Return
to John Halliday Chapter Page
Early Life in
Scotland
Early in 1746 George Halliday
left Dumcrieff, Moffat Parish, and removed with his family to
Berryscaur, Parish of Hutton and Corrie. One of the first acts
of a Scot when he moved from one parish to another was to transfer
his certificate of church membership, his "testimonial".
There exists in Hutton Parish a Session record-book with entries
from 1746 to 1769 headed "A list of testimonials taken in
and given out by the Session of Hutton since ye 2nd. of June,
1746". The first entry in it reads, 1746, June 2 - taken
in one from George Halliday in Berryskare from Moffat".
Hutton parish is the largest
in area of the Dumfriesshire parishes. Much of it, however, is
moorland. Hence it has been by no means the most prosperous part
of Annandale. In 1755 its population was 993. By 1793 this had
decreased to 583, the decrease being due, it was alleged, "to
laying farms together". Serving this population commercially
there were two corn millers, one dye and wauk miller, one shop
keeper and fifteen weavers. The parishioners of Hutton were said
to be "regular in conduct, well disposed to government,
(while) in industry and sobriety they excell". (1) The statistics
of the parish may have been slightly different when George Halliday
became its one dye and wauk miller, though the general picture
would be substantially the same, especially, one would hope,
the fine character of its inhabitants.
Map C (Berryscaur)
The parish church stands
on the outskirts of the village of Boreland. The name was originally
Bordland, or Board-land, from the Danish "bord", meaning
"table". Bord land was land held on the rental of food
for the Bishop's table. Since the parish was organized separately
at that point in 1220, the name must date back to the XII or
XIII century.
The village is on the Dryfe
Water, a tributary of the Annan some twelve miles long. (2) The
valley of the Dryfe is similar to that of the Annan, though probably
somewhat narrower, its water meadows being less extensive. The
same beautiful hills flank the dale. The name derives from the
Anglo-Saxon "drifeaig" which means "hurry"
or "tumult". In its upper reaches the little stream
is placid enough, its name scarcely appropriate. Then "the
Dryfe finds its way to the rocks at Boreland and, leaping like
a mad thing, drives down its glen to join the Annan at Dryfe
Sands". (3)
A mile below Boreland the
Dryfe is joined by a small tributary stream, the Caldwell Burn.
At this point is a little hamlet of fewer than a dozen cottages,
- Berryscaur. The name comes from the Norse. Its first two syllables,
"berry", can be traced through the earlier form "berrier"
to the Norse "beorg", meaning a small hill. .(4) The
last syllable, "scaur", is also Norse from the word
"sker", a cliff. (5) The combination of the two - "berrier-sker"
suggests a precipitous small hill. That is a correct description
of the hill immediately behind the hamlet. Berryscaur is on the
estate known as The Shaw, whose manor house stands on the hill.
The hamlet became the home of independent artisans who lived
in the very modest houses available there in the XVIII century.
Here it was that George Halliday took up residence in 1746.
Not much can be discovered
about George Halliday. In the records of Moffat Parish there
are three references to him. The first states that on Sunday,
January 21, 1739, the banns for his marriage to Mary Hasty (sic)
were proclaimed for the third and last time. On that occasion
he "consigned (to the Session) 10s. sterling as "pawns".
In the Church of Scotland of that period the pawns were moneys
handed over to the Kirk Session when banns of marriage were finally
proclaimed. If the first child of the marriage were born not
earlier than nine months later, the moneys were returnable to
the father. The marriage took place that week, apparently at
the bride's home, for on January 28, 1739, "George Haliday
(sic) gave to the poor, conform(able) to the act of Session for
being married out of the church - 2s. 6d."; another interesting
financial procedure of the Scots kirk of that time. The third
entry is dated December 2, 1739, some ten months later, when
the Session reported receipt of "baptismal money from George
Haliday in Dumcrief - 1s." Presumably the ten shillings
of pawns were returnable to the proud parents.
The child born in 1739
was baptised 'Francis', the entry in the baptismal register being
dated December 10, 1739. Three more sons were born to George
Halliday and Mary Hastie in Dumcrieff, registered respectively
as James, baptised November 19, 1741; Patrick, January 14, 1743;
and then John, whose registration reads, "March 11th, 1745,
George Hallyday (sic) and Mary Hastie had a son baptised named
John". John was to become the father of the Halliday who
emigrated to Canada.
Presumably George Halliday
had learned the trade of dyer and wauk-miller on the estate of
Dumcrieff. His father may have been of the same trade. Dumcrieff
was not a large estate when the Hallidays lived on it. At that
time a small community of tradesmen lived in the grounds. They
earned their livelihood by running two mills, one a corn mill,
the other a wauk mill. The latter would probably be operated
in conjunction with dyeing vats, the two operations being commonly
carried on together. The mills operated in Dumcrieff for many
years. The millers are supposed to have occupied a building later
known as 'The Gardener's cottage'.
The trades of dyer and
wauk-miller were practised in most rural areas of Scotland in
the eighteenth century. Not much equipment was needed. The industry
had to be near a stream of water, for water was used in considerable
quantities. Two stone-lined vats were built, one for each process,
and usually in the yard of the dyer's house. The raw, 'homespun'
woollen cloth - and to a lesser extent sometimes linen - was
first placed in the wauking vat. There a trampling of the cloth
under water shrunk it, removed its coarse roughness, and gave
it a reasonably smooth surface. The webs were then dried, the
water being drained away by the nearby stream. When dry the cloth
was put into the ‘litting' vat - the old Scots term for
'dyeing'. The dyer had two sources available for his dyes, England
and Holland. Traditionally, two colours only were used, blue
for the ordinary clothing of Scots citizens, black for the less
commonly used garb of special occasions. The cloth was allowed
to steep in the dye until the colour was fixed, then dried, the
residue in the vat being drained away.
The dyer and wauk-miller
of the eighteenth century had two kinds of customers in need
of his product. One of these was the weaver of 'homespun' cloth.
She might be a housewife who wove cloth for her family on the
household loom after spinning the yarn on her wheel. Up to that
point she was competent, but wauking and dyeing the cloth (and
sometimes the yarn) required equipment and skill she did not
possess. So the dyer of the neighbourhood was called upon to
practise his trade, for a fee. On one occasion the Session of
Hutton church had to have cloth dyed for one of the parish's
indigents; Session Record states, "Paid an account ... for
dyeing to John Halliday - 4s. 6d". Not all weaving was done
by local housewives, however, for professional weavers, either
resident or itinerant, were available. In Hutton in 1793 there
were 15 weavers resident in the parish. (1) These too would require
the services of the wauk-miller and dyer. A dyer's income may
well have come largely from these two sources.
It appears, however, that
a dyer might also have quantities of his dyed material for sale.
One living in Berryscaur world have two markets available as
retail outlets. Weekly markets were held in Dumfries and Lockerbie
in the eighteenth century. To obtain a license to sell on these
markets a tradesman had to be registered ("entered"
was the word used then) as a burgess of the town. On June 11,
1792, James Halliday, "a dyer" was so 'entered' at
Dumfries. In 1793 James Halliday of Berryscaur, one of George
Halliday's grandsons and the one dyer in Hutton Parish (1), may
well have been the new burgess of Dumfries. Such markets would
be a second source of income for dyers.
Dyers were, thus, independent
traders. They usually rented their property from the land-owner
of the neighbourhood. The Hallidays of Berryscaur would be tenants
of Graham of Shaw. While not affluent, they would in all probability
have an adequate income, more especially in view of their monopoly
of the trade in Hutton. This seems to be borne out by the Hutton
Session records listing relief payments made by the Session to
members of the parish "in straightened circumstances".
The record exists for the period 1742 to 1772. There were at
least fourteen Halliday families in the parish at that time.
Among them some required financial assistance from the Session
Poor Fund from time to time. Not once over the period for which
a record exists did the Hallidays of Berryscaur require such
help.
No record of George Halliday's
death has been found. The churchyard contains no existing headstone
to his memory, nor do Session records report the payment of "mort-cloth"
money on the occasion of his death. Four generations of his family
lived in Berryscaur between 1746 and 1898. In that latter year
another George Halliday, great-grandson to the first one and
the last to reside there, died in Berryscaur. When the first
George Halliday came to Hutton he had four children. Hutton Parish
baptismal registers list five children baptised after the family
arrived there, namely, Janet, 1747; Christian, 1749; Isobel,
1751; Jean, 1753; and William, 1755.
George's fourth son, John,
followed his father's trade of dyer, continuing to reside in
Berryscaur. He lived in the corner unit of an L-shaped terrace
of four cottages. The shorter arm of the terrace faced Dryfedale,
the longer arm the Caldwell Burn. (6) Thus, John's house had
two windows looking on the road from Boreland to Lockerbie while
its door and one window looked on the Burn. It was ideally located
for the practice of his trade and the marketing of his goods.
John had married Jean Dinwiddie
(also spelled Dinwoodie). Unfortunately, in Scotland at that
time, registration of marriages and births was voluntary and
either the principals or the minister might fail to record the
event. No contemporary registration was made in Hutton for John's
marriage (which might, of course, have taken place in a neighbouring
parish) nor for the baptism of his children. From the headstone
in Hutton churchyard, however, it is learned that he had a son,
James, born in 1775. A second son, John, was born in 1778. A
delayed registration of his birth was made either by the son
himself or by his mother in 1801. It read, "April 25th,
1778. John, son of John Halliday, late dyer in Berryiscare (sic),
and Jean Dinwiddie". On May 5, 1778, John, Sr., died at
the youthful age of thirty-three, his newly-born son being about
ten days old. According to the Statistical Account of Scotland,
1793, in the year 1778 "fever and consumption carried off
thirteen young people". Apparently an epidemic of some kind
struck the parish, John Halliday being one of its victims.
Since the two sons were
still infants, their widowed mother would be dependent upon others
for the operation of the family business. It was normal for a
widow to carry on under such circumstances by employing a journeyman
dyer. Whether this was Jean Dinwiddie Halliday's procedure or
not is unknown. Her father-in-law, George Halliday, may still
have been living. Her youngest brother-in-law, William Halliday,
appears to have been a dyer and may have been the William Halliday
"entered" a burgess of Dumfries in 1786. Either of
these relatives may have operated the business. The family continued
to live in the Berryscaur cottage, where the dyeing vats were
and where both sons learned their father's trade in due course.
Ultimately, James became
the chief operator. He married Jessie Rogerson and six children
were born to them. They lived in a cottage directly across the
Caldwell Burn from his mother's house. According to one of his
descendants, James used the dyeing vats "across the burn",
which would be those in the yard behind his mother's house.
The younger son, John,
broke with the traditional family occupation. Though he had learned
the dyer's trade and practised it for a brief period, he moved
into a professional career. This career ultimately led him far
from the ancestral home in Scotland to a new home in Upper Canada.
What influences there may have been in the Berryscaur home to
lead to this break is unknown. It is clear, however, that there
were two in Hutton Parish which did much to mould him, the Parish
Church and the Parish School. His associations with both were
close ones.
Hutton Church was established
in 1220. (7) There is no mention of it in the turbulent days
of the Reformation nor did the Disruptions of a later day have
much effect upon it. In 1602 its fabric must have been in good
repair, since it is not included among the twelve churches in
Annandale which the King ordered rebuilt at that time. Its extant
records begin in 1744, but were maintained only spasmodically
according as its minister was or was not interested in Session
Minutes and Parish Registers.
The present building was
erected in 1710. It was built of local, brown stone, the roof
being thatched, with slate substituted in 1763. The building
was rectangular, 67 feet long and 15 feet wide. Down the centre
from the east door to the west one ran a "passage",
or aisle. This was gravelled, while the rest of the church's
floor was earthen. On either side of the passage the "rooms"
(box pews) were built, separated from the passage and each other
by low partitions. One "room" was reserved for each
heritor, the owner being responsible for supplying the chairs,
benches, and desks needed for worship by his family, his servants
and his tenants. The "room" occupied by Graham of Shaw
(where the Hallidays as his tenants had a right to worship) was
in the south-east corner. The pulpit was built midway down the
south wall. In 1763 an extension, - the jamb - was added on the
north wall directly opposite the pulpit. Such was the church
where John Halliday was baptised, where he attended school and
worshipped, where he taught the parish school for a brief period,
and where, in all probability, he was married.
John Halliday was unfortunate
in the calibre of his minister during his youth. This was the
Rev. Patrick Nisbet, who was minister of Hutton from 1767 to
1799. Mr. Nisbet had been a merchant of Glasgow, became bankrupt,
and was placed in Hutton Parish as its minister by his brother-in-law,
the Principal of Glasgow University, who held the living of Hutton.
He was not a success as a minister. "The parishioners were
filled with consternation at discovering that if deprived of
his papers he could not speak for five minutes commonsense. The
congregation dwindled to two or three old women and a few boys."
(7) Parish records were kept imperfectly for the first five years
of his ministry and then discontinued altogether. The effect
of such incompetence upon a youth, especially if his home were
a religious one, would be considerable. In revulsion at the laxity
John Halliday may well have become sympathetic to the sterner
theology and practice of the Cameronian dissenters. And Mr. Nisbet's
dependence upon a manuscript in the pulpit may have had an echo
in a Church of Scotland congregation in Canada many years later.
(8)
In July, 1799, Mr. Nisbet
was succeeded by the Rev. Jacob Wright. He came to a church which
had been brought to such a pass that no elders were left in the
Session. Mr. Wright was a more competent minister and so built
up the parish that he was able to hold his congregation firmly
to the Church of Scotland during the Disruption. He would have
a considerable influence upon the twenty one year old John Halliday,
whom he probably married to Margaret Johnstone in 1801. He would
also be instrumental in having him appointed as schoolmaster
in Boreland in 1803. If John Halliday had already been favourably
inclined toward the Cameronian discipline, the influence of Mr.
Wright may have been such that he continued in the Established
Church. It may explain his readiness to return, temporarily,
to that Church years later in Upper Canada. (8)
The Hutton parish school
was another major influence in the life of John Halliday. Responsibility
for public elementary education in the Scotland of the eighteenth
century rested upon the heritors of each parish. They had to
employ teachers and maintain the schools, which were commonly
held in the church building. The earliest school record for Hutton
Parish states that in 1745 ten shillings and threepence were
paid to John Graham "who taught school in the kirk last
winter". (7) He was succeeded by three other Grahams and
by Robert Moffat. These would be the schoolmasters for the family
of George Halliday of Berryscaur.
If John Halliday of the
next generation began to attend school about the age of five
years, his schoolmasters would be William French (who taught
from an unknown date to 1786); David Irving (1786 to 1790); and
William Scott (1790 to 1796). The last named teacher was considered
particularly well qualified because he was able to teach Latin
and French. Presumably, John Halliday studied these languages
in addition to the usual school subjects. He appears to have
been an apt pupil. For in 1796 at the young age of eighteen he
was appointed schoolmaster to succeed William Scott, at a salary
of eight pounds, six shillings, and eightpence, sterling. There
is no suggestion that any pedagogical training was required of
teachers at that time.
It may be that John Halliday
was already giving indications of a personality characteristic
quite marked in his mature years, namely, his propensity to object
openly to any situation not to his liking. In any event, whether
instigated by him or by his pupils' parents, a complaint was
lodged with the heritors soon after his appointment. Heritors'
minutes read, "It being complained by the inhabitants that
the church where the school is presently taught is cold for the
children, it was agreed to take for a rent not exceeding 15 s.
for one year the house of David Mundel". (7) Whether John
Halliday originated the complaint or not, the success of the
method may have set a pattern for him when later in life he faced
unsatisfactory situations. His first term as schoolmaster did
not last long. Without any reason being given in the records,
his tenure of the position ended in 1798.
The erstwhile schoolmaster,
now twenty years old, returned to the trade of dyer. On December
25, 1801, he married Margaret Johnstone. No parish registration
was made of the event, but it was recorded in the new family
bible in the groom's handwriting. The next year the parochial
register of baptisms recorded the birth of their first son thus,
"October 4, 1802, John, son of John Halliday, dyer in Berryscare,
and Margaret Johnstone". In the following year a second
son, William, was born. He was baptised December 29, 1803, but
on this occasion his father was registered as "schoolmaster
of Hutton". During that year John Halliday had been reappointed
the parish schoolmaster. The circumstances surrounding the appointment
and the resulting change in life for the Halliday family had
their origins in changes which had taken place in the Scottish
educational system. These were described in a history of the
period as follows: (9)
At that time every rank
and profession was recruited from lads who had got their Latin
and their training in the parish schools; while the teachers,
to whom they largely owed their success, lived in hovels, and
their families were clad in rags. In spite of their powerful
claims, the schoolmasters were obliged to wait till this century
(the nineteenth) before they got partial remedy for their success.
At last, in 1802, the long sought, long needed relief came, though
by a most modest installment. The Schoolmasters' Act was passed.
After a quite superfluous preamble, stating that "the parish
schoolmasters of Scotland are a most useful body of men and their
labours have been of essential importance to the public welfare",
it ordains that henceforth their incomes are not to be under
300 merks (£ 16. 7. 6), nor above 400 merks (£22.
4. 6); that they are to be provided by the heritors with a house,
which need not contain more than two rooms, including the kitchen,
and with ground for a garden of not less than a quarter of a
Scots acre, or two balls of oatmeal as its equivalent. So ends
not too brilliantly a dismal period of scholastic poverty; so
begins on not too prodigal a scale of liberality the new area
of educational history.
The narrator of this bit
of pedagogical history adds that the Lord Advocate had told later
of his difficulty in getting even two-room accommodation for
the schoolmasters. A great many of the lairds and Scotch members
were indignant at being obliged "to erect palaces for dominees".
Meanwhile, in Hutton, the
heritors had been somewhat in advance of the Act of 1802. In
1800 they decided that the church was no longer a suitable place
in which to house the school. So it was agreed to build a school
"and an apartment for the teacher". A modest building
was erected on the Lockerbie - Ettrick road where it goes through
Boreland, a few score yards beyond the main village corner. The
"apartment for the teacher" was the room above the
school-room. Here Robert Graham, who had succeeded John Halliday
as teacher in 1798, lived and taught until 1803.
With the passage of the
Act in 1802 the heritors of Hutton were confronted with legal
requirements which they found financially difficult to carry
out. The story is not clear, but it did involve appointment of
another teacher. John Halliday was reinstated with a salary of
£16. 17. 6, - the minimum called for by the Act, but more
than double what he was receiving in 1798. In addition, he was
now provided with housing accommodation. Presumably, John Halliday
moved with his wife and infant son from Berryscaur to Boreland.
The birth of his other children in Scotland must have taken place
in that village. (10)
Improvements were made
to the school property almost immediately. The Act had not only
prescribed a minimum salary and an apartment, it had also ordained
that a garden be provided. This the heritors did at Hutton in
1804. They "laid off" one rood of land (the quarter-acre
ordered by the Act) beside the school, for the schoolmaster's
garden. John Halliday made good use of this, planting in it above
twenty fruit-trees, besides small fruit bushes", and erecting
"outbuildings" in it. Only one trace of the garden
now remains, a copper-beech of great size, reputed to be from
150 to 200 years old, and therefore planted by or certainly known
to John Halliday. When he resigned the position in 1815 the heritors
gave him a bonus of ten pounds because he had tended this garden
"in a beneficent and exemplary manner". (7)
At the same time as they
provided the garden the heritors put a ceiling on the school-room
"to prevent the wind blowing up through the floor, and to
render the dwelling-house above more inhabitable". Since
the school-room floor was earthen and the heating depended upon
each pupil bringing a peat daily for the fire, the temperature
in the school may frequently have been low and the room above
affected considerably by "the wind blowing up through the
floor". Apparently John Halliday found the apartment too
small. It was described as "only twelve feet; an inside
passage and a bed leaving hardly room for the family... to sit
down. The farmers gave five pounds to help for an addition".
(7)
Once again, therefore,
John Halliday being the schoolmaster, uncomfortable conditions
in Hutton school were remedied. The school sufficed in this condition
for thirty years. Not until John Halliday had been gone from
it for sixteen years was this original school demolished in 1831.
Then a new, one storey school, twenty-two feet by fifteen, was
built on the same site. This still stands, presently serving
as an annex to the schoolmaster's house.
It was either during his
second term as schoolmaster at Boreland or immediately following
his resignation that John Halliday changed the spelling of the
family name. He changed the "a" to an "o".
In the twentieth century world, with its increased use of legal
'paper', upon which a family signature is of considerable importance,
the exact and consistent spelling of a name must be followed.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth such consistency was not
so important and certainly was not followed. It has been observed
already that common nouns were found with a variety of spelling:
examples include scar, scare, skare; walk, wauk, waulk; and there
are others. The same liberty was taken when writing proper names.
Parochial registers exist in which the Halliday family name is
variously spelled Haliday (Moffat parish), Hallyday (also Moffat),
Holiday and Holliday (Dornock parish). The same variety is found
in the spelling of it on headstones in Annandale churchyards,
thus: Holiday (Hutton), Holliday (Wamphray), Haliday (Johnstonebridge).
The significant fact about the spelling of the name, however,
is that the spelling 'Halliday' far outnumbers in frequency all
the other forms combined. Thus, in Wamphray churchyard one stone
has the spelling 'Holliday', while twelve inscriptions are 'Halliday';
in Hutton eleven headstones commemorate that number of different
families, one spelled 'Holliday', one spelled 'Holiday', and
the other nine spelled 'Halliday'. In the parochial records of
Hutton, whether those of the Registers or of the Session Minutes,
the spelling 'Halliday' so far outnumbers any other that the
variation can almost be considered a slip of the scribes pen.
In addition to such evidence
from the contemporary eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there
is similar evidence from the earlier history of Annandale. True,
the alternative forms of spelling exist. But again the weight
of evidence favours 'Halliday'.
Certainly, John Halliday's
immediate ancestors must have used it. With the exception of
the Moffat parish spelling 'Haliday' in its Session Minutes and
'Hallyday' in its baptismal register, the family name was always
'Halliday'. (Even the Moffat spelling retained the "a"
which John Halliday changed.) It was so when George Halliday
transferred to Hutton Parish; it was so registered for his six
children born there; it was so spelled on his son John's headstone
and on that of his grandson, James, father and brother, respectively,
to the schoolmaster. Even in 1801 when the birth of John Halliday
the schoolmaster received a late registration, his mother or
he himself must have believed 'Halliday' to be a correct spelling.
All his children born in Scotland were registered at baptism
with that spelling. When the heritors of the Parish appointed
him 'Officer' of the Parish in 1808 the record states that they
paid "Mr. Halliday" the wages of the office. And when
in 1815 he was giver certificates of character so he could be
recommended as schoolmaster for the emigrants to Canada his name
was spelled "Halliday". (11)
It is tempting to believe
that John Halliday took advantage of a major break in his career,
emigration to Canada, to change the spelling to John Holliday.
Existing and dated signatures, however, make such an assumption
untenable.
There is some evidence
for believing that the latter "o" was used by him during
his term as schoolmaster at Boreland. The oldest existing book
known to have been in his library, "The Classical Geographical
Dictionary", bears on its title page his undoubted signature
spelled with an "o" and dated in identical ink "1812".
The history of Hutton parish (7) always refers to him as "John
Holliday". This work was not published until 1908 and contains
no references to original authorities. Presumably, however, its
author had some, such as heritors' minutes. If so, and they were
correctly transcribed, the spelling "Holliday" was
being used by him during his tenure of the schoolmaster's position
from 1802 to 1815.
His next surviving signature,
however, raises a doubt. It comes from 1815 after his arrival
in Canada. In December of that year while at Brockville, Upper
Canada, the immigrants petitioned for leave to settle westward
on the lake. (12) On that petition his signature was clearly
"John Halliday". (13) From that date onwards existing
copies of his signature show it to be "John Holliday".
(14).
The conflicting testimony
leads to the conclusion that in the later years of his residence
in Scotland the schoolmaster did use an alternative spelling
of the family name; that the new spelling was recognized by some
local authorities but, as the emigration records show, not, by
all; that even after his arrival in Canada he could revert, possibly
unconsciously, to the older family spelling "a"; but
that from the time of his settlement on the Scotch Line he consistently
used the form "John Holliday". No reason for the change
is apparent. Since, however, it was a deliberate choice his action
should be respected and his name so spelled, at least from the
date of his settlement in Canada.
Strangely enough, and with
no evidence available as to when or why they did so, John Halliday's
children, with two or three exceptions only, changed the spelling
back to the traditional and historical "Halliday".
During his second period
as schoolmaster seven children were born to the Hallidays. They
were baptised as follows: William, Dec. 29, 1803; Jane, Aug.
9, 1805; Janet, Mar. 21, 1807; James, Nov. 28, 1808; (he died
in infancy); Mary, May 8, 1810; George, Apr. 5, 1812; and James,
Jan. 29, 1814.
In 1808 and for three years
thereafter he received some financial assistance by acting as
'officer' for the parish. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries a parish was maintained by the payment of the teinds
(tithes) levied on the landowner heritors. These moneys had to
be collected by the Session. But since the teinds were in large
part devoted to the stipend of the minister it was not thought
fitting that he should go around collecting it. Yet the task
involved book-keeping and quite a bit of travel in the parish.
In those days usually the only other parishioner who would have
the required mathematical education would be the schoolmaster.
Apparently the fact that his salary also was paid from these
funds did not prevent him being the collector. For on May 8,
1808, the Session reported "Paid Mr. Halliday one-half year's
wages for acting as officer ... 7s. 6d. 11 He received this annual
wage of 15s., additional to his salary as schoolmaster, up to
1811. It may have been continued for later years, but the record
is silent about it.
With a larger family and
even with the addition of the officer's wages, both the two-room
apartment above the school-room and the salary for the position
must have been less than adequate. Nor did future prospects appear
too bright, for the Act of 1802 had set a maximum salary of £22.4s.
6d. John Halliday must have wondered what the future would hold
for his fair sons, Scotland's present and future alike clouded
by the existing war conditions.
Then, in February, 1815,
the minister of Hutton Parish and the Post Office at Boreland
received notice of a government-sponsored plan whereby Scots
were encouraged to emigrate to Upper Canada. Each emigrant would
receive a free grant of one hundred acres of land and each son
a like amount on attaining his majority. The family of the Hutton
schoolmaster could become land-owners to a total of five hundred
acres, an impossible achievement for a schoolmaster's family
in the Scotland of 1815. An additional inducement might even
exist for John Halliday. For among the emigration terms was one
promising a salary of £50 sterling to any schoolmaster
whom the emigrant body might select. Set against the prospects
in Scotland, either for himself or his sons, this emigration
plan was attractive indeed. A decision was made.
On May 26, 1815, John Halliday,
his wife and family of seven children left their relatives in
Berryscaur, the schoolmaster's position in Boreland, the Parish
Church of Hutton, and joined the band of Scots in Glasgow awaiting
embarkation for Canada.
Return
to John Halliday Chapter Page
 |
