John's birth

John Wighton was our earliest known direct ancestor. I was unable to find John's birth date in the ScotlandsPeople Database but since John died in April, 1758 at the age of 49, he was likely born in 1708 or possibly in early 1709. Since John was married in Meigle, and since he was a resident of the parish at the time of his wedding, it's possible (but not assured) that he was born there. As Meigle's parish records weren't kept prior to 1727, that would explain why I was unable to find John's birth records anywhere in Scotland. You may wish to read A History of Meigle before learning more about John.

Life in Scotland when John was growing up

The last seven years of the 17th century were years of famine over the greater part of Scotland. Exporting grain out of the country was prohibited and meal was imported from Ireland. Still, there was widespread suffering with some parishes experiencing a population decrease of 50%. The country was recovering by the time John was born, and as was common in any period after there had been a large loss of life, we can expect that those who survived were able to find employment at a decent wage. Thus it is possible that John escaped dire poverty during his childhood and I found no record of any widespread plague or disease during the early part of the 18th century. Those comments notwithstanding, all Scottish children were subject to a high death rate. John very likely would have been exposed to smallpox during his childhood. In the 1700s, 96% of the population were exposed to/caught smallpox and the disease had a 20% mortality rate.

John grew up during the early years of Scotland's union with England (1707). He was too young to be aware of the Jacobite uprising of 1714/15, but his family almost certainly would have known about it. The Jacobites captured Perth some 18 miles away and in January 1715 also burned and destroyed 6 villages west of Perth in order to deny their shelter, corn and forage to the opposing forces. Here's an excerpt from an account at the time: It would be endless to give an account of all the hardships and acts of barbarous cruelty done. It may easily be imagined, considering the season of the year, the vast load of snow that then lay upon the ground, the poor people, man, wife and child without the shelter of a house, without clothes, meat, drink or anything to support them. When they saw with their own eyes, from the high ground to which they were retired for shelter, a second burning at Auchterarder, they were reduced to the utmost degree of distraction and despair. News of the village burnings would have spread quickly to the villages near Perth. Most of the people in that part of the countryside were lukewarm towards the rebellion and it was rumoured that the destruction of the villages had been carried out with such thoroughness because of that.

John's marriage

Since Meigle was quite small, you might think (as I did) that there were a limited number of marriage prospects for Helen and John. However, I was surprised to find that this wasn't the case. Between 1732 and 1736, 84 Meigle men and 86 Meigle women got married. At a minimum, 95 different families celebrated marriages during this period. (There were 95 different surnames on the register, but some surnames were represented multiple times and this might mean more than one family.)

John married Helen Mill in 1734. The Kirk Session records for Meigle parish recorded the events as follows: On the 2nd of February, 1734, John Wighton and Helen Mill, both in this parish, entered their names for proclamation in order to marry, were three times proclaimed in this Church and nothing was offered to be objected against their marriage.

John and his family

In 1735, John and Helen had their first child - William. According to the Scots Ancestry Research Society (SARS), he was born in Polento, Meigle. A daughter Susan followed in 1736 and a son Charles in 1738. My review of the Meigle parish records revealed that both of his siblings were born in Polento as well. Similarly, John's nine grandchildren were born in the same place between 1762 and 1779. We might even speculate that John himself was born and raised in Polento.

Polento provides an important clue to the early Wighton family, so it's best if you take a short digression from John Wighton's life to read about our Search for the Wighton Family Homestead. When you're finished, we'll resume the story of John's life.

The family homestead

O.K., you're back. So, now you know that Polento is really POTENTO and in the 1730s it was part of the Cardean and Baikie Estate owned by the Earl of Strathmore. You'll also have learned that the Potento land lay about 1 mile north of Meigle. I initially assumed that Potento was the name of the estate house and, since John's children and grandchildren were born in Potento, that meant that they lived in that estate house - a somewhat notable fact. I may have been correct that Potento was the name of the estate house. However, I was mistaken in my assumption that John and his three children, and later his grandchildren lived in that house.

My better understanding of Potento took place when I began searching through a microfilm of Meigle's parish records. I soon found William's birth record and the annotation that he was born in Potento. I also found John's other two children's records, both of them also born in Potento. I also found about 200 other births recorded to Potento over a 40 year period. That's a lot of children to be born in a single house.

I spent a lot more time picking data out of that microfilm. There were at least a dozen different birth locations cited in the records. Some children were born in Meigle, others in Potento, Broomend, Camno, Kinloch, Mains of Fullerton, and so on. I found all of these locations on a blow up map of Meigle and its surrounding area. All of the names were within the parish boundaries, and each name represented an estate house or what is now a small village. This means that people did not live in Meigle and then travel out to their farm lands every day; they lived much closer to their lands and those settlements took the name of the estate house or some other origin.

I then looked more closely at just the Potento births. During the 1730 -1740 period when John's children were born, there were 18 other families having births and recording those births in Potento, Meigle. William, Susan and Charles were just 3 of about 40 other children born in that decade in Potento. We can conclude the Potento was a sizeable settlement for the time.

John's work

What about the fact that we had two generations born in Potento - does that signify anything about John's employment status? Here's what I found. Over the course of 4 decades, 48 different families lived in Potento. Many were transitory within a single decade, others appeared to stay in place for some time. Over the forty years, there were five families who appeared to be multigenerational inhabitants of Potento- the Millems, Mustards, Scots, Thomsons, and the Wightons. Does that mean that they were key employees, or did they just like the area?

I found some clues to the important people in Potento from the Kirk Sessions records of the parish. The most important family appears to have been the Mustards. For example, the father, William Mustard, was an officer of the Kirk Sessions. Also, whereas other children were noted in the birth records simply as William, son born to John Wighton, Potento, the Mustard children were noted as follows: Joseph, son born to William Mustard, portioner in Potento. A portioner is a person who owns a small piece of land that has been carved off from a larger portion. There were a dozen Mustard children born in Potento and nearby Broomend over 33 years and the second generation began in 1746. Another important Potento man was William Dalgairns who was an Elder of the church. Dalgairns had eight children between 1728 and 1741.

(Meigle is obviously the origin of a famous phrase. Here's how that came to be. Out of envy, a young Millem child once slashed at a Mustard child with a sharp stick and drew blood. He was amply punished for his impunity. Church records report from that point on, Millem children were not able to cut the Mustards anymore. )

Let's step back a bit from our study of John Wighton's life so that you can learn more about Agriculture in 18th Century Scotland: Part 1 - The Farming Community.

From our new-found knowledge of the hierarchy of Scottish agriculture combined with what the Meigle parish records reveal, we can make the following assumptions. The key person in Potento was Mr. William Mustard. He may not have owned the exact piece of land that John Wighton was working on - but he would have been the most influential man in that area. Since he raised children in Potento, and since his son raised a family there as well, we can conclude that Mr. Mustard was not an absentee landowner. There would be no tenant farmer for Mr. Mustard's land - he did that himself employing what workers he needed himself. If Mr. Mustard's land holdings were large, than all of the 40 odd families who raised children in that area, probably worked for him. If Mr. Mustard's land holdings were just a small part of the Potento area (the other part still being owned by the Earl of Strathmore), then it's possible that John Wighton paid rent to the Earl. However, there was a second influential man in Potento - Mr. William Dalgairns who fathered children in Potento from 1728 to 1741. If Mr. Mustard owned the whole area, then Mr. Dalgairns was probably his second-in command. Or, if the Earl of Strathmore was still an active owner, then Mr. Dalgairns was likely the Earl's key employee. Either way, our John Wighton was not likely high in the local hierarchy.

Mr. Mustard's ownership of a part of the Potento area may have been somewhat transitory. By the end of the century, the ownership of Potento passed from the Earl of Strathmore to a member of the Murray family. This suggests that Mr. Mustard had only a small piece of land, or if he did own a big piece, it was re-acquired by the Earl some time later. But, back now to John Wighton's life.

Life in Scotland 1740...>

Hard winters and cold wet summers could spell hunger and even starvation for an agricultural country such as Scotland. The winter of 1740 was memorable both for its length as well as its rigour. The frost set in early and with great severity. In nearby Perth, the river Tay was frozen almost to the bottom; horses and carts passed over it freely and an ox was roasted on the river which was sold at a shilling a pound. Spring came but no thaw. The frozen clods were ploughed down and the seeds committed to the ground in this state. The summer continued cold and bleak in the extreme with little sunshine. The harvest was disastrous with the seed which did germinate giving poor yields in grain and straw. The animals suffered too and many died of starvation.

As far as we know, John lived his entire life in Potento, Meigle and would have been there at the time of the second Jacobite rebellion in 1745. For a brief period, the Jacobites occupied Perth some 12 miles away. Villagers would have remembered the villages that had been burnt in 1715 and would have wondered if the Jacobites would repeat that outrage. To all accounts however, the Jacobite army behaved well in Perth even though the city was not a supporter of their cause. The same could not be said for the English force which ransacked the homes of a number of Jacobite gentry on their way to retake Perth. (Many of the lairds around Perth were strong Jacobites.) In Perth, the English general Cumberland issued a proclamation requiring any citizen of Perth who knew a Jacobite rebel to turn him in or face hanging himself. People who were alleged to have assisted the rebels in any way during their stay in Perth were imprisoned in appalling conditions within the Tollbooth while they awaited trial for their actions. Ministers in surrounding parishes were ordered to compile lists of people who had shown sympathy towards the Jacobites but they refused to comply.

Perils from anti-Jacobite forces were not the only threat a Meigle villager would have felt. He also would have been in peril from Jacobite supporters. Most of the lairds in Perthshire had strong Jacobite sympathies and they had the power to force their tenants to join them in the cause. However, this kind of coercion was probably more common in the Highlands. Regardless, it was a time of peril for everyone - not the least of whom were the innocent, powerless farmers and crofters in the countryside.

We can get a glimpse of a farmer's life in Scotland from the account written by the Meigle minister for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. Although he would have written that account in the 1780s/90s, he devoted a couple of paragraphs to describing the earlier situation. I suspect that his comments were intended for the country as a whole rather than for Meigle Parish specifically, but still it's instructive to read what someone of the time thought.

Before 1745, the state of the country was rude beyond conception. The most fertile tracts were waste, or indifferently cultivated, and the bulk of the inhabitants were uncivilized. The education, manners, dress, furniture and table of the gentry were not so liberal, decent and sumptuous as those of ordinary farmers at present. The common people clothed in the coarsest garb, and starving on the meanest fare, lived in despicable huts with their cattle. The half ploughed fields yielded scanty crops. No ground was then fallowed; no pease, grass, turnip, or potatoes were raised; no cattle were fattened, and little grain was exported. Oats and barley were alternately sown, and, during seven months of the year, the best soil was ravaged by flocks of sheep, a certain number of which were annually sold and carried off to be fed in richer pastures. The inactivity and indolence of tenants were astonishing. When seed-time was finished, the plough and harrow were laid aside till autumn; and the sole employment of a farmer and his servants consisted in weeding his corn fields, and in digging and conveying home peat, turf, and heath, for winter fuel. The produce of a farm, holding a proportion to those exceptions, was barely sufficient to enable the tenant to pay his trifling rent and servant's wages, and to procure for his family a scanty subsistence.

John and Helen's deaths

Scottish funerals of the time required that the coffin be covered by a mort-cloth which was a black, usually velvet piece of cloth. Each parish would have its own mort-cloth which they would rent to local inhabitants as well as to residents from other towns who wanted to bring their family members who had been born in that parish back to their village of birth for burial. The parish used the mort cloth fees to provide for the poor of the parish. On April 30, 1758, the Kirk Session minutes for the parish of Meigle recorded that 2.2.0 (two pounds, two shillings) was received for the mort cloth for John Wighton. This kirk session entry tells us that John died in April of 1758, but we don't know the exact date. From Greg Wighton, we learn that John was 49 at the time of his death.

Helen Mill survived John and would live for another 7 years. John's son William was 23 and still a bachelor when his father died - he'd marry in 1761.

John's favorite joke

One of the most amazing things about the Meigle line of the Wightons is that we've been able to preserve a common link with our ancestors through our love of telling bad jokes. Ever since our first generation of Wightons, each patriarch would write down his favorite joke and pass it to his son with explicit directions that he should pass it on to David Wighton of generation 9. Surprisingly, all of the letters made it to me, although all of them came with a "postage due" stamp. Here's John's favourite joke.

In the beginning when the Lord God Almighty was creating the world, one morning he turned to the Archangel Gabriel sitting next to him and said "I think I'll create Scotland today. I'll make it a country of dark beautiful mountains, purple glens and rich green forests. There'll be clear swift flowing rivers filled with salmon. On the lush and fertile land, the people will grow barley to brew into an amber nectar that will be sought after the whole world over. Underneath the land I'll lay rich seams of coal. Fish will teem in the waters around the shores and there'll be vast deposits of oil and gas in the sea bed..."

"Excuse me, Sire," interrupted the Archangel Gabriel. "Don't you think you are being too generous to these Scots?"

"Not really," replied the Lord. "Wait until you see the neighbours they're getting."

Sources

Dictionary of the Scots Language (http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/)

Family Search, The LDS Genealogical Website: (http://www.familysearch.org/)

Greg Wighton of Tasmania provided John's age at death.

LDS microfilm of Meigle's parish records had the Kirk Session minutes as well as the birth and marriage records for the parish.

Perthshire Diary (www.perthshirediary.com)

ScotlandsPeople Database (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/)

Scots Ancestry Research Society (March 26, 1971), Report to John L. Wighton

Smout, T.C. (1998). A History of the Scottish People, Fontana Press.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland (http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/)

Where to now? To read more about Generation 1 John's immediate family, just click top to make a selection from Generation 2's genealogical table at the top of this page. Or, you might read The Origin(?) of the Meigle Wighton Line for some speculations on the town(s) where our line originated and speculations on John's possible parents and grandparents. The navigation buttons just below will give you quick access to biographies in other generations.