Talk:Garth

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Slight picture problem here.
I have this JD Rattar which is impossible, unless he was taking photos when he was 4 years old.
The same pic is in the museum archive at this link:

http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=wordsearch&s=item&key=Wczo1OiJnYXJ0aCI7&pg=17

They say GWW.
Can anyone confirm that Rattar inherited GWW's collection, which would explain this.?????
And can anyone confirm clearance date as 1874??
Also, which category/ies???
Robbie 16:50, 21 July 2007 (MDT)

When G W Wilson's company went into liquidation in 1908, the majority of his still useable glass plate negatives were purchased by a former employee, Fred Hardie, and used to make post cards until 1920. The Hardie family later donated the collection to the Aberdeen University which also bought a second stock kept by another Aberdeen merchant family much later. Rattar is not traceable as owner Wilson's stock. Due to the quality of the print I wood guess it is in the Aberdeen collection presented in the net as well. But they do have some 1000s online, so it is a hard job to check out what they might say there ... ;-) Islandhopper 17:10, 21 July 2007 (MDT)

The date of 1874 is given both in J.W. Irvine's "Dunrossness Story" book, and also on the Museum site, on this copy of the same picture:

http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=wordsearch&s=item&key=Wczo1OiJHYXJ0aCI7&pg=1

Which also gives a not very good explanation of the picture originating with a J.D. Rattar image printed on the reverse side of a GWW print which was bought in Stromness is 1873....which makes the whole thing about as clear as gutter. ;-)

My great-grandmother and her family were one of the families evicted, and the family story has always been that she was grown up, but still unmarried at the time. She was born 1855 and married 1879, so that also puts it in the 1870's sometime, but back then dates and times were meaningless, she could neither read nor write, so it was impossible to date it any closer than some event in her life. That said, it is also a handed down family story, and relies, as they all do on how well she told it to her family, and how accurately they repeated it to me, etc. She was gone 20 years before I came along, so I had to hear it second hand, and the one who heard it most has been gone nearly 20 now too so there's no way of cross checking it any better.

The appendix of the Napier commissions report (available in the net) has a detailed report of a Shetland landlord of that area opposing and refusing claims made by the crofters ... Islandhopper 17:34, 21 July 2007 (MDT)

Thanks IH, I have a link to that.
Any information on where the evicted families were re-settled????
I seem to remember hearing that some went to Bigton, and that the Fleck Bairnsons were also descendants from Garth. Any info???
Robbie 17:38, 21 July 2007 (MDT)

^^^ Yun wis me 3 replies up, I keep forgetting to sign these posts.....

My ancestors moved to the Brakes, (North Voe), and the descendants of one subsequent branch of the family are there yet. Not entirely sure where any of the rest from Garth ended up, but have heard among some of the old stories about some emigrating. Some relatives to the Eastshore Eunsons who'd been in Scord ended up in the US, California maybe, I believe there was an article in the Times or Shetland Life a few years back when one of the present generation came over to see where his ancestors had come from. With a total of 27 families suddenly wanting a croft in the Ness, I can't see the area being able to cope, so it would make sense some at least left Shetland for good.

I have heard that a family of Leslies who were evicted from Corston, who had Toab connections moved back there, and it was decendants of their's who bought Quendale when the then Grierson owner sold it not all that many years later. I don't have any real confirmation of that though, and with Leslie being a very common name, a mistake could easily have been made.

Regardless, even if the Leslie's who owned Quendale weren't descendants of evictees, I find it somewhat amusing, in a very ironic way, that both owners of Quendale since the late 1950's definitely have been direct descendants of evictees. Eighty years at most, and the wheel has turned full circle, fate plays some strange hands sometimes.

Ghostrider 18:40, 21 July 2007 (MDT)

Eric Richards' The Highland Clearances has a short note stating that the most dramatic clearances in Shetland were the evictions at Queensdale in 1874 where, according to a contemporary historian, "the houses were stripped and in some cases burned as soon as the tenants were out." Twenty-seven families were evicted, and many went immediately to Australia and New Zealand but gives no falily details about who went where ... Islandhopper 01:07, 22 July 2007 (MDT)

Garths Ness

While in this area. Does anybody know anything about the disused military buildings at the point of Garths Ness.
What, when, etc.. All I know is that it was still in use, to some degree at least, during the 60's, because the firm my father worked for, Pearson and Tawse, had the maintenance contract for the buildings.
Robbie 02:11, 22 July 2007 (MDT)

As a bairn I was always told it was "some sort of radio station", run by the RAF, and was part of the whole Mossy Hill, Maybury set up. But back then, in the cold war days, folk didn't seem to want to talk much about such things, maybe they didn't really know much about them anyway.

It had a tall(ish) mast, which would support a radio theory, the mast was lit with a red marker light on top at nights, and I remember seeing that light at nights in to the early 70's. I was there in the summer of either '74 or '75, and it was an entirely abandoned site then though.

The Military presence in the Ness went through a number of changes at the end of the 60's/early 70's, Mossy Hill changed hands from being run by the RAF to being run by Royal Signals, the houses for Military accomodation were bulit at Maybury, and the Garthness Station seemed to come to the end of it's life as part of that overall reorganisation.

Ghostrider 06:56, 22 July 2007 (MDT)