'A Thoroughly Domestic People': Family Migration from North Western Scotland in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract

"Five hundred years hence a few of the most aristocratic families of the great Australian Republic will boast of the distinction of being able to trace their Ancestors in the Highland Emigration Book of 1852-3." The author of those words was an English civil-servant, Sir Charles Trevelyan, and they were addressed to Sir John McNeill who was Chairman of the Board of Supervision for the Poor Law in Scotland. Trevelyan was waxing enthusiastic about the operation of the Highland and Island Emigration Society of which he was a founder and permanent chairman. With the willing co-operation of McNeill and the support of the Chairman of the Emigration Commissioners, Sir Thomas Murdoch, he had launched in 1852 a scheme for assisting emigration from the north-western parts of Scotland which, he imagined, would relieve both the overpopulation of the Highlands and Islands and the underpopulation of the Australian colonies.