The Blues were a predominant family in the 17th & 18th centuries on the north-east coast of Scotland, the old county of Kincardine. They are first evident in Gourdon, a fishing village in the parish of Bervie, and then in Johnshaven in the parish of Benholm, another fishing village a couple of miles to the south. A number of Blues also lived in and fished from Miltonhaven, another couple of miles south in the parish of St Cyrus.
Family oral history takes us back to a mariner from the Low Countries named Thomas Blewhous, born around 1590, who settled in the area near Gourdon. He and his wife Margaret had a son Alexander, born about 1625. Alexander married Elspet Kermack on 30/11/1647 in Gourdon.
Elspet was born on 13/4/1617 and another birth that seems related is a brother Jon, born in 1641. Their parents were George Kermack and Jeillis Hunter.
There is a house in Johnshaven, now named Brae House, that seems to be connected to the Kermacks. A grave was found in the grounds with a broken gravestone on which the initials GAK are inscribed. One boundary of this house is recorded in the title deeds as Jeillis' Well. Wells were usually named for the lady who owned the ground.
So the theory is that the house was built by George Kermack and Jeillis Hunter. The ownership passed to their daughter Elspet and her husband Alexander Blewhous, then to one of their children and then to their grandson Thomas Blews. Thomas was born in 1692 and is a key person in researching this old family tree.
From Church records, a gravestone and a lot of help from my distant Blues cousin, Eileen, I have traced our Blues branch of the family tree back to the Thomas born in 1692 and his wife Janet Falconer. His gravestone describes him as a Skipper in Johnshaven, so we refer to him as Skipper Tam.
Skipper Tam seems to have been a very successful fish merchant who ran his business from the house and grounds where Brae House now stands. He was also the master of a fishing boat called the Whape, recorded in 1747 by Customs.
The combination of oral history and skimpy but factual records supports the theory that takes the family tree back to Thomas & Margaret Blewhous and George Kermack & Jeillis Hunter. Their children, Alexander Blewhous born about 1625 and Elspet Kermack born in 1617, married in 1647. They had several children, but which one produced Skipper Tam in 1692 is not known, as the records show the father merely as "Blews" and ignore the mother altogether.
At this distance in time and with the limitations of the Old Parish Records this is as much as we can find.
Brae House is now owned by my distant cousin Eileen, who also traces her ancestry to Thomas Blues born in 1757, his father John, and his father Skipper Tam.
Skipper Tam's daughter Elspet sold the original house to a John Pyper in 1827. He knocked it down and built the present house. We think that John Pyper was the uncle of David Pyper who married Kitty Blues in 1819. So I have a double connection with Brae House.
It no longer exists!
Miltonhaven was the largest settlement in the parish of St Cyrus in the 17th and 18th centuries, but by 1850 it was nothing. It was a burgh of barony of around 150 to 200 people that had regular market days and fairs which attracted people from all over The Mearns.
It had a substantial fishing industry, both whitefish and salmon, but that declined. This is possibly due to competition from nearby Johnshaven, and also to the depredations of the press gangs in the latter half of the 18th century.
The main occupation became limestone quarrying from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries when farmers and lairds learned the value of lime in agriculture. There were several outcops of limestone in the area, large limekilns were built, and the night sky over Miltonhaven glowed red.
In the mid 1700s as the fishing declined, and quarrying became the main occupation, another source of income presented itself - smuggling. Montrose was a major port at that time, and ships heading for Montrose would drop American tobacco, French gin, Dutch brandy, China tea, West Indies sugar, whatever over the side to be collected by local people from the fishing villages to the north of Montrose.
Miltonhaven prospered, until the Customs men eventually managed to get the smuggling under control.
Meanwhile, quarrying continued, but when the inland quarries were worked out attention turned to a ridge of limestone that extended from the coast just north of Miltonhaven and seems to have enclosed the land on which the village stood. This ridge was quarried and thus the protection it afforded from high seas was removed. Eventually the sea washed away the land behind the removed ridge, taking with it the entire village.
Some houses were inundated in 1792 and a new sea wall was built, but storms in 1795 caused the sea to damage the defences and destroy the rest of the village.
Near Miltonhaven caravan park there is an old house sitting just off and above the beach, most recently used as a bothy for salmon fishers. It is probably a survivor from Miltonhaven, just a little too high for the sea to reach it.
Coastal erosion is a problem in this area, but the fate of Miltonhaven is an extreme case.
Finally, oral history tells of children being carried in creels on their mothers' backs in lashing rain from the doomed village along the coast to Johnshaven on the night that Miltonhaven died.