Betsy VanAuker wrote: > > I have another question: Was there anything happening in the Orkneys - > economic, political, etc. - that might have made several generations of a > family decide to leave the Orkneys for Edinburgh? > > Margaret VanAuker Basically people left Orkney and went to various locations in the UK and also around the world (the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, mainly) in order to try to make a better life for themselves — to earn a living or to seek education. The same situation (a brain-drain, if you like) has applied for centuries to the rural parts of Scotland and still persists to this day. Orkney wasn't a rich part of the country and offered limited opportunities. Both of my parents were born in Orkney. My father left when he was nineteen after his father died, and his two brothers left at around the same age. My mother left Orkney when she was seven with her mother(though her father stayed there), supposedly to find better educational opportunities for her older sister. None of my mother's siblings remained in Orkney much after they left school. In the 19th century there was an agricultural revolution that displaced many people from the land, but many Orkney people who had no involvement with agriculture also left, as they had done for generations and as they still do. A little off Orkney, but I remember reading the passenger list for a ship that was taking emigrants to America from south-west Scotland in the early 19th century. The reason given for travel was frequently, "Could not earn bread in the sweat of his brow to support himself and his family". Norman Tulloch

I know my family left for Canada (1858) in search of work and education, as the family followed the herring in Orkney and Caithness, and the fish were not as plentiful. I would imagine that others felt Edinburgh was far enough to go. Charlie Petersen Port Townsend WA USA