This is very much in the realm of uncertainty but as I’ve already mentioned in the main article on Duncan McIntosh a search of the Old Parish Records (OPR) on the Scottish government web site found six possible Janet McBains. This was, in fact, an incorrect statement as I found no Janet McBains baptised between 1760 and 1770 in the county of Inverness. What I did find were six entries for Janet or Jannet McBean and looking at the 1851 English census for William and his mother Janet gives us her birth time period of between March 31, 1761 and March 30, 1762 (as the 1851 census was taken on 31 March). There is only one of the six records which offers a likely candidate. Add to this fact that Janet’s father was likely to have been called James (as her first born son was called James) then I am assuming that her parents are James McBean, a tenant farmer from Cultuhel (or Culduthel) on the southern outskirts of Inverness with her mother Jannet Hossack (or Hosoach).
McBean and McBain are simply spelling variations of the same surname and clan, in 18th century record keeping completely interchangeable. Clan MacBean is officially recognised as Clan MacBain by the Court of the Lord Lyon (the heraldic authority of Scotland). The ancestral lands of the Chief of the Clan were at Kinchyle in the parish of Dores. Both names derive from the Scottish Garlic patronymic name Mac Bheathain (Mac Beath) which translates to “son of Beathan”, Beathan meaning “lively one” or “son of life”.
For more information see https://www.scotclans.com/blogs/clans-new2/macbain-clan-history
The problem we have at this time with all names in the Highlands is when parish clerks began writing Gaelic spoken names into English language registers they did so phonetically. A family would verbally state their name, and depending on the clerk’s personal spelling habits or the local accent would determine how names were recorded.
The Cultuhel (Culduthel) estate was owned by the Frasers of Culduthel, part of the Clan Fraser. It was unusual to find a McBean (part of the Clan Chatten federation which included McIntosh and McBean) working a tenancy on Clan Fraser land. The Frasers were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian cause; the Clan Chatten and in particular Clan McBean had been at the heart of the Jacobite army and uprising.
In 1746, at nearby Culloden, the Hanoverian army inflicted a heavy defeat on the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie; this defeat shattered the clan system; tartan, kilts and the public use of Gaelic were banned in an attempt to subdue the Highland way of life.
However, in 1762 Colonel Alexander Fraser, the 6th Laird of Culduthel, was needing to adapt to the new ways of the world, post-Culloden. Inverness was growing as a place of business and Colonel Fraser could not run the estate by himself, and therefore welcomed someone who could make the land profitable, putting former clan prejudice aside. The “Act of Grace and Pardon” was passed in June 1747 which allowed men such as James McBean to take an oath of allegiance to the crown in front of a local magistrate. This rehabilitated previously Jacobite clansmen back into society, wiping away an allegation of treason. However, the Disarming Act of 1746 banned the carrying of weapons, the wearing of tartan and the playing of bagpipes, effectively taking away the visible signs of the clan system.
James McBean came from the generational farming heritage of the McBean clan and so brought the necessary skills to the Culduthel estate to make it profitable, supplying merchants such as the Hossacks of Inverness.
So it is interesting that Jannet’s baptismal record shows that her mother was Jannet Hossack.
The Hossack family held significant merchant interests in and around Inverness in the latter half of the 18th century. Most notable was John Hossack (1688-1763) who was Provost of Inverness at various times from 1735 to 1761. He is most famous for pleading for clemency for the Highlanders to the Duke of Cumberland after the battle of Culloden. He also successfully fought against plans to build a new army fort in Inverness leading to the building of Fort George on the Ardersier peninsula. This took over 20 years to build and needed vast quantities of raw materials, so that Hossack and the other merchants of Inverness benefitted.
The Hossack family was not large in number; they were a small localised family around Inverness and the Moray Firth. They did not have a clan chief or clan lands but were at the beginning of the “merchant class” who were influential through commerce, trade and finance. John Hossack was a close ally of Duncan Forbes, Lord Culloden and so used his civic status to influence regional affairs. Through his wife, Margaret Mackintosh, he had connections to Clan Chatten,
I have been unable to trace a direct link from Jannet Hossack to Provost John Hossack but it seems very likely that she was a niece or a cousin of some sort. Parish records show that a branch of the Hossack family lived and worked on the part of the estate known as “Oldtown Culduthel” so it is very likely that Jannet was part of that branch
We need to get Jannet McBean/Janet McBain from the Culduthel estate to Ardesier so she can marry Bombadier Duncan McIntosh. There are two ways that this might have happened.
Following the Battle of Culloden the 6th laird of Culduthel needed to maximise his estates revenue, so he decided to maintain the traditional way of highland farming by dividing the land into communal strips (known as “run rig”) and he actively invited local people such as James McBean to settle on estate lands. However, after his death in 1778, the 7th laird decided to adapt the estate to tap into the surging British market for wool and mutton, The higher hillsides and grazing boundaries of the estate were systematically leased out to large-scale sheep farmers, mirroring the broader transitions happening along Loch Ness and the Great Glen. By 1800 the transition was largely complete. The ancient "run-rig" systems of tenant farming were entirely gone, replaced by a dual system of large, commercial sheep-walks on the uplands and neat, enclosed arable farms producing timber and grain on the low ground near Inverness.
This may have forced the McBeans to move (as part of the Clearances); they may have moved to a smaller, less fertile croft near Ardesier or the coast of the Moray Firth (I think it unlikely but they may have emigrated to Canada or North Carolina – Provost John Hossack paid for ships to take highland folk to the latter.) As part of this move Janet may have found work in Ardesier.
The second way, and I think more likely way that Janet could have ended up in Ardesier is as an employee of John Hossack and Company, the business owned by the Provost of Inverness. In these early days of the merchant class it was typical that the jobs in the business were kept “in the family” and so, I would argue, it is not a huge leap to imagine that Jannet McBean (Janet McBain) was sent to work for some part of the Hossack business at Ardesier where she met and married Bombardier Duncan McIntosh. If that is true then she would have acquired some business skills which she may well have passed on to her son William in Hull.
All of this is based on the family legend that Janet McBain came from Inverness and the fragile connection to Jannet McBean, born and baptised in 1762, with a father called James because that is what she called her son. The records are handwritten, often in highly cursive script, often very difficult to read (even or especially for AI who is very bad at guessing when it can’t read it) and as I’ve mentioned earlier, we are in a time when the language and written records were transitioning from Gaelic to English.
So most of these connections are conjecture on my part but from what we know I think the story holds up fairly well – even if it turns out to be a complete work of fiction! I suspect we may never know.
'S e do bheatha (“you are welcome”, literal translation “It is your life”)