Welcome to Bruce and/or Clare McKirdy, and to [email protected] who have joined this week, and welcome back to Dot Wells. If you haven't already contributed, we hope to hear from you soon. ****** ****** ****** As the 27th Games of the modern Olympics reaches the half way point, I wonder what major events took the interest of our ancestors? Most would have been the simple family events which mean so much to us as we search back - the births, marriages and deaths. Then there would have been the constant fretting of the parents whose sons had gone off to serve in the Army or the Navy. Another on Arran in the late eighteenth century would be the continuing efforts to obtain a regular sea link with the mainland. John Burrell the Duke's factor had the task of attempting to set up such a service, no doubt influenced by the fact that he lived on the mainland and experienced the frustrations of travelling to and from Arran first hand. Of major impact but far less welcome were the attempts by Burrell to improve the rental returns by splitting the farms and raising the rents. As factor he was all powerful, for example on 27th March 1770, he refused to permit ploughing on the farm of Largiemenock as the tenants offered only 14 pounds rent per annum for a three year period against Burrell's revised rental of 23+ pounds. Burrell's scheme's on Arran were only partially successful, and were not helped by the fact that he could not find labour to build the head dykes to close off the farms from the hill pasture. In later years he was forced to remit much of the higher rents as the tenants rightfully claimed by not building the dykes, he had not met his side of the lease agreements. Clearance scheme's did however have an impact on emigration - one well documented Arran example is the departure en bloc of the Glen Sannox tenants to Megantic in Quebec Canada. No doubt most subscribers to this list have examples of migration to the mainland, and some will have examples of subsequent return, often linked to deaths in the family from TB etc due to the poor housing conditions they found there. ****** ****** ****** Feel free to join in and present your own items. Peter Cook [email protected] List owner and Co-host with Barbara < [email protected] > of the ButeshireGenWeb mailing list.