Dingwall historian delves into census archives to throw intriguing new light on local life
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TRAILBLAZING research by a distinguished historian has shed fresh light on a fascinating area of local history in Dingwall.
Jonathan McColl, currently chairman of Dingwall Museum and a member of the Dingwall History Society and Highland Family History Society, has dived into early census statistics to uncover intriguing information about local life.
His latest publication for the Highland Family History Society is The Early National Censuses of Dingwall, transcribed from an original manuscript in the Dingwall Museum archives.
Jonathan writes and talks about the people and places of the Dingwall area in formal lectures or in guided walks around the burgh.
This year, wearing another hat as a board member of the Dingwall Community Development Company, he helped in the design and implementation of a new heritage trail of notice boards intended for self-guided walks around places of interest in Dingwall.
He said of his latest venture: "Everyone looking into their family trees quickly discovers the importance of the ten-yearly censuses in finding the make-up and progression of their ancestral families, and the earliest such set is for 1841 where you can find the residences, names, ages of your multi-great grandparents.
"But the National Census started more than a generation before that one, in 1801, over 220 years ago, when William Pitt was still Prime Minister and Nelson and Napoleon were commanding their ships and troops in the French Revolutionary Wars. Surviving records of these first censuses are extremely rare as most were destroyed once the statistics had been gathered."
SEE ALSO: Dingwall heritage trail uncovered
In Scotland it was the parish schoolmaster who had to organise and perform the count, and Jonathan carefully transcribed the notebook that Dingwall’s schoolmaster, Alexander Simpson, used for the first thee censuses.
Only the heads of households are named in the book, followed by the numbers in their households. As an example, in 1811 Hector MacKenzie, butcher and farmer, was head of a group of three males and six females.
Jonathan has gone further to add value to these lists: he has compared the 1821 John Wood map of Dingwall with the counted names and discovered the precise path walked by Simpson and this is leading to a more precise geography of inhabitants in the Burgh and in the wider parish.
From this we see that the butcher and his family lived in a dwelling on the north side of the High Street near the corner with George Street. They were still there ten years later with an extra male but two fewer females. One of the women would have been his wife Catherine.
MacDonald and his children included Margaret, Duncan, Kenneth and Jane. He may also have been the retired 75-year-old living with his daughter Margaret on the Old Strath Road—ie up Knockbain—in 1841.
The book is available from the Highland Family History Society and from Dingwall Museum.
