Family Tree

of Trudy Mae COWLEY

Abodes     Aliases     Baptism     Birth     Burial      Children     Death     Description      Education     Immigration     Marriage     Occupations     Property     Provision     Siblings

Birth

The birth provided here for John BLACKLOW is the most likely.  His name is given as John BLACKLAWS, the same name he used when enlisted in the Royal Marines.  However, it does mean that he under-estimated his age by 2 years when he enlisted, if this is his correct birth date.

John is descended from the MACGREGOR clan of Scotland.  The following information on this line of descent has been extracted from Blacklow (n.d.). 

An Introduction to the Past (p5)

Clifton Leslie Blacklow (1877-1950) told his daughter, now Mrs Maude Madden, when she was a child, “When the MacGregors, Rob Roy in particular, were outlawed the clan broke up to avoid capture and adopted names such as Blacklaw, Blackburn, Blacklock, Lamond, White, and other names.”

From Mrs Madden, “I have always been told by the early family that the Blacklows (Blacklaws) came from the Blacklaw Hills in the Scottish Border country and that they were ‘border raiders’.”

When in Scotland she was informed that the Blacklows were entitled to wear the MacGregor Kilt.

The MacGregor Clan (pp5-11)

The homelands of the MacGregors was the three glens of the rivers Orchy, Strae and Lochy on the opposite watershed to Stathfillan and Glendochart.  From Glenstrae they branched out to Glengyle and Roro.

They are believed to have been connected with their neighbours the MacNabs, descended from the Celtic hereditary Abbots of Glendochart, of royal race.  The original chiefly line of the MacGregors descended from lain, of Glenorchy, who was the first known chief of the MacGregor clan, but came to an end because of a childless heiress that carried the superiority of the glens to her husbands clan the Campbells.  The male line of the family descended from Ian’s nephew, Gregor of the Golden Bridles who would not submit to another clan and continued to hold their ancestral lands as long as they could by the sword.  The Campbells slowly managed to take over the original MacGregor home lands of Glenorchy and the adjacent glens and it was the loss of this land that led to their persecution between 1603 and 1774 which forced the MacGregors to be outlaws.

The Campbells’ policy of ‘empire building’ was the taking over of the lands of the MacGregor and other clans by any underhanded and devious means that they could manage to devise, including marriage into MacGregor families and laying matrimonial claim to the land, and lending money against a mortgage and then foreclosing at impossible times.  The Campbells’ tactics were the exploitation of the MacGregors’ two weaknesses, pride and pugnacity.

Their method was to win their victim’s confidence and play any cause of resentment against a third party, or supply one if necessary, then incite them to a violent act and shortly after step in to keep the peace armed with Letters of Fire and Sword and a charter to their land, supplied to them by troubled kings who would be grateful for intervention from any that would uphold “the king’s law”.

The Campbells continued to cause trouble and tried to undermine the authority of the MacGregor chiefs among the clan an din 1519 the Campbells elected and set up their own nominee as overall Chief of MacGregor.  He was a junior chieftan who had married Campbell of Glenorchy’s daughter.

The landless MacGregors, known as the Children of the Mist, continued their ‘lawless existence’ and fought with neighbouring clans and in one feud they fought the battle of Glen Fruin against the Colquhouns.

This battle was caused because two tired and hungry MacGregors traveling from Glasgow to their homes at Dunan were overcome by tiredness and nightfall while passing through Colquhoun land and asked for the highland hospitality of traditional food and shelter at Luss and were refused.

The MacGregors found an empty hut, killed a sheep and ate and took shelter.  Alexander Colquhoun had them seized and executed even though they offered payment.

The MacGregor chief, Alasdair of Glenstrae, received the report of the ‘judicial’ murder and angrily decided to act against the Colquhouns and made up a raiding party of eighty men and killed two of their men and took 300 cows and approximately 600 sheep, goats and horses and drove them into Argyll lands.  Argyll was at feud with the Colquhouns at the time.  Colquhoun retaliated by leading a large party of mock ‘Widows’, each carrying their ‘dead husband’s’ bloodied shirt on the tip of a spear to King James.  The shirts had been dipped in sheep’s blood.  King James was squeamish at the sight of the blood and horrified he quickly issued Colquhoun with Letters of Fire and Sword.

The MacGregors were infuriated because of the one sided report and of the royal condemnation without so much as a hearing and Alasdair of Glenstrae found moral support from MacCailen Mor (Argyll), and Alasdair of Glenstrae failed to see that his clan was being cunningly set up against Campbell’s enemy, the Colquhouns.

Alasdaire of Glenstrae gathered 300 MacGregors and led them to Loch Longside and then cut back to Glen Fruin near Colquhoun’s best farmland.  Colquhoun was given early warning and gathered 300 mounted men and 500 on foot and met in battle at the top of Glen Fruin.

Colquhoun’s force was routed and eighty Colquhoun men were cut down and their chief escaped to his castle at Bannachra in the lower glen.

The Macgregors took 600 cows and 600 sheep, goats and horses and once again placed them on Argyll’s land.

King James VI saw the failure of his pacification of the highlands policy and he issued a Privy Council edict proscribing the clan MacGregor and made it illegal to bear the name MacGregor.

The hunt was on for the MacGregors and they were pursued without mercy, and the outlawed MacGregors were hunted down with bloodhounds, known in Gaelic as conn dubh, or black dogs.  Warrants were posted for their extermination and the MacGregors became as game to be pursued and hunted for sport, their homes were burnt, their cattle and possessions looted and their families left destitute.

Argyll was commissioned to ensure the women of the MacGregors were branded on the face with a red hot key.  The MacGregors, used to living off the land, used ambush and guerilla tactics against their pursuers and took a heavy toll on their numbers but eventually deprivation of warmth and shelter in winter reduced their families to a pitiable condition.

The MacGregor chief decided to end his clan’s suffering by surrendering himself and his kinsmen to MacCailen Mor (Argyll) as he expected that he would receive mercy becaue of MacCailen Mor’s secret encouragement for the Glen Fruin raid.

The chief made one condition to the surrender – that he and his kinsmen should be allowed exile in England.  Argyll accepted their surrender and they gave themselves up and instead of exile in England they were promptly marched to Edinburgh where the chief and several fo the leading clansmen were taken before a Court of Judiciary on the 20^th January 1604 and the chief Alasdair was executed the same day and the others over the next two months.

Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage entry for the MacGregor chief’s immediate family alone shows 22 MacGregors as hanged, 4 beheaded, 3 as murdered (2 by arrows in the back), and 5 as killed in battle.

Alasdair of Glenstrae wrote a dying statement declaring that Argyll had incited the MacGregors to aggression against the Colquohouns and several other landed men who were his personal enemies.  When the clan MacGregor heard of their chief’s betrayal by Campbell and while the mock trial was continuing in Edinburgh the fiery cross went round and the clan immediately rose and took terrible vengeance on Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy who they believed to be Argyll’s prompter.

They laid waste other Campbell holdings, Culdares and Duneaves in Breadalbane, Glenfalloch, and Bochstel in Menteith, and burnt his castle at Achallader.  Campbell’s monetary loss was £66,666 Scottish.  His loss in men was not numbered. 

The MacGregors then went to earth and King James VI sudden accession to the English throne in 1603 took the heat out of their pursuit and the clan watched and waited and took the names of surnames of the clans on whose land they happened to be living, but kept open the communications and unity between family groups.

The scattered clansmen were forced to take other surnames and some branches of the clan have never yet resumed the name of MacGregor.  The name Blacklaw is one of the names adopted by some of the MacGregor clan when they were outlawed in Scotland in 1603 and the name of MacGregor ‘proscribed’ on the pain of death.

Some of the MacGregor clan ironically adopted the name of Campbell.

The men of the MacGregor were even stronger in spirit and refused to lie down and die as the king and the Campbell adviser planned, and adopted a much stronger code of belief.

Whoever attacked one of their number had still to reckon with vengeance taken.  The MacGregors had lost their lands and cattle and had no choice other than to take back from others their means of subsistence or starve and they refused to give in.  The proscription act was renewed 5 times.  In 1611 to forbid the sale of arms, and in 1613 those of the former clan MacGregor were not allowed to carry weapons other than a blunt ended knife to cut their food and a gathering larger than four men was made illegal.  IN 1621 to renew the acts against the risen generation and in 1627 to extend the proscription to their children and in 1633 Charles 1^st forbid the clergy to christen the babies of the MacGregors.

It was believed that if a baby died unchristened it would not be entitled to enter heaven.  King Charles introduced fresh Letters of Fire and Sword against them, declaring that “although the wicked and rebellious clan had been reduced by James they had broken out again committing open ravages in Angus, Clackmannan, the Lennox, the Mearns, Monteith, and the counties of Perth and Stirling.”  The centre of this activity was Glengyle and the Trossachs.

The MacGregors’ neighbours felt a need to conciliate them for their own peace of mind because as allies in war the MacGregors were very quick to act and two centuries had made them one of the most skillful guerrilla forces ever to operate in Scotland.

On the outbreak of civil war in 1638, the clan Gregor gave all of its support to King Charles because Campbell led the Covanteers and by supporting the king under the royal standard they saw also a way to re-establish the clan’s name, fortune and lands.

Clan Gregor fought so well and conspicuously that the Marquis of Montrose’s heart warmed to them and promised in the king’s name the restitution of the clan Gregor’s lands and in 1645 he put this in writing.  A week later Charles was defeated at Naseby.  However, it was felt in Scotland that this promise would still be honoured.

Montrose was defeated at Philiphaugh and the royal fortunes collapsed.  Montrose was beheaded.

Over the next 20 years clan Gregor’s hopes of restitution fell to it’s lowest when Cromwell rose and was restored again when Charles was once again placed on the throne.  Argyll was beheaded for collaborating with Cromwell and the Gregors were overjoyed at his demise.

The government had been so dreading Jacobite action in Scotland since 1707 that to keep the chiefs quiet, Queen Anne had been paying them bribes as pensions of £360 Stirling a year.  Records show that a pension was paid to Janet Blacklaw in Edinburgh in 1733 (Guildry, p.145).

In 1774, proscription on clan Gregor was finally repealed by Act of Parliament and the clan was free and waited for the restitution of their lands held by Iain Glas and known in the lowland as Sir John Campbell of Glenorchy, but Archibald Campbell, his new chief, was seen by the king’s advisers as much too powerful and a source of danger to the king, and managed to block any chance of restitution.

Charles, although reminded of his solemn promise, chose to let it lie, but a few years later the head of the rightful, but long disinherited branch, the Children of the Mist, was officially recognised as chief of the whole clan.  The present chief of the Children of the Mist is Sir Gregor MacGregor or MacGregor, 6^th Baronet and 23^rd Chief of Clan Gregor, who commands the 1^st Battalion, Scots Guard.

The Chief of Clan MacGregor’s silver kilt pin is in the form of the MacGregor arms:  an uprooted oak tree surmounted by a sword bearing an antique crown on it’s point and the motto of the MacGregors is S Rioghal Mo Dhream and is translated from Gaelic as ‘Royal is my Blood’.  The motto originated because of the MacGregor’s descendency from the Celtic hereditary Abbots of Glendochart – the royal race.

Of the MacGregor Armes, by Campbell of Glenorchy (Roughly Translated) (p12)

The sword and firtree crossed beneath a crown

A fatal sign appropriate to this race

By some foreseeing fellow well set down

Might for such lymmaris spoiling every place

The crown presents the King’s most royal grace

One righteous judge with skill he does decree

That you and all such clansmen should embrace

His sure censure for their villainy

To wit – if only for his sword go free

Or execute, continuing in their wrong

He will erect a gallows of that tree

And thereupon that in a gibbet hang

So far’s my wits can serve I cannot know

A better badge for such a sort of men.

Postscriptum

One thing yet rests that should their arms befit

If with St Johnston’s ribbons they will knit.

[Note:  St Johnston’s ribbons were gallows ropes.]

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Description

When John enlisted in the navy he was described as being aged 19 years, 5’ 4 ¾” in height, with dark hair, brown eyes and a fair complexion.

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Immigration

John's detachment of Royal Marines were embarked per HMS Calcutta on 6 April 1803 in order to prepare the ship for the embarkation of the convicts.  The ship sailed from Spithead on 24 April 1803 and left Yarmouth three days later.  On its journey to Port Phillip Bay, the HMS Calcutta called at Teneriffe, Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope.

John arrived to Port Phillip Bay, Victoria aboard HMS Calcutta as a Royal Marine on 9 October 1803, the supply ship accompanying HMS Calcutta, Ocean, having arrived two days previously.

The marines, convicts and settlers, which made up Lt Gov COLLINS party, were removed from Port Phillip Bay to the River Derwent in two stages - the first arriving in the Ocean and Lady Nelson on 15 February 1804, the second arriving in the Ocean on 25 June 1804.  It is not known whether John was part of the first or the second shipment. 

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Marriage

On 15 August 1808, John BLACKLOW married Ruth THOMPSON.  Ruth was single and from Hobart.  John was single and from Hobart.  They were married by Banns at Hobart Town, River Derwent, Van Diemen's Land by Rev Robert KNOPWOOD (who also arrived per HMS Calcutta).  

Witnesses to the marriage were James MCCAULEY, a Sergeant of the Royal Marines, and Francis BARNES.  (NS 282/8/1 p.12)

This is to certify that John Blacklow, single man and Ruth Thompson, single woman both of this town were married by banns at Hobart Town, River Derwent, Van Diemen's Land, this fifteenth day of August in the year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight by me Robert Knopwood ... In the presence of Jas McCauley, Sergt RM and Francis Barnes.

John was aged 35 years and Ruth was about 15 years old at the time of their marriage.

Francis BARNES was witness to many marriages around this time, officiated by Rev Bobby KNOPWOOD.  BARNES had come out on the Calcutta as a convict and worked in Hobart around this time as a clerk.

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Occupations

On 27 February 1801 John enlisted in the Royal Marines as John BLACKLAWS, giving his age as 19 years.  He was enlisted by Captain TIMINS in London in the Portsmouth Division. John was assigned to the 86^th company as a private.

In February 1803 John sailed aboard HMS Calcutta, under the command of Lt Colonel David COLLINS, as part of the Royal Marine Guard assigned to transport nearly 300 convicts in 2 ships – the HMS Calcutta and the Ocean – to Port Phillip, Victoria.  They left Spithead, England on 24 April 1803.  The voyage took nearly six months.

During his voyage per HMS Calcutta on 20 July 1803, John received 12 lashes with the cat o’nine tails for disobedience of orders.

On 9 October 1803 HMS Calcutta arrived at Port Phillip.  Lt Colonel David COLLINS did not attempt to find a suitable site for the settlement and disembarked all his company and goods on a sandy beach near what is now known as Sorrento, Victoria.  COLLINS’ Lieutenants reported on the unsuitability of the surrounding area as a settlement, so COLLINS wrote to Governor Phillip KING in NSW to seek permission to move the settlement from Port Phillip to VDL.  

As a Private in the Royal Marines, John received one shilling and one penny per day, which was paid every 3 months (£4.17.6 per quarter, or £19.10.0 per year).

On 17 October 1803 John BLACKLOE was listed as a person victualled at full allowance on the Commissariat Return for 1803-1804.  His quality was given as Private.  (HRA Series III Vol.1, p.107)

On 18 December 1805 John BLACKLOW, Private, was part of a return of a detachment of Royal Marines, serving at Hobart Town, VDL.  Captain was William SLADDEN. (HRA Series III Vol.1, p.343)

John was promoted to Corporal on 19 January 1809 and assigned to the 35^th company.  As a result of this promotion, John's pay was increased to one shilling and five pence per day. (LSD 1/90 pp.16-17)

In 1812, the Royal Marines in Tasmania were disbanded.  Some returned to England, where the main branch of the Royal Marines continued on; others chose to settle in Tasmania.  John left the Royal Marines on 6 October 1812 to become a settler, but died shortly afterwards, before his official discharge was received.

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Property

John was supposed to receive a grant of land upon his discharge from the Royal Marine Corps, but died before it was received.  AOT Correspondence File suggests John was granted land at Black Brush and the property was named Blendon.

On Blendon today is the remains of a small stone building.  This is believed to have been where John Blacklow and his wife and children first settled, and where John Staples settled with Ruth and brought John Blacklow’s children up.

The large building that stands on Blendon today is thought to have been built by John Blacklow 2^nd.  (Blacklow, n.d., p15)

However, a map of the land grants in that region shows that the grant claimed by John BLACKLOW was adjacent  to that claimed by John STAPLES, and that John BLACKLOW was the occupier of the grant on the other side of John STAPLES, land granted to James TURNBULL.  The map also shows that the land grant claimed by John BLACKLOW was located to Ruth THOMPSON (aka Rebecca STAPLES - the name she was known by after marrying John STAPLES after John's death). 

The land to the south east of these properties was granted to Joshua FERGUSSON.  At the north west the land grant was bounded by the original course of the Jordan River - the present course of the Jordan River runs through the grant.  The land grant to the south west of John's grant was located to Price PRITCHARD.  The size of the grant claimed by John BLACKLOW was approximately 284 acres.

Price PRITCHARD and John STAPLES were fellow marines with John BLACKLOW on the Calcutta. 

In the AOT Correspondence File, a note by Miss WAYN, a previous AOT archivist states that John BLACKLOW received a grant of land on discharge in 1812, but this is unconfirmed.

A letter regarding land grants for discharged marine soldiers from Governor MACQUARIE to Lieutenant-Governor DAVEY dated 30 January 1813 reads: 

12.  The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having signified to his Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies their approbation of such of the Marine Soldiers, who have been for some years past doing Duty in Van Diemen’s Land and who wish to remain in the Colony instead of returning to England, to become Settlers, and Twenty Eight Noncommissioned Officers and Soldiers of the Detachment of Marines having made their election to remain and become Settlers in the Country, I have acquiesced in their request, and have forwarded a Return of their Names to the Lords of the Admiralty, requesting that regular Discharges may be sent out for them.  These Twenty Eight men continue still embodied and doing duty at the Derwent, the rest of the detachment, fourteen in number, having made their election to return to England, were accordingly sent thither on board the Private Ship Isabella early in last month.  As it will be a long time before the Discharges for these Twenty Eight Marines can be received from England, and as I understand they are very anxious to go to settle on the Lands to be assigned to them, you are hereby authorized and directed to disband them on the 6^th of the Month of March next, and to strike them off duty from that date, paying one Month’s subsistence to them in advance from the 6^th of March, previous to your disbanding and striking them of all further Military Duties.  Mr Meehan the Surveyor must be directed to locate and measure out Farms for them at Coal River, or at any other part of the Settlement they may prefer.

Private soldiers to get 80 acres if single, 100 acres if married, and ten acres for every child.  To be victualled and clothed for 18 months from the King’s Stores, and to receive gratis seed grain and agricultural tools and implements which can be furnished.  To get 1 male convict labourer, clothed and victualled from the King’s Stores for 12 months.  Get 1 cow on 18 months credit.
(HRA Series III Vol.II, p.18)

On 3 February 1814, the allowance of 1 cow was increased to an added 2 working oxen (Given, 1997).

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I am willing to provide source details upon request.