3rd Great Grandparents; Malcom Gilles and and Margaret McPherson

Malcom and Margaret's home in Summer Hill, built in 1865.

Malcolm Gillies (1821-1907) and Margaret McPherson(1833- 1921)

When Malcolm Gillies and his twin brother Donald were born on July 18, 1821, in Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland, their father, Donald, was 31, and their mother, Margaret, was 32. Malcome arrived in Australia with his parents and siblings on 12 December 1837, on board the "Midlothian" together with other gaelic families from the Isle of Skye. It was a long (127 days) and perilous voyage and 27 passengers died of typhus. After this traumatic voyage their pastor delivered the first Gaelic church service ever delivered in the Southern Hemisphere. He married Margaret McPherson, from Inverness, in 1856 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and they had 14 children together.  He died in 1909 at his late residence "Tenelba" at 159 Canterbury Road, Petersham.  He died on July 21, 1907, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, having lived a long life of 86 years. HIs funeral notice said that he died of senile decay. (2)

Margaret MacPherson was born in 1833 in Fort William, Inverness-shire, Scotland to Alexander McPherson and Isabella Hyndes (McPherson). Alexander was an accountant (in Australia). She may have been working as a farm servant at age 18 as there is a Margaret McPherson listed at a farm called Faichamard, near Fort William, on the night of the 1851 census. According to oral history, she was born in Ft Wiliam inverness.  She immigrated on the "The Waverly" 20 Dec 1848 aged 13. along with Paul (30), Jane (2), Margaret (2). She, with her family originally emigrated to South Australiain about 1840 then to NSW in 1842. She resided  with her father prior to her marriage at 57 Gloucester St., Sydney. She married Malcolm Gillies in 1856 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They had 14 children in 22 years. She died on October 28, 1921, at the age of 88 at 11 Henson St Summer Hill aged 88 of senility cystitis, myocarditis, Annie McPherson Gillies, career nurse and Margaret's daughter, who lived at 11 Henson St, advised of the death. They were members of the Brethren sect and buried in the independent section of Rookwood cemetery. (Thanks to Lynne Robinson for much of this information)

Malcome arrived in Australia on 12 December 1837, on board the "Midlothian" together with other Gaelic families from Sleat on the Isle of Skye.  After the collapse of the seaweed trade (due to cheap soap imports) many Hebrideans were suffering great hardships.  This was compounded by the highland clearances, where landlords decided to replace tenants and crofters with sheep as this was more profitable. Furthermore, the potato famine was causing starvation and great privation. In desperation, Lord McDonald wrote to the British House of Commons to ask that people be sent to the colonies to make a better life. They wrote to the Rev. Dunmore Lang in Australia to assist as he had already been lobbying to have good, hard working Scotts sent to the colony to improve the stock in the colony.  Soon ships were provided to transport willing and unwilling people to the colony.  After the ship was provisioned and placed in the harbour people were invited to board and soon the ship was full, unable to take more on the crowded decks. The voyage was horrendous because although there was plenty of provisions, the ship's captain decided that more profit was to be had by saving much of it for sale and profit in Sydney.  The people were already in extremely poor condition so many died from disease and poor nutrition. When they reached Sydney they were so traumatised by the voyage that they refused to be separated and parcelled out to the various farms and industries established in the colony. Many could not even speak English, only Gaelic, and most were uneducated.  The only place where a large group could be accommodated was at the farm owned by the brother of Dunmore Lang north of Newcastle so they were sent there. An account of this is provided below. He died in 1909 at his late residence "Tenelba" at 159 Canterbury Road, Petersham.  

CONDITION OF A CLUSTER OF HIGHLAND EMIGRANTS IN NEW SOUTH WALES.....  (quote from Free Settler or Felon, https://www.jenwilletts.com/andrew_lang.htm)

In a late article on the destitute condition of the population of a large district of the Highlands, mention was made of the improvement which had taken place in the circumstances of a particular individual who had emigrated from Skye in 1837, and settled upon the property of Mr Lang, on Hunter's River in New South Wales. We are now able to present an  account of the improved circumstances (cluster of Highland emigrants to which that individual belonged. We derive our information from a private letter of the Rev. Dr Lang to Mr John Bowie, W.S., Edinburgh.

It is first to be observed that these men were generally in the most wretched state before they left Skye. They were totally unable to pay their own passage-money, and consequently were carried out at the expense of the colonial emigration fund. Many of them had no property whatever besides their clothes, and some had to be assisted even with clothing, before they could undertake the voyage. One or two excerpts from the notices of the Skye parishes in the New Statistical Account of Scotland, will help to complete the idea of how these poor men and their families lived in their native island. We quote from the notices of several of the parishes, which are all in the same condition :—" The poor tenants are almost invariably under the necessity of having their cattle under the same roof with themselves, without partition, without division, and without a chimney ; the houses, therefore, are smoky and filthy in the extreme, and, having little either of night or day clothing, and their children nearly approaching to absolute nakedness, they are fully as much without cleanliness in their persons as they are in their houses. No people on earth live on more simple or scanty diet than those in this parish. The greater number of them subsist on potatoes of the worst kind, sometimes with, but oftener without fish.

The inhabitants may be characterised as sober and active, but it must be admitted that they want that persevering industry which is necessary to improve their condition. The able-bodied among them, after their potatoes are planted in the end of spring, go to the south in search of employment. They return again at Martinmas, and their earnings go to pay the landlord's rents, and to support the weaker members of their families. The winter is almost altogether spent in idleness. There is no demand for labour in the parish, and hence there is only occasional exertion on the part of the people. As the summer earnings are spent during the winter, there is seldom or never a fund laid up for sickness or old age, and when cither of these comes, there is great poverty and privation. Their clothing consists of cloth of their own manufacture ; this they find fitter to resist the weather than any manufactured in the south. Their food consists principally of potatoes. Oatmeal is a luxury among them, and butcher-meat is seldom tasted. Their poverty arises very much from overpopulation. There are 500 families in the parish. Of these only six pay upwards of L.50 yearly rent; 269 pay from L.10 to 7s. 6d. per annum; and there are 225 families, comprising upwards of 1100 individuals, located in different parts of the parish, who pay no rents, deriving their subsistence from small portions of land given them by the rent-payers for raising potatoes. These are a burden to the proprietor, inasmuch as they destroy the land in cutting fuel and turf, and are a grievous burden to the inhabitants generally, from the extent of pauperism prevailing among them.

The flocks of the large sheepowners are annually thinned by those who feel the pinching of famine; and to such an extent is this system carried now, that it has led to the proposal of establishing a rural police throughout the island, which is expected to come into immediate operation - a measure completely unprecedented in the history of the Highlands. Such being the condition of vast numbers of people in the Highlands, it must be gratifying to every humane mind to learn how greatly the condition of our emigrants has been improved, even within the first year of their residence in Australia.

It had occurred to Dr Lang that it would be desirable to keep the Highland emigrants together if possible, instead of dispersing them as labourers throughout the colony, as in the former case they might have schools and churches suitable to their own wishes. It was determined to try an experiment to that effect, and accordingly the twenty-three families in question, who had landed from the Midlothian in December 1837, were transferred to Dunmore on Hunter's River, an extensive and nourishing district to the north of Sydney, belonging to Mr Andrew Lang, the government previously agreeing to give them two months' provisions. Dr Lang observed their progress for a year, but was then obliged to revisit his native country, where, in September 1839, he wrote the letter which we are about to quote. "My brother's estate," says he, "consists of about 2500 acres of land, of which about 1500 are alluvial land, formed by successive depositions from the river, of the first quality, and of the utmost fertility; and the portion of it on which the Highlanders are settled is within two miles of the village of Morpeth or Greenhills, from which there is a daily communication by steam-boats with the town of Sydney, which, of course, affords an eligible market for farm-produce of every description. Alluvial land, when clear of timber, in that neighbourhood, has been let at as high a rental as 30s. per acre; but the terms on which the Highlanders were settled were as follows : - Small farms, of from twelve to thirty acres, were measured off to each family - partly clear land and partly wooded. Leases of these farms were granted them for seven years, at the rate of L.1 per acre of yearly rental for the clear land—the wooded land being rent free for four years. Rations, or provisions, with implements of agricultural labour, were also advanced to them on credit, till they should be enabled to pay for them from the produce of their land.

The Highland settlement, which was known in the neighbourhood by the name of Skye, was formed in the month of January 1838 ; some of the Highlanders preferring to have their land all wooded, that they might sit rent free for four years, and others to have it all clear, that they might have it immediately under cultivation. Houses, tolerably comfortable in some instances, were easily erected by means of saplings found in the neighbourhood—the roof consisting of reeds or bark. By a little economy, the Highlanders were enabled to make the government ration of beef, which had been granted them for two months, last out four; and my mother, who happened to be residing with my brother at the time, taught the women how to prepare porridge and bread for their husbands and children, from the Indian corn or maize meal of the colony, which they procured at a comparatively cheap rate ; supplying them, at the same time, with various little indulgences, which could easily be spared from a large colonial establishment. To enable them to get in their crops with greater expedition, my brother also supplied them by turns with a plough and bullock team, a ploughman and bullock-driver, receiving payment in labour ; a day's ploughing being reckoned to so many days' labour. And when their crops were in, those of them who were inclined to be industrious obtained employment at remunerating wages—either on my brothers property or on others in the neighbourhood.

By this means, most of them acquired a little money for the purchase of pigs and poultry, and, in some instances, even of cows. When the settlement was thus fairly formed, and when various additional Highland families by other ships had joined it, my brother built a school for their children in a central locality. The school is also used as a temporary chapel on Sabbath, as often as the services of a minister can be procured to officiate, either in the English or Gaelic languages. It is a neat brick building, covered with stumps or wooden slates, with glass windows and a deal floor. It cost L.150, including school apparatus—the government contributing the one-half of the expenditure and my brother the other. The schoolmaster, for whom I succeeded in obtaining a salary from the colonial government of about L.75 per annum, before I left the colony, is Mr John Whitelaw, of the normal seminary of Glasgow, formerly a student at the university of that city ; and in the month of December last, when I visited the school, the number of pupils in attendance was upwards of sixty.

My colleague, the Rev. W. McIntyre of Sydney, has hitherto visited the district about once a quarter, on which occasions he officiates both in the school-house and in the church at Maitland, four or five miles distant, in the Gaelic language ; but the Presbyterian minister at Maitland, the Rev. Robert Blain, frequently officiates in the settlement in English. I have brought home a requisition, however, for a Gaelic minister for the settlement, signed by ninety-nine adult Highlanders, most of whom are residing on my brother's property. A schedule drawn up by Mr Whitelaw, in January last, shows the state of the settlement at that time. The wheat harvest had terminated in the month of November 1838, and the maize, or Indian corn, and tobacco had been planted about the same time or shortly before, either on the stubble land from which the wheat had been reaped, or on other land which had been cleared while it was growing. In short, the original settlement had been completely successful, and a number of additional families of emigrant Highlanders had also been permitted, at their own earnest request, to settle in the mean time on other small farms in their immediate neighbourhood and in the same way.

The schedule referred to gives a minute statement of the condition of the twenty-three emigrants in January 1839. It is too formal a document for these light pages, but its details are most interesting. We find, besides a column for the number of acres each man had in cultivation, such notices as the following after almost every one: -" Has two cows and two pigs ; " Has two cows, one pig, and a small stock of poultry ;" or at least Has a small stock of poultry." When these possessions are contrasted with the want of all things experienced in their native country, and when we consider that but a year had then elapsed from the commencement of the settlement, we cannot doubt that a few years will see a cluster of miserable Hebridean peasants transformed into a set of farmers equal to those in the average districts of their native country.....Chambers Edinburgh Journal