Sarah McLean — A Hidden Link?

Isabella (née McLean) Campbell is our great-great grandmother. She was born in 1801 on the western coast of Argyll, Scotland, at a remote farmstead called Arichonan. The farmstead was famous for an uprising among its farmers when they were evicted as part of the Highland Clearances in 1848. Two of Isabella’s brothers, Allan and Duncan, were indicted for violence during the uprising.

One of Isabella’s nieces, Sarah McLean, was the daughter of Allan. Sarah was born at Arichonan in 1835.

We’re taking a look at Sarah because she may have played a previously undiscovered role in her Aunt Isabella’s emigration to Canada in 1857.

Sarah first appeared on our radar when we found a Sarah McLean living with Isabella Campbell’s family in the 1841 Scotland census. The child, having the same surname as Isabella’s maiden name, sent us off on a search for a relative (or neighbor) who might logically be staying with the Campbell family. The only candidate we found was Allan McLean’s daughter. The match wasn’t perfect because she was listed as 12 years old when she should have been six. But censuses frequently had errors and this didn’t seem to be an insurmountable one.

Further piquing our curiosity was finding unexpected initials on a sampler that Isabella’s daughter Sarah Campbell made in 1854. The sampler had the initials of everyone in Sarah Campbell’s family, with a mysterious “S McL” thrown in. Considering that Sarah McLean was staying with the Campbell family in the 1841 census, it seemed possible that the initials stitched in 1854 represented Sarah McLean. If so, it also seemed likely that Sarah McLean was in close contact, or even staying with, her Aunt Isabella’s family again in 1854.

Considering that Sarah McLean’s parents emigrated to Canada some time between 1849 and 1851 when she was a teenager, it seemed unusual that she would stay behind in Scotland with her uncle and aunts … but census records show Sarah may have been a bit … shall we say … untethered from her family.

The 1841 Scottish census was the first one in which Sarah appeared — and appear she did. She showed up twice in Arichonan, at both her parents’ house and at her grandfather’s next door. Perhaps she was staying with her grandfather while the parents were dealing with her newborn (born the day of the census) sister. But as seen above, she also showed up with her Aunt Isabella Campbell’s family in the adjoining parish. One could speculate she’d been staying with her aunt in the days leading up to the newborn’s arrival so they reported Sarah too.

In the next census, of 1851, we see Sarah twice, but this time on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. She shows up as a domestic servant living with her uncle Duncan (a stone breaker) and aunts Mary and Cathy (provision merchants) at Bellanoch, a short distance from Arichonan, in March of 1851. She also shows up with her parents in Ekfrid Township, Ontario, in the census taken in Canada in January of 1852 . As mentioned earlier, her parents emigrated some time between 1849 and 1851. If they immigrated between the two censuses they too should have appeared in both census but they didn’t. So we don’t know when Sarah emigrated. It may be that her parents reported her as part of their family in Canada even though she had stayed behind in Scotland with plans to join them later. She was sixteen at the time.

We know Sarah emigrated to Canada by the time of her marriage to Harvey Wrightman in Ekfrid Township, Ontario, in 1858 when she was 22. She and Harvey, a laborer, had 10 children and settled in Middlemiss —a small community in Ekfrid near a bend in the Thames river — until their deaths in 1914 and 1911 respectively, both in their late 70s.

Further confusing the subject of her emigration date, we find that Sarah reported different years in the 1901 and 1911 Canada censuses.  In the former census Sarah reported her immigration year as 1848 and in the latter she reported it as 1857. The 1848 year is too early because her family was still in Scotland until at least May of 1849 when three of Sarah’s siblings were baptized there.

But it is the reported 1857 immigration year that is really intriguing.

If she came to Canada in 1857 she may well have come with her Aunt Isabella’s family who emigrated that same year. This theory would explain how she was still in Scotland in the 1851 census with her uncle and two aunts at Bellanoch; and with her Aunt Isabella at a farmstead called Auchrome in 1854 at the time of the needlework sampler.

(Parenthetically, also living in Bellanoch, at least by 1853, was Isabella’s eldest daughter Effy Campbell who had her first three children there. This small farmstead appears to have been an intersection point for some of  the McLean and Campbell families.)

If Sarah McLean did remain in Scotland when her parents emigrated we could assume she stayed in touch with them in the ensuing years, and may even have been the conduit for communication between her father Allan and her Aunt Isabella. This could also explain how, when Isabella emigrated 3,400 miles from Scotland to Canada in 1857, she came to settle only nine miles away from her brother.

We have no way of knowing, but we suspect Sarah McLean may have served as a link between Allan and Isabella. As such, she may have played a role in Isabella’s emigration destination. For if Sarah hadn’t stayed behind in Scotland, Isabella may have lost touch with her brother Allan and could have emigrated elsewhere in Canada, or perhaps even emigrated to Australia where her son Malcolm had moved a couple of years earlier.

It’s an intriguing theory … one which ascribes a vital role for Sarah in the history of the Campbell family and its descendants.

Sarah’s McLean’s Emigration — a Flight of Fancy?

Sarah McLean’s great-great-granddaughter Marsha Vonica shared this bit of family lore:

“It has been said in our family that Sarah’s dad Allan was working as a gamekeeper for Queen Victoria when they left for Canada. The queen supposedly wished Sarah well when she got on the ship with her family and gave a bowl to Sarah to take with her. Sarah’s daughter’s daughter Ruby gave the bowl to one of her daughters.”

Given that Allan was a simple farmer or herder in a remote corner of coastal Scotland who’d had a dust-up with the farm’s owner and with the law, it doesn’t seem likely that Queen Victoria would have ever heard of him, employed him, or went to see him off and present his daughter with a farewell token. But it makes for a good story, and who am I to question it? It enchantingly adds another layer of mystery and mythology to Sarah’s life and to the role she played in the lives of those around her.

This article was developed with the assistance of Marsha Vonica, a descendant of Sarah (née McLean) Wrightman. Marsha provided the photograph of Sarah and we co-researched and debated Sarah’s whereabouts over the years.