Spring Drive To Church Graveyard Amulree Strathbraan Highland Perthshire Scotland

Tour Scotland Spring travel video of a road trip drive, with Scottish bagpipes and drums music North on the A9, then West on the A822 road on ancestry visit to the church and graveyard in Amulree, Glenquaich, Strathbraan, Highland Perthshire. Amulree Church was built between 1743 and 1752 and remodelled in 1882 by John Douglas of Edinburgh who was also responsible for Palladianising Blair Castle in 1736 and designing Taymouth Castle in 1746. It is built to a simple design. The church contains copies of records of the large number of people who stayed in the area prior to mass emigration, mostly to North Easthope, Canada, in the early 19th Century. The churchyard has wonderful some interesting Scottish gravestones.

The entire population of Glenquaich, a lovely heather clad glen running inland from Loch Tay to the hamlet of Amulree, and where over 500 people lived, was evicted by the second Marquis of Breadalbane. The evictions were carried out before the houses were set alight. The people decided to emigrate to Canada, and in particular to an untamed area of Ontario owned by the Canada Land Company. Eight or nine families had arrived there voluntarily in the summer of 1832 after a voyage lasting three months. Amongst these was John Crerar from Amulree who was older than the average immigrant. He was a tall, well built man who had been factor on the Shian estate in Glenquaich, and also a whisky smuggler, running distilled spirit from illicit stills in the glens to the towns. The excisemen were closing in and John Crerar emigrated to Ontario to avoid arrest. Here he found employment constructing the Twentieth Line Road into an untamed region of 44,000 acres known as the North Easthope Concession, in south Ontario. This was named after Sir John Easthope, a director of the Canada Land Company and had first been surveyed just three years before in 1829. After the Breadalbane evictions began in 1834 more and more families from central Highland Perthshire began to emigrate to North Easthope. They left with great sadness. But the immigrants buckled down to the task of carving a new homeland out of the wilderness.

All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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