Tag: Toronto

My Tocher Family

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The word tocher, of Scottish Gaelic origin, means dowry. Tochermagazine features old Scottish tales, songs and traditions. The tiny place named Tocher in Aberdeenshire consists of a few houses set among farmers’ fields. Uncommonly, Tocher is also a family name.

My Tocher family can be traced to Alexander Tocher, (c1733-c1798) of Grange parish, Banffshire, who married Jean Shepherd in nearby Cullen parish church, Banffshire on February 12, 1752.

Cullen Parish Church

Family history notes passed down to me by a cousin said Alexander was a “Miln of Pathnic and Proprietor of Garmouth”. Miln is a Scottish word for miller, and there was a mill on the Burn of Paithnick. I have not yet confirmed whether Alexander owned property in Garmouth. The same source says Alexander died in May 1798, age 65, and Jean died in September of the same year.

The couple had two children: Alexander, baptized July 28, 1754 and Margaret, baptized September 21, 1756. When Alexander grew up he attended university in nearby Aberdeen. “Mr. Alexander Tocher, Banffiensis” is listed among the recipients of arts degrees from the University of Aberdeen and Kings College in 1779. He then found a position as a schoolmaster in MacDuff, a fishing town on the Banffshire coast, overlooking the Firth of Moray.

On November 17, 1798, Alex’r Tocher married Elizabeth Stephen at Gamrie parish church in MacDuff. He and Elizabeth had three daughters: Margaret (1799-c1870), who married MacDuff rope manufacturer Alexander Carney (or Carny) in 1821 and had 10 children; Elizabeth (1801-1885), who did not marry, and Jean (also known as Jane), my direct ancestor, born March 17, 1803.

Two years later, on June 19, 1805, Elizabeth died, leaving Alexander with a young family to raise. He remarried in 1808. He and his second wife, Ann Haslopp, had no children. In 1823, daughter Jane developed an interest in MacDuff school’s assistant schoolmaster, a young man named James Avon Smith. In fact, Jane became pregnant. She and James were married in Gamrie and Macduff parish on July 5, 1823, and she gave birth to son Alexander in October.

Jane died at age 35 on February 28, 1838, a month after giving birth for the ninth time. This baby, John Murray Smith, was my future great-grandfather. Jane is buried in Doune cemetery, MacDuff, along with two daughters who died very young, and with her father, who died February 10, 1844, aged 89 years. Ann Haslopp who died on January 3, 1850, aged 83, is also buried with them. 

Reading the Tocher monument, Doune Cemetery, MacDuff

The inscription on the monument that marks their grave notes that Alexander Tocher was schoolmaster at MacDuff for 67 years. Maybe he had to continue working to support the family, or maybe he really loved his job, but after so many years in the classroom, he must have been set in his ways. Hopefully the community celebrated his long service with a big thank-you.

The 1841 census of Scotland found Alexander Tocher, schoolmaster, living on Duff Street in MacDuff with his wife Ann, unmarried daughter Elizabeth and teenaged grandson Alex Smith, while son-in-law James Avon Smith lived around the corner on Gellymill Street with the six other children.

By the mid-1840s, the Smith family had started the move to North America, with Jane’s unmarried sister Elizabeth Tocher accompanying them to help look after the children. “Aunt Tocher” died in Toronto in 1885, aged 84, and is buried in the Smith family plot in Toronto’s Necropolis Cemetery. With her passing, the name Tocher died out in my family.

Notes

See https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/04/james-avon-smith-of-macduff-banffshire.html for James Avon Smith’s story.

I used a website called www.freereg.org.uk to research the Tocher family. Similar to the volunteer-run www.freebmd.org.uk and www.freecen.org.uk, this site allows the researcher to quickly survey the old parish records. A search for Tocher baptisms in a ten-year period in Banffshire brought up all the baptisms of children with Tocher as the mother’s last name and all the babies with Tocher as the father’s name. Clicking on the number beside the entry brings up the names of the witnesses. Once I had identified the people I thought were my Tochers, I paid the Scotland’s People website to see the actual images of the parish records.

The website of the Scottish Genealogy Society has many useful resources, including links related to education. The page http://www.scotsgenealogy.com/Links/Education.aspx links to a book that lists officers and graduates of the University of Aberdeen, with Alexander Tocher’s name on page 254. https://archive.org/stream/officersgraduate00univuoft#page/254/mode/2up.

The campus of the University of Aberdeen

Places are as important as historic events when it comes to researching our ancestors’ lives, and Scotland has some excellent online resources for exploring them. See http://maps.nls.uk to check out the fascinating collection of old maps on the National Library of Scotland’s website, and www.rcahms.gov.uk to learn more about the old buildings with which our ancestors might have been familiar. The website of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland includes maps, photographs and descriptions of hundreds of structures around the country. A search for Paithnick on this site shows the location of the mill: http://canmoremapping.rcahms.gov.uk/index.php?action=do_advanced&idnumlink=194836

There has been a church at Cullen since the 13th century. See www.cullen-deskford-church.org.uk/cullen-auld-kirk-history.php. 

The information about Elizabeth Tocher was given to me by the staff at the Necropolis cemetery in Toronto. There is no gravestone to mark the Smith plot.

James Avon Smith of MacDuff, Banffshire

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MacDuff is on the Moray Firth, northeast Scotland

My mother’s father, Fred Murray Smith, was a kind and gentle man. Although he had a good sense of humour, he was a strict Presbyterian and did not allow my mother to play cards or go to movies on Sundays. He was also quite formal, never seen at the dinner table without a jacket and tie. So it was a shock to discover that there was a large skeleton in the Smith family closet, although it dated from Fred’s great-grandfather’s generation.

Fred’s grandfather, James Avon Smith, was assistant schoolmaster in the coastal town of MacDuff, Banffshire, Scotland. James and his wife, Jane Tocher, had seven children. Jane died in 1838, shortly after giving birth to John Murray Smith, Fred’s future father.

In the early 1840s, James immigrated to Canada. He settled in Toronto and became a teacher of the classics at Knox College and Toronto Academy. The children and their Aunt Elizabeth Tocher eventually joined him in Toronto.

According to an outline of the Smith family history that was passed down to me via my cousins, James Avon Smith was born in 1800, the son of Walter Smith, farmer, of Lochagan. (Lochagan is located a few miles inland from the town of Banff; there doesn’t seem to be a village there, although the place name still exists.) I checked the records of Banff Parish Church on Scotland’s People, and there it was: James Smith, natural son of Walter Smith by Jane Avens. But natural son? That meant his parents were not married. I had to investigate further. 

When we were in Edinburgh in 2012, I looked up the Kirk Session records of the parish. Having committed the sin of fornication, Walter and Jane had to appear before the Kirk Session, which consisted of the minister and elders of the church, and the couple had to pay a fine. But it seems they did not learn their lesson: Walter Smith and Jane Avens reappeared before the Kirk Session four years later and confessed they were guilty of a “relapse in fornication.”

Walter Smith remained unmarried, although the Kirk Session records show that he fathered three other children, all by different women. It comes as no surprise then that, when James Avon Smith had his own family, he did not follow the traditional Scottish naming pattern and name any of his boys after his own father. 

In 1810, Jane Avens married James Taylor in Banff parish, so perhaps she found true love and a supportive step-father for the boy. Eventually, James attended Kings College, Aberdeen. He married Jane Tocher in 1823 and their eldest child, Alexander, arrived several months later. 

Photo credit: Janice Hamilton

Research remarks: Initially, I was not optimistic about researching the Smith family. The name is just too common. Luckily, Banffshire did not have a large population in the 1800s, Smith was not a common name there, and the parish records were surprisingly well kept. Also, someone in a previous generation did a good job of remembering and writing down the family’s story. That may have been James Avon Smith Jr., a Toronto artist and architect. 

A longer version of this story appeared in the February, 2013 edition of the journal of the Aberdeen and Northeast Scotland Family History Society. This is an excellent journal, and several members of that society have been extremely helpful to me from afar.