The importance of Dundee in the Wighton family history is difficult to overstate. You've already read that there had been 80 Wightons living in the Dundee area by 1725. Between 1725 and 1850 another 350 Wightons moved into the area. Over the entire research period, some 430 Wightons lived in Dundee and environs, more than five times the number of the next largest center.

I have included data from Liff and Benvie in the data above. Liff and Benvie is the parish immediately west of Dundee. During the Industrial Revolution, as the demand for housing grew in Dundee, the city began to expand westward and consumed much of the parish. Liff and Benvie's farmland became housing for Dundee's mills. Between 1725 and 1850, more than 100 Wightons were born/married in Liff and Benvie.

Some of the growth in both Dundee as well as in Liff and Benvie obviously came from the children of parents already living in the city. However, the largest part of Dundee's growth came from a tremendous influx of workers from the surrounding areas as the jute industry began to grow. At the same time, landowners in the rural areas of Perth and Angus were clearing farmers off their lands. Some of these would emigrate to Ireland or to North America. Others certainly came to Dundee. With most of the Wighton families before the Industrial Revolution living in Perthshire/Angus, nearby Dundee with its heavy manufacturing base was the natural destination.

We can safely assume that most Wightons living in Dundee/Liff and Benvie during the Industrial Revolution were not farmers. Dundee's strength from its early beginning was its commerce and so it's likely that most Wightons made their living in some related way to that industry. We can get a glimpse of the Wighton family's occupations from the records in the Howff Cemetery. Here are the indicated occupations of 26 Wighton men during Dundee's period of great growth in 1800-1825: Carter, coachmaker, cowfeeder, farmer, grocer, hairdresser, hackler, manufacturer, mariner/seaman, shoemaker, warper, weaver, and wright. As one might expect, work in the flax mills attracted the most families (9) but the grocery business was also attractive to 5 families.

Some of those occupation may be obscure, so here are three definitions. A cowfeeder was a tenant of a small dairy farm. A warper prepared the warp thread for a weaver. A heckler, or hackler, was a person who separated the coarse flax with a toothed hackle. Since their work very much depended on the quality of the thread that they had to work with, many people in this occupation would keep a close eye on the threaders working near them and berate and hassle them whenever they made a mistake. They became known as heckling hecklers.

As you probably have already read in the History of Dundee, health and sanitation conditions in the city were deplorable (at least from modern standards). Referring once again to the Howff Cemetery Records, we find that 22 Wighton children died before they reached the age of 2. The most common cause cited (six times) was teething. Inflammation of some type was also indicated three times as dropsy, inflammation, and inflammation of the lungs. Other causes were bowel hive, chincough (whooping cough), cholera, fever, measles, nervous fever, rash, smallpox, and water in the head. If the death of your child wasn't bad enough, one 2-year old Wighton died when his clothes caught fire.

Eleven other Wighton children died before the age of 10. By far the highest cause of death was inflammation in some form or another such as consumption, water in chest, inflammation, and inflammation of the lungs. These inflammation deaths occurred as early as 5 years old but most were in the 8-10 year old ages. Water in the head (a.k.a. inflammation or hydrocephalus) was mentioned three times.

This description of the Wighton family in Dundee would not be complete without mentioning one of our more famous ancestors - Andrew John Wighton (1804-1866). As a young man Andrew Wighton opened and carried on a grocer's business in Hilltown, Dundee (where the mills and tenements were) and, later, as a good citizen, became a member of the Town Council. However, his chief diversion was to collect from far and near the printed music of Scotland chiefly, but also of England, Ireland and Wales. After his death, his collection was donated to Dundee where it is now housed in the main library.

For those of you interested in any information about the Meigle Line of Wightons living in Dundee, I can tell you that three members migrated to Dundee from Alyth around 1825. (You can see them waving from the top of the town hall, at the top of the page.) John Wighton, shoemaker, and Anne Baxter, daughter of a shoe manufacturer, were married in Alyth in 1821 and had their first child there in 1823 (John Baxter Wighton who would become a Sargeant Major in the Army). Four daughters would be born in Dundee during the boom times: Barbara Baxter Wighton in 1826, Elizabeth Taylor Wighton in 1828, Ann Wighton in 1833, and Mary Ann Wighton in 1836.

Barbara Baxter Wighton married Alexander Lees, a brass finisher, in 1850 and the couple had seven children. Elizabeth Taylor Wighton worked in the mills and died in 1873 at the age of 44. Ann Wighton died in infancy from water on the head. Mary Anne Wighton worked as a domestic servant and as a factory weaver. She cared for her parents until their deaths (1869 and 1894). She herself must have been ill at the time of her mother's death because she died of pulmonary congestion a few months later at her brother's house in Arbroath at the age of 47. Mary Anne had two children. Her son Alfred died from whooping cough and convulsions at the age of 20 months. Her daughter, Luisa, lived long enough to become a bookbinder's assistant but died at 16 from pulmonary congestion (TB).

John Baxter Wighton, the first born, lived in Dundee until he enrolled in the army. While JBW was fighting in the Crimea, his wife Catherine Latta returned to Dundee and stayed with his parents. A daughter Anne was born but she died in 1855 at the age of 1 year. JBW's second child, John Murray Wighton was born in Dundee in 1857. Again, JBW was away at war and Catherine stayed with his sister, Barbara.

Sources

Amy Louisa Wighton: a family history as told in a letter circa 1939 to her grandchildren (John Latta Wighton and Ella Wighton). (Amy Louisa Wighton was John Baxter Wighton's daughter-in law and John Murray Wighton's widow)

Dundee City Council web site (http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk)

Howff Cemetery Records, provided by the Tay Valley History Society (http://www.tayvalleyfhs.org.uk/resources/howff.php?)

John Murray Wighton's birth record from an Extract of General Register Office for Scotland, http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/.

Reverend Small, Statistical Account of Dundee in the 1790s, Statistical Accounts of Scotland, http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/

Scots Ancestry Research Society: a report commissioned by John Latta Wighton and Ella Peterson on the paternal ancestry of Harry Latta Wighton.

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

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