The 1806 Voyage of the Spencer:: A Search for the Scottish Origins of James Hector Munn

By Xlibris US

In the summer of 1806 the vessel the Spencer left Oban, Scotland headed for Canada to pick up a load of lumber. But first it came to anchor off the island of Colonsay and took aboard 115 Gaelic speaking emigrants and their baggage. They were going to Prince Edward Island where Lord Selkirk had promised them land to be bought outright or on contract.
The passengers were related in some way to two family heads named McNeill and McMillan. For example 20 year old James Munn had just married Elizabeth McMillan and their siblings James McMillan and Ann Munn would be married as soon as they reached PEI.
Why these couples and their other family members wanted to leave Colonsay is the story told here. Events of Scottish history may have made it necessary to emigrate at that time and we speculate as to how it was financially possible.
The McMillans and the Munns would fit with prior Selkirk Settlers by taking up property as neighbors in Belle River and Wood Islands where they would raise double cousin children, start a school, start a church and begin businesses and farms.
Eventually, after two generations at Belle River, circumstances urged grandson James H. Munn to migrant to western Canada and on to the Washington Territory where homestead land was available to hardened pioneers. The story is only one many that track the western migration from Europe to the Americas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493151400

Book preview

cover.jpg

Copyright © 2014 by Hector John Munn.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013922239

ISBN:            Hardcover      978-1-4931-5139-4

                      Softcover         978-1-4931-5138-7

                      eBook               978-1-4931-5140-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/13/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

143853

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I INTRODUCTION

A.   The Spencer

B.   Colonsay and Its People

II THE SPENCER PASSENGER LISTS

A.   Handwritten List 1806

B.   The List Interpreted

C.   Adjusted List

D.   Families of the Spencer: Wedding and Baptismal Records

E.   Guidelines for Family Groupings

F.   Family Ranks and Relationships

III BEFORE THE SPENCER

A.   Christian Beginnings

1.   Colonsay: An Island at the Edge

2.   Church Beginnings

3.   Church of Scotland Versus Charles I

4.   The Restoration

B.   Colonsay Family Names

C.   Clans, Lairds, and Crofts

D.   Back to the Stewart Royals

E.   Bonnie Prince Charles

F.   The Highland Clearances

G.   Lord Selkirk and the Selkirk Settlers

H.   Changes Come to Colonsay

I.   The Exodus Begins

J.   McNeill, Munn, and McMillan Families’ Back Stories

1.   The McNeills: Relatives of the Laird of Colonsay?

2.   The Munns: The Migrants

a.   Marriage at Kilfinan?

b.   Clan Lamont and Clan Campbell, 1646

c.   One Hundred Years Later, 1745

d.   Duncan John Munn and Boats: A Theory

3.   The McMillans

a.   Boats and the McMillans

b.   The Unofficial Visit of Prince Charles to Colonsay

c.   Hector McMillan Prospers

K.   The Selection of Passengers

L.   Relatives Who Stayed Behind

1.   James Munn, the Flax Man and a Winnower

2.   Donald Munn and His Twin Sons

M.   Dh’fhalbh iadsan, chatill iad a chaoidh (They Left, Never to Return)

1.   Provisions for the Journey

2.   The Passage

IV THE NEW HOME: PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, CANADA

A.   English and French Colonies in the New World

B.   French Versus British

C.   Selkirk Settlers of 1803

D.   A New Home for the Colonsay Émigrés

1.   A Winter Camp

2.   Belle River and Wood Islands: Lot 62

3.   The Munn Brothers

E.   James Munn and Elizabeth McMillan

F.   Neil Munn and Elizabeth MacLeod

G.   Naming Tradition Modified

H.   Hector (1826) Munn and Sarah Munn (1832)

I.   James Hector Munn (1864)

1.   Belle River: A Sad Place

2.   A New Life in the West

3.   Unfinished Business

V RECOVERING MUNN FAMILY HISTORY

A.   The Munns of Washington State

B.   Prince Edward Island Contacts

C.   A Guided Tour of PEI

D.   Discovery of Colonsay Past

E.   A Visit to the Highlands and Islands

F.   Colonsay Island: A Real Place!

VI DISCUSSION AND CRITIQUE

A.   The Bonnie Prince Charles Connection

B.   The Church of Scotland Connection

1.   St. John’s Parish, Belfast, PEI

2.   Origins of Church of Scotland

3.   Duncan Munn and Kilfinan Parish

4.   Free Church of Scotland, Wood Islands

C.   The Lamont Clan Connection

VII CONCLUSION

APPENDICES

Appendix I: The Ship Spencer, an article by Douglas C. Macmillan, 1981.

Appendix II: Handwritten List of passengers imported to P.E.I. on the ship Spencer 1806. (Accession Number 2702/883C, The Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island)

Appendix III: Interpretation of: Handwritten Passenger list of Passengers Imported in the Spencer of New Castle. Hortten Brown, Master, from Oban, N. Britain, 22 Sept. 1806.

Appendix IV: Adjusted Spencer Passenger List

Appendix V: Hector Macmillan Family Genealogy, about 1977. Prepared by James S. MacMillan, a listed family member, 480 Sycamore Circle, Danville, Calif., USA, 94526 (last known address).

Appendix VI: Duncan Munn Family Genealogy.

Appendix VII: Subscribers of Wood Islands Free Church of Scotland, 1853. From records of Edgar Munn, Belle River, PEI, deceased.

REFERENCES

MAP AND PICTURE CREDITS

PREFACE

GRANDFATHER JAMES HECTOR Munn talked very little about his past. He did say that we must remember his grandparents were from Scottish islands and were highlanders. They were pioneers of Prince Edward Island. Life on Prince Edward Island was difficult so he left to find his future in the west. He homesteaded near Port Townsend, Washington Territory. Homesteaders had to be U.S. citizens. He gave up his Canadian rights and he deeded his half inheritance of a PEI farm to his younger brother, John Daniel Munn.

His children and grandchildren began searching for his past by visiting PEI in the 80’s. A visit to the Provincial Archives of PEI turned up the handwritten passenger list of the British ship the Spencer that brought 115 residents of Colonsay Island, Scotland to PEI in 1806. Among the passengers were James Munn and Elizabeth McMillan, James Hector Munn’s grandparents. Also were their parents Duncan Munn and Flora Brown and Malcolm McMillan and Graciel McNeill. Nearly all of the passengers were related in some way. Who were they? Where is Colonsay? Why did they leave? Why did they go to PEI? How did they pay for the ship’s passage? So many questions followed.

It seemed that only a trip to Colonsay could answer these questions. So in August of 1995 a trip was made to Scotland. We rented a car to take by ferry from Kennacraig on the Kintyre Peninsula to Scalasaig on Colonsay Island. We were aided in our quest by Mary Carmichael who was researching the more recent history of Colonsay and had visited Munn families in PEI. She suggested bed and breakfast accommodations and noted that her parents Bill and Lillian Carmichael would be on Colonsay at the time. We arrived on a Wednesday afternoon and left for Oban on Monday night.

There was time to explore the corners and hills of the island and cross over onto Oronsay on a day’s hike. At the only hotel on Colonsay there was a book store and we found a copy of Islands: Colonsay and Oronsay by Norman Newton. We were invited to have a meal with the Carmichaels and they had one of the few copies of Colonsay and Oronsay in the Isles of Argyll: Their History, by John Loder. They also had a copy of Mary Carmichael’s graduate thesis on more recent Colonsay/Oronsay history, which is soon to be published in book form. Colonsay became a new home. The visit was too brief.

On returning to the United States the research continued. Then in 2000 the internet was available. We discovered The Corncrake in which Kevin Byrne, the editor, posted marriage and baptismal records beginning in 1796. In these we found many names of Spencer passengers. Now the husbands and wives and children of families of the Spencer could be associated. The puzzle pieces of the passenger list began to fall into place.

The research began to identify other interesting issues. We learned that the Munn family could be a sept of the Lamont Clan. This is a clan that suffered one of the last tragedies of the old clan wars, the Dunoon Massacre. The marriage or James Mun and Bety McMillan may have taken place at Kilfinan rather than Colonsay. The sister of James Munn was Anne Munn McMillan, as she eventually married Elizabeth’s brother James. Ann claimed that her husband’s grandfather, Hector McMillan, was involved with a possible visit of Bonnie Prince Charles to Colonsay. The prince was on his way to a rising of highland Scottish warriors and hoped to regain the throne of England for the Stewart royals. It is unbelievable that anyone on Colonsay could have been that involved with the royal Stewart family misfortunes and the tragedy that followed with the Battle of Culloden. But it makes a great story.

Once across the Atlantic and on PEI, the emigrants from Colonsay go about becoming land-owners for the first time. What can be told about these 80 years is an ordinary story of winning the land and planting crops. Except that the second generation fell on bad times with the untimely death of Hector Munn. Son James Hector Munn decides that there may be a better life in the Canadian west. He left PEI on the train for Vancouver and eventually found himself in a new life as a homesteader in Washington Territory. He marries Ana Mae Edwards. Their story is told in another book titled Jim and Ana.

Scottish families have a custom of reusing names. So to clarify, the James Hector Munn of the book was born on Prince Edward Island in 1864. His father Hector was born on PEI in 1826, while James the Elder and Spencer passenger was born about 1784 on Colonsay Island or possibly near Kilfinan on the Cowal Peninsula.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE PUZZLE OF the Spencer passenger list could not be solved without the scholarship of Kevin Byrne. He has helped with details of data and supplied pictures that help to visualize Colonsay Island today.

Without the professional proof-reading help of Susan Fawver, a neighbor at Friendsview Retirement Center and good friend, the manuscript could not have been completed.

I

INTRODUCTION

THE WOODEN BRIGANTINE the Spencer became the bridge between two islands: Colonsay Island at the western edge of Scotland and Prince Edward Island at the eastern edge of Canada. Duncan Munn and his family left Argyllshire, in Gaelic-speaking Scotland, to find a new home in English-speaking North America. Their transport for this voyage was the Spencer. How Duncan Munn became a part of the journey and what happened to some of his children is the subject of this story.

The Duncan Munn family was not alone. Additional family groups gathered from the corners of Colonsay to the wharf at Scalasaig, the principal port of the island. The 115 emigrants traveled along with an unknown number of the ship’s crew. All would safely cross the North Atlantic to arrive at Pinette Harbor near Eldon, Prince Edward Island.

The late summer voyage in 1806 brought an end to a long story of the Scottish past for the families. It began a new story in a wilderness of the New World of eastern Canada and for some, on to western United States. Now, over 200 years later, we attempt to record this family story so that it will not be lost from memories that are fading fast.

This story of the Duncan Munn family is shared in part by about 10 other families, all from Colonsay, Scotland. Each family could trace origins to parts of Colonsay and perhaps to mainland Scotland. Each family left the shore of Pinette Harbor to start their future in this new land. The story of the Munn family is just one example of the story of the other Spencer families. It is also an example of how many families of Scotland, Great Britain and other European people left the struggles of the old country for the struggles of the new, hoping they would find new opportunities for living a better life.

To write about history of this type one is confronted with many questions. Is the information we discover accurate? What information is critical to the story and what must be left out to keep the story short? Sometimes there are stories for which the facts are in conflict. There is then the possibility of speculation as to the truth. Effort is made to point out where speculation and writer opinion may depart from received history. The reader will certainly make a choice or may even have knowledge of possible corrections. Please feel free to bring your knowledge on such points of interest to the writer’s attention. But give some space to what may seem like flights of fantasy into possibilities.

Questions remain when history is passed along verbally by elders. Names and dates are easily confused. Some family stories we would like to forget. Some records have been lost to decay, fire or flight. Much information never is recorded in the first place. Though much Scottish history is known in general, families