Home and Family - Dachaigh is Teaghlach
Family Homes
John came from a large family with seven siblings, all crammed together in the small thatched roofed cottage at Easter Rarichie. The family moved to Broomton Farm on Balnagown Estate in the mid-late 1850s where some of the farm cottages were leased as small holdings. It was claimed by the owners that “The soil is generally of a sharp early nature and well adapted for producing potatoes, lighter kinds of grain and turnip husbandry.”
A Pioneering Family
John was the eldest and the first of his siblings to leave the family home in 1860 to attend Glasgow University before going on to study at the Theology Hall in Edinburgh.
The family was marked by a lively Christian faith, as evidenced by the fact that in addition to John, two younger siblings, Catherine and Donald, followed him into missionary work in China, which must have been a great support and encouragement during the difficult times that were to come. Sadly, Donald, who was a medical doctor, died at sea on his journey home from China in 1886. He is commemorated on the family gravestone with the touching epitaph “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep”.
While John’s brother Hugh stayed at home becoming a farmer at Balintore, his other brothers William and Alexander moved to Edinburgh taking up employment as a miller and policeman. His second youngest sister Elizabeth studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Art in 1887, with the title “studentess”. She later returned to the family home at “Broomton” where she lived out her days with John’s youngest sister Mary, a dressmaker, and their mother Catherine.
I’ll Keep Coming Home
John was to retain his strong family connections and returned to his home and family in Easter Ross on at least four occasions in between long periods of missionary work in Northeast China. His parents and some of his siblings are buried in Balintore Old Cemetery.
“For he was a Highlander, born in the parish of Nigg, and Gaelic was his mother tongue.”
James Webber, 1915
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