Researching Garioch in the Archives
Our Archivist recently held a talk in Inverurie Library, sharing records related to the area of Garioch.
The area of Garioch comprises quite a large number of historic parishes including: Bourtie, Clatt, Culsalmond, Daviot, Chapel of Garioch, Insch, Inverurie, Keith-hall, Kemnay, Kennethmont, Kintore, Leslie, Meldrum, Monymusk, Oyne, Premnay and Rayne. We can find out a lot about these areas from our Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives records!
Building history:
We can research who was living where and for how long, or how the area has developed over time, using the Aberdeenshire Commissioners of Supply Assessed Tax Reports.
The Commissioners of Supply were first established in Scotland in 1667 to collect the cess or land tax, on a county basis. Those eligible to become Commissioners were substantial landowners and they were responsible for administering the tax on a county wide basis. Gradually, because they were already organised and in existence, they were given other duties, including education and roads and bridges. They were able to adopt the Police Acts of 1839 and 1857 which gave them power to adopt a 'policing' system. This allowed them to introduce and regulate lighting, paving, cleansing, water supply and public order.
The commissioners became an important voice for the views and concerns of local landowners and with the widening of the franchise and electoral change they eventually transformed into the elected bodies - the county councils - in 1889. These joint committees and the commissioners of supply were abolished under the Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1930.
Chapel of Garioch Assessed Tax Report of 1799
The records list all property or landowners required to pay tax for their property and the columns detail exactly what each person is liable to pay tax on: duties on houses and windows; duties on inhabited houses; duties on male servants; duties on carriages with four wheels; duties on carriages with two wheels and taxed carriages; duties on horses used in husbandry or trade, and on mules; and duties on dogs. Later on, we can see they tax for wig powder.
[husbandry is the care, cultivation and breeding of crops and
animals]
This following page shows entries for the parish of Clatt. At the top we can see Mrs Gordon of Knockespoke, followed by Mr William Gordon (Minister); William Booth, Robert Booth and William Booth Junior all at Auchmunziel and later on, William Ingram of Towie.
These records can be very useful for tracing the changing place names of properties in the Shire, or going down a rabbit hole to try and locate a building now! Below is an ordnance survey map from the 1860s showing Knockespock (taken from the assesesed tax record above). It was located on the south east corner of Craignook Wood, south of Clatt.
And you can still see it on this modern aerial view from google maps.
Below you can see the second page for the area of Keig (Keig Brought Over). Again, there are some interesting place names that some of you may want to learn more about: Craigpott, Micklehaugh…
And the first entries for Kemnay Parish, which list Mr Mitchell, the minister, first, followed by Alexander Burnett, who’s address is just given as ‘Kemnay’, which wouldn’t be as easy to trace!
Valuation Rolls
Following the Commissioner of Supply records, you may wish to look at the valuation rolls.
In 1855 a uniform system of property valuation was
established in Scotland and its records give the names of proprietors and
occupiers along with the rateable value of each property. These were designed
to allow local authorities to have accurate information on ownership, tenancy
and occupancy in order to levy annual rates to fund local services.
The rolls were produced annually – they were drawn up by the
15th August each year using information gathered by surveys carried out by the
Assessor and their staff. Appeals were then allowed to the 15 September. The
roll was authenticated and in force from Whitsunday (15 May).
The rolls include every property for which there was a
rateable value. Separate rolls were compiled for each county and royal burgh
(other burghs were included in their county's valuation rolls). From 1930 until
1974 only cities and large burghs had assessors and were allowed to produce
their own valuation rolls. All other burghs were included in the respective
county valuation rolls.
In 1989 the Community Charge (Poll Tax) was brought in and the rating of domestic properties ended (later replaced by Council Tax). The Grampian Joint Board came into existence on 1 April 1996 and was also given the responsibility of carrying out Electoral Registration on behalf of the constituent authorities of Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire and Moray.
Kintore in 1859, which is the first date of valuation rolls we hold for Aberdeen County.
The rolls are set out by parish or ward and then by street. Depending on the roll, the streets may or may not be listed in alphabetical order, which can make them difficult to find. Some of the larger Aberdeen Burgh valuation rolls have been indexed by street. If you are looking for a person, and only know the parish they were residing in, using the valuation rolls to locate them can be quite time consuming, depending on the size of the parish!
The above image shows the Estate of Kemnay in the parish of Kemnay in 1875. You will see that the entries are varied and include land, as well as property. For example, entry one is the mansion-house and domestic offices of Alexander George Burnett of Kemnay. He also owns all of the other entries on this page, including gardens, lawns and pleasure grounds under entry two, as well as woodlands, a meeting-house, shootings, fishings, and many farms and crofts. We can see the list of those occupying these lands and properties in the next column. Unfortunately, when the crofts and farms are named so generically, it can be hard to differentiate between them.
Note that the valuation rolls do not list everyone who was
resident in a property, only the head tenant. This means if a family or
individual was lodging with someone else, they may well not appear in the
valuation roll at all. The roll was usually taken in May (Whitsunday) and
lasted until the following year, so the information contained within also
depends on when in the year an event took place.
Likewise in the image below, the entire page shows the estate of Keith-Hall is owned by the Right Honourable Earl of Kintore (or Francis Edmond, Advocate of Aberdeen, as the trustee). This page gives more detail for the individual farms, so it may be easier to locate and identify these.
Parochial Board
If you would like to research more about the people living on
these estates, it is worth checking poor relief records. From 1845 until the
introduction of the welfare state in 1948, responsibility for poor relief was
borne by parochial boards, parish councils and county councils. Minutes,
applications for relief and registers of poor survive for many parishes, and
many have been indexed by the Aberdeen and North-East Scotland Family History
Society. These documents are incredibly useful for family history research.
This example is from Kintore Parochial Board and is their General Register of the Poor. The volume dates from 1847 – 1854. The columns along the top are:
- name of pauper
- present residence
- married or single / widow or widower / if child, orphan, deserted or bastard
- name of each dependant living with pauper
- age in years
- place of birth
- trade or occupation
- if wholly or partially disabled
- means and resource of pauper besides parochial relief
- names and weekly earnings of parents
- names, ages and earnings of children not living with pauper and whether married and number of children
- date when admitted on roll
- amount of relief in money
- amount of relief in food, clothing, fuel, lodging, or of any other kind
- date and cause of removal from roll
- remarks
These records give a good overview of some of the many reasons why people needed assistance during this period, and how they were ultimately helped. Examples included on this page are ‘weak in mind’, ‘lunatic and dangerous’, ‘bodily inferiority’, ‘asthma’ and ‘old age’. Some of the assistance received includes money for clothing and house rent.
You can glean some interesting additional family information from these records, not just information about the individual claiming poor relief. For example, the above makes note that Widow Janet Crombie or McKenzie’s daughter Janet Cocker is illegitimate, married to James Angus, a day labourer, and has 5 children.
In some instances, the parochial registers include full page documents and a lot of detail. This is the Chapel of Garioch Parochial Board General Register of the Poor for 1847 – 1906. On page 124 we find this lengthy entry for Frank Hamilton, a single Australian aged 58. The text describes Mr Hamilton’s numerous containments in Aberdeen Lunatic Asylum, and his three escapes!! It discusses who is liable for the cost, whether it is Ellon, Belhelvie or the Chapel of Garioch.
The final paragraph dated November 1886 reads: ‘Frank Hamilton having now been a month at large. He is in terms of the Lunacy Act off the Roll in this parish. His craze is that having been at the gold diggings in Australia, ships laden with gold are coming to him. Otherwise he is quite wise.’
Parochial Board Minutes
There are some occasions where the general registers of the poor or applications of the poor have not survived for the parish. In these instances, we can look to the minutes for information instead.
As you can see from this page (Clatt Parochial Board), searching this type of record can be much more time consuming, as in most cases the minutes have not been indexed. We do have a remote volunteer project to name index these, but in the meantime, they are still worth searching if the other poor relief resources for the parish you’re looking at have not survived. In some cases, there are more details about the circumstances of the individuals claiming poor relief than the information that ends up in the actual applications or registers.
Education and School Records
School records generally include admission registers, log books and some
photographs, plans or miscellaneous documents.
The admission registers for schools can tell us a lot about both the individual pupils who attended each school and the changing demographics of an area. They generally include columns detailing admittance date, name, date of birth, address, guardian or parent, previous school (if any) and onward school (if any).
You can see from this page of admission register of Keig Public School, the pupils that joined the school in January 1885 to May 1886. These records are very useful for tracing the movements of people. If you know that your relative attended a school and the rough date, you can search for their entry. If the person has then moved school, this should be recorded, so you can follow the trail of where they were living.
[Due to data protection, not all of these records are
available to search. There is a 100 year closure based on the date of birth of
the individuals.]
Log books provide less consistent detail about individual pupils, but much more detail about teachers, teaching methods, society and the local area. The next few images are interesting entries from Kintore School Log Book.
Absences of children from school are often noted first. This is because the schools attendance rates were heavily reported. On the page above, we have reference to an absence of 15 year old Arthur Abell, as his parents had sent him to Inverurie to see a ‘spae-wife’. This was a colloquial term for a female fortune teller. Headteacher Mr Kean notes this in the margin as superstition. The consultation was required in the hope that the whereabouts of an elder brother were found out. He had been out of sight for years.
Mr Kean later notes additional attendance dwindling as the grass develops and boys went to herd cattle. The following week attendance is further diminished as “planting potatoes more important than planting knowledge”.
Entries on these pages continue to show the farming nature of the environment. The below entry details Inverurie Feeing Week.
Discipline is commonly mentioned in the log books. The entry below from the week of 4 July 1876 reads ‘had occasion to punish four boys for throwing dust upon girls on going from the school and for tearing of the girls’ dress. Gave them two slaps each and a caution. The boys were Gordon McIntosh, William Strachan, James Strachan and William Aitken’.
Unfortunately, this is still an issue two years later in 1878 when John Forbes, a boy only at the school for the first time the previous week, left his seat to light his pipe from the fire. He smoked before the scholars during school hours, whilst the master was for a short time absent from the main room. His punishment was four slaps and a sharp admonition, but it shows that socially and culturally, pipe smoking was not as easy to eradicate as expected…
School Board Minutes
School Board records are another type of record that can be
useful to search, particularly if you are interested in the history of
education, a particular area rather than school, or the school buildings
themselves.
The Education (Scotland) Act 1872 (35 & 36 Vict., c.62)
created school boards in Scotland with a statutory duty to provide education
for all children between the ages of 5 and 13. This Act was responsible for the
mandatory nature of the admission registers and log books that we have just
looked at. The boards had an elected membership made up of owners and occupiers
of property of the value of £4 or over. They were responsible for the building
and maintenance of schools, staffing and attendance of pupils. They were
overseen by the Scotch Board of Education.
The pages that follow are from the records of the Chapel of Garioch School Board, dating from 1873 – 1919. This School Board covered the area of the Chapel of Garioch civil parish. Below is an entry that jumped out regarding the death of Captain Smith in April 1915.
Transcription: The board resolves to put on record its profound sorrow and regret at the death of Captain Smith of Pittodrie defending his Country. Their appreciation of the practical interest he uniformly showed in the intellectual, moral and physical wellbeing of the children as well as his kindness and courtesy extended to every member, and happy memories will be retained by them of their pleasant associations with him in the management of the educations affairs of Chapel of Garioch’.
The school board records minutes often pull together information from the log books about attendance rates, which gives us a useful comparison of school attendance across the area.
The page above is from Clatt School Board in 1914. It describes circulars from the local government regarding the treatment of children under the mental deficiency act. These records can therefore give us a useful overview of what was happening at a wider government level. The circular here is requesting the board appoint a medical officer.
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