Blacksmith to Archaeologist

It is a very rewarding experience when travelling abroad to come across references to fellow Greenockians who have left their mark, in a positive way, in a far off country.  On a recent visit to Canada, I visited the lovely little town of Elora in Wellington County, Ontario.  There I discovered the following  historical plaque erected by the Ontario Heritage Foundation, Ministry of Culture and Recreation. 

It reads:-

David Boyle 1842 - 1911

Born in Scotland, Boyle came to Canada in 1856 and settled in this area.  As a local school teacher, he began an extensive collection of native artifacts and became an archaeological authority.  Boyle moved to Toronto in 1883 and three years later was appointed the first Curator of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, then housed in the Canadian Institute Building.  Dedicated to the study and retention of artifacts within Ontario, he initiated an active programme of excavation and acquisition.  Between 1887 and 1907 Boyle edited a noted series, the Annual Archaeological Reports, published under the auspices of the Ontario Department of Education.  Through his work on Ontario prehistory, Boyle gained international recognition as a leading Canadian archaeologist and anthropologist.

David Boyle was born in 1842 in Greenock, the son of John Borland Boyle and Anne Anderson.  The 1851 Census shows David (9) living with his parents John (32) listed as an Engine Smith, his mother Ann (33) and siblings John (5) and Mary Ann (3 months) at 9 East Quay lane in Greenock.

David's grandfather, also David Boyle was blacksmith at Greenfoot, Sorn, Ayrshire and was married to Jean Borland.  They had several children, at least one of whom, Andrew also emigrated to Canada and was blacksmith at Eden Mills, Ontario.  David worked with him for a while.  David began his career as a blacksmith working for Hugh Hamilton in Elora, but also attended school and had a thirst for knowledge.  He began teaching in 1865 and moved to Elora Public School in 1871. In 1867 he married Martha S Frankland and they had two daughters.  Geology and natural history were just two of his many interests and he began collecting specimens which he donated to the Canadian Institute in Toronto.  In 1909 he received his Doctor of Laws from the University of Toronto.  You can read more about Boyle in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography here.

It would appear that Boyle also sent natural history samples back to his home town of Greenock as there are a couple of reports from the1870s and 1880s in the Greenock Telegraph detailing these.  Hopefully the McLean Museum may still have some - I'll try and find out when it reopens in a year's time.

From a plaque in Elora showing the town in days gone by.

It really makes me proud to realise the esteem which is afforded to people like David Boyle and his family who left their native land and achieved so much in their adopted country.

Trade in 1791 - essentials and home comforts

Greenock's shipbuilding and sugar refining industries relied heavily on imported goods.  Shipbuilding required timber, much of which was imported from Canada.  Sugar was imported from the West Indies and refined here.  However the Greenock ships which brought back these valuable cargoes did not make their outward journey empty.  They supplied invaluable commodities which the settlers and traders in these far away lands could not easily obtain.

This advertisement (I've reproduced part of it here) from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1791 shows what goods were being exported from Britain by ships belonging to Greenock merchants.  Among the items being offered for sale were:-

Food - refined sugar, Cheshire cheese, salad oil

Clothing - shoes, stockings, hats

Fabric - Irish linen, printed cotton in fashionable patterns, corduroys, woollens, embroidered serge

Metal goods - nails, ships anchors, German steel,

Household essentials - earthenware, frying pans, kettles, window glass, candles

Toiletries - soap, hair power

Other items included - tobacco, paint and oil, fishing nets, sail cloth guns, powder and shot.

It is so interesting to see the sorts of things that were traded then.  Obviously it was not just the working essentials that were important to settlers, they also required some home comforts and luxury goods.  Many local merchants had branches of their business on both sides of the Atlantic in order to make the most of the trading opportunities available.  William Forsyth, who is named in the advertisement, was an important merchant in Nova Scotia with trading partners in Greenock.  There will be more about William Forsyth and his family in future posts.

Greenock - Port of Departure

In my last post I mentioned the Scottish Diaspora, those Scots who travelled far and wide across the world in search of new lives.  Many of them would have sailed in the thousands of ships which left the port of Greenock each year taking folk away to all corners of the globe.  I came across this poem recently -

Wilfred Campbell (1860-1918) was a Canadian poet, and lived in Ontario.  You can read about him here.

I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't heard of him before.  But these few verses from his poem The World-Mother (Scotland) appealed to me (if we ignore the fact that for each of the Scotsmen who moved away, there were an equal number of Scotswomen with them who contributed just as much!).  Of course his poetry is of its time and appears very old fashioned and romanticising to us today.  But in this year of Homecoming Scotland I thought that the last line was quite apt.

The Greenockian

John Galt - Founder of the City of Guelph

On 23 April (St George's day) 1827 John Galt, William Dunlop and Charles Prior took part in a ceremony which marked the founding of the beautiful Canadian city of Guelph in Ontario.  John Galt wrote in his autobiography -

"... a large maple tree was chosen; on which, taking an axe from one of the woodmen, I struck the first stroke.  To me at least the moment was impressive, - and the silence of the woods, that echoed to the sound, was as the sigh of the solemn genius of the wilderness departing for ever."

The town was named Guelph in honour of the British King George IV and was laid out to a precise plan drawn up by John Galt.  Although he is probably best known in Scotland as a novelist, Galt is esteemed in Guelph as the city's founder. 

Galt's plan reserved land for churches and schools.  As this extract from his autobiography shows, Galt considered education to be extremely important -

perhaps his own school days in Greenock had something to do with this.

He was part of the Canada Company, set up to develop land and encourage settlers to what was then known as Upper Canada.  

In his novel Bogle Corbet (1831), John Galt describes life as a settler - leaving homeland and family, starting in a new, unknown place, clearing forests, building homes, the extreme weather conditions - it is not an autobiography, but Galt was writing from his own experiences and that of many of the people he met during his time in Canada.

Galt and the Canada Company had many differences, and he returned to Britain and died here in Greenock in 1839.  However Guelph is not his only legacy in Canada.  His sons settled there and became very much part of society in their adopted land.

The Greenockian