The Donns of Ducksie Part 1
Recorded 7 months ago
About this recording
Jim Shankland's maternal great, great grandparents, John and Catherine Donn moved from Guidebest, Latheron to Grant Street (Ducksie), Pulteneytown.
One element of Jim's extensive family history focusses on The Donns of Ducksie. With the assistance of his son James Donn Shankland as narrator, the story of The Donns of Ducksie has been recorded.
Jim's research is supported by extracts from the John O'Groat Journal, recorded by Ian Leith. As well as writing the script, Jim provides an audio introduction to part 1 and conclusion to part 2.
The recording is in two parts. Part 1 tells the compelling tale of John Donn & Catherine Sutherland.
Part 2 focusses on the fascinating story of William Donn’s relationship with Helen Gray and their child John.
Script
Principal Narrator – JDS: James Donn Shankland
John O’Groat extracts - IL: Ian Leith
Introduction and end paragraph - JS: Jim Shankland
CAPITALS– to aid phonetic pronunciation
JS – Introduction
JDS narrates
The Donns of ‘Ducksie’ - The tale of John Donn & Catherine Sutherland
John Donn was born in 1816 at Guidebest GIDEBEST, the name, except for locals, sounds strange and foreign. It’s where a few small farms or crofts lie up a short strath which reaches inland from the coastal village of Latheron. Guidebest is the place where John’s father Donald Donn had come about fifteen years before. Donald had left the Gaelic speaking north-west and he came to be known in English as Donald ‘Sutherland Guidebest’ Donn marrying Margaret Munro, a local lass, from Rangag. Whether by initiative or force, during the time of the ‘Highland Clearances’ around the year 1800 Donald had walked the hundred miles or so across straths and moors to start life anew at Guidebest.
To briefly explain Donald’s backstory, he’d been born around the year 1777 when his father John had enlisted in the 73rdHighland Regiment, dying in a battle in India fighting for the British East India Company. Going back one more generation the soldier John’s father was the famous Gaelic Bard Rob Donn Mackay who was born in 1714 at Altnacaillich in Strathmore, below the mountain Ben Hope.
In the space of one hundred years four generations this is how John came to be born at Guidebest. Then just a toddler, John with elder brother George he made the short move with his parents Donald and Margaret to Golsary, a farm now fallen into ruin which sits in the midst of Rumster Forest. There the family settled alongside his father’s first cousin and family.
Now here’s a quirky thing. John’s father Donald’s first cousin was also called Donald. Living side by side at Golsary children were being born to both families. So, to differentiate these two Donalds, one from the other, the minister at nearby Latheron Parish Church recorded John’s fathers name as Donald Sutherland Guidebest Donn – so called because he’d previously lived on the local laird Sutherland’s land at Guidebest. This must have raised a laugh amongst some women at the church, all these bairns from Golsary and who belonged to which Donald?
Anyway, let’s move onto the tale of our main characters John Donn and Catherine Sutherland, both born in 1816.
I’ve thought about John Donn’s childhood at Golsary. Genealogical research can be done remotely, at a desk, scrolling through sources. Social and historical information is available online and from book shops and libraries. In conversation with folk having relevant knowledge, in particular the likes of local heritage museums and archivists are invaluable. All to the good, but nothing compares to sitting where your ancestor sat, even so what you see is not what they saw.
I sat on the wall beside the ruined doorway of the largest cottage at Golsary, which was of modest scale, a single compartment which might once have been subdivided into two rooms. The slab outer walls still stand to head height but all traces of timbers including the roof are gone. That September afternoon, the day was still and warm, the air crystal clear and all the smallest prominences and folds in the land visible to the eye. Looking out towards the sea the coast is hidden below cliffs.
In 1826 John was ten years old. In those days he was still a young lad, but of an age when John looked about his world as a place of adventure. I could see young John gazing across fields of hay and oats, the husks heavy and ripe, ready for harvest. The arable land appeared woven into the surrounding moorland of purple blossoming heather and bog.
Around seven years old John had been sent in summer months to keep watch over the cattle and other beasts grazing on the hillsides rising inland above Golsary. With other youngsters he’d sleepover in the drystane shielings and tell each other tales of the Faerie hosts, of ghosts and the ‘Little People’ who had built the nearby brochs and raised mysterious circles of giant stones. At the time the community was bilingual and the children spoke Gaelic and Caithness CAITNIS the local dialect. Because many farmers around Latheron spoke Gaelic local place names still commonly feature this language, many others with Norse origin. John had been taught the names of these prominences and places as coordinates by which he’d kept his father Donald updated where their cows and goats were grazing.
For sure, John at his doorstep would not have been enjoying a quiet moment what with two families and another ten people around the steading. What is certain is that the John whilst never lonely was in material things ‘dirt poor.’ At age ten, John had just begun to realise not everyone lived as they did, farming and fishing. Just out of sight, the Sutherland landowners lived at Forse House and their ‘home farm’ called Nottingham also lay between Golsary and the coast. John was aware the landowner lived a wealthy lifestyle and though the physical manifestations were there to see, nevertheless difficult for him to imagine how different daily lives were for these Sutherlands.
Nearby, the fishing station at Achastle-shore had been built in 1810 and so was well known to young John. Firstly, he’d ventured down to the coast to line fish off the rocks. More recently on ‘fair weather’ days he’d started ‘learning the ropes’ as a novice crewman aboard fishing smacks going out in season for the herring shoals.
From the modern main road, at Achastle a single lane dead end leads to the overgrown remains of a cart track which reaches to overlook a cliff girt cove. The way continues, formed back in the day, by blasting and excavating rock and earth, a passage suitable for horse and cart then winds its way down into the cove revealing a ruined complex constructed by local flagstone.
The main building faces the seafront with a quadrangle behind, all of which was substantially two storeys in height. Though all construction timbers have long since fallen to dust, there was a ‘Port Captains’ office on the upper floor with windows looking seaward. Patrick MacDonald who developed the fishing station must have sat there, supervising and planning operations. In this former epicentre of the fishing station a sturdy masonry lintel remains, set over the inglenook of a fireplace. Though extinguished many years ago the surface is still blackened by the heat and smoke of countless fires.
Other single storey structures sit cheek by jowl, some would have housed coopers, carpenters repairing barrels and boats - others stitching sails and fishing nets, making ropes. Provisioning food stores, some led horses, hauling carts transporting a whole variety of goods. Seasonal workers found temporary accommodation around Latheron village, some stayed around Achastle in stone-built bothies or temporary dwellings, probably fashioned under sail canvas.
Because the level area of land beneath the cliff and the sea cove is narrow with no room to build a harbour a breakwater was constructed across the front of the main building facing seaward. A section of the concrete foundations, with a cobbled and flagstone platform is still evident. On the rocky shore the rusting frame and cog of an iron winching gear for the men who attached cables onto the prows of fishing boats and wound them up and onto to the breakwater to safety.
Fishermen, coming to shore under oar, in small and vulnerable wooden boats, in adverse conditions, a gale, the tides and roiling waves, avoiding the sheer and jagged cliffs, the reefs and skerries was a high-risk undertaking. The fishermen’s sense of relief, coming to stand on solid land would have been visible.
When John Donn was just ten, unknown to him at that time, this place would have been vital in shaping his formative years and future. These experiences on shore and at sea contrasted with the seasonal rhythm and flow of farm life both environments were embedded in his being from early years.
Achastle-shore must have seemed a great confusing chaos, until the methods and processes, the ‘coming and goings’ of seemingly innumerable people wearing different clothes, many speaking unintelligible languages from foreign places, busy at activities he barely understood eventually became familiar. Sitting on the doorstep of Golsary the only certainty is that John could only in years yet to come, discern life’s paths which led to and from that fishing station.
All my senses tell me that it was here, at Achastle-shore, just a few years later when John Donn and Catherine Sutherland met. John on one of the boats put out to sea and Catherine ashore, waiting for the herring catch, wearing a shawl, skirt and apron, bandages wound around her hands as protection from the razor-sharp edge of the gutting knife. All the while the talk amongst the womenfolk standing or at rest on the shore and Catherine, at times distracted, her eye spotting the movement of boats in the middle distance of the steel blue grey ocean. The women would have chatted, sometimes singing and whilst at work ‘kept an eye’ on the seas, its moods, sensing the wind direction, its strength and weather changes, keeping watch over the men and boys adrift on that vastness.
John and Catherine Sutherland both born in 1816 married on 21st July 1831. At the time John and Catherine were both just fifteen years of age. Catherine lived a few miles along the coast from Golsary at East Clyth, a scattering of crofts lying below the Moss of Whilks and above the shoreline cliffs.
Catherine having taken up as a ‘herring girl’ she first met John, then coming together as ‘sweethearts’ she fell pregnant. Three months after John and Catherine’s wedding the birth of their first child, Christina is registered on 25th October 1831. At the time of Christina’s birth Catherine, just fifteen, most likely her family home being in East Clyth she would have welcomed the support of her mother. So, John left Golsary setting up home at East Clyth. John would have continued as a fisherman and together with Catherine grew vegetables.
Nine years later they upped sticks and moved from East Clyth to Pulteneytown PULTNEYTOWN. John and Catherine could foresee better prospects for their family based at this major fishing port. With their first five children and then Margaret born shortly after arrival at Wick in 1843, the challenges in these early days would have been formidable.
As the herring industry grew, to enable the shipment of bigger catches, larger boats were constructed. An industrial scale port grew at Wick where the fish could be more efficiently and safely landed in huge quantities, processed and transhipped. Around this line of supply to the market gathered logistical support in boatyards for building and repair, sail and net making, cooperage yards and a multiplicity of other activities supporting the populace and economic activities.
‘The summer of 1846 was a bumper year for the herring fishery; the season has been one of unbroken and uninterrupted good weather. In the words of Wick Heritage Museum ’The biggest ever catch in a single day happened on 23rd August when 976 boats landed 24,400 crans of herring. A cran contains 850 to 1,000 herring so that 3000 gutters and packers processed over 24 million herring in a single day. Boats were growing in size; nets were now being made of cotton as opposed to the heavier hemp and so the vessels could carry many more nets.’
But like a bolt out of the blue arrived an unforeseen coincidence of several misfortunes.
Here’s the twist, the very abundance of salted herring led to an oversupply to the market and resulted in a price crash. ‘The fishing industry’s government appointed monitors explained this resulted in a great stoppage in the catching and sale of fish. Then along came severe Winter weather, a harbour which was failing, and this exposed fishermen to run the gauntlet of a deadly sea.
Fishermen had conventionally depended in winter upon upfront payments made by curers who in order to bind crews to them, advanced a proportion of the cash which those crews were anticipated to earn the following year’s fishing season. Such advances were suspended. For the same reason, nobody was willing to make investments of the sort which usually kept a whole range of fishery-related businesses afloat. Cooperages, it followed were obliged to lay off coopers. Other sectors, most notably boat building were still more severely affected. Something like 100 fishing boats had been built during the later months of 1845 and the early months of 1846 - the figure in the corresponding period later 1846 and 1847 was virtually zero.
This economic shock to the herring industry coincided in 1846 with the full horrors of the potato ‘blight’ which in Caithness CAITHNS resulted in at least 80% of the autumn potato crop being destroyed by the blight. With widespread starvation in Ireland, the Western Isles and north of Scotland facing these depredations, Wick Town Council predicted serious local consequences – ‘the labouring classes, cottagers and tradesmen with their families, depend for their subsistence on potatoes.’
Though the fertile lands of Caithness CAITNIS produced grain the price went up as demand across Britain and Ireland escalated. With incomes insufficient to by the pricey grain and few potatoes available government fishery officers reported in January 1846 that there was considerable suffering in Caithness CAITNIS - ‘Some families were surviving on turnips and cabbage.
Landowners and farmers and merchants looking to increase their incomes by selling to larger southern markets had arranged to export grain on the cargo ship ‘William Bowers’ which in February 1846 was moored at the Pulteneytown PULTNEYTOWN harbour. Such was the fear of starvation amongst the ‘ordinary’ community they blockaded the port and prevented grain being loaded onto the ship. Following several incidents between the opposing ‘sides’ the government brought in the army. This culminated in the troops facing a ‘large and determined mob’ and with bayonets fixed and muskets held in the ‘charge’ position, a first attempt to disperse the protest being unsuccessful the troops resorted to firing their muskets. Several protestors incurred minor injuries from bayonet and shot.
Two ringleaders were taken into custody; one convicted to transportation to Australia. Thankfully when social unrest had ended this harsh sentence commuted. Locally there appears to have been an accommodation or compromise whereby Caithness farmers sold a proportion of their grain stores at ‘local prices.’ The blockade ended, widespread starvation was held at bay and once again prospects for life became brighter.
When the food shortages and civil unrest occurred in 1846, John and wife Catherine both aged about thirty. By then with seven children, Christina, fifteen; John, thirteen; Elizabeth, nine; George around eight and William six, Margaret, five and Helen about one year old, they had faced these hardships finding ways forward to establish their family in Wick. Having departed the croft at East Clyth only some five years previous with a young and expanding family, they had already encountered outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox, cholera and typhoid.
In August 1848 Advocate Archibald Young wrote ‘a furious storm burst upon the east coast… At Wick twenty-five men perished in taking the harbour, besides twelve others whose boats were swamped at sea...Many perished at the harbour’s mouth, with home within sight and home voices within hearing. The whole damage was done in three or four hours…Since 1845, more than 150 fishermen have perished and about 400 fishing boats have been wrecked in the neighbourhood.’
In this small community it’s certain that fellow fishermen and perhaps relatives of the Donns were lost at sea. Quite possibly father John was one of the fortunate ones to make the safety of the harbour whilst watching other craft being overturned and with despair seeing others drown.
Where John and Catherine first brought their children to live is not recorded, but it seems likely they rented or sub-let a room or two, the dwellings constructed in terraces two storeys in height with pitched slated roofs. When the Donns first arrived in 1841 both were aged 25 and it would have taken time to ‘find their feet’ to get established at the ‘fishing,’ to secure an adequate home and an allotment to grow vegetables.
Arriving at Pulteneytown PULTNEYTOWN Heritage Museum in September 2024 one of the volunteer guides in making me welcome enquired if I had any local connections. I mentioned my forebears had lived for many years during the 1800’s in nearby Grant Street. With a broad smile Carole Sinclair explained that Grant Street was known locally as ‘Ducksie.’ Apparently, the name stuck because at one time this was where there had existed a duck pond.
By coincidence Carole had been brought up in ‘Ducksie’ her address sitting amongst the house numbers where my Donn family had lived long ago. I guess Carole and I could therefore be described as neighbours separated by time and distance. If the Donns didn’t keep ducks almost certainly they would have eaten duck eggs. The first record of the Donns of Ducksie is in the 1851 and from that time on, through all their years in town they chose to live in almost adjacent dwellings along a short terrace.
In 1851 the family lived at 31 Grant Street and then in the 1861 at 23 Grant Street. By 1861 John and Catherine were 45 and children at home Margaret 19, Helen 17, Catherine 14, my great grandfather Robert then 12 and James age 8. Omitted therefore living elsewhere are Christina 29, John 28, Elizabeth 25, George 24 and William 22. So, by 1861 John and Catherine had a family of ten children.
The Donn family in succeeding periods rented three houses numbered closely to each other along ‘Ducksie.’ The landlords all had local connections, fishing and merchant people. The houses are on a two-storey terrace along the north side of the street immediately east of the junction with MacArthur Street.
Pulteneytown PULTNEYTOWN from its foundation, functioned as a close knit ‘fisher community’ proudly separate and practically ‘independent’ of the original Wick ‘county town.’ All supplies and provisions, churches and schools lay within a hands reach. Just down the brae found the harbour, the boats and all the fishing infrastructure and the providers of all kinds of supplies.
By 1863 the family was growing up and one of John and Catherine’s sons William, then 24 was in a relationship with a local Dressmaker and Milliner named Helen Gray who was of a similar age.
Helen and William’s relationship was not a momentary romance. I hold a paper copy of a Birth Certificate issued by the Registrar General of Scotland. On 28 January 1864 Helen gave birth to a son named John, the surname registered Gray after his mother Helen Gray. In the certificate the child John is noted as illegitimate and the Father’s name and occupation on the form is left blank.
The naming of the baby points directly to the Donn family. John is a direct reference to the grandfather John, ‘head’ of the Donn household.
The birth of a child ‘out of wedlock’ was not uncommon and popularly known as ‘jumping the broom,’ couple’s planning to marry at some future point. After all, John and Catherine’s first child, Christina had been born in 1831 just three months after they wed at age fifteen.
However, marriage between Helen and William never came to pass. Both John and Catharine Donn knew life is rarely plain sailing and by then ‘long enough in the tooth’ to foresee in the consequences that for baby John choppy waters could lie ahead.
Meantime life moved ahead for the baby’s grandfather John, the fisherman and ‘patriarch’ of the family.
Caithness CAITNIS Archive at Nucleus helped me research an early Customs & Excise record, the Appropriation Book for the official numbers of British Registered Ships. I found the entry for the ship ‘Express,’ classified as Sailing not steam, date of appropriation or purchase on 18th July 1866.
Having previously found sensational newspaper correspondence I was able to match John Donn to the boats name, to the registration of ‘The Express,’ to sailings and passages reported in local newspapers and to several extraordinary events. As Master of ‘The Express,’ the seas at times calm could also be cruel.
Narrator IL first section begins
START CAITHNESS NARRATION 1
On 2nd October 1866 an incendiary letter written by Hugh Milligan of Scrabster Custom House was published in the John O’Groat Journal, the sensational and defamatory content of the letter intended for the widest readership, for maximum publicity across the Caithness, the Highlands and Islands.
Letter written at Custom House, Scrabster
2nd October,1866
A CASE OF BARBARITY
TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOHN O’GROAT JOURNAL
Sir, - The small vessel ‘Express’ of Wick, John Donn, master, arrived in our Roads yesterday, when immediately thereafter it was observed by myself and numerous others from the shore, that the master was abusing the boy – by the way his own son – in the most scandalous manner. Several boats put off from the ships in the Roads, in order to remonstrate with all the vehemence in their power against the brutal inhumanity of this more than unnatural parent – if he deserves that name. It is to be hoped the authorities (if we have such a thing as authority at all) will not allow such flagrant barbarity to pass unnoticed, as the execrations of the whole public are most intense against this unnatural (no idiot) father. – I am, sir, your most obedient servant,
Hugh Milligan
JOHN DONN’s REPLY
Letter written in Pulteneytown, 19th October,1866
TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOHN O’GROAT JOURNAL
Sir, - I perceive that ‘Hugh Milligan, Custom House, Scrabster, ‘has been guilty of a very gross breach of the commandment which forbids him to bear false witness against his neighbour. I refer to the alleged ‘case of barbarity,’ which he brought under the notice of your readers in a recent number of the Journal. In his letter, which did not happen to come under my observation until to-day, he says – ‘The small vessel Express of Wick, John Donn, master, arrived in our roads yesterday, when immediately thereafter it was observed by myself and numerous others from the shore that the master was abusing the boy – by the way his own son – in the most scandalous manner;’ and ‘several boats put off from ships in the roads in order to remonstrate with all the vehemence in their power against the brutal inhumanity of this more than unnatural parent – if he deserves that name.’ Here we have strong language, but precious little truth. The boy indeed, I frankly admit, was crying out as if he was being ill-used – nay latterly, as though his very life was in immediate danger, yet there is not a Milligan in existence that can say with truth, that ever I abused man or boy. I could not, in fact, abuse a dog, far less a boy, nor suffer any one to do so; and had Hugh Milligan been abroad with me at the time he refers to, he would, I believe, have had a very different tale to tell. As we were leaving Castlehill, shortly before we came up in Scrabster, I had occasion to reprove the boy for idling away his time, smoking a tobacco pipe, when he had his work to attend to. Being rather spoilt by having been too much indulged, he took this reproof very much amiss, turned sulky, in fact, and went to bed. After we had been about an hour at Scrabster, he came on deck with a new suit of fine clothes under his arm, which I had recently got for him to attend church, and proceeded to take the boat to go ashore. I remonstrated with him on the folly of his conduct and requested him to put the clothes back where they were in my chest, but all to no purpose. When nothing else would do I took the clothes from him by force, and while I was doing so, he did cry as if he were being ill-used. My mate and myself now took the boat aboard, and expected the boy would give us no further trouble, but shortly thereafter he came on deck again with the clothes this time rolled about his body, inside those he was wearing, and made a most determined endeavour to put the boat overboard himself, and in all this he would latterly have succeeded if left alone. I had during this time repeatedly begged him to give over his folly, and to put the clothes in my chest, as he continued to pay no heed to me, I laid him down on his back and took the clothes from around him, When I was so engaged he struggled hard, and cried most vehemently, but I was careful not to hurt him in any way. This is the fact. I now leave it to your readers to judge as to whether I have been justly accused of ‘brutal inhumanity. &c.,’ and unless Hugh Milligan withdraws his defamatory statement, he may soon have occasion to be less doubtful as to the fact that we have ‘authorities’ – I am, &c.,
John Donn
HUGH MILLIGAN RESPONDS
Written at Custom House, Scrabster,
November 5, 1866
THE ALLEGED CASE OF BARBARITY AT SCRABSTER
TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOHN O’GROAT JOURNAL
Sir, - John Donn, the master of the smack Express of Wick, in this case of barbarity to his son, it seems cannot sleep – better it should. I refuse peremptorily and absolutely to withdraw one single syllable in my former letter to your Journal regarding the question at issue. I have a score of witnesses to prove from ocular demonstration as to the fact. My former letter, therefore, is strictly and literally true. Our harbour master went off with a crew in order to remonstrate with the Balaam. Yet I would naturally and charitably suppose that John Donn did so in a state of infatuation. Wick folk say, so like the man – old peregrine – I am, &c.,
HUGH MILLIGAN
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Harry Gray
