Description |
The majority of the collection comprises legal documents including instruments of sasine, tacks, bonds, discharges, assignations, and letters of charge to enter heir etc. relating to the property and financial transactions of the Caw family. They are accompanied by associated correspondence, accounts, copies and inventories. The bulk of the collection relates to the concerns of Thomas Caw [early-mid eighteenth century] and subsequently to those of his successors, James Caw [mid-late eighteenth century]; and his sons James, Alexander, William and John, [late eighteenth-early nineteenth century]. In particular the documents record the legal/financial developments and disputes between the Caw family and the Shearer family after property held by the Caws from the Shearers was burned by the Jacobite rebels on 28 January 1716. The collection also includes documents relating to other members and associates of the Caw family which have links to Thomas and his successors. |
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history |
The Caw family hails from Perthshire, and this particular branch of the family from Crieff. There is not a great deal of information available on the Caw family members besides what can be taken from the records in the manuscript collection GB234 GD1/1288. However in histories of Crieff and Perthshire, they are noted as the inhabitants of the first house to be burned by the rebels on 28 January 1716. The elder Thomas Caw, in one document called tacksman [born 1636] and his wife Mary Clow lived beside the younger Thomas Caw and his wife Christine Alexander in the west part of Crieff at this time. Both houses were torched by men who were at that time billeted at the younger Thomas Caw's house. It is known that Thomas Caw tried to save his father from the house next door, but failed.
The following information has been taken from the manuscript collection GB234 GD1/1288 and is in parts a little inconsistent and imprecise. In the documents the surviving Thomas Caw is named provost, vintner and brewer in Crieff. It seems he died prior to 10 October 1759 when an account of the furnishings and sundries for his funeral appears. He had three sisters, Grizel, who was married to James Bryce in Miln of Ogilvie; Jean, who was married twice, to Andrin Weitit in Dunning and Duncan Drummond; and Janet, the youngest who was married in 1710 to John Bryson, corporal in the major cadets troop in Colonel William Ker's Regiment of Dragouns.
Thomas himself had three sons and two daughters, James, dyer in Crieff; David, named on separate occasions as merchant and writer in Crieff; Thomas, dyer in Crieff; Elizabeth [Betty] and Mary. James was married to Mary Gray, Betty to John Arnot, merchant in Crieff, and Mary to Archibald Anderson, baxter and burgess in Stirling. James, who died before 1796 appears to be the eldest and had four sons, James, dyer at Milton of Ochterardy; Alexander, dyer [b.20 August 1758]; William, named as dyer and feuar [d.8 December 1836]; and John.
James, the eldest of the four brothers had a son William, cabinetmaker in Crieff [1807-1875]. And a John Caw, cabinetmaker [d.18 May 1901, probably son of William] had a son William who compiled the hand list which completes the collection. |