The Highland Clearances

As near as I can tell, Most of my ancestors lived in the south side of Inverness in the early part of the 19Th century. The heart of the Scottish Highlands.

But why leave? and why would they all end up in the same place? Melrose, Ma?

Through various sources, I have discovered some history of Scotland around the time just before John Grant immigrated to Boston.

The Highland Clearances were less an effort to rid Great Briton of Scots and more of an effort to populate Canada and force a military to defend her sovereignty.

theclearances.org In the first attempt at Government-sponsored emigration, a proclamation at Edinburgh in February 1815 sought

'to encourage settlers to proceed to the British Provinces in North America and for this purpose a certain number of vessels will be appropriated for the conveyance of such persons .... Lands will be granted to them, either in Upper or Lower Canada .... A grant of one hundred acres will be secured to each family and all their male children will be entitled, on attaining the age of twenty-one years, to a similar grant'.

But some resisted, or had the money to prolong their own homesteads. By by the 1880's though, the proclamations liked more like this:

'I am instructed to give you notice that the present arrangements by which you hold the cottage, byre, and other buildings, together with land on that estate, will cease from and after the term of Martinmas, 1880; and further, I am instructed to intimate to you that at the said term of Martinams, 1880, yourlandlord purposes taking the whole arable and pasture lands, but that he is desirous of making arangements whereby you may continue tenant of the cottage upon terms and conditions yet to be settled upon. I have further to inform you that unless you and the the other tenants at once prevent your sheep and other stock from grazing or trespassing upon the enclosures and hill and other lands now in the occupation or possession of the said landlord, he will not, upon any condition, permit you to remain in the cottage you now occupy, after the said term of Martinmas, 1880, but will clear off the estate, and take down the cottages. Those of his tenants who are still there, are permitted to remain in their cottages as half-yearly tenants on payment of 12s per annum, but liable to be removed at any moment that their absolute lord may take it into his head to evict them; or, what is much more precarious, when they may give the slightest offence to any of his meanest subordinates'.

In other words, if John Grant had staied on his homestead, he would have been subject to the whims of his landlord. What semed like a good deal in the early part of the century had turned into something forced. However, hanging on this long obviously opened up options for these immigrants. For instance, No longer were these people beging taken to Canada. Now they could go to the USA.

As witnessed by the emagration paths of the Shaws and my fathers, mothers family, this was a good thing.
Somhow somewhere these folks MUST have heard of the samll town of Melrose and knew of its connetion to a town of the same name back in their homeland.

In 1886 A small stone was taken fom the legendary Melrose Abby and brought to reside in the restored Trinity Episcopal Church on Emerson st.