Chart
John Sutherland Family
of Deskford Scotland, &
of Deskford Scotland, &
Canada.
Early
in the 13th century, an area in the north west of Scotland was erected
into a Scottish earldom and granted to a nobleman of Moray, whose
family was probably of the Flemish origin. The area was given the
name "South Land" from which came the name Sutherland. A "Sutherland
Clan" evolved with a Chief who was powerful enough to protect its
northerly Cathedral at Dornoch where parts of that mediaeval
structure still survive. The 14th and 15th centuries were a period
of baronial anarchy in Scotland with the Crown in eclipse under very
weak kings. The Gordons had been invested with vice-regal powers in
the north of Scotland, and used those powers to seize the Sutherland
Earldom. The Earl of Huntly's second son, Adam Gordon, obtained,
in 1494, a "brieve of idiocy" against the Earl John of Sutherland
even though he had possessed the wit to maintain himself in office
through troubled times for forty years. In about 1500, Adam Gordon
married the Earl's daughter. Adam Gordon continued to terrorized the
Sutherland Heirs to the extent that they dared not advance their claims.
By 1601 Adam Gordon descendants had obtained a grant from King James
VI that the Sutherland Earldom should never be lost to the Gordons.
The legal battle over the Sutherland lands continued for
many years until the Earl died in 1766, leaving an only daughter.
The House of Lords held a hearing in which, sitting as a supreme court,
they bestowed the earldom on the late Earl's daughter who in turn
married into a wealthy English family of Leveson-Gower, who created
the First Duke of Sutherland.
John Sutherland whose daughter
Anne, married a John McWillie in Deskford Scotland in 1869. John
Sutherland immigrated to Portage La Prairie, MB. Canada,
in 1878.
The First Duke of Sutherland and some other Scottish landlowners
decided to change from cattle to sheep farming in the interest of
making more profit from their large tracts of land. That action displaced
the many tenant farmers who had farmed the land for many years.
In turn, the tenant farmers were offered meager assistance
to relocate to small, poor, rocky plots of land on the northern coast
of Scotland.
Between 1811 and 1820, approximately 15,000 people were
removed from the inland country and most were forced to make their
lives on the barren northern coast. This period commonly called "The
Highland Clearances" saw thousands of these tenant farmers forcibly
moved to one and two acre plots on rocky crofts along the
coast of Scotland. This change in life style, from farming to
life on the sea, was unknown to the former tenant farmers and
fishing was a dangerous skill not quickly learned. The greatest majorityof people today who now carry the name Sutherland can trace their
ancestry to those people who where forced to relocate to
that northern Scottish coast. Because of the hardship those
people faced, many chose to immigrate to British overseas colonies
such as Canada and Australia. Among the Sutherland families
dislocated from their former lands was a John Sutherland who settled
in or near Cullen, Scotland, off the northern coast.
