History Notes by Julie W

HISTORY NOTES BY JULIE WILLIAMS

Please don’t be alarmed, readers of History Notes in the Barraba Community News and the Barraba Historical Museum Facebook page! Margaret Currell is only briefly out of action and plans to be on the job again soon and back to writing History Notes.  However, perhaps it is time for other people to contribute sometimes, so expect to see some different authors’ names every now and then.

Recently I was fortunate to visit Pam Spencer Johnson, a third cousin whom I had never met previously.  She lives at Lake Tabourie on the NSW South Coast.  Her extensive family research includes a new book entitled “The Heather was Blooming, the Scottish Ancestors of Minnie McKid/Spencer of Ironbark NSW”. She gave me a copy of this book, which I rely on for these notes.  There are many people around Barraba who have Scottish heritage.

I admit to being very ignorant about the history of the Scottish Highland clearances. I was aware that it involved farmers and families being evicted from their land, but I was not clear about the background to this, and I didn’t realise that my ancestors the Sinclairs were victims of this.  I suppose I thought that the hint of blue in their blood, being descended from the Earl of Caithness, would mean they were exempt.  But now after reading some of Pam’s book and other references eg wikipedia; I realise that is not how it worked.  Since the Middle Ages, clans were the major social unit of the Highlands and the expectation was that the chief owned the land and the family members (clansmen) were protected by the leader while they rented and worked the land.  This is greatly oversimplified, but it seems that they worked along happily enough until about 1750.  Over time the chiefs evolved into landlords as an economic model of society replaced the clan model.  The landowners realised they could make more money by clearing land to raise sheep for wool rather than leasing to tenants with small holdings. 

According to Pam, our ancestor William Sinclair (born 1753) and his family were “removed” in 1807 from their comfortable and productive farm at Kirkton, as was his son Colin; and they moved to smaller, less fertile plots nearer the coast.  Colin’s children included Catherine and Jean, both of whom have numerous descendants in the Barraba area.  That land was then sold on in about 1829 so the families had to move yet again. These “clearances” seemed especially brutal, with many of the little farms and houses burned to the ground, although there is no evidence that the Sinclairs suffered this fate.  They next moved to a place called Dunn-Watten in Caithness, the home of the McKid families. 

These people certainly had a rough time of things but probably not as bad as some of their neighbours.  Six of the Sinclair children emigrated to Australia between 1839 and 1850.