1. DIASPORA. 2. SLAVERY. 3. CLEARANCES. 4. HEADSTONE ICONOGRAPHY.

This headstone is near the entrance of the Old Urquhart Cemetery. Urquhart has a population of just 420 people and is a pretty remote farming settlement in north Moray.

It turns out the real story is not Thomas Gilzean but his nephew, Alexander Gilzean (who is not the ‘Alex’ mentioned on the stone). Alexander Gilzean was born in 1777 at Nether Meft, on the Innes House Estate near Urquhart. The Innes House Estate still exists and today is a popular, award-winning, location for the weddings of the wealthy (photo below). His father was James Gilzean, but it was his mother Henrietta Kelly whose family connections would prove most influential in deciding Alexander’s travels. Henrietta came from Alves, near Elgin, and had a cousin George Forteath, a half-brother John, and a cousin William Falconer, who were established in Jamaica in the 1770s and 1780s.

Alexander Gilzean emigrated to Jamaica in the 1790s where he worked as an attorney. Throughout his life, Alexander seems to have been in receipt of considerable largesse from his family, mainly from the successful and influential Thomas (it seems he may have been Provost of Inverness) referred to on this headstone. Records show that Thomas paid for his shoes, clothing, furniture, books and Latin lessons but also regularly sent cash and picked up his debts. Interestingly the go-between for this largesse was one Thomas Sellar, the father of the notorious ‘factor’ Patrick Sellar. For those not familiar with the name, Patrick Sellar is, almost inarguably, the most infamous figure in the Highland Clearances since it was he who unsympathetically drove the tenants from the Sutherland Estate and was later charged, and acquitted, of culpable homicide.

To cut a very long and detailed story a little shorter we can say without fear of contradiction that, in addition to being incapable of looking after money, Alexander Gilzean plus his younger brother Thomas, and at least one cousin bought, sold, and ‘owned’ a number of slaves who worked their plantations in the West Indies. In 1817 the Jamaica Almanacs show Alexander as proprietor of the ‘Dunvegan’ plantation in St Tomas in the Vale. Dunvegan was a 47-acre property accommodating between 28 and 52 slaves at any one time. He is also recorded as having been the manager of a plantation when an enslaved man – Alexander Kelly – was flogged to death, supposedly for not ‘surrendering a borrowed horse’.

As if all of that was not sufficient, at some point around 1810, Alexander began a relationship with Sarah Gilzean. Age 25 years and described as “African” in the Slave Register of 1817, she was registered as the property of Alexander Gilzean along with her sons Thomas age 6 and James age 2. In his 1832 return, Gilzean records the manumission (freeing of slaves) since 1829 of both these sons, along with 3 further mixed-race children, Henrietta Kelly, Alexander and Isabella. There is, however, no indication of any formal manumission for Sarah. Much later, his will makes provision for Sarah to have use of Dunvegan – although it was to be owned by James and Isabella.

From the Legacies of British Slavery, “Alexander returned to Scotland in the mid-1840s, although there is no evidence that Sarah travelled with him (she is not found in the 1851 census for Scotland nor in the statutory deaths after 1855). He died in Aberlour, Banffshire, in February 1848. Among other bequests, Alexander left his Jamaica estate, Dunvegan to “my reputed children” James, Henrietta, and Isabella, share and share alike, their “mother Sarah Gilzean to have the use of part for her lifetime”.

The threads of the slave trade are long indeed. From a minuscule farming village in Moray to Jamaica and Africa.

Alexander’s eldest son Thomas was left £500 but the census and other public records suggest that his father’s money failed to be sufficient to guarantee him a comfortable existence. The 1851 census has him living at 82 Parkside Street, Edinburgh (photo below), his age recorded as 35, and his birthplace as St Thomas in the Vale, Jamaica, “British subject”, with an 11-year-old son, James, and an 8-year-old daughter Henrietta Kelly. His wife, Barbara’s, age was recorded as 21, and his occupation as “tailor” and at his death from tuberculosis in 1868 he was described as “journeyman tailor”. In the early 1900s TB was identified as a disease of tailors.

As for the iconography. We have seen a number of the ‘primitive’ and more sophisticated carvings on headstones elsewhere. There are a number of the skull and crossbones in this area, and at Cromarty over on the Black Isle is the ‘Pirate’s graveyard’. It seems to be widely accepted by those with more expertise in this field, that the images are simply a way of conveying a message or sentiment when a significant proportion of the population was still illiterate. But . . . we have not seen another exactly like this. There are, however, a few almost identical in the oldest graveyards in America e.g. one pictured below from Bennington Centre Cemetery, Vermont was carved by the itinerant stonemason Ebenezer Soule who left others across Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So, it may be that a particular design is simply the ‘signature’ or ‘speciality’ of a carver. Or perhaps because it was relatively simple to execute?

If you know of any similar carvings, or any which have caught your attention, please let us know (with a photo if possible).