some more fergusons...

I missed yesterday's anniversary of Peter Ferguson and Elizabeth Rattray as I have been sidetracked looking into the revolutionary records available on footnote.com for some other ancestors. Hopefully I will blog about those revolutionary finds soon. Now, I want to get back to the birthday and anniversary dates of my ancestors, as last week there were not many direct ancestors to write about.

Peter Ferguson and Elizabeth Rattray, my 4th great-grandparents, married in Kettins, Forfarshire, Scotland, Febraury 23, 1801. Kettins was part of Forfar county during that time, Forfar later changed its name to Angus in 1928, according to GENUKI. It seems that Peter and Elizabeth lived in Kettins throughout their marriage, as their six children were all born in this parish. The marriage record also states that Elizabeth was from Kettins. Peter was from the parish of Logierait, Perthshire, which is about 25 miles Northwest of Kettins, as seen in the map below.


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Perhaps Peter moved to Kettins as a young adult to find work and met Elizabeth there. His parish of Logierait was considered part of the Highlands, and during this time, many people were being cleared off their land by the landowners, known as the Highland Clearances. The information on Logerait does not seem to follow this pattern though, as discussed in the last section of the explorescotland.net website.

It seems Elizabeth dies fairly young, before 1841, as the first census available has Peter and her children listed without her, living in the Campmuir village of Kettins. I have not been able to find Elizabeth's death record. She is not listed in the IGI or the Old Parish registers available online at Scotlandspeople.org. Her death may not have been recorded as they were not required to register such events until 1855 in Scotland.

There is some information on Kettins, and much less on the village of campmuir, that I have found online. Familysearch has a great guide to Kettins and which records are available, including Kirk session minutes and other documents. I also found a small excerpt on the village of Campmuir from The Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland... published in 1856 : (from google books p. 94)

"At the hamlet of Camp-muir three quarters of a mile north of Kettins and close on the boundary with Cupar Angus are vestiges of a camp supposed to have been Roman."

From this same book, there is a section about Peter's occupation in Kettins. Peter, as listed on the 1841-1861 censuses, is a linen weaver.

"A proportion of population are employed in the weaving of fabrics subordinately to the manufacturers of Dundee..."

The other volume I usually look to for historical information on the parishes of Scotland is The New Statistical Account of Scotland..., published in the mid-1800s and written by parish ministers. The section on Kettins can be found here and the section on Logierait can be found here on google books.