FranScript.co.uk

A series of events as part of the First Mull of Galloway Smugglers' festival.

A Talk & Launch of a new Genealogical Service

Homecoming 2014 is an appropriate year to launch this new project.

It is based on 25 years of research into the social history of Scotland, the Isle of Man and Cumbria in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Over 20,000 people have been identified and their footprints recorded, providing details of the lifestyles of our ancestors, whether they were rich or poor, honest or dishonest. A booklet, giving further information about the service and including case histories and details of my books, will be available, free of charge.

A Talk and Book Launch

This story links families living in Galloway and Virginia.

It is written from the Scottish perspective, using information available at the National Library of Scotland and the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh and in a private archive in Galloway. George McMurdo is the central character because his papers have survived at all these locations, making it possible to reconstruct the lives of the people with whom he was connected on both sides of the Atlantic.

This is the draft scheme for the book:

Section 1: The Early Days: the Virginian plantations and life in America.
Section 2: Back in Scotland: the problems of plantations in another continent; the education of John Ravenscroft and the McMurdo children.
Section 3: Attempts to claim the Ravenscroft inheritance: Dr John Ravenscroft returns to Virginia but is soon back in England, with a wife. He spends the rest of his short life waiting for payments from Virginia.
Section 4: The McMurdo children: a different approach to life in Virginia.
Section 5: Court Cases: the Miller problem: George McMurdo forced to defend his actions.
Section 6: Further attempts to claim the Ravenscroft inheritance: McMurdo’s near bankruptcy, his death and beyond.

An attempt is made to discover if George McMurdo was a rogue, as several members of his family and his business and other contacts, including James Murray of Broughton, believed or merely a man of his times.

Ancestral Footprints was launched at Castle Douglas on 22 May

This is the first of a series of events that will be held there, focussing on the different aspects of the lives of the people living in Dumfries and Galloway in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Was your ancestor a smuggler, a customer for smuggled goods or a revenue officer? If so, was their footprint recorded in the contemporary documents? And, more significantly, has it been identified there?

This illustrated talk provides a brief introduction to where these footprints are found: the custom house letterbooks, merchant correspondence, civil court cases for debt and criminal prosecutions for smuggling.

Then the vivid exploits of our ancestors are told by the smugglers, the customers for their goods and the revenue officers themselves, describing their life and times.

This is a drop-in event at the Tolbooth, where John Bignall, a merchant in Ramsey on the Isle of Man and deeply involved in the smuggling trade, imprisoned one of his customers, a gentleman who lived near Kirkcudbright, for debt.

During 25 years of research into 18th and 19th century documents, it has been possible to identify more than 600 people, who were involved in the smuggling trade in Dumfries and Galloway on one side of the law or the other, or possibly both.

Find out more about life in this area when the smuggling trade involved virtually the whole population. Was your ancestor one of these people?

A detailed ancestral footprint costs £25. It may not be available on the spot but will be forwarded to you within a few days.

Over 50 smugglers and revenue men / Excisemen have been identified as being associated with Ballantrae in south west Scotland. Working in partnership with the Festival organisers in the run up to an “Ancestral Footprints” event we shall be trying to make contact with their descendants. The event itself will reconstruct their ancestors’ exploits by using contemporary 18th and 19th century documents. Descendants will receive a personal memento detailing their descendant’s exploits.

This talk reconstructs gardens that have been lost completely and others that lie hidden under more recent planting schemes. It includes the Ayrshire gardens of Auchans and Auchincruive, both of which have wider connections.

Page 61 of A Nest of Smugglers (2012) states: the smuggling story of Ballantrae is so complex that it will be subject of a separate booklet. It was not anticipated that this booklet would appear quite so soon. The Ballantrae Smugglers Festival in August 2013, however, provided the necessary stimulus to pull together all the information available and to complete the research, where necessary. The story was quite unexpected. Not only did it describe Dumfries and Galloway's smuggling history in microcosm but also it provided a new insight into the activities of both the Bay of Luce and the South Ayrshire smugglers.

This circular tour reconstructs the dramatic story of the 1832 Dumfries Cholera Outbreak. Where did it start? How fast did it spread? What were the theories about its origin and cure? Where did the victims live? How did the doctors cope? This event coincides with the publication of A History of Dumfries and Galloway in 100 Documents Part 2, which includes a major article on the outbreak based on the Dumfries & Galloway Courier's weekly reports and comments. Starting and finishing at Dumfries Museum this tour involves easy walking on pavements and footpaths.

'The craze for tea, brandy and wine and the proximity by the sea to England made Dumfries and Galloway a prime location for smugglers - and often the law could do little to stop them. Frances Wilkins' compelling account draws on national and local archives, as well as tales from the descendants of revenue officers, sailors and smugglers'. This will include a brief introduction to smuggling in our area, for the uninitiated, and exmaples of the smugglers from west to east. An exhibition will highlight the Mull of Galloway Smuggling Company and the Clone Smugglers on the opposite sides of the Bay of Luce. There will be no folklore!

In the one hundred year period from 1720 nearly 40 revenue officers were dismissed from the Dumfries Customs Collection. They included: Collectors: David Blair, John Crawford & Robert Maxwell; Land surveyor: George Gordon; Riding Officer: Thomas Corbet; Tidesmen: James Aiken, Christopher Armstrong, Thomas Bain, Alexander Brown, William Carruthers, Adam Dickson, William Edward, John Graham, James Hunter, David Johnston, William McNish, Joseph Mason, William Maxwell, Andrew Newal, John Shand, Thomas Simpson, Andrew Smith, Archibald Smith, Archibald Stewart, James Thomson & Alexander Wrangham; King’s Boat Commanders: Thomas Bell, John Bruce, Robert Carmichael & Jeremiah Gardner; Boatmen: Turner Dalgleish, Thomas Fisher, Samuel Grahame, John Leebody, Edward Lindsay, John McCurdy & Mungo Wright. What are their stories? Do they have anything in common that made dismissal inevitable?

Supposing that the government in London instead of purchasing the fiscal rights of the Isle of Man from the Duke of Atholl in 1765 had not interfered in the smuggling trade what would have happened? There is a very strong possibility that left to their own devices all the smuggling merchants would have become bankrupt, even George Moore and John Taubman. In other words, the smuggling trade would have self-destructed. This lecture looks beyond Revestment (1765) at the rise and fall of such apparently indestructible merchant partnerships as The Clone Smugglers; Richard Hetherton of Stonebriggs; Robert McDowall of Hopses; The Mull of Galloway Smuggling Company; John Rome of Langlands. Was their bankruptcy inevitable?

This is a modification of the course previously advertised.