Happy Valentine's Day

To celebrate we share with you some heartfelt words of love written in a letter in 1808.

The letter is written by Mary, Mrs William Balfour, 1788-1820, Captain William Balfour's first wife (and first cousin, daughter of William Manson). 

'It is extremely painful for me to communicate or correspond with you while my mind is in its present distress...'

She is writing to John Balfour, 3rd of Trenaby, William's uncle, begging him to help cancel her husband William's appointment to a ship in the south of England and wishes him to stay at home. 

Letter from Mary Balfour (nee Manson) to John Balfour page 1

She goes on to say: 

'To most married People the idea of being separated for a few months, appears trifling, but few, very few indeed, are so completely happy as we have been since our marriage. His affection has seemed to increase daily, and mine for him scarcely knows any bounds...as a husband he is exemplary, as a father no less so - think then what anguish must wring my heart when I bid him farewell, perhaps for ever! My feelings are too poignant for explanation - '  

Sadly she is unsuccessful!  

Letter from Mary Balfour (nee Manson) to John Balfour page 2

The letter is from the Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie papers, and is part of bundle D2/27/12. It was written on the 31st March 1808. This letter comes to you as part of our ongoing volunteer project to record every letter in every bundle in the 47 boxes of the D2 Balfour Collection by our six amazing volunteers. 

We Love Words

We love words in the Orkney Archive, we love discovering words we haven't heard of before and we love words we have heard of but have different meanings. Today we bring you

Pawn

In a recent search for marriages in the Stromness Old Parish Register (Ref: OPR/30/3) on microfilm, we found this phrase from 1740:

"pawn money consigned in the Clerk's hand"

How intriguing, we thought [we're so easily intrigued], why is "pawn" being used in a marriage announcement?

Someone instantly sped to the bookshelves and found The Concise Scots Dictionary, 1991 and looked it up.

The definitions are: "1. pawn, a pledge [so far so normal] 2. pawn, usually in plural a sum of money deposited with the kirk session by a couple as a guarantee of their intention to marry within 40 days and of their chaste conduct in the interval, late 16th - early 19th century. [Aha!] and in the phrase lay doon the pawns: make official notification of one's intention to marry, arrange for the proclamation of banns."

In the Chambers English Dictionary the above definition is not mentioned, but it does say that pawn can also be a peacock, a gallery or covered walkway and [of course] a chess piece.

The full proclamation of marriage is here:

"Dec 4th [1739]Magnus Coupar and Margaret Newgar both in this parish were contracted and pawn money consigned in the Clerk's hand and January 1st 1740 that the said Magnus Coupar and Margaret Newgar were lawfully married and dues payed."


We love words!

Check It Oot...

We found two interesting things today.




Firstly, these ridiculously detailed 'probable weather' predictions for an entire year taken from some late nineteenth century almanacs...

Peace's Almanac 1866-8

... and secondly, an early marriage contract, or what we may call a pre-nup from around the same time:

Orkney Archive Reference SC11/38/8

... Jane Blackwell Gordon used this document to protect her assets when planning to marry Dr Edward Mitchell. Her money and property would otherwise have become her husband's upon marriage. Therefore, Dr Mitchell had to 'renounce' his rights to Jane's possessions.


This legal protection was only available to wealthy women. Most married women lost the rights to all property including their children until the married women's property act of 1870. For more information see here.

Do you believe everything you read in the paper?

Whilst trawling through the pages of our Orcadian newspaper archive recently, I found a couple of interesting stories. In 1870, the paper did not just report news from Orkney but from all over the world.

Reported in the 5th March edition, these are both from the USA:

"A South Carolina paper declares that a young man who lost his wife last week married another while friends were making preparations for the funeral, and with his bride followed the remains sorrowfully to the grave"

Even Jeremy Kyle looks shocked at that story!









Then tragedy and a very cheeky comment:

"A young man at Muscatine, Iowa lately crawled into a boiler to clean it out, but the engineer, being ignorant of the fact, closed the door and fired up. The young man became uncomfortably warm, and in his horror discovered the boiler filling with water. His shrieks were unheard, but fortunately the engineer opened the door and the half-suffociated prisoner was released. A contemporary thinks it was shameful that the engineer should have spoiled so good a story by opening the door when he did"

Hello Sailor!

Hello, for my first blog, I thought I’d share with you this little snippet of the past which I found recently. It is the notice of a marriage in the Deerness Old Parish Register (OPR) which we have here on microfilm.



It transcribes as “ Mr William Heudell, Commander of the ship Three Brethren of Liverpool and Margaret Loutit were married the 4th Day of September 1796”

The reason I find it so interesting is that it highlights one of the many connections which Orkney has always had with the outside world.

One of my favourite Orkney archives is CE55/4/6 which is a Register of Crews Engaged in Orkney from 1851-1910. This very large volume gives names of sailors, their present ship’s name, port of registry, intended voyage and their last ship name and port of registry. From 1871 it also gives the area where they were born together with the date and place where they were last discharged. Some of the other places where the crews came from last were London, Dundee, Kirkcaldy, Hull, Banff, Leith and also Londonderry and Mary Port.

For example Charles Cooper, age 32 from Orkney was hired in September 1873 to work as a B’swain on the Galatea, a ship registered in Kirkwall. The intended voyage note said, “Orkney to the Baltic and back to U.K. In the event of the ship being froze up, crew to be discharged and sent home.” Brrr. One of the other sailors hired on the same ship was John Planck, age 23, originally from Edinburgh.

Some of the other intended voyages were to the Davis Straits, Quebec, Konigsberg, Hudson Bay, Greenland and Adelaide in Australia. So if you’ve lost an ancestor and you know he was a sailor from a British port, he may have found his way to Orkney and be recorded in our book, but be warned, this could take time as there is no surname index!