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The Dragoon and Cattleman of Strathmore John Cormack (1875–1948), dragoon of the line, ploughman and cattleman
(Alyth, India, Strathmore and the Carse of Gowrie) Arriving at the great great grandchildren of Alexander Cormack we meet men and women who fall within the scope of living memory. Some of them are the grandparents of people living today, my own grandfather and grandmother included. At a superficial level not much may seemed to have changed in the lives of rural people in Perthshire and Angus. Whilst improvements were made both in mechanisation and accommodation, farming progressed much as it had, certainly as far as the ploughmen and cattleman were concerned. The hand plough, drawn by a pair of Clydesdale horses, would continue to be used up until the mid-1900s and the graip, the long pronged fork used by the cattleman to tease hay and lift muck, must have seemed to be an eternal creation. Yet things were changing. Less men were required to work the land and even less wanted to, as urban employment offered seemingly better conditions. For some the answer was to seek far-off shores from where to look for their fortune. For others, as in generations past, the army or the sea offered a chance to escape the land. The Cormacks were a part of all this. One of the remarkable things about the fourteen children of James Cormack and Christina Anderson is that not one of them died in infancy and they all reached working age. Nearly all the men started their working lives with the plough and then moved onto other employment as the years progressed: Alexander the quarryman, James the postman, David the oil-works foreman, John the soldier, carter and cattleman, Andrew the ship donkey-man, William the butler and fireman, Peter the sailor, to name just some. Mary emigrated with her husband and perhaps Christina did too. Fred, posted to England during World War I , found a wife and remained. Whilst many of the Cormacks did stay in Perthshire and Angus, their children and grandchildren remaining to this day, in many ways the old ties were broken and horizons, if not the fortunes, greatly expanded. What of my grandfather?
It is a strange thing indeed to be writing about your own grandfather, especially when you have never met him and he died years before you were born. "Big" Jock Cormack, as he later became known, came into this world in New Alyth, one of the several places where his parents lived during the 1870s. Nothing is known of his childhood and by the time of the 1891 census he is working away from home, probably at a farmtoun elsewhere in Perthshire or Angus. Other than his birth, the first recorded event in John's life occurred when he joined the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Highland Regiment (Black Watch) as a Dragoon of the Line (No: 6413) at Kirriemuir on 17th April 1896. He was aged 20, had been living away from his parents for over three years having been working as a ploughman. His "Description on Enlistment" shows him to be 5ft 115/8 inches tall, weighing 137 lbs, with a chest measurement of 35-37 inches. His complexion is fresh, eyes blue and hair dark brown. His religion is given as Presbyterian. The only distinctive marks of peculiarities are a scar on the right buttock and slight varicose veins in the left leg. From John's service record is seems the Regiment served at "Home" until the end of December 1897 when he went overseas to India having being posted to the 1st Battalion in the process. In mid July 1899 he was transferred to the Mountain Artillery of the Royal Regiment of Artillery in Bengal as a Gunner. John served in India for nearly 11 years, being given one furlough home in early 1904. It seems he became sick during 1908 and was home on an invalid posting between October and December of that year. He was then given a Home posting and remained with the Royal Artillery in London until leaving the service on 30 April 1909, after 13 years and 14 days service. Quite how John met his wife, Teen Nairn is not within anyone's memory. Teen was the daughter of George Nairn and Mary Strachan and was born at East Bendochy Farm in 1887. By 1905 she was working as a domestic servant at Clunie Manse. Teen attended Clunie Kirk, as did some of John's brothers and sisters. With the Cormacks at Hawkhill and the Nairns only a walk away at Craigend of Gourdie it is not difficult to see how a courtship might develop. The couple married at Craigend of Gourdie in November 1909. John was working at a ploughman at Middleton in Kilry at the time. Their first years of married life saw them living in Leslie Street, Blairgowrie where John worked first as a ploughman and then, briefly, a coal carter. Although Blairgowrie remained their home during this time Teen gave birth to three of her first four children, Helen, George and Christina, at her parent's house at Craigend of Gourdie. This was a common Scottish custom. John junior, or Jackie as he was called by the family, was the exception, being born at 24 Leslie Street, Blairgowrie. By 1917 the family had flitted to Cargill where Tom was born, John now being employed as a cattleman, an occupation he would continue in for the rest of his life. In subsequent years John took fees at wider flung farmtouns with my mother Ann being born at East Nevay in Angus and the twins Clare and James at Pitcoag, Glencarse. It seems that John spent most of the rest of his life working in the Carse of Gowrie, that stretch of fertile land on the north bank of the River Tay between Perth and Dundee, at touns such as Gallowflats and, lastly, Mains on Inchture. It was not unusual for a ploughman to progress to the byre and the care of the cattle that inhabited it. The ploughman's work was hard and the physical demands were such that it could not be continued with indefinitely. Rheumatism was the curse of the furrow and, coupled with the ill-health resulting from his army service, it is not surprising to find John fulfilling this different role in the farmtoun. John would have reigned supreme in the byre (cowshed). Here the cows were fed, the bulls called to do their duty, the resulting calves born and their mothers' milk drawn into pails by the maids. For all this the cattleman, or baillie as he was sometimes called, was held responsible by the farmer. Not least of his responsibilities was the midden and a good part of the working day was spent mucking out the greep (the aisle between the cattle stalls) and removing the dung to the heap outside the byre where it would be left to rot and ferment until the time came for it to be taken to the fields. The midden was a vital part of a farm's wealth. When a farm was sold it would be measured and valued, forming part of the sale and sometimes fetching a high price. The quality of the midden was a large factor in determining the quality of the crop and then the quality of the beasts which fed upon it. The cattleman's day began at 4.00am. He was the earliest riser in the farmtoun. Turnips and silage would be fed to the beasts, the byre mucked out and fresh straw laid before the milkmaids arrived for their early morning shift. These maids, fee'd girls (sometimes lads too) and wives of farm servants, leapfrogged with their milking stools from cow to cow, pulling the teats and filling their pails until hurrying off to their next duty of the day. In the afternoon and evening the whole ritual would be repeated. The rest of the morning would be spent cleaning and clipping the beasts. Then in the early afternoon there were turnips to be pulled and brought from the neep-shed to the byre before milking again. With up to 50 cattle in his care and each eating up to 112lb of turnips a day John would have had to barrow in something like two and a half tons of turnips inm the same period resulting in one and half tons of dung to be barrowed out again to the midden. In the summer the sweat would flow profusely although it is unlikely his obligatory bonnet and waistcoat would ever have been removed. In the winter he would have been chilled to the bone. Perhaps the early evening would be spent bruising corn for cattle feed before the evening milking. Last of all the beasts would be fed again, the greep cleared and new straw laid. Only then would the cattleman think of returning home for his own supper and the tending of his own small crop of kail or potatoes—provided of course that a sick or calving beast did not bring him back to the byre. His day was the longest on the farmtoun by far, with even the Sabbath bringing but little respite—the muck still had to be cleared and the beasts still fed and milked. Teen Cormack's last pregnancy was a hard one. She was carrying twins and to ease her burden her youngest child, Ann (my mother) was given to the care of Teen's sister Mary until after the birth. Ann had whooping cough which made things even more demanding. The boy twins, Clare and James, were born at the Cottar House at Pitcoag on 8th January 1921. Though both boys were healthy their mother was not and Tom Cormack remembers how his elder brother George was sent to run over the hill into the nearest village to find a Doctor to come and tend his mother. Teen was taken to the County Fever Hospital in Perth where she died of perpeural fever (childbirth fever) several days later. The aftermath of this family tragedy saw the children separated with Helen and Christina sent to a children's home in Perth; George and John to a similar home in Dundee; Ann to her Uncle Stewart Cormack in Stranraer. Clare and James were eventually adopted. Clare went to the USA. What happened to James is unclear although there is a family tradition that he may have gone to Canada. Tom stayed with his father. Given the nature of his life as a cattleman it is hard to see how John could have kept his children together. Several years later John did remarry, to Margaret Kilgour of Kettins. Little is known about Margaret but they had two children, David and Jessie. John died, a retired cattleman, at Mains of Inchture in 1948. © 2000 Origins.net and Neil Pheasant | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
