20 Days of Orkney Trees #11

Today's post is a letter written to Orcadian historian John Mooney in 1925. The author is New York based business man, Adam H. Cormack, who had a 'dream of forestation' for Orkney.


'It appears to me, Mr. Mooney, that we of the present generation could do few things that would be of more permanent good to our native Isles than to start a tree planting movement in the Orkneys. Not that the present generation, or at least we who are now of middle life, could expect to derive any direct benefit except the pleasure of added charm of the Orkney landscape which would necessarily follow from the planting of trees, but it would be of great importance and benefit to future generations.'

Orkney Archive Reference D49.3.1

Adam Cormack was born on the island of Eday in 1872, the 10th of his father James' children. James was a crofter who did not own any land and Eday's population was gradually becoming too much for the available resources to support. Adam will have seen America as an opportunity to own property and land and to make a good living, but Orkney obviously never left his heart.


I didn't find any evidence of any results of Adam Cormack's reforestation dream but, as was discussed a couple of posts ago, the Forestry Commission did plant 18 hectares of woodland on Orkney during the 1950s.




Information taken from:

Orkney Archives D49/3/1 and  D31/31/1 'Typescript of a book entitled Tales of Orkney and Eday, my Father's Island, by Maribelle Cormack'