Janet Swanston

Janet Swanston was born in South Dunn in Watten Parish in 1797.  There is a farm named South Dunn and another named just Dunn, one called Bridge of Dunn and a wonderfully-named Dunn Inn with some appropriate words written beside it. 

Joking aside, it doesn't end there because there is another area named on the map as Crofts of South Dunn.  Basically, a croft was a very small farm which only provided subsistence farming and as the Highland way was to subdivide the lands amongst all sons, these could become very small indeed.  This tradition was leading to a crisis and it has been said that the Highland Clearances got there first before famine took the people away.  In the 1841 census, between another place with a humourous name, Snotterfield, and Toftingall there were 40 properties going under the description of Dun.  Only two or three would have been serious farms and the rest crofts, even though most tenants were described as farmers.  There is a separate page on the crofts of Caithness but basically they were on the poorer soil up the hill compared to the gentlemen farmers round Loch Watten where the most fertile land would be.  I think it's safe to assume that the McAdies and Swanstons were crofters rather than farmers but with husband William accredited with a size of 12 acres given in the 1861 census, this being equivalent to about 8 football pitches, maybe he could have made a go of it.  After his death Janet moved to son Alexander with 13 acres then son-in-law William with 30 of which 24 were arable, suggesting his was on the edge of the workable land.

Janet married local lad William Mackadie (one of several spellings) and stayed around South Dunn until they moved to Lanergill, about two hundred yards away, again another area of crofts with a bigger farm to lend its name to the area.  Curiously, a newer building in a different location in the area, originally built as a schoolhouse, has taken on the name Lanergill but shouldn't be confused with the original, now ruined, farms and crofts. 

The 1881 census throws us up an interesting fact.  Janet is listed as mother-in-law staying with William McAdie and his wife Margaret, who is indeed Janet's daughter.  This means that her daughter, a McAdie, married a McAdie.  Obviously Janet was a McAdie herself through marriage but her mother was also a McAdie by birth.  It was a reasonably common name in the area but I haven't looked in detail at how closely inbred they were.

This could be a problem though as there seemed to be a limited choice of partners in the widespread, sparsely-populated area.  Margaret had just married William having been single at the age of 43 in the previous census and in adjacent houses the husband and wife pairings had the age pairings 88/71, 69/50 and 44/60. Very odd. Maybe there just weren't very many choices around.  My best guess based on the variable ages on the censuses suggests that Janet was nine years younger than her own husband William McAdie.  Janet herself lived to 86, a good age considering when and where she lived.  She had been listed in the previous census as a retired farmer, suggesting that she got her hands dirty as well as looking after the house.