Tour Scotland short travel video clip, with Scottish music, of cottages and people on ancestry, genealogy, history visit to Hirta, Scottish Gaelic: Hiort, the largest island in the St Kilda archipelago in the Outer Hebrides. The islanders originally lived in houses strung along a main street, with plots of land and common ground on either side. In 1861 the landlord replaced the traditional thatched blackhouses with sixteen single storey cottages with chimneys and slate roofs. The islanders were vulnerable when weather prevented them from gathering food, or even destroyed their stores, as happened in the late summer of 1885, when the islanders corn, barley and potatoes were ruined in a bad storm. With the people facing starvation, on 16 September the minister sent a desperate plea for help. The message was placed sealed in a bottle on one of the miniature boats used for messages, and it was duly received on Harris. People on a visit to the island often recorded the number of inhabitants, but not their names. In the late seventeenth century St Kilda supported 180 inhabitants. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the population fluctuated but decreased overall, mainly as a result of disease and migration. An outbreak of smallpox in 1727 reduced the population dramatically to 42 people, and it was reported in 1758 that there were 88 islanders. Many of those recorded in the 1764 census were the families of new settlers from Isle of Skye and Harris: Gillies, MacQueen and McCrimmon replacing the old St Kilda names of MacDonald, Morrison and Campbell. The dietary needs of the islanders in 1764 are also recorded. It was said that each of them ate 36 eggs and 18 fouls daily, making a staggering total of 3,240 eggs and 1,620 birds. The departure of 36 islanders for Australia in 1852 caused a sudden drop in the population, which had stood at 112 in 1851. The 1861 census counted 71 islanders, and 50 years later in 1911 the islanders only numbered 74, and ten years later stood at 71. In the 1920s deaths and migrations saw a dramatic drop to only 43 islanders in 1927. Most adults pursued their traditional livelihoods, working their crofts, gathering and spinning wool, weaving tweed and fishing. Some of the inhabitants listed here, for example three of the younger Mackinnons at no. 1 Main Street and Finlay MacQueen at no. 2, were among the islanders who stayed to the end in 1930. At the start of 1930 the St Kilda community was in a precarious state. Only 36 islanders remained: thirteen men, ten women, eight girls and five boys. Only two resident families included more than two children, and among the adults there were six widows and three or four widowers. They formed 10 households, leaving unoccupied 6 of the 16 cottages that they rented from the landowner. On 29 August 1930 the islanders were evacuated. Officials found forestry work for the men, and most of them were settled at Lochaline near Oban, while other families went to live at Strome Ferry, Ross-shire, Culcabock near Inverness, and at Culross, Fife.
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