William I and Margaret start a life together

In the previous two posts, we looked at William Roy I's first 30 years and the same for Margaret Campbell. So now we need to bring the two of them together!

As discussed in the previous posts, it is possible that William and Margaret knew each other as children, as William's maternal grandparents, the Peddies lived at Ballinloan in Little Dunkeld, while Margaret and her Campbell siblings grew up at Meikle Logie, less than a mile (1.5 kms) away. The nearest church for both hamlets was the tiny church of Laganallachy, which we have previously viewed in Google Streetview format. Services were conducted there once a month in Gaelic, and for the remaining weeks, the families would have walked to the Parish Church in Little Dunkeld. We can't be sure that William and Margaret met at this point, but we do know for certain that they had met by March 1842, when they married!

On the census night of 6 June 1841, Margaret was living with her widowed mother and youngest brother at Meikle Logie, and William was a miller at Balmacolly near Bankfoot.1  Nine months later, on Friday 4 March 1842, they married in the parish of Auchtergaven, having 'given in their names in order to proclamation of banns' on 19 February (two weeks earlier).2  

Auchtergaven Church ruins and churchyard in Bankfoot by Alison Dennison (2019)

In the parish register William is listed as 'residing at Balmacolly', and Margaret is described as 'residing at Bankfoot', which suggests that she had moved there from Meikle Logie - perhaps in anticipation of their marriage, or to work, or to live with her brother John (who died at Bankfoot in 1853, according to the inscription on the gravestone in Laganallachy graveyard).3

Their first child, James was born on 4 December 1842, almost exactly nine months (or 39 weeks) after the marriage.4 The parish register shows that William was still a miller at that point, and resided in Bankfoot. James was baptised on 18 December 1842.

The next child was also a son, John, and he was born almost two years later on 26 February 1844 (baptised 13 March 1844), followed by William Roy II another two years after that on 8 April 1846 (baptised 19 April 1846), the only daughter, Susan born 22 April 1848 (baptised 7 May 1848), George born 8 December 1849 and Donald born 5 August 1853.5

While there is a birth interval of approximately two years between the first four children, George followed only 1 year and 7 months after Susan, who is missing from the household by the time of the 1851 census. This could suggest that she died within the first year of her life. There is no record of her burial in the Auchtergaven Graveyard inscriptions.

Interestingly, despite being almost four years apart in age, George and Donald's births are registered one after each other on the same page of the parish register. The rest of the births on that page and the previous three pages of the register are a jumbled assortment ranging from 1840 to 1854, which would suggest that the church had done a bit of a tidy up of missing baptisms in the records, and captured them all in one fell swoop.  

The Minister of the Auchtergaven throughout some of those years was Reverend Thomas Nelson, who had been ordained in 1831 and died on 27 March 1852.6  The parish minutes of 1852 note his passing, and say that 'Mr Nelson has been for nearly two years unable to discharge his public duties', and that he had 'several attacks of palsy' before one final one.7 He was replaced by the Assistant Minister, Reverend Edward Place Dewar, who was a youngster of around 25 years of age and died himself just three years later while in Cairo, Egypt in November 1855.8 Perhaps paperwork was not either of the Reverends' thing? 

The introduction of statutory registration in Scotland for births from 1 January 1855 may have caused the incoming Minister, Reverend David Landall to tidy up the existing baptism registers and attempt to capture any recent missing details.9 The register pages I viewed contain many entries for families with multiple children listed immediately after each other, such as in George and Donald's case, which would certainly suggest that there was an attempt to capture each family's missing baptisms. 

On each of the registers of his children's births/baptisms, William Roy I is described as 'miller' which suggests that he maintained that occupation until at the time that these births/baptisms were recorded. He must have done alright for himself for a time as, by 1848, he was listed as 'proprietor' of the home in which the family was living on Prieston Road in Bankfoot rather than 'tenant'.10 However, as we'll find out in the next post, he appears to have lost employment as a miller around the 1850s, early 1860s. 

We'll follow up on William's employment history in the next installment, which will take up the story around the point of the 1851 Census.

Confused about where these characters fit into the family tree? Or where this action is occurring?  You can always check The Family Tree and Map pages for visual clues.

Footnotes

1. Census record for William Roy, aged 30, Colly, Auchtergaven, Scotland, 1841 Scotland Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.; Census record for Margaret Campbell, aged 25, Meikle Logie, Little Dunkeld Scotland, 1841 Scotland Census, National Records of Scotland, scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
2. Marriage of William Roy and Margaret Campbell, married 4 March 1842, Old Parish Registers Marriages, 330/20 p.339.
3. Alison Mitchell (ed) Monumental Inscriptions (pre 1855) in North Perthshire, Vol. 2, p.211.
4. Baptism of James Roy, born 4 December 1842, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.212..
5. Baptism of John Roy, born 26 February 1844, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.221; Baptism of William Roy, born 8 April 1846, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.221; Baptism of Susan Roy, born 22 April 1848, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.237; Baptism of George Roy, born 8 December 1849, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.270.; Baptism of Donald Roy, born 5 August 1853, Old Parish Registers Births, 330/20 p.270.
6. West Stormont Historical Society, Auchtergaven Graveyard Inscriptions, Entry No.311.
7. Auchtergaven kirk session, Minutes (1808-1855) and Proclamations (1855-1861), CH2/22/2, image 00310.
8. Macphail's Edinburgh ecclesiastical journal and literary review, Vol. XIX, Myles Macphail, Edinburgh, 1855, p.384
9. The Globe (London), 12 April 1856, p.1.
10. Perth and Kinross Council Archive; Cess Rolls Perthshire, 1848-1848; Roll: SCPERa018_029Cs18481848, 1848.