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Introduction
by Bill
Fernie
Since Caithness.org has grown to
contain ever more information on all aspects of the county it has
seemed more and more likely that there is sufficient interest to
deal with Caithness history on a larger scale. Many topics are
covered by articles from Caithness Field Club Bulletins.
However, although there are many books covering aspects of Caithness
history both more recent and in the distant past few have the
breadth and coverage of Calder's History of Caithness. Even
though the second Edition was published in 1887 and as J T Calder
himself says the work is gleaned from a variety of sources available
at the time and put into a chronological order and written up it is
still one of the most comprehensive works on Caithness.
We also have many photographs of Caithness with which to illustrate
many of the places mentioned by Calder as in our Castle Section.
Chapter V is therefore already complete.
It is worth bearing
in mind when reading this history that it is written in a somewhat
old fashioned style and may have references or attitudes that
prevailed at the time and would not be held now. Certain
prejudices held by the author may be objectionable to modern day
readers. Bear in mind that the writer is in the second part of
the nineteenth century and his references to the here and now are
long past.
We will begin with page one and add Prefaces and list of contents
later to match each chapter as work progresses. As with the
Caithness Castles links will be made to other sources where
appropriate and to other information already on Caithness.org
Please feel free to send in any
comments on the text or point out errors. email
[email protected]
9 November 2003
PEDIGREE OF JOHN SINCLAIR, ESQUIRE OF BARROCK
17 April 2003
Appendix 5
- The Earls Of Caithness Of The Sinclair Family
Appendix 5 - Pedigree of the Mey Family
Index to J.T.Calder's "Sketch of the...
Index to
J.T.Calder's "Sketch of the Civil and Traditional History of Caithness
from the Tenth Century" 2nd Edition with Historical Notes by Thomas
Sinclair M.A Published by William Raw,Wick,1887 by
Sara-Jayne Donaldson - Researcher and Genealogist
You can order it direct from -
Sara-Jayne Donaldson, 3 The Crescent, Glengolly KW14 7XL.
£10 (£1-05 2nd and £1-30 1st
class) Overseas email Sara at
[email protected]
to check postage.
18 March 2003
More Appendix Pages Added
Valuation of the County in 1760 and 1798
Earls of Caithness of the Sinclair Family after separate Earldom
Armorial Bearings of the Earls of Caithness
Pedigree of the Mey Family
Nearly 100 pages still to
come.......................................
17 March 2003
Appendix
3 - Extracts From Old Inventories Of the Titles Of
the Estate Of Malcolm Groat Of Warse
the publication of the History has fallen a bit behind schedule.
Not a very exciting part of the history so far but contains some
interesting items and shows the detaisl of record keeping in use hundreds
of years ago.
9 October 2002
Appendix 2
EXTRACTS FROM OLD INVENTORIES
OF THE TITLES OF THE ESTATE
OF MALCOLM GROAT OF WARSE.
A fairly mundane listing of titles and
who left what to whom. It has some old language and
abbreviations that take a bit of understanding but if you persevere
you will mange some of them. Perhaps someone will one day
supply an up to date version for faster reading.
7 September 2002
Appendix 2 - Dwelling houses, Dress, Etc
3 September 2002
Appendix 2 - Superstition In Caithness
A short section mentioning superstition
and witches in Caithness.
29 August 2002
Appendix 2 -
Memoranda Connected With Public Roads In the County Of Caithness
Ever wondered how the Causewaymire road
to Thurso or the Wick Bridge was ever built then here is your
answer.
26 August 2002
Appendix Begins
If you have been following this history you will know by now
that although the last chapter is now in place there is a long way
to go. The old style of the bookk menas that much valuable
information is contained at the end in the appendix, Postscript and
Notes to the Second Edition, Miscellaneous and Notes on Caithness in
1887.
So here we go first with
Ancient State Of Husbandry
24 August 2002
Chapter 15
Completed
The final part of chapter 15 covers
Richard Oswald and the Oswald Family
13 August 2002
Chapter 15
Begins
Chapter 15 deals with some of the
famous lay people of Caithness. We begin with Sir John
Sinclair (1754 - 1835) famous for his agricultural improvement
schemes, his "Code of Agriculture" and "Statistical
Account of Scotland". In 1793 his ideas on the economy shone
through when he took instant action to relive the lack of finance
of merchants by speeding up credit facilities in various places thus
possible alleviating a collapse generally.
30 July 2002
Chapter Fourteen
Begins
A few accounts of ministers and school
teachers. We start with Alexander Pope of Reay.
Also completed is the
Table of Contents. From
this you will see that although the chapters are coming to an end
there is a huge amount of information in the Appendix, Postscript,
notes and Miscellaneous sections. This reflecting and
old fashioned style of setting out a book. Nowadays most of
the information in the final sections would probably have been
included in chapters within the main body of the text. So
there is a lot more to come...................
23 July 2002
Chapter
Thirteen
Completed.
18 July 2002
Chapter Twelve
Completed
13 July 2002
Chapter Twelve
Begins
8 July 2002
Chapter Eleven
The whole chapter is completed being
one of the shorter ones and concentrating on the famous Battle of
Altimarlach.
A poem
on the battle can be found in the Appendix (Still to
be completed) is already
in the poetry section
3 July 2002
Chapter Ten -
Completed
Readers who have not see this history
before might be interested to know that the appendix listings to
this work are quite long, running to almost 100 pages. They
include some very interesting information on many aspects of
Caithness in different periods. The Appendix section will be
tackled after Chapter 15 has been completed.
1 July 2002
Chapter Ten -
First Half
28 June 2002
Chapter Nine
Completed
19 June 2002
Chapter Nine -
Middle Section
18 June 2002
Chapter 9
Begins
7 June 2002
Chapter 8 Second
Half
5 June 2002
Chapter 8
Begins
26 May 2002
Chapter 7
- Second Half
21 May 2002
Chapter 7
- First half.
26 April 2002
Chapter 6
- second half now completed.
22 April 2002
Chapter 6
- First half
1 April 2002
Chapter Four
Completed
25 March 2002
Chapter Four
begins with war in Caithness. A battle at the hill of
Clairdon two miles east of Thurso, assassination, retribution,
fighting the Norwegians slaughter at Murkle Bay. More battles and
the Pope and Bishops get involved
5 March 2002
Chapter Three
is now completed. In this chapter Sweyn the famous
Caithness pirate enters and departs the story. Calder recounts
some of the stories of his adventures, murders and general
plundering in the north and as far as Cornwall and Ireland.
24 February 2002
Chapter Two completed. We
have decided to put all of the notes tot he bottom of the page to
make the narrative easier to follow. Chapter One will be
revised later once we have completed the rest of the history.
A few smaller notes remain to be added in chapter one.
Chapter One
Index & Introduction
Page One
Page
Two
Page Three
Page Four
Page
Five Page
Six
Page Seven
Page Eight
14 February 2002
Chapter Two -
Page One
The Original Inhabitants of the County
- Standing Stones in Latheron - Subdued by Sigurd, the Norwegian
Earl of Orkney.
9 February 2002
Page Eight
- Chapter One Main Text Complete
The final part of chapter eight is now
in. Decided to hurry on with the main text and come back later
so many of the references and notes. This is because we are
aware that many people are now waiting on the main text and we want
to try to get the main part up as fast as possible. We will
continue to add links to other parts of the web site where we think
this would be useful. So far we have mainly linked to the castles
section but where any pictures or other material seem relevant we
will link over to that also. Eight pages on the web site is
actually 48 pages of text in the book. We will start chapter
two in the next few days. Target is to complete over 12 months
- but we may manage to speed up depending on time available.
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