The Story of a Family
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14 NEWSLETTER OF THE ORKNEY FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Issue No.55 September 2010 Concluding Part The Story of a Family By Margaret Watters and Peter Leith The second half of the 17th century is an unknown time John, who succeeded him. Thomas appears now and for the Leiths. Very little history as such has come down again in records. He signs as a witness at the baptism of to us. The early information is in family quarrels and the James Cursiter and Marjorie Hays’ son Thomas in 1701. Leiths do not seem to be in court rccords at that time. Changing Times Church records had not started or have not survived ex- The town of Stromness at the beginning of the 18th cen- cept in Kirkwall. Orkney history books are not much help. tury was out to the west of the present town extending Most just skim over the period. The Leiths of Onston must from the kirk with it’s kirkyard past Warbeth Beach to have been quite poor at that time as Thomas Omand, who Breckness where in 1633 Bishop Graham had erected a had bought the King’s land of Savedale in 1666 took a mansion. This bit of coastline had been inhabited for a wadset right over John Leith’s 13½ settings in 1676 and long time. Past Breckness Mansion there is a field with still had it in 1684 when John settled his affairs. the remains of a chapel and graveyard. There are the In 1684 John Leith executed a charter granting his ruins of a broch on the other side and there have been 13½ settings of malt mealing udal land to his oldest son graves found there. Nearer the kirk there is an area of Thomas Leith reserving his own life rent. His wife is not disturbed ground which has always been called Munker- mentioned so she must have been already dead. He also ness. The name indicates memory of a monastery and made provision for the wadset rights of Thomas Omand also there have been underground passages uncovered in the property. Among the witnesses to the deed is Da- in the kirkyard by the gravediggers. vid Leith, son of John. One wonders how many of a fam- Across the bay and Eastwards along the shore in ily John had. David does not appear in history again. Cairston the Gordons lived in a mansion at the Bu and Malt Mailing Udal Land is the amount of malt due to the owned all the land round about there. The remains of a earldom for scat. A setting was about 28 lbs. The end of norse Castle there indicates that this was also an an- the 17th century was a grim time in Orkney history. The cient site. weather was very bad,1696 being on record as particu- The ancient grandeur was all very fine but times were larly unpleasant. Crops were poor or non-existant, but changing. Merchants began to appear on the scene. skat or taxes and rents had to be paid. Orkney belonged Trade, of course, was by the sea and Breckness, while to the king but was let out to tacksmen for a price. The all right for small boats was no use for trading ships. late 1600s are known as “Brand’s years” after the tacks- They went on to Hamnavoe which was then and still is man of the time. He was Alexander Brand and he was an excellent harbour. And so, in the Session Records of very brutal in his exactions of his dues. Actually he had the kirk a new name appears “Shoarsyd”, the forerunner paid an inflated price for the tack to begin with and was of the present Stromness. One after the other the mer- feeling hard done by. chants built houses there and soon, in 1700 there was Although tenants were very hard hit in other parts of agitation to move the kirk as well. A school was also be- Orkney and some landowners went bankrupt, the udal ing planned. owned Onston and also Clouston did not change hands Richard Johnston, he who was married to Marjorie and the heads of household remain the same. There are Cursetter, is often noticed in records of the time. no surviving documents in the family to give us any de- Also Duncan Grahame of Breckness and John Brown tails of what it was like to live at that time, which is a of Kirbister. These were the leading merchants but there pity. We can only guess. Dates are also hard to come by were more. but Thomas Leith must have married soon after the 1684 The disastrous weather of the decade round 1700 had deed was signed. His bride was Elizabeth Cursiter, a another far reaching effect. The small farm holdings daughter of Cursetter of Hutter in Kirbister, Stromness. could no longer support whole grown up families al- These Cursiters, were a branch of the Firth Cursitters, though there would be plenty of work. So it was then as it an old udal family. A daughter of the previous generation is now, move around and search for work. The new town had married Edward Omand of Onston. Another daugh- was the obvious place and many went there, settled and ter, Marjorie Cursiter, was married to Richard Johnston. became shop-keepers or tradesmen. Many rented small He was a Stromness merchant The oldest son of Thomas holdings from the Gordons in Cairston; and from Brown and Elizabeth was born in 1686 or thereabouts and called in Kirbister. We find Leiths in Cairston, Kirbuster andA Issue No. 55 September 2010 NEWSLETTER OF THE ORKNEY FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY 15 F Outertown where Gordon was laird. Some were trades- their marriages all took place in Stromness Kirk. Elspeth men in new town. was first to marry, she married Nicol Robertson who was In the meantime Thomas Leith, the second oldest son of a merchant in Stromness. We shall hear more of him later. Thomas Leith and Elizabeth Cursiter, was farming Neth- Then in 1755 Euphan married Thomas Isbister from Har- er Onston and in 1723 married Margaret Clouston. Their ray and Janet married Robert Matches. There is no record family, recorded as baptised in Stenness, is Margaret of Marjory and John is known not to have survived. Wil- 1736, David 1741, and Isobel in 1744. A son James was liam, the only surviving son, married in 1765. His bride baptised in Stromness in 1752 and there was evidently was Isobel Smith, daughter of John Smith of Stromness. another son, Thomas. Thomas Leith appears frequently Although a udal owner owned his land completely, with in the Stenness Kirk records; as an elder and treasurer in no reference to the king, there were several taxes that 1735 and is still being recorded as an elder in 1755 but he had to be paid. SKAT, the old Norse land tax, CESS, which may not have still been at Nether Onston by this time. met the cost of the army and navy and TEINDS (the Scots Records show Thomas and Margaret still living in Sten- term for TITHES) which paid the minister of the parish ness in 1744 but in 1745 we find that his elder brother church, the amount of which was negotiated between the John decided to take his place at Nether Onston. heritors of the parish. Some of these dues were payable in Records do not show who lived in Nether Onston in the cash and some in labour but most were payable in kind. 1700s but we assume that it was Thomas Leith and his e.g. Malt, bere, butter, flesh, meat, oil, geese and poultry. wife Elizabeth Cursiter. There is no record of what family These termed Vicarage teinds were settled locally and they had but through various documents we can trace four. varied greatly from parish to parish. The minister and The eldest son was John, recorded as living in Cairston. the heritors did not always see eye to eye and in the 1750s Another son, Thomas lived and worked at Nether On- in Firth and Stenness things reached boiling point and ston. He was prominent in Church affairs. James, living ended in the courts in 1757. at Blackhall just along the road, appears as a witness in It is known as the Vicarage Case and throws some light a document. Peter, married to Isobel Velzian with family on life in Orkney at that time. The church minister of born in Stenness and then Stromness would seem to be the time, Mr William Nisbet, a man continually short of another son. A daughter Elspeth was married to Richard money, cast round for ways of increasing his income. He Clouston of the Netherbigging family and lived at Upper noticed that very few paid the butter teind in kind but Onston and latterly at Chesmire. always in cash. So, at the next heritors’ meeting he de- It is difficult to trace families in the early 18th cen- manded to be paid his butter teind in kind and that the tury. Records are few and only people who owned land cows on the farms be stented (assessed) accordingly. At are recorded with certainty. The kirk recorded baptisms that time the assessment was 8 pence for each calved cow, and marriages but where there are several entries of the 4 pence for each farrow cow and 2 pence for each young same name it is difficult to distinguish between different cow or quey. But Mr Nisbet wanted butter, and butter he families. Only the deaths of notable people were recorded had to have, so he appointed two men to go round the and, of course, many kirk records were lost or never were.