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Category Archives: Raeburn Family

William Raeburn – A British Seaman

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by richardgwynallen2013 in Cornwall, Raeburn Family, Scotland, Uncategorized

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By Richard Gwynallen

William Raeburn
1761 – 1795
Relationship to Fawn: 1st cousin, 7x removed

William was the son of Margaret Allen and Henry Raeburn, who we introduced in the essay, Margaret Allen & Henry Raeburn – Another Banffshire Family in the post-Culloden era.  His christening is given in parish records as 22 September 1761 in Banff, Banffshire, Scotland.

Recently, in one of the blessings of the internet, I heard from Lefayre (Heslehurst) Palmer in Australia who is a descendant of William, and thus a distant cousin of mine.  She offered some information on William’s naval career that was fascinating.   Lefayre has several long standing contacts who have provided some of the information in the past.  All attempts have been made to find the original researchers and authors.  If located, acknowledgment of those folks will also be made.

I have summarized that information below.  As documentation is available I will add it to the story. I’m very grateful to Lefayre for adding a very interesting piece to the knowledge of our family history.

William’s Story

William first mustered onto the Culloden on 6 May 1785, which led him to Plymouth, Devon, England, where he married Ann Rowter from Liskeard, Cornwall.

I wonder if enough time had passed since the battle of Culloden that serving on a ship by that name didn’t mean anything.  Or did it, given that at least some of his mother’s family had been involved in the Jacobite rebellion?  Or did he grow up sheltered from those stories?

William Reburn and Ann Rowter had four children. The first child, William, was born in 1787 in Menheniot, Cornwall, but died young.  George was born in 1788 in Stoke Dameral, Devon.Thomas, was born in 1790 in Liskeard.  A second son named William was born in 1792 at Liskeard.

Liskeard(Lyskerrys in Cornish) is about 20 miles west of Plymouth and 14 miles west of

tin-mines-in-gonnamena-near-liskeard

Tin Mines in Gonnamena near Liskeard.

the River Tamar.  Liskeard is an ancient market and stannery (tin mining) town. It received its charter as a market town in 1240.  Liskeard is today one of the few Cornish towns that still has a livestock market, which is held every Tuesday.

likeard-cattle-market

Modern-day Liskeard cattle market

Many structures still extant in Liskeard were there in William’s day.

liskeard-stuart-house-cc-humphrey-bolton

Stuart House, built between 1480 and 1520. King Charles I stayed at Stuart House in 1644.

st-martins-church-likeard-cormall-mostly-15th-century

St. Martin’s Church, Liskeard, Cornwall – mostly 15th century

Bodmin Moor lies to the northwest of the town. 

bodmin-moor-near-likeard-cornwall

Bodmin Moor near Liskeard, Cornwall

bodmin-moor-tregarrick-tor

Bodmin Moor Tregarrick Tor

Plymouth lies between the River Plym to the east and the River Tamar to the west.

river-tamar-1

River Tamar

Both rivers flow into the natural harbor of Plymouth Sound. The River Tamar forms the county boundary between Devon and Cornwall.

In the nearby parish of Stoke Damerel the first dockyard, HMNB Devonport, opened in 1690 on the eastern bank of the River Tamar. Further docks were built in 1727, 1762 and 1793.  Devonport is today one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy.

devonport-naval-base-1

Devonport Naval Base

devonport-naval-base-today-1

Devonport today

William’s first ship, the HMS Culloden, was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 16 June 1783 at Rotherhithe.

hms-culloden-1

HMS Culloden

He then mustered on to the Victory, followed by the Drake.

HMS Victory was a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy,  launched in 1765.  In May 1778, the 42-pounder guns were replaced by 32-pounders, but the 42-pounders were reinstated in April 1779. In 1782, all the 6-pounders were replaced by 12-pounders. Later, she also carried two carronade guns, firing 68-lb (31 kg) round shot.  This was the status of the ship when William served upon it.

hms-victory-1

HMS Victory

HMS Drake was a 14-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy launched in 1779. She was bought from a commercial builder during the early years of the  American War of Independence, and went on to support operations in the English Channel and the Caribbean. At one stage she assisted an attack on a French-held island, an expedition commanded by a young Horatio Nelson.

To make matters a little confusing, there appear to have been two William Raeburns aboard the HMS Drake, both with wives named Ann, and both Boatswains.  Both had wills, and the wills allow us to separate the two men.

Lefayre noted that it turned out that our William had been drafted between ships (between the Victory and the Drake) while at sea and it was compulsory for Royal Navy seamen to make a will on entering a ship.

The will we believe to belong to our William was signed 20 April 1795, and was proved on 22 May 1798. It was witnessed by Capt. Samuel Brooking. It was customary for wills of men on board ship to not be proven until much later. The date it was signed and witnessed was considered legal even thought it was not recorded in a court.

Both men left their worldly goods to their wife Ann, but the William in this will names his wife as Ann Reburn of Liskeard, whom he names executrix.

The Drake sailed for the Caribbean almost immediately after William’s boarding of the ship in April 1975, where he died of a fever.  Lefayre noted that service men feared being sent to the West Indies due to the high death rate from Yellow Fever and Malaria.

The Admiralty Records note William Raeburn’s death on 24 August 1795.  The death is recorded in the HMS Drake muster of July/August 1795 (ADM 36/1499) as well as the Ship’s Pay book (ADM 36/473).  The Captain’s Log of the HMS Drake records William’s death as above with the following entry: ” . . . departed this life William Reburn Boatswain of a fever at 5. . . . Buried at sea with the usual ceremony.”

A Boatswain is a Petty Officer, the seniormost rank of the deck department. The boatswain supervises the other members of the ship’s deck department, and typically is not a watchstander, except on vessels with small crews.

The boatswain is the foreman of the unlicensed (crew members without a mate’s license) deck crew. The boatswain, or bosun, is distinguished from other seamen by the supervisory roles: planning, scheduling, and assigning work.

As deck crew foreman, the boatswain plans the day’s work, assigns tasks to the deck crew, and checks on the completion of the work. Outside the supervisory role, the boatswain regularly inspects the vessel and performs a variety of routine, skilled, and semi-skilled duties to maintain all areas of the ship not maintained by the engineering department. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatswain)

The ship’s three standing warrant officers, the Carpenter, Gunner and Boatswain (Bo’sun), who, along with the Master, were permanently assigned to a vessel for the purposes of maintenance, repair, and upkeep. Standing officers were considered the most highly skilled seaman on board, and messed and berthed with the crew. As such, they held a status separate from the other officers and were not granted the privileges of a commissioned or warrant officer if they were captured.

The Warrant Chart below shows the hierarchy aboard ship.

warrant-chart-1810

In William’s time, the Boatswain’s typical uniform would have been a blue frock coat with Navy buttons.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Victory still exists today as a museum. For more information, go to: HMS Victory. The ship offers a look at how William might have been living on board ship.  Below are two pictures of how seamen of William’s rank of Boatswain and below would have slept and eaten.

hms-victory-berthing-and-messing

HMS Victory berthing and messing

hms-victory-berthing

HMS Victory berthing

Additional Notes

The line descending from William and Ann continued in Plymouth, Devon, England until some descendants emigrated to Australia in 1886, leading ultimately to Lefayre.

An interesting note is that William’s brother, George, also entered a naval career.  George Reburn married Mary Beer at Stoke Damerel parish in Devon, England in 1798.  The certificate showed him as being of HMS Bedford.

Both William and George entered the Royal Navy and both ended up living in Plymouth, Devon, England, and marrying west country women.

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Margaret Allan & Henry Raeburn – Another Banffshire family in the post-Culloden era

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by richardgwynallen2013 in Allen/Allan Family, Raeburn Family, Scotland, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

by Richard Gwynallen

MARGARET ALLAN
1733 – unknown
Relationship to Fawn: 7th great aunt

Margaret is another of the Allan family of Banffshire that remained in Scotland after our direct ancestors emigrated.  It is a very simple story.  Really it is just a story of two people marrying and moving on as great changes engulf their world.  The changes Margaret and Henry’s life undergo is a story of the aftermath of Culloden.

Margaret Allan was the sixth child of James Alexander Allan and Isabel Ruddach.  She was born on the 19th of March, 1733 in Bogtown, Fordyce Parish, in what was then Banffshire, Scotland.

margaret-allan-birth-certificate

On 19 July 1751, in the town of Banff, she married Henry Raeburn. Henry was several years Margaret’s senior, having been born in 1722 or 1723. He was the son of Henry Raeburn and Margaret Castles or Casells.

Once I get a copy of their marriage certificate I will post it here.

They seem to have lived at the Raeburn family’s Whyntie farm until they moved to the town of Banff sometime between 1754 – 1757. They had eight children.  The first two, Elspet (1752) and James (1754), being born at Whyntie, and the rest (George-1757, John-1759, William-1761, Henry-1764, Robert-1766, and Charles-1770) being born in Banff.

Elspet and James’ births are recorded in the Boyndie Old Parish Register, Vol. I: Births/Baptisms 1750 – 1759.  It is clear here that Margaret and Henry were still at Whyntie when Elspet was born. For James, the record shows only the “Parish of Banff,” and town or farm, but other genealogies agree that the family was still at Whyntie when James was born.

I am grateful to the Fenty Family website for information on this land.  The Fenty name is derived from Whyntie.  As they moved on they took the name of their original home with them. Their site provides interesting insights into the origin of the place name, as well as many of the maps I am using.

Whyntie is a stretch of coastline and adjacent land between Portsoy and Banff in what was called Banffshire, Scotland.   There is today a Whyntie Head, a Whyntie Wood and two farms, Easter and Wester Whyntie.

scotland-map

Scotland – The lands of Whyntie are on the Moray coast in the northeast

whyntie-1

This is the land of Whyntie, with its stream, wood and bay.  Around it are the places named in the old charters, unchanged over six hundred years – Boyndie Dallachy, Brangan and Threipland (many thanks to the Fenty Family website)

whyntie-head

Whyntie Head

whyntie-coast-1

Whyntie coast

There are today two farms identified in Whyntie, Easter Whyntie and Wester Whyntie.  The exact location within this setting of the Raeburn farm I do not know.

Easter Whyntie

easter-whyntie-farm-1
easter-whytnie-farm-2
easter_whyntie_-_geograph-org-uk_-_224154

Wester Whyntie

easter-whytnie-farm-3

Margaret and Henry are believed to have become merchants or artisans in Banff, but I do not yet know specifically what. However, we may have insights into why they moved sometime between 1754 and 1757.

whyntie

Between 1750 and 1830 great changes in the settlement patterns of people in Scotland occurred. The above map is the part of Major Roy’s Military Survey map from 1746 showing Whyntie. In it one can see the farming townships, or the” ferm-touns.” The ferm touns had been the basis of a communal, co-operative system of agriculture for centuries “where the run-rig arrangement of unenclosed strips of land were distributed amongst the villagers to ensure no-one got all the good or all the unproductive land.  Each family got some of both. ” (Fenty website. Scotland before the Industrial Revolution: An Economic and Social History c.1050-c. 1750, by Ian D. Whyte, provides a thorough discussion of the Scots English term ferm touns and the ancient run-rig system)

During the ’45 Rising, Hanoverian commanders were at a disadvantage in Scotland because they had no modern survey map of Scotland.  Roy’s task was to address this deficit and create a complex map that allowed for control and order of geographical space through reconnaissance and survey.  The map had many functions, not the least of which was to serve as a tool for understanding the Scottish settlement patterns and changing them.  A more complete discussion of Roy’s task and the resulting may can be found at the National Library of Scotland.

In fact, these ancient forms of land use disappeared over the next several decades to be replaced by larger farm units which often retained the name of the original village, though sometimes with an adjective added to describe the division of land taking place, such as Easter and Wester Whyntie.  Hundreds of planned towns and villages sprang up by 1850. A way of life was disappearing, but productivity of rural lands increased, amenities in towns expanded, and artisans came to thrive in the towns. As people have done everywhere, our ancestors were moving and adapting.

Though we do not know for certain, perhaps Margaret Allan and Henry Raeburn saw the writing on the wall with the first steps in the breaking up of Scottish land use patterns, and the other changes imposed on Scotland after Culloden, and made their move to Banff  to be one step ahead.  As with shifts of population from farms to towns throughout the world, rural people bring with them many skills, including blacksmithing, carpentry, and spinning and weaving.  I hope to be able to tell a story of their life in Banff one day.

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