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In 1783 Hugh
Marwick and his father Magnus took over the joint tenancy of the farm of
Scockness in Rousay. Hugh was
only seventeen years old but in all other respects already a man and ready
to take on the responsibilities of the partnership. Ten
years later he married Betsy Sinclair from a neighbouring farm and in the
course of the next eighteen years she bore him ten children, every one of
them a boy. In her old age
Betsy was asked how many children she had had. Thinking,
no doubt, of all these mischievous boys and never a girl to comfort a
mother's heart, she replied, "Ten deviIs."
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The two eldest devils, Magnus
Marwick and Thomas Marwick, were married and
still living at Scockness when their father died in 1820.
They continued working the farm until
evicted by the laird because of a dispute over kelp making. Thomas
Marwick then took the tenancy of Banks for a few years before moving to Woo
nearby. Tammy o' Woo, as he
was known, and his wife Ann Gibson from Broland had five sons and five
daughters. All but two of them
as well as Tammy himself would eventually emigrate to New Zealand.
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The Free Church of Scotland in co-operation with a company
in New Zealand organised large scale emigration from Scotland to Otago
after New Zealand came under British rule in 1840. The city of Dunedin, named after the
Scottish capital, was the creation of these early Free Kirk settlers. It
is likely that the Woo Marwicks who were staunch members of the Free Kirk
in Sourin took advantage of the sponsorship their church offered.
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The eldest son Hugh
Marwick who was a boatbuilder to trade was the
first to go. He left in 1855
with
his wife Margaret Sinclair from Swandale and their two children, Annie
aged two and Elizabeth who was still just a baby in arms. The
sadness of parting would soon give way to brighter thoughts of their
future in a new land and it must have been a severe blow to this young
family when baby Elizabeth died at sea, a victim of the cramped and harsh
conditions of a sailing ship on a twelve-week voyage.
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Hugh Marwick and Margaret did not stay in New Zealand very long and
soon set sail across the Tasman Sea for Australia. At
their new home in Victoria they had four more children but Annie Marwick was the
only one to marry. Her
granddaughter who lives near Melbourne is one of my Australian
correspondents. Another is a
great granddaughter of William Marwick who emigrated about the same time as his
brother Hugh and like him spent only a short time in New Zealand before
trying his luck in Victoria where he married and settled down to raise a
family of eleven children.
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William's eldest son, William Thomas, moved to Western
Australia in the 1890s
when
the goldfields around Kalgoorlie were luring people from far and wide. After
a few years he bought some land and set to the back-breaking task of
clearing it to make the productive dairy farm it was to become within a
few years. Of William Thomas's
nine children one still survives aged eighty-five. A
recent family tree from Western Australia shows almost 300 descendants of William Thomas in less
than 100 years.
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Three more of the second devil's family were to follow Hugh
and William to New Zealand in the late 1850s,
namely
Isaac, Betsy and Mary. Little
more is known of Isaac except that he got married but there do not appear
to have been any children. Betsy
had married Hugh Yorston in 1842
and
had six children when they left for Dunedin in 1859. They
sailed from the Clyde on June 10 and reached their destination
ninety-three days later after a voyage on which four babies had been born
{one of them to Hugh and Betsy} and eight children under the age of three
had died.
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The Yorstons had been allocated a stretch of
land some miles south of Dunedin but instead of tramping to it along the
roughly gravelled road the family followed an old Maori track over the
hills with the father and the boys carrying all their possessions while
Betsy and the girls took turns at carrying the infant. While
the mother and younger children stayed with friends the father and the
others set to to build a stone and clay house. Some
years later it was replaced by an imposing wooden building giving its
occupants, both past and present, a commanding view of the surrounding
countryside. It still bears
the name Mount Pleasant which the Yorstons gave it. It
took many years of hard labour to clear the native bush to create the
large farm Mount Pleasant eventually became. It
has now been broken up into smaller units but some measure of its original
size can be gained from the eight-horse stable that still stands.
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When Mary Marwick, who had gone out at about the same time as the Yorstons, arrived in
Otago she met up with Richard Craigie whom she had known in Rousay and who
had emigrated with his parents some years earlier. Soon
they were married. Their first
child died in infancy but another, named after his father, arrived the
following year. Tragically
Mary died a few months after the birth.
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Back in Rousay the mother of the Woo family died in 1861.
By
that time five out of the ten children were overseas. Of
those still in Rousay, John and Margaret were married and settled in homes
of their own. Tammy the second
devil was by then sixty-five years of age and at home with him were Thomas
Jr, Isabella and Ann who at sixteen was the youngest of the family. After
a few months it was decided that the Four of them should join the others
in New Zealand. They left
Rousay in the summer of 1862.
For
some years Tammy had been an elder in the Rousay Free Kirk and the Kirk
session minutes of 25 May 1862 record
his resignation and in a glowing tribute speak of the session's "high
appreciation of his Christian character and worth and their great esteem
for him as a personal friend." After
recording their regret at his departure the session expresses the hope
that Mr Marwick and those of his family who accompany him "will
continue to adorn the doctrine of God in that distant colony."
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Tammy's nephew, Hugh Marwick, who was a son of Isaac the
ninth devil, decided to accompany his uncle to New Zealand. Hugh
was twenty-one years old and after a few years down under working as a
carpenter and boatbuilder, he returned to Rousay to marry the girl he had
left behind. With his bride he
set off for New Zealand once more and their first child Betsy Ann was born
there. Before long however the
family returned to Rousay and settled at Guidal where Hugh carried on
business as a shopkeeper, carpenter and boatbuilder, registrar, school
attendance officer and amateur dentist. He
was the father of Dr Hugh Marwick.
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When
the last of the Woo family reached New Zealand they met Richard Craigie,
the widower of Mary who had died a few months earlier. Before
long Isabella and Richard had teamed up and eventually produced a further
ten Craigie children. No doubt
their union was frowned on, as a marriage between a man and a sister of
his dead wife was outside the limits of acceptability at that time. Old
Tammy lived out the rest of his days with Isabella and Richard at their farm of Craigielea.
In a letter dated 28 October 1869, to his son Hugh in Victoria,
Tammy writes of the kindness of Richard and Isabella.
He wants for nothing and Richard is referred to as his best friend.
Thomas Marwick Jr is mentioned in this letter as working as grieve on
Richard's farm.
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James Knarston, who was to become the husband of
Ann Marwick (see photos below),
Tammy's youngest daughter, ran away to sea from Stromness at the age of
fifteen. After several years
service in both the Royal and Merchant navies he opted for a life in New
Zealand. A spell at the gold
diggings followed before he and Ann settled at Taieri Mouth, south of
Dunedin, where James spent the rest of his life as a general merchant.
Unfortunately Ann did not survive the birth of their only daughter
Maryann whose daughter, now in her 80s, is one of my New Zealand
correspondents.
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The Craigies held a family gathering in Dunedin in 1973
to mark the 125th anniversary of the arrival in New Zealand of Richard and
his parents. In 1988 some of
them decided it was time to have another and this was hastily arranged to
coincide with the arrival in Dunedin of my wife and myself.
(The writer is a gg-grandson of the seventh devil Robert Marwick.)
Through my interest in family history I knew about the New Zealand
Craigies and it was a great thrill to walk into a gathering of 200
descendants of Richard and his two Marwick wives.
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New
Zealand is a very young country;
man did not set foot on it till a mere 1,200 years ago and no
European settlement of any significance took place until after 1840.
New Zealanders cannot see far back into their history without
looking beyond their own shores to places such as Scotland from where
their ancestors set out in search of a better life.
They acknowledge the debt they owe to these courageous pioneers who
laid the foundations of the pleasant place New Zealand is today.
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James
Knarston and his wife Ann Marwick
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