The MacAskills
by Bill MacAskill
Tacksman-led Emigration The upshot of these arguments was that Kenneth kept the farm at the agreed rent, charterd
a ship and set sail for America with a large party of his own tenants. The ship sailed in
1811 and, running the blockade of American ports, docked safely in Wilmington.
(American ports were under blockade at this time as a prelude to the 1812 war) Some
of the party stayed in North Carolina, others went to South Carolina where they joined
MacAskill kinsmen who had immigrated to America before independence.Many years later Kenneth MacAskill was to be accused of taking these people away against their will and under false pretences. John MacKenzie, factor of the estate, was asked for his version of the story. He replied, "I believe they went of their own accord. It may or may not have been the case. I cannot say. The tenant of the farm went to America and brought them to his own land there, and remained with them for two years, and then left them, as we are given to understand, in good circumstances". What can be said about this early form of emigration to America is that it was far from an isolated instance as the Assynt experience shows. It was a period when tacksmen of considerable means were investing in land in the Carolinas and chartering sound vessels with reliable crews to take willing emigrants to America. Allan MacDonald, another Inverness-shire tacksman (husband of Flora MacDonald who assisted Prince Charlie) went over with tenants, stayed a while and then returned in exactly the same circumstances as Kenneth MacAskill. Many others did likewise while some only arranged the passages.
So popular did this form of well managed, well However, immediately they discovered the economic rewards of eviction they had the law repealed. Starving crofters driven to the crowded shorelines became redundant cheap labour when the kelp industry failed. They became prime candidates for forced emigration.
|
fed and reasonably comfortable passage to the
new world become that the landlords, before their discovery of possible fortunes from sheep
rather than people, passed an act of parliament in an attempt to put a stop to this form of tacksman
led emigration and its resultant loss of rental income.