This week’s prompt for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is ‘Invite to Dinner’. There are so many ancestors I would love the chance to meet and ask questions, especially those with a brick wall.
The person I chose this week is my husband’s great-great grandfather, William Bell. He is one of those brick walls. The information I have been able to find, regarding William’s life, is derived from the Census of Canada records, Marriage Banns from the respective parishes in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, Death Registers from the Archives of Manitoba and the book Rural Reflections, Vol. II 1879-1982, published by the Isabella History Committee.
William Bell was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. The records I have found place his year of birth between 1823 and 1828. The first record of his life was his marriage banns to Annie Grierson. The banns of marriage are the public announcement of an intended marriage between two specified persons. The banns are read in the parish church of the individuals and allow others to raise concerns as to why the marriage should not occur. The banns must be read aloud on three Sundays before the wedding ceremony. The first banns I was able to find were posted in William’s parish on 11 May 1851 and 18 May 1851 in Dryfesdale, Dumfriesshire and it states “William Bell in this parish and Ann Grierson in the parish of Applegarth”. The second record I found was the posting in Annie’s parish, Applegarth, Dumfriesshire, on 18 May 1851. It states “William Bell in Dryfesdale, and Ann Grierson in this Parish, Proclaimed two days – married elsewhere”.
The next record I found were the entries in the 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia for a Wm. Bell (even though the census states 1851, the enumeration did not occur until 1852). William is recorded as living in a one-storey framed house in the Township of Pickering, Ontario. It states he is a 25-year-old married labourer, born in Scotland and whose religion is Scotland Presbyterian. The others in the house are his 19-year-old wife, Ann Bell, and his daughter, Jennet Bell, who was born 20 January 1852 in the Pickering area of Ontario. This means they left Scotland and arrived in Canada between 18 May 1851 and 20 January 1852.
William continued to live and farm in the Pickering area until 1881/82. This is supported by the 1861, 1871 and 1881 Census of Canada. These censuses report his date of birth as either 1826 or 1828. William and Annie had eight children: Jennet, William Grierson, Margaret Grierson, Margaret Ann (Annie), Francis, Jean Agnes, Robert and John. Annie passed away 15 February 1874 as a result of complications following the birth of her son, John. She is buried at the St. John’s Presbyterian Cemetery in Pickering and on the headstone, it is written “In memory of Ann Grierson the beloved wife of William Bell died Feb’y 15, 1874 aged 42 years and 10 mo’s A native of Dumfriesshire Scotland”.
In the spring of 1881, William and his son-in-law, Walter Palmer, (Jennet’s husband) came to Manitoba to find a homestead and register it. They arrived by train in Brandon and then took off by foot looking for a homestead; about 70 miles later they found it. William chose the northwest quarter of 24-14-26 and took a pre-emption for the northeast quarter of the same section. This land was located in what became known as Blaris, Manitoba. Walter registered the southwest quarter of this section. William and Walter spent the summer clearing and establishing their homestead. They built a small frame house and the walls filled with grout (a lime and sand mixture). This created an eight-inch thick wall for protection against the heat and cold of the outside. They also started a garden and when fall came they harvested the potatoes and stored them in the small cellar beneath the house. After closing the house up for the winter, William and Walter headed back East.
In the spring of 1882, they returned to Manitoba to live. The party consisted of William, and five of his eight children: John, Robert, Annie, Margaret and Jennet, and also Jennet’s husband, Walter Palmer, and their two children, William Samuel and Ann Grierson. William Bell’s two older sons, William and Frances, chose to go to the United States and his daughter, Annie remained in Ontario for a few more years before moving to Manitoba with her husband and children.
According to William Samuel Palmer’s entry in the book Rural Reflections, Vol. II 1879-1982 he recalls that his mother, Jennet, “did not like the idea of leaving Ontario, but “Go West” was the slogan of that time and quite a number of people migrated west”. William’s entry continues on to state they took the Soo Line from Minneapolis to Winnipeg and then on to Brandon. In Brandon they were met by William and Walter who loaded up their belongings and headed to the homestead. They could not make this trek in one day and, according to William, they stayed at the farm of Mr. John Crockart for a while, located about eight miles north of Brandon. The travelling party consisted of eight people and they joined the three Crockarts and all 11 managed to live in a 16’ x 20’ log house.
They left the Crockart’s and continued their trek to the homestead with a wagon and a team of mules that were owned by another farmer. There were no roads or bridges and the three rivers, Little Saskatchewan River, Oak River and Arrow River, had to be crossed with caution because the waters were high from the spring thaw. It took three days to reach their homestead; each night they relied on the hospitality of farmers along the way. William notes the farm they stayed at the first night was located just west of Rapid City. It was owned by the Shanks and this family lived in what was called a ‘dugout’; a structure created by the earth and sod. One was required to walk down into the ground for four or five steps and the walls and roof were made from cut sod. “The inside of the ceiling was covered with cotton, to keep dust and dirt off the bed and table, etc.” William can remember his mother crying in bed that night, saying “To think we have come to this”.
They finally arrived at their homestead and the whole family lived in the house that was erected the summer before. The family quickly started the various chores required to finish the house, dig a well, build a stable, plant the garden, break the land, plant the crops and take care of the farm animals.
William Bell passed away 13 December 1887 and is buried in the Arrow River Cemetery. William’s headstone states he was 64 years old.
Various family members have pondered the reason for the move from Ontario to Manitoba. Some of us feel that William had a need to establish a farm and enough land for his sons to inherit. When William and Annie Bell arrived in Ontario most of the land in southern Ontario was owned and it was hard to find a farm for sale. I have checked with the appropriate property title offices in the Pickering area and cannot find a record of William Bell ever owning property there. According to the records I have found, they lived in Green River and Uxbridge; communities in Pickering. I surmise that he must have rented these farms.
I may have hit a brick wall with William Bell, but I do know he came from Dumfriesshire, Scotland and the history of the Bells from this area is recorded in many historical documents, books and websites, such as, Clan Bell International; Clan Bell North America; Wikipedia; The Lowland Clearances; Scotland’s Silent Revolution: 1760-1830, Peter Aitchison & Andrew Cassell; Memorial of the Clan of the Bells, 1864, C.D. Bell; The Bell Family in Dumfriesshire, 1932, James Steuart;
The Bell clan in Scotland is noted to have lived in Dumfriesshire which is part of the border area between Scotland and England. The clan was also known as the Bells of The Border.
The true origins of the name are unknown. There are various theories such as the name came from the old French town of Belle, from a Frenchman named Gilbert La Fitz Bel, from another Frenchman named William Le Bell, from the shortening of Isabel, from the sign of a bell on an Inn, from the priests of the Druid agricultural deity Baal and from the moors of Denmark to the dales of Norway.
The first records of the Bell name (variations are Bel, Bellis, Belle, Beall, Beal, Beale and Bale) in Dumfriesshire indicate they settled in the Middlebie Parish around the 11th century. In 1296, Bells are noted as landholders in these lands and, during the next four centuries, acquired what was almost a monopoly of a part of Annandale centered on Blackethouse in Middlebie parish. ‘As numerous as the Bells of Middlebie’ was a phrase known throughout Dumfriesshire. The Bells, an old West Marche Clan, were one of the eight great riding families of the Scottish Border since the early 1100s and were great friends and supporters of the Great House of Douglas, after Archibald Earl of Douglas granted lands to William Bell at Kirkconnel in Annandale in 1424. William built a fortified tower there which featured the Bell clan crest, still in use today. In 1426, William Bell’s lands of Kirkconnel were confirmed by James I under a charter recorded in the register of the great seal. The Bell Clan used to number their horses in the hundreds and their cattle and sheep in the thousands.
The Bell Clan allied with the best border families through blood and friendship. Their land holdings were extensive, and to survive, they engaged in the ‘reiving’ (to go on a plundering raid) of the period and participated in many battles against the English. The Bells of Middlebie were quite well known, especially for their fighting skills. Their lands were situated in what became the center of the struggles between Scotland and England. For centuries these border families fought, feuded, raided, and ravaged across, and parallel to, The Border. The Bells and Grahams, Armstrongs and Johnstones, Kerrs and Scotts formed ever-shifting alliances or declared implacable feuds with each other along and across The Border. The only constant was their loyalty to family being above all else.
Life on The Border was rough and dangerous; homes were burned, crops destroyed, livestock stolen or slaughtered, household possessions seized, and many of the local people were “put to the sword.” When politics were not the force behind an invasion, the Reivers were raiding for revenge or simply for loot. These constant wars and violent raids usually followed a scorched-earth policy resulting in The Border people sustaining their families by ‘acquiring’ movable goods, in addition to fending off those who wished to reciprocate and their reputation as ‘raiders, thieves and broken men’, was occasioned by circumstances which gained them a lasting place in Border legend. To minimize their loss, Border families lived in crude hovels constructed of a few stones, poles, and turf or thatched roofs, leaving little concern if destroyed as they could reconstruct their destroyed home in a matter of a day or so. Planting crops and storing grain were not usually done by The Border people because they could be easily stolen or burned. Instead, The Border people concentrated on keeping “goods on the hoof”, resulting in the target of most raids to be cattle, horses, sheep, and other livestock. Counter raids offered some hope of replacing stolen livestock, which may have been stolen previously from the victim of that day.
During all of this feuding, plundering and fighting the local law was often hopelessly outnumbered on both sides of The Border. Expeditions to bring a semblance of order were occasionally dispatched from Edinburgh or London often resulting in the marginally effective method of hanging a number of the most notorious Border Reivers. The Bells, along with other Border families, became increasingly turbulent throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Bells were one of the thirteen clans considered “the Devil’s Dozen” for their reiving activities. The Crown’s determination to pacify the Borders led in 1517 to Clan Bell receiving royal letters of warning to keep the peace. The Bells are, also, included in the 1587 list of unruly clans in the West Marches. The Act of 1587 was passed ‘for the quieting and keeping in obedience of the disordered subjects, inhabitants of the borders, highlands and isles.
According to Wikipedia, the Bells are noted to have been part of the 1585 siege of Stirling Castle by Scots factions which resulted in the defeat of James VI, King of Scotland. The Carruthers clan were present at the November 2, 1585 Siege of Stirling. George Carruthers, 2nd Baron Homains and 6th Laird, was in command along with John Maxwell, Provost of Dumfries, of 3 companies of infantry and 2 troops of cavalry. This force was comprised of Carruthers, Bells and Irvines. It was normally the practice of the Bells of Middlebie to rally under the standard of Carruthers of Mouswald. Overall command that day was under Lord Maxwell. The Muster Roll from this siege gives a list of forty Dumfriesshire Bells, including the chief, William Bell known as Redcloak, of Blackethouse.
The frequent pillaging of both sides of the Border region continued until the Union of the Crowns in 1603. It was at this time that James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne as James I after Elizabeth I of England died. King James set out immediately to tame the Border region. His methods were cruel and he had the power on both sides of The Border to relentlessly bring about order. It took seven years of ruthless enforcement of harsh decrees before the Borders started to be a peaceable, stable place to live. By 1620 reiving virtually disappeared.
Border Reivers raided where they had to in order to survive. They were shaped by the conditions of their lives, that were largely beyond their control. Border people have been described as taciturn, harsh of voice, hard-headed, tough, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, and vengeful. These characteristics were certainly the result of enduring for centuries the conquering armies and outlaw raiders from the south and the scruples of a man would not be challenged if it meant he had to raid across The Border to feed his family.
In 1606, the attention of the King and the government was turned to the launch of the Plantation of Ulster, an organised colonisation to impose a Protestant influence in the province of Ulster located in Northern Ireland. This caused many of the families from The Border to move or be moved to Ireland where the name Bell is among the twenty most numerous in that province. The Lowland Clearances, between 1760 and 1830, further dispersed The Border Reivers.
According to Wikipedia, the Lowland Clearances were one of the results of the Scottish Agricultural Revolution, which changed the traditional system of agriculture which had existed in Lowland Scotland in the seventeenth century. Thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from the southern counties (Lowlands) of Scotland migrated from farms and small holdings they had occupied to the new industrial centres of Glasgow, Edinburgh and northern England, or abroad to the Americas or Australia. Those that remained on the land had to adapt to the Scottish Agricultural Revolution.
As farmland became more commercialised in Scotland during the 18th century, land was often rented through auctions. This led to an inflation of rents that priced many tenants out of the market. Furthermore, changes in agricultural practice meant the replacement of part-time labourer or subtenants (known as cottars, cottagers, or bondsmen) with full-time agricultural labourers who lived either on the main farm or in rented accommodation in growing or newly founded villages. This led many contemporary writers and modern historians to associate the Agricultural Revolution with the disappearance of cottars and their way of life from many parts of the southern Scotland.
Many small settlements were torn down, their occupants moved to new, purposely-built villages. Other displaced farmers moved to the industrial centres. In other areas, such as the southwest, landowners offered low rents and nearby employment to tenants they deemed to be respectable. While most Lowland Scots moved to the industrialized areas of Lowland Scotland between 1760 and 1830, some took advantage of the many new opportunities offered in Canada — to own and farm their own land. Those that chose to remain chose to do so because of their inability to secure transatlantic passage, or because of obligations in Scotland.
The last Chief of the Bell Clan was William Bell of Blackethouse from 1578 to 1623. His home in Annandale was known as Blackethouse and it was destroyed in 1547 during a raid by the English. William moved to another house near Kelso and named it Blackethouse, as well. History records that all Bells throughout the kingdom acknowledged Bell of Blackethouse as their Chief. William Bell of Blackethouse is believed to have used the principal Coat of Arms of the Family, (three gold bells on an azure background, and the Family Crest (a hand holding a dagger, ‘paleways proper’, with the motto, “I beir the bel”). After he died in 1628, the chiefship became dormant and without leadership the Bells ceased to exist as a viable clan. The descendants of the Lairds of Blackethouse stayed in the realm but moved to the cities where they contributed substantially to learning.
Azure, three bells, Or
Motto: I bear the bell
Translation: I bear the bell
In April 1985, a letter providing proof of The Border Bells’ status was sent to the Lord Lyon requesting he acknowledge the Bells had, at one time, been a Clan under patriarchal chiefs and to allow them to reestablish the Clan. The Lord Lyon’s 06 May 1985 letter provided this acknowledgment and permission. Work started on tracing the senior Blackethouse line to determine the ranking Bell to be invested as Chief; Benjamin Bell, as of 2012 is the Chief Apparent of the Clan. Upon approval of the petition by the Lyon Court, Benjamin will be invested as Chief of the Bells. The Clan will then assume its rightful place among the Families of Scotland. Clan Bell had a tartan named “Bell of the Borders” established in 1984 and it is listed by the Scottish Tartans Society.
Designed by Bob Martin
Tartan date: 01 January 1986
If I had the opportunity to invite William for dinner I would ask the following questions:
- Where and when were you born;
- What are the names of your parents and siblings and when and where were they born, married and where and when did they die;
- Where did you live in Scotland and what were your occupations;
- Where and when did you meet Annie;
- Where and when were you married;
- What was the name of the port and the date Annie and you left Scotland and the name of the ship you were on;
- What was the name of the port in Canada you arrived at and the date of arrival;
- What was the reason you chose Pickering, Ontario to live;
- What was the reason you decided to move to Manitoba and homestead;
Oh, how I would love to meet William and ask all my questions. I would probably need to meet him for longer than a dinner to ask my questions as I am sure his answers would only lead to more questions.