Hugh Buchanan

Hugh Buchanan, was the youngest child of Angus Buchanan and Binnie MacPherson, born in Sleat, Skye, Inverness-shire, Scotland. This was a crofting family eking out a living off the land and sea. These were difficult times for crofters in the Highlands of Scotland as landowners were re-deploying their land by introducing more and more sheep farming. Sometime between 1851, when he was ±3 years old living in Sleat, and 1861 when he is with his mother and father in Nairn aged ±12, his father Angus decided to leave Skye and travel to Nairnshire - over 120 miles away on the other side of Scotland. Angus is an Agricultural labourer in the 1861 Census.

In 1871 Hugh, 20, is working as a servant for William Fraser, Innkeeper, in Nairn, and by 1881 he is living with his wife Sarah Ann Smith and three young children in Aberdeen (about 90 miles from Nairn).

When I eventually managed to track down Sarah Ann's origins I discovered that she was born in Sutton Waldron in Dorset - 550 miles away from Aberdeen!

It would seem from stories passed down in the family that Hugh travelled abroad to Argentina to buy cattle for his employer and met Sarah on the return trip when she was working in service in Wiltshire. Whether they fell in love and she went to Aberdeen with him then and there, or whether she followed him later is not known. What we do know is that by 1873 she was in Aberdeen when she had he first child, William Hugh Buchanan. Sarah and Hugh didn't marry until 4 January 1878, but the first 3 children were all registered as Buchanan.

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jun 27 2021, 6:50:55 UTC