing this can help with identification of families. It is likely that:

• Minor sons were probably born between 1799-1818.
• Adult sons were probably born prior to 1799, possibly as late as 1805.

As there is quite a margin for error in the interpretation of this document, don’t rely on these date ranges too precisely.

Branches and Lines

The author’s system of accounting branches and lines of families is challenging to understand at its best. Exactly what is meant by “1st, 2nd, 3rd line,” etc. is not always clear, nor consistent in the original document.

For example: There are often several lines listed for many of these branches. Are we to conclude that the patriarchs of each of these lines are all brothers or cousins from the same family?

It seems that the author used a combination of both at various points in the document. And he does not seem to be consistent. Sometimes those listed within the same line at parallel generations are clearly labeled as brothers, other times cousins, and in one case even nephew. In other cases the relationships are not indicated at all and the reader is left to guess.

Unfortunately for the reader this means that one cannot accurately infer any specific relationship just because certain people are listed consecutively. However, with the team of researchers involved on this project and our knowledge of these Stewarts, we hope that our conclusions and educated guesses will be of assistance to you.

Layers of Errors

The reader should not presume that the author’s original work is error-free. In fact, the author says, in his own words “for if I would examine it a dozen times I would still find some corrections.”

As such, when the author says something like, “John Stewart had four adult sons and two minor sons”, this should not be interpreted too literally. It should be read as “I think John Stewart probably had about four adult sons and about two sons under 16.”

It is clear that the author knew some families better than others. In cases where the author gives more detailed information on a family then the reader may presume the author had better knowledge of that family and may trust the entry to be more accurate. However in cases where the author gives very little data on a family then the reader should presume the author was less familiar with the family and should interpret the accuracy of the information as less reliable.

James Irvine Robertson graciously acknowledges that he probably made some errors in transcribing the original hand-written letters. Until such time as we are able to gain access to the original documents then we are unable to verify the accuracy of the original transcriptions.

We too have probably made some copying or interpretation errors in what has been presented here.

Therefore the serious researcher may want to refer back to the original letters in the Stewart Society Archives for greater accuracy

Money

According to a comment made in Section 1, VI Branch, 5 Line, 5th son, the rents listed in the document are annual rents.

To convert rents and other monetary values to rough present day (2020) amounts: (source)

• multiply by about 60 to convert to present day British pounds
• multiply by about 80 to convert to present day American dollars
• multiply by about 100 to convert to present day Canadian or Australian dollars.

Ditto

“Do” in the original document means “ditto”, however for readability, in most cases we have written the dittoed reference out in full.

Duncan Stewart 1739

The original author makes occasional reference to Duncan Stewart’s Genealogy or Duncan Stewart’s History which was published by Duncan Stewart in 1739. This document can be found here: