Hello everyone, I'd invite my great-great-grandmother Flora CURRIE to dinner because you are always going to get more family info from a woman <grin>. Flora, married to my great-great-grandfather Archibald HILL, a farm worker, died on Bute in 1881, aged 83 according to her death certificate. Hopefully she would be able to give me lots of information, not only about her own parents and Archibald's, but also about all the other people on Bute who I suspect might be relatives. More importantly, she'd give me lots of personal details about them all. I'd really like to have a good gossip (Flora might disapprove of gossip, of course). As to Flora herself, how did she feel in the early 1840s, very likely in 1843 when she was pregnant, when she left Skipness in Kintyre for Bute, with Archibald and at least one child? The move is believed to have been forced when a new landlord took over the Skipness estate. Other Skipness people moved to Bute around the same time, but did Flora miss the closeness of the farm township? Or was life easier on Bute, with all its agricultural improvements? How did Flora cope, bringing up a family on a Bute farm labourer's wage, moving from farm to farm over the years? Did the family feel disadvantaged because they were Gaelic-speaking? Did she worry when her husband, presumably no longer employable as a farm labourer, was working as a roadman in his 70s? I suppose she was simply relieved he was earning money. And what would we eat at our dinner? In Kintyre, I understand, Flora's diet would have consisted largely of potatoes, oatmeal, milk and herring. I assume it would be much the same on Bute. Chicken was eaten at Skipness weddings etc, so that's what I'd serve. I hope Flora wouldn't be too disappointed in a squeamish great-great-granddaughter who had to have someone else kill the chicken, Regards Madeleine Wales