Taylor Genealogy -- Kirkwall (1844)

Kirkwall Harbor, 1833

Kirkwall (1844)

By the year 1844, the average size of the approximately 400 Kirkwall families was quite large, pushing the city's population to up around 3200. Poor citizens lived on the opposite side of town from the more affluent, and both urban groups called all other Orcadians "country folk." The WISHART family had been in residence about a half-dozen years, having come from the county of Banffshire between the Spey and Deveron rivers on the Scottish mainland. The very old seaport town of Banff, the county seat, was once the long-ago home base of Malcolm Canmore, early-day King of Scotland. Other principal harbors were at Macduff, Cullen, Portsoy, Buckie, and Portgordon. But Banffshire was definitely agricultural, engaged in farming and cattle-raising in the rich farmland of the lower district touching the coastline. In Banffshire's upper district, which stretched away off to the south and into the mountains, farming was more limited.

Young MARY WISHART's 43-year-old father had arrived in Orkney as a ship chandler, outfitting boats that carried whale hunters to the Atlantic and to the German Ocean (the North Sea). However, WILLIAM LINDSAY WISHART, an optimistic man by nature, would labor the bigger part of his years at the miller's trade. MARY's 47-year-old mother, ELIZABETH (BARCLAY) WISHART, suffered from rheumatism, an affliction to remain with her for life. The family evidently worshiped at the Congregational Church, and perhaps the younger Wishart children attended Kirkwall Grammar School on Castle Street. But probably not all ten members of the family were living in Kirkwall at this time.

By the springtime of 1844, one of the Orkney country folk, adolescent JOHN TAYLOR, had already decided to learn a profession for himself in historic nearly-eight-century-old Kirkwall.

Merging with the Stromness road at the southwestern edge of town, the road from Orphir linked up with the lower end of Kirkwall's chief avenue which was called Albert Street as it led to Laverock, the mid-section of the city. At different points from one end of town to the other, Kirkwall's narrow main drag was known by several names, one of them ironically being Broad Street where the prominent Tankerness House, built in the 1500's, and its courtyard were located just across from St. Magnus' Cathedral. But universally, the major boulevard of Kirkwall was simply called the Street.

In mid-town the abandoned Bishop's Palace with its Moosie Tower stood adjacent to the antiquated Earl's Palace and very near St. Magnus' Cathedral. The narrow main street was called Victoria Street where it continued beyond the cathedral and transformed into Bridge Street as it handled the principal traffic moving onward to the piers.

A tree grows in Kirkwall, perhaps the tallest and most prominent of those on an island whose soil and climate are not entirely favorable to their existence. Pedestrians walking north passed by the Tree and then came to the Bridge of One Arch over Papdale Burn.

Further on, the harbor of Kirkwall Bay grew visible, revealing the piers and Corn Slip, an opening between the wharves. Turning left, residents wandered in a westward direction down to the end of the ayre separating Peerie Sea from the ocean waters of the bay, where a few years later a great mill's wheels were driven by the ebb and flow through an oyce. But Peerie Sea, which expanded at time of high tide, was then already starting to be a rubbish dump with both east and west sides filling up and being reclaimed as dry land.

While navigating the narrow mile-long passageway leading all the way through town, wary strollers feared the likely prospect of facing some heavily-loaded vehicle with a sturdy set of briskly revolving wheels shooting vigorously down the congested thoroughfare behind a panicked runaway horse.

King Street ran parallel a block east of the Street. One block west of the Street was Junction Road. Other accesses were Shore Street, Palace Street, Watergate Street, the Strynd, Castle Street, and St. Olaf's Wynd, which was named for the father of Norway's King Magnus I, or Magnus the Good, who was reigning when Vikings founded the city.

Starting in the spring of 1844, 18-year-old JOHN TAYLOR wore the leather apron of the trade at a Kirkwall smithy shop while assisting Robert Flett. The blacksmith sometimes made wheels and other vehicle pieces, boat anchors, parts for mills, crofting implements, scythes, plows, spades, shovels, axes, picks, knives, and similar utensils useful to fellow Orcadians. With the heat of an Orkney peat-fueled fire in his face, he tempered a keen edge on a cutting instrument at the appropriate time, having learned as all Orcadians did that blades became sharper when the ocean's tide was flowing inward. He formed horseshoes to a correct size before securing the iron cleats to the underside of an Orkney beast's uncloven hooves. The blacksmith may have spent time mending harnesses, repairing tools, or fixing broken articles.

On an October day in the Orkney autumn of 1844, JOHN saw his eldest brother, James, 22, wed 25-year-old Mary Robertson in Orphir parish, where JOHN's parents and grandparents had also married. The Orkney Isles famine of 1845, an overflow of Ireland and Britain's devastating potato blight, may have convinced the new couple to leave for America. The following year, James took his bride to the U. S. while a hungry Kirkwall populace was acknowledging the city's 800th birthday. On the watery route to America, James and Mary's first-born child learned to walk on her own two feet while living aboard a pitching and rolling ship.

Isabella Robertson had also left for America in 1846, probably accompanying her sister Mary, her brother-in-law, and her new infant niece. While his sweetheart was gone across the sea, Robert, namesake second son of his father, was contemplating a New World future for himself to begin two years later.

With the tutelage of the Kirkwall village blacksmith, JOHN studied the craft of forging metal, shaping red-hot and white-hot materials into desired objects by using the hammer, tongs, and anvil. While pumping the air bellows, fueling the furnace, pounding iron, and performing assignments in a manner satisfactory to Robert Flett during four years of studious labor, the young apprentice matured into adulthood on the Orkney island of his birth.

Migrating islanders reported from places with increasingly familiar names. Twice JOHN had corresponded in letters to his married brother, James, who had emigrated and was established in the States during 1848. Isabella Robertson had left behind the surplus of women in Orkney, going to Pennsylvania two years earlier to reside at the home her emigrant sister, Mary, who was the wife of JOHN's brother James. Isabella would welcome another Taylor brother, the one named Robert, to Wilkes-Barre in August of 1848; and she would marry him in October.

JOHN TAYLOR had already reached the age of majority long before his fourth year of training finished in early 1848. He decided to look toward America. Like older brother Robert, JOHN was enticed by the vision of a country with better prospects for his life's fortune. The young journeyman's family home was at the House of Piggar between Orphir and Archer Fortescue's Swanbister Estate seven miles southwest of Kirkwall. Fortescue had purchased his Swanbister property three years earlier, and back in 1845 the "Devil of the Hill" had begun making many innovative improvements to his land, some of which aggravated neighboring farmers.

Soon JOHN would live in a lower latitude with the sun rising higher in the sky and setting farther south on the horizon, where summer's daylight and winter's darkness were both briefer than in Orkney. But America's summers were hotter and its winters were colder than Orkney's milder seashore climate. The 22-year-old, qualified with knowledge and experience in a skilled trade, made plans to leave his widowed father, his three younger brothers, his little sister, and their housekeeper back at their farm cottage near Swanbister Bay. He had chosen to sail southwestward to the other side of the massive Atlantic Ocean.

Also being left behind in Orkney was a special friend with a "kind and gentle and loving spirit," someone born 17 years earlier about 95 miles due south of Kirkwall at the little town of Gamrie, located a couple miles inland on Scotland's northeastern coast. MARY WISHART had spent her early childhood beyond Scapa Flow, across Pentland Firth, over the North Sea, way down in the county of Banffshire. Presently abiding at Kirkwall during 1848, the teenage lass remained in Scotland to await JOHN's eventual return and their proposed wedding.

contact the site manager