The Highland Clearance Timeline

Timeline Sources: Crann Tara; 'The Highland Clearances' by John Prebble; 'A Prospect of Sutherland', Gilbert T.Bell; 'The Scottish Family Tree Detective' by Rosemary Bigwood; National Library of Scotland ;Helmsdale org; Stephen Blamires on clannada.org

1692 - Glencoe Massacre.
1725 - In the aftermath of the first Jacobite Rising, Highlanders had begun emigrating to the Americas in increasing numbers. The Disarming Act of 1716 and the Clan Act made ineffectual attempts to subdue the Scottish Highlands, and eventually troops were sent in. Government garrisons were built or extended in the Great Glen at Fort William, Kiliwhimin (later renamed Fort Augustus) and Fort George, Inverness, as well as barracks at Ruthven, Bernera and Inversnaid, linked to the south by the Wade roads (constructed for Major-General George Wade). These had the effect of limiting organisational travel and choking off news and further isolated the clans. Nevertheless, conditions remained unsettled for the whole decade. In 1725 General Wade raised the independent companies of the Black Watch as a militia force to keep peace in the unruly Highlands. This increased exodus of Highlanders to the Americas. Increasing demand in Britain for cattle and sheep and the creation of new breeds of sheep such as the black-faced, which could be reared in the mountainous country, allowed higher rents for landowners and chiefs to meet the costs of their aristocratic lifestyle. As a result, families living on a subsistence level were displaced, exacerbating the unsettled social climate.
1746 - Battle of Culloden
1764 - The Forfeited Estates, administered by the Crown since the Jacobite Rebellion, are restored to their owners.
1766 - William,17th Earl of Sutherland and his wife die after an illness triggered by the death of their baby, who died from an accidental fall from her father's arms. The remaining orphaned daughter Elizabeth goes to live with her maternal grandmother, Lady Alva, in Edinburgh.
1770 - Tax on distillation of spirits introduced.
1771 - Sir Walter Scott is born
1772 - In 1792 tenant farmers from Strathrusdale led a protest against the policy by driving over 6,000 sheep off the land surrounding Ardross. This action was dealt with at the highest levels in government, with the Home Secretary Henry Dundas getting involved. The Black Watch was mobilised; it halted the drive and brought the ringleaders to trial. They were found guilty, but later escaped custody and disappeared. What became known as the Clearances were considered by the landlords as necessary "improvements". They are thought to have been begun by Admiral John Ross of Balnagowan Castle in Scotland in 1762. MacLeod of MacLeod (i.e. the chief of MacLeod) began experimental work on Skye in 1732. Chiefs engaged Lowland, or sometimes English, factors with expertise in more profitable sheep farming, and they "encouraged", sometimes forcibly, the population to move off suitable land.
1772 - Slavery declared illegal in Britain
1773 - 'The Hector' sails to Nova Scotia in the first major Highland emigration to Canada.
1780 - Donald Cameron of Lochiel begins clearing his family lands, which span from Loch Leven to Loch Arkaig. The Mac Sheumais (or McHamish) Gunns continued to live in Strath Kildonan first at Killeaman and later at Badenloch at the top of the Strath until the old line died out in 1782.
1782 - Thomas Gillespie and Henry Gibson lease a sheep-walk at Loch Quoich, removing more than 500 tenants, most of whom emigrate to Canada.
1782 - Tartan wearing legalised again after a 35-year ban.
1782 - The Act of Proscription is repealed, but many Highland landowners, who have been born and raised in London or other metropolitan areas, remain in their urban homes, distancing themselves from the tenant Clan members on their lands.
1785 - First large clearances on Glengarry's estates. Marriage of Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland to the Marquess of Stafford. Morrison Gunn, the Clan Chief, dies in battle abroad, leaving no heir.
1786 - Large emigrations to Canada from Knoydart, on Glengarry's property.
1787 - French Revolution begins with the storming of the Bastille.
1788 - The Langwell estate was purchased from Robert, son of James Sutherland, by Sir John Sinclair for £9,000, using his wife's dowry (see A History of the Highland Clearances: Emigration, protest, reasons By Eric Richards). On this estate was the small village of Auchencraig, where the Gunns were born, who were eventually cleared to Badbea by order of Sir James Sinclair. "The last of the lairds of Langwell was the elder brother of George Sutherland of Midgarty. He lived at the property at the beautiful and romantic place of Langwell, on terms of amity and friendship with all his relatives and fellow-proprietors, and in the exercise of an unbounded hospitality. His estate furnished him with the choicest luxuries of the table, such as mutton, beef, salmon, venison, and game of every variety, while, from a wellstocked garden, he had the best fruits and vegetables which the soil and climate could produce. He was himself an epicure in no ordinary measure, but so social was his disposition that, even if his table groaned with good things, he could not eat a morsel with relish or comfort, unless he had one or more guests to enjoy them along with him. He was, besides, an excellent landlord, and, the desolating system of sheep-farming being then unknown, the straths of Berriedale and Langwell were the happy homes of a numerous peasantry, all of whom were ardently attached to their warm-hearted landlord. His eldest son and heir was, however, unworthy of his father and of his race. He was a determined prodigal. During his father's lifetime, he married Miss Sinclair, sole heiress of Brabster and West Canisbay, which, united with his paternal inheritance, afforded him the prospect of a very handsome income. But his extravagance and profligacy blasted his prospects. His loose habits so alienated the affections of his wife, that she felt herself compelled to sue for a divorce, whilst, by his extravagance after his father's death, he found himself so overwhelmed in debt, that he was obliged to sell his fine paternal estate far under its value. " There is an account of the downfall of the lairds of Langwell on p. 106 of "Memorabilia domestica; or, Parish life in the North of Scotland" by the Rev Donald Sage 1790 The Great Cheviot sheep are brought to Ross and Caithness.
1791 - The Society of the Propagation of Christian Knowledge reports that over the previous 19 years more than 6,400 people emigrated from the Inverness and Ross areas. "The dis-peopling in great measure of large tracts of country in order to make room for sheep (is taking place)," observes the Reverend Kemp after visiting the Highlands. Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster brings the first Cheviot Sheep to his Caithness estates. These sheep would later be referred to as four-footed Clansmen, indicating the tenants' rage at being removed in favor of animals.
1792 (late July to early August) - Angry tenant farmers drive all the Cheviots in Rosshire to Boath. The 42nd Regiment intervenes, and the sheep are returned to Rosshire.
1793 - Execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France.
1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte made First Consul of France.
1800 - Food riots in Glasgow.
1802-1803 - Sir Walter Scott publishes 'Border Minstrelsy'.
1800-1813 - Extensive clearances in Strathglass, Farr, Lairg, Dornoch, Rogart, Loth, Clyne, Gospie, Assynt, and lower Kildonan. James Horne purchased the Langwell Estates from Sir James Sinclair for £40,000.. His son Donald made fishing the main occupation for the people of Badbea, many of whom lost their lives at sea.
1801 - The first clearances of the Strathglass area by William, the 24th Chisholm. Nearly 50% of the Clan living there are evicted.
1801 - The emigrant ship The Sarah sails from Fort William to Pictou. By contemporary laws, only 489 slaves would have been allowed to be carried in the ship's holds. But no such laws govern emigrants, and almost 700 people are crammed into the ship, with nearly 50 people dying on the journey and countless others falling ill.
1803 - Seeing their labour-base diminishing because of emigration, landowners in the Hebrides work towards the passage of the Passenger Act, which limits the number of people who can emigrate to other countries, trapping and keeping many tenants in poverty.
1814 - Walter Scott's 'Waverley' published.
1807 (Whitsun) - Evictions at Farr & Lairg -- the first major Sutherlandshire clearances.
1807 (October) - The Rambler, carrying 133 emigrants from Thurso, sinks in the Atlantic. Only three passengers survive.
1807 (November) - A gathering of The Northern Association of Gentlemen Farmers and Breeders of Sheep agree to move their activities into Ross-shire, Sutherlandshire, and Caithness. This decision would lead to massive clearances in those areas.
1809 - The Chisholm enacts another large clearance of his lands in Strathglass, advertising to interested sheep-farmers lots holding between 1,000 and 6,000 sheep. Glen Loth was cleared at the same time as nearby Kildonan, in three waves in 1809, 1813 and 1819. 1811 -- More than 50 shepherds are brought into Sutherlandshire and made Justices of the Peace -- thereby giving them legal control over the native tenants.
1811 - 1851 - The demand for seaweed (or kelp) falls. The harvesting of kelp was taken up by many cleared farmers who were relocated to the coast of Scotland. The lowering demands for kelp returns those farmers to poverty.
1811 - Sir James Sinclair sold the Langwell Estate for £40,000 to James Horne, whose nephew, Donald Horne, inherited in due course.
1813 - Lord and Lady Stafford, the landowners of Sutherlandshire, hire James Loch to oversee the clearing of their lands.
1813 (Spring) - Lady Stafford writes that she would like to visit her Sutherlandshire estate but: "At present I am uneasy about a sort of mutiny that has broken out in one part of Sutherland, in consequences of our new plans having made it necessary to transplant some of the inhabitants to the sea-coast from other parts of the estate." 1813 (Spring) -- a group of Strath Kildonan residents march towards Golspie in order to have their grievances against the clearances heard. They are met by soldiers and the Sheriff, who, aided by local church ministers, intimidate the tenants into returning to their homes to await their eviction notices.
1813 - Nearly 100 tenants of the Strath of Kildonan emigrate to Canada aboard the Prince of Wales and settle near Lake Winnipeg. The Eddystone carried Gunns from Kildonan, to Canada. Seven of them applied for grants of land in the Selkirk settlement. Selkirk took 100 of them and these made the party that sailed from Stromness on The Prince of Wales, in convoy with the Eddystone which arrived with servants and officials of the Selkirk's settlement, and under the protection of a sloop-of-war. Selkirk made it clear that the sea-passage would cost each emigrant 10 pounds. The money was paid, and many of the people were able to bank more with Selkirk, to be drawn upon when they reached Canada. Source: The Highland Clearances by John Prebble, page 114 Another source says: 1813 and 1819 - so savagely that these clearances provoked the first recorded dissent against the evictions anywhere in the Highlands. The clans here were Gunns, Mathesons, Mackays, Macbeths and Sutherlands - all the peoples of the Sutherland/Caithness border region, but Kildonan was predominantly Gunn territory, and it was the Gunns who resisted in 1813. They first ran off a Mr Reid, agent for some southern sheep-farmers, who had visit the strath, asking questions and taking notes; Mr Reid declared to anyone who would listen that he had been attacked by a mob and had barely escaped with his life. IT WAS JUST THE EXCUSE the Duke of Sutherland's factors had been praying for. The male staff of the estate were sworn in as special constables and a detachment of infantry sent out at the double from Fort George. This was more than the Gunns could withstand and their resistance melted away. Within three months large areas of upper Kildonan had been entirely cleared, and the people offered tiny allotments of poor land on the clifftops near Helmsdale, or sent into exile in Canada - the choice of many of the younger people. In June of the year they sailed from Stromness in Orkney, bound for the Red River settlement in Manitoba.
1813 (December 15) - Tenants of the Strathnaver area of Sutherlandshire go to Golspie at the direction of William Young, Chief Factor for Lord and Lady Stafford. The tenants are told they have until the following Whitsunday to leave their homes and relocate to the wretched coastlands of Strathy Point.
1814 (April) - Under the direction of Patrick Sellar, a Factor for Lord and Lady Stafford, heath and pastures surrounding Strathnaver are burned in preparation for planting grass for the incoming sheep. The native tenants of Strathnaver make no motion of moving to Strathy Point, or anywhere else.
1819 - IN 1819 THE LAST INHABITANTS were cleared from lower Kildonan. This time there was no dissent; the people had learned by bitter experience that neither government, nor law courts, nor their church, would speak a word or lift a hand in their defence. They went quietly into exile; to Glasgow; to whatever patch of land they might be offered to scrape a living. Some went to join their kinsmen across the Atlantic. After the events of 1813, there had been further evictions and emigrations in 1815, when 700 Kildonan clansfolk left for the Canadian settlements along the Red River and in Glengarry County. They had a hard time and had to fight both the harsh Canadian winter, Cree Indians and renegade Frenchmen. They called their new home Kildonan. 1813 -- Sir George MacKenzie of Coul writes a book justifying the clearances, citing: "The necessity for reducing the population in order to introduce valuable improvements, and the advantages of committing the cultivation of the soil to the hands of a few...."
1814 (June 13) - Patrick Sellar begins burning Strathnaver. Residents are not given time to remove their belongings or invalid relatives, and two people reputedly die from their houses burning. Known as 'The Year of the Burnings'.
1814 - George Gunn, son of Hector (great grandson of George Gunn of Borrobol, the brother of the sixth MacKeamish, was declared chief of Clan Gunn by someone, nobody seems completely sure who, but it was not the Lyon Court. It is probable that he simply assumed the role of chief due to the erroneous belief that his father was chief. It is doubtful that George Gunn of Rhives (Rhives being the estate given to him by the Countess, who hired him as her factor at Assynt) was ever accepted as chief by many of the clan.
1815 Battle of Waterloo - Whenever men were sent off to fight from Caithness and Sutherland, invariably, once they were gone their families were thrown out of their homes and their crofts ere destroyed.
1815 - The Sheriff-Substitute for Sutherlandshire arrests Patrick Sellar for: willfull fire-raising...most aggravated circumstances of cruelty, if not murder. Not surprisingly, a jury of affluent landowners and merchants acquit Sellar.
1816 - Soon after, Sellar continues clearing vast areas of Sutherlandshire.
1818 - Patrick Sellar retires to his Sutherlandshire estate, given to him by Lord and Lady Stafford in acknowledgment of his work.
1819 (May) - Another violent clearing of Strathnaver residents. Donald Macleod, a young apprentice stonemason witnesses: "250 blazing houses. Many of the owners were my relatives and all of whom I personally knew; but whose present condition, whether in or out of the flames, I could not tell. The fire lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins."
1819 (May) - The Kildonan area is cleared. Donald MacDonald later writes: ...the whole inhabitants of the Kildonan parish, with the exception of three families--nearly 2,000 souls--were utterly rooted and burned out.
1819 (June) - The Sutherland Transatlantic Friendly Association is formed to assist cleared tenants who wanted to emigrate to America.. It generates little interest and soon folds.
1820 - James Loch publishes his account of enacting the clearances, or, as he calls them, 'the improvements'. He declares that Gaelic will become a rarity in Sutherlandshire.
1820 - Journalist Thomas Bakewell severely criticizes both Loch's book and his actions during the clearances.
1820 (February and March) - Hugh Munro, the laird of Novar, clears his estates at Culrain along the Kyle of Sutherland. A riot ensues when the Sheriff and military arrive to evict the tenants. Remonstrated by the minister Donald Matheson, the tenants eventually cease fighting and move away.
1820 - 'Radical War': rising of Scottish radicals at Bonnybridge and Strathaven.
1820 - Death of George III.
1821 (April) - Officials bearing Writs of Removal for the tenants of Gruids, near the River Shin, are stripped, whipped, and their documents are burned. Fearing another riot like Culrain, military and police accompany the Sheriff back to Gruids where, faced with such strong opposition, the tenants gathered their few belongings and moved to Brora.
1822 - Emigration poster.
1822 - George IV's visit to Edinburgh.
1826 - The Island of Rum is cleared except for one family. MacLean of Coll pays for the other natives to emigrate to Canada.
1826 - The emigrant ship James arrives in Halifax. Every person on board had contracted typhus during the voyage.
1827 - Lady Stafford visits her Sutherland estate and receives gifts from the tenants. "Those gifts," wrote Donald Macleod, "were provided by those who would subscribe would thereby secure her ladyship's favor and (that of) her factors -- and those who could not or would not were given to understand very significantly what they had to expect by plenty of menacing looks and an ominous shaking of the head."
1829 (September) - The Canada Boat Song, a poem protesting the clearances, appears in Scotland's "Blackwood's Magazine." George Gunn (Chief of Clan) now factor for Lady Stafford, involved in evictions.
1830 - Lady Stafford visits her Sutherlandshire estate and visits the tenants living in primitive sheds. Unable to comprehend how people could live under such conditions, but speaking no Gaelic, she is not able to ascertain the condition of her tenants lives.
1830 (October 20) - While stonemason Donald Macleod was off working in Wick, his wife and children were surprised in their home: "...a party of eight men...entered my dwelling (at) about 3 o'clock, just as the family were rising from dinner." "The party allowed no time for parley, but having put out the family with violence, proceeded to fling out the furniture, bedding and other effects in quick time, and after extinguishing the fire, proceeded to nail up the doors and windows in the face of the helpless woman.... Messengers had (previously) been dispatched--warning all the surrounding inhabitants, at the peril of similar treatment, against affording shelter, or assistance, to wife, child, or animal belonging to Donald Macleod. ...After spending most part of the night in fruitless attempts to obtain the shelter of a roof or hovel, my wife at last returned to collect some of her scattered furniture, and (built) with her own hands a temporary shelter against the walls of her late comfortable residence...(but) the wind dispersed (the) materials as fast as she could collect them." "Buckling up her children...in the best manner she could, she left them in charge of the eldest (who was only seven years old), giving them such victuals as she could collect, and prepared to take the road for Caithness" (in search of her husband). "She had not proceeded many miles when she met with a good Samaritan and acquaintance...Donald Macdonald, who, disregarding the danger incurred, opened his door to her, refreshed and consoled her, and still under cover of night, accompanied her to the dwelling of (a friend), William Innes...of Sandside."
1832 - Despite the fact that he forcibly evicted them, exiled members of Clan Chisholm swear allegiance to their chief back in Scotland.
1832 (late summer) - Cholera runs through the Inverness area, claiming almost 100 lives. Many fear the illness came from the impoverished cleared tenants who beg on the streets, and strict laws are enacted to persecute these itinerants.
1833 - At a party in honor of King William IV, Lord and Lady Stafford become the first Duke and Duchess of Sutherland.
1833 (winter) - After the Duke of Sutherland's death, plans are made by some of the gentry for a monument to be erected in his honor. The tenants are "asked" to contribute, but Donald Macloed writes: all who could raise a shilling gave it, and those who could not awaited in terror for the consequences of their default.
1836 (autumn) - a famine strikes the Highlands and Islands, leaving thousands to starve, despite efforts to fund emergency rations.
1837 - The European historian/economist J.C.L.J. de Sismondi writes of Sutherlandshire: "But though the interior of the county was thus improved into a desert--in which there are many thousands of sheep, but few human habitations, let it not be supposed by the reader that its general population was in any degree lessened. So far was this from being the case that the census of 1821 showed an increase over the census of 1811 of more than two hundred... the county has not been depopulated - its population has been merely arranged in a new fashion. The Duchess of Sutherland found it spread equally over the interior and the sea-coast, and in very comfortable circumstances--(but) she left it compressed into a wretched fabric of poverty and suffering that fringes the county on its eastern and western shores."
1837 - Accession of Queen Victoria.
1840-1841 - Donald Macleod publishes a series of letters in the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle, describing his own eviction and other eyewitness testimony of the clearances.
1840 - Treaty of Waitangi: Maori Chiefs hand sovereignty of New Zealand to Great Britain.
1840 - 30,000 Highlanders were forced to move to Glasgow. None of them could speak English, none of them had ever seen a city before and none of them had ever performed any kind of work other than tending their own patch of land and their few cows and chickens. They were forced from a life of subsistence farming to one of working indoors in a factory. Others were Cleared from their Highland homes to the seaside fishing villages where they too had to give up the only way of life they knew and learn overnight how to fish in order to survive.
1840s - Donald Horne had decided that his fishermen at Berriedale should give up herring in favour of higher-value, and abundant, salmon.
1841 (February) -Henry Baillie, Parliament Member for Inverness, forms a committee to investigate the situation in the Highlands. The committee concludes that there are too many people living in the Highlands and that a course of aggressive emigration should be established.
1841 (August and September) - Given writs of removal by legal officials, the tenants of Durness and Keneabin riot and attack police and sheriffs with stones and sticks. Only after being threatened with an onslaught of military troops do the tenants accept the writs and grudgingly move away.
1842 - Queen Victoria first visits Scotland.
1843 - Disruption of the Church of Scotland: foundation of the Free Church.
1845 - Denied shelter within the church itself and believing themselves to be cursed by God, ninety evicted tenants of Glencalvie take temporary shelter in the churchyard at Croick, and leave messages scratched into the glass windows: ...Glencalvie people the wicked generation... ...John Ross shepherd... ...Glencalvie is a wilderness blow ship them to the colony... ...the Glencalvie Rosses...
1845 - The potato blight, which had devastated Ireland the previous year, wipes out most of the potatoes in the Highlands.
1846 - Highland potato famine.
1846-1849 - Irish potato famine.
1847 (February) - James Bruce, a writer for "The Scotsman," reports that "The Highlanders' problems are due to their own laziness and suggests the best solution is for the native tenants: as soon as they are able to labour for themselves, be removed from the vicious influence of the idleness in which their fathers have been brought up and have lived and starved."
1848 - Cholera epidemic in Glasgow.
1846 (December) - The Reverend Norman Mackinnon of Bracadale Manse wrote to the Chaplain in Ordinary to Queen Victoria: "Oh, send us something immediately.... If you can send but a few pounds at present, let it come, for many are dying, I may say, of starvation..."
1848-1849 - Revolutions in France, Austria, Sicily, Naples, Hungary and Prussia.
1849 - Despite some rioting by the native tenants, Lord Macdonald clears more than 600 people from Sollas on North Uist.
1849 - Thomas Mulcok, a somewhat bizarre writer and journalist with the Inverness Advertiser arrives in the Highlands and vigorously attacks landlords and factors in print. So vigorously, in fact, that he eventually flees to France when faced with charges of slander.
1850s (early) - Clearances of thousands of tenants in the Strathaird district, Suishnish, and Boreraig on Skye; and Coigach at Loch Broom.
1851 - Sir John MacNeill, under the direction of the Home Secretary, tours the Highlands and reports back that the Highland poor are "parading and exaggerating their poverty and are basically lazy." The only solution MacNeill sees is emigration.
1851 (August) - The clearance of Barra by Colonel Gordon of Cluny. The Colonel called all of his tenant farmers to a meeting to "discuss rents", and threatened them with a fine if they did not attend. In the meeting hall, over 1,500 tenants were overpowered, bound, and immediately loaded onto ships for America. An eyewitness reported: "...people were seized and dragged on board. Men who resisted were felled with truncheons and handcuffed; those who escaped, including some who swam ashore from the ship, were chased by the police...." When officials in Glasgow complained to the Colonel about many of Barra's homeless wandering their streets, he stated: "Of the appearance in Glasgow of a number of my tenants and cottars from the Parish of Barra--I had no intimation previous to my receipt of your communication. And in answer to your enquiry--what I propose doing with them--I say 'Nothing'."
1851 - the parish of Loth was united to that of Kildonan, and by this means the number of the population was more than restored. Meanwhile, however, many of the old clan of the Gunns had gone out to the world, never to return to the scenes of the doughty deeds of their ancestors.(ref Electric Scotland).
1853 - Knoydart is cleared under the direction of the widow of the 16th Chief of Glengarry. More than 400 people are suddenly and forcibly evicted from their homes, including women in labor and the elderly. After the houses were torched, some tenants returned to the ruins and tried to re-build their villages. These ramshackle structures were then also destroyed. Father Coll Macdonald, the local priest, erected tents and shelters in his garden at Sandaig on Loch Nevis, and offered shelter to as many of the homeless as he could. Donald Ross, a Glasgow journalist and lawyer wrote articles outlining the clearance of Knoydart, which generated little sympathy.
1854 - The clearing of Strathcarron in Ross-shire. Some Clan Ross women tried to prevent the landlord's police force by blocking the road to the village. The constables charged the unarmed women, and, in the words of journalist Donald Ross: "...struck with all their force. ...Not only when knocking down, but after the females were on the ground. They beat and kicked them while lying weltering in their blood....(and) more than twenty females were carried off the field in blankets and litters, and the appearance they presented, with their heads cut and bruised, their limbs mangled and their clothes clotted with blood, was such as would horrify any savage."
1854 - Archibald Geike, describing a recent clearance on Skye, states he saw: (The house was) "a wretched hovel, unfit for sheep or pigs. Here 6 human beings had to take shelter. There was no room for a bed so they all lay down to rest on the bare floor." "On Wednesday last the head of the wretched family, William Matheson, a widower, took ill and expired on the following Sunday. His family consisted of an aged mother, 96, and his own four children - John 17, Alex 14, William 11, and Peggy 9 - the old woman was lying-in and when a brother-in-law of Matheson called to see how he was, he was horror struck to find Matheson lying dead on the same pallet of straw on which the old woman rested; and there also lay his two children, Alexander and Peggy, sick! Those who witnessed this scene declared that a more heart-rending scene they never witnessed." "Matheson's corpse was removed as soon as possible; but the scene is still more deplorable. Here, in this wretched abode, and abode not fit at all for human beings, is an old woman of 96, stretched on the cold ground with two of her grandchildren lying sick, one on each side of her."
1854 - An emigrant ship is described by "The Times" as: The emigrant is shewn a berth, a shelf of coarse pinewood in a noisome dungeon, airless and lightless, in which several hundred persons...are stowed away, on shelves two feet one inch above each other...still reeking from the ineradicable stench left by the emigrants on the last voyage... After a few days have been spent in the pestilential atmosphere created by the festering mass of squalid humanity imprisoned between the damp and steaming decks, the scourge bursts out, and to the miseries of filth, foul air and darkness is added the Cholera.
1854 - Highland landowners are asked to gather troops from their tenants to fight the Crimean War. Most of the Highlanders refuse, one telling his laird: "Should the Czar of Russia take possession of (these lands) next term that we couldn't expect worse treatment at his hands than we have experienced in the hands of your family for the last fifty years."
1856 - Horne sold Langwell for £90,000 to the 5th Duke of Portland.
1859 - Gunn of Rhives died and his two sons not long after. In legal and genealogical terms, the office of chief of the Clan Gunn became vacant with the death of Morrison Gunn in 1785 and remains vacant today.
1860 - The Langwell Estate was purchased by the 5th Duke of Portland for £90,000 who turned the area into deer forests.

Heike, Secretary of Clan McAndreis

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