Last Saturday I went to the library to wind up my research. What we found was the 1841 census. Mind you, Helen Hastie went to America in 1837 (or '38), so they had left. However, I gained some interesting info from the census.
- There were other Hasties still in Leadhills in 1841. They were most likely relatives; there were many of the same first names.
- Most of them were miners.
- There was one who was a Hand Loom Weaver. This lends much credence to Nancy and John Hastie's (John is a descendant of Helen's brother) impression that at least the father, John, was a weaver rather than a miner. It tells us that yes, there were hand loom weavers in Leadhills in that era.
I also found several other family names: Alston and Bramwell ( women who married Hasties in prior generations).
I visited this farm that was the home of Robert Burns from 1788-1791. Here he wrote much of his most famous work including "Auld Lang Syne" and "Tam O'Shanter". What does this have to do with us? Well, john Fenn (a first cousin of Dingy Watson) told me that the story in the family went that one of the women in the family was named Jean Armour after Robert Burns' paramour and wife, that the 2 families were great friends, and that in fact Robert Burns was her godfather and held her at her christening. This would most likely have been Jean Armour Sloan, the mother of Helen Hastie. I don't have total birth records for this yet, but it all seems to hang together with dates etc. So, visiting there, I was able to imagine that some ancestors had been there too.
The farm sits in a beautiful spot on the banks of the River Nith. Burns had been offered the lease of his choice of 3 different farms, and he chose what appealed to his poetic imagination. (Boy does this sound familiar!) Unfortunately it was the least productive, or "worst" as the caretaker told me, of the 3 farms. So after 3 short years during which he was forced to get a day job as exciseman for the county, Burns said (to paraphrase) "to hell with farming, it's a Godforsaken occupation" and gave up on it.
It was fun to see what a Scottish farm of that time looked like, with the walled-in barnyard floored in cobblestone with central drain, the walled-in small fruit orchard, the old implements, and so on. I have photos which I know Peter, Forrest, Dad, and others will be interested in.
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Incidentally, Bramwell is also the name of the Bronte brother...they were in England, of course, not Scotland. But how common is that name? And of course there were so fewer many people then than now. The likelihood of being related to someone else was so much greater than now.