North or South Uist .....

[Little Bernie]

Many of the family stories that were told to me have come to have a fair degree of inaccuracies, so to I suspect, of where in Scotland my gggrandfather and his 3 sons came from.

We Campbells, I've been told came from North Uist,but doing a wee bit of looking via the internet, I see that North Uist was settled by a fair amount of MacDonald's, and Protestant at that. Now, my Campbell's are Catholic, so with both of those things in mind, mustn't that be an error ? Meaning there's little chance a Catholic Campbell family would be living under Protestant MacDonalds.

I'm thinking possibly the rumour wasn't completely off target, and that it may have been in South Uist, or even Benbecula.Now, I'm not sure if this helps much,but my gggrandfather was a "Weaver" by trade.
Cheers

[sheilajim]

Hi Little Bernie

The Campbells and McDonalds! Now I thought that the Campbells were the Protestants, and the McDonalds were the Roman Catholics!

I have both in my ancestry. Sometimes they both are Protestants, and sometimes Roman Catholics.

My family at least, seemed to change back and forth from RC to Presbyterian.

I don't think that you can take the religion for granted.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Sheila

[angusm]

Hello Little Bernie: for this purpose, you can forget the MacDonald v Campbell issue. There were quite a few separate families of the Campbell name happily settled in Clanranald territory and some had been there since 1730. I do think though that your point about your family's Catholicism very probably points to a South Uist origin. There was a narrow range of Campbells in Benbecula until after 1841, a bit late probably for your folks - and the influx was from South Uist. I will keep an eye out for anything more specific. AngusM

[Little Bernie]

Dear Angus: The accuracy of my dates is not to my liking;however, I'm guessing that in 1841 they were still in Scotland.

"There was a narrow range of Campbells in Benbecula until after 1841"
Would it be narrow enough to isolate the towns or districts ? Would we be talking 10-15 families of Campbells or 100+ ?
Cheers, Bernie

[angusm]

Hello Little Bernie: in Benbecula 1841 there was Angus Campbell, the Bard Sgallach, formerly tailor to the Clanranald gentry and his [extended] family in Aird and an unmarried schoolmaster in Torlum. This is fewer than in 1730 when there were four families of the name on the island. Later there were more families, mainly descended from an incomer family from South Uist where there were, as I understand it, a number of separate lines. Hope this helps. Angus

[Little Bernie]

Dear Angus, that's what I thought, so we're really talking about a small population to draw from. Small enough that if I was in the area(South Uist or Benbecula) I could literally ask each Campbell family if they have these particular family members of mine in their family tree, but that is not an option at this time.When I went home to Cape Breton last year(I'm teaching English in China) I went up to Inverness last year and I ended up chatting to an old fellow who's mother remembered my family(they'd lived in that area from about 1857-1920) partly because all the young folk have left the area for work some of the old memories are still to be heard, and I suspect the area my family came from in Scotland would be suffering the same fate as Inverness ,Cape Breton. The only thing that is significantly different is the degree of poverty and upheavel during the clearing.