Update! The Clarks of Bendochy
Detail of 1865 map of Bendochy parish showing Craigie Den
Sometimes doing ancestry you have a breakthrough and it’s such a great feeling!
Today I was able to go back two generations in the Clark line and find the father and grandfather of David Clark 1770.
Ancestry Tree showing WIlliam Clark’s family at St Fink, Bendochy, Perthshire
In a previous post “The Clarks of Bendochy” I explained how Lizzie’s great grandfather William Clark c 1813 was from Bendochy, which is north and east of Blairgowrie in Perthshire.
David and his son (an older brother of William) lived at Craigie Den and today I found a map which shows the very place - it’s a road in the St Fink area and there are just a couple of houses there so it’s likely that one of them was the Clark home.
As you can imagine, David Clark is a common name and it turns out that it is REALLY common in this area of Scotland. On the Scotland’s People website you can look up surnames by place and see where the earliest recorded person lived and from there track families using a spreadsheet. This is a great way to break through the “brick walls”.
I found an Ordnance Survey record of place names from the 1800s and when the original mapmakers went around they checked with local people to make sure they had the right names. Lucky for me, in St Fink David Clark was named, along with a David Anderson. I did some digging, using birth and marriage records, census data, valuation rolls, and area maps, and was able to track the Clark and Anderson families who lived in St Fink for over a hundred years, from 1700 to 1870.
OS1/25/9/8 Perthshire Ordnance Survey Name Books 1859-1862
I found that David Clark 1770 (father of David Clark in document above) was likely the son of Alexander Clark 1738 who was likely the son of David Clark c 1700.
The Anderson line goes back even further - David Anderson Esq. b 1783, the neighbor of my ancestor, was the owner of the Chapelton farm south of Craigie Den and other properties in the Hill of St Fink. His father, grandfather, and great grandfather lived there since the late 1600s.
Zoomed out detail showing Chapelton Farm (lower)
In 1772 the families intermarried when David Anderson Esq’s father James married Janet Clerk, the sister of my ancestor Alexander Clark 1738. Alexander farmed the Chapelton farm and raised his family there. So many David’s and Alexanders in both families!
You can see between Craigie Den and Chapelton there are some buildings labelled St Fink and Chapel. The Anderson’s lived at this house, next to a medieval burial ground and foundations of the Chapel of St Findeach the Virgin, which originally belonged to Cupar Abbey.
One of the Andersons was digging around and found some skulls, leading to the archeological exploration of the site in the late 1800s.
Chapelton Farm from the Hill of St Fink
Horse Tax Rolls 1797 showing Peter Clerk at Chapelton owned 3 horses
Valuation rolls show that George Kinloch M.P owned property in Bendochy (Blacklaw Farm). He was William Clark’s landlord in 1841 when William moved to the Kinloch estate in Meigle so maybe he knew him from growing up in Bendochy?
Scott and I didn’t get to St Fink on our June trip but I’ll be going back next year!