Archie Dagg was born in Coquetdale at the very end of the nineteenth century. His father and grandfather were shepherds and when he left school at 14 years of age, Archie joined the family trade. Many of the tasks related to the job were dictated by the seasons and the weather.
This is an extract of Archie’s oral history recording that was made in 1978 by Northumberland Archives.
In 2011, Berwick Record Office (part of Northumberland Archives) was involved in an oral history project to collect the memories and experiences of sheep farmers and shepherds in Northumberland. Links to the website and clips of the interviews can be found below:
JUBILEE OF THE BORDER UNION LODGE OF GOOD TEMPLARS
Although drastic changes in licensing are more likely today than have been at any time during the last fifty years, the Good Templars are not nearly so enthusiastic as they were in the eighties and nineties. Partly this is due to the fact that the Temperance movement has made good, and the general public is much more abstentions than in the early Blue ribbon days. The old stalwarts, it is complained, are dying out, and the young ones are not coming on. Still it was only a small gathering that met to celebrate the jubilee of the Border Union Lodge in the Good Templars’ Hall Berwick, on Thursday night. The Mayor was in the chair, and supporting him were the Mayoress, Mr R Taylor (District Chief Templar), Alderman Boston (Spittal), Mr G Piercy, and the Rev. Moffat Gillon, Edinburgh, Grand Chaplain of the Order.
The company sat down to tea at 6.30, and after had been disposed of, “Rescue the Perishing” was sung, and then the Mayor rose to speak. He congratulated the Lodge on attaining its jubilee, on the good work it had during its existence in spite of ups and downs. They were ment that night to carry on the good work which had begun in the town fifty years ago. He was glad to know that the Board of Education was helping them by making provision for temperance education. The Board was making known the act that drinking of beer, wine, and spirits tended to weaken the muscles of the heart, and had a weakening effect on the body generally. It was a step in the right direction to show that alcohol was not normally necessary for the upbringing and health of human beings. Last year they spent £479,000,000 on strong drink- over a million pounds a day. Could any country be expected to prosper while it did that? The number of days’ work in the year that was lost through drink, said Sir G. B. Hunter, was appalling, and it tended to cripple all trades. Drink was answerable for three-quarters of the crime of the country. It was answerable for one half of the pauperism of the country, and drink was answerable for one-fourth part of lunacy in the country. This sum of £479,000,000 was spent to produce crime, pauperism, and lunacy. The profits of the drink trade were not sufficient to pay for the upkeep of the prisons, the workhouses, and the asylums, which the trade made necessary.
The entrance to the Berwick Workhouse just off Castlegate, where some of those suffering from the effects of too much alcohol ended up. Ref: BRO 1541-01.
It was their duty to do their utmost to bring about prohibition. It was 51 years since the Order was introduced into England, and they were glad to have with them that night one jubilee member- Alderman Boston, of Spittal-the oldest member of the Good Templar Order in Berwick today. They hoped he would be long spared to carry on the good work, with which he had been so long associated.
FIRE AT LAMBERTON THRESHING BIG QUANTITY OF GRAIN DESTROYED
On Wednesday afternoon a rather serious fire took place during threshing operations at Pit Houses, Lamberton, on a portion of the estate recently split up by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland for small holdings for ex Service men. The crops on the whole of the Lamberton estate were harvested and stacked by the Board of agriculture, and it was a portion of this harvest which was destroyed.
The fire was discovered at the dinner hour, one of the men employed at the threshing, observing a cloud of smoke rising from behind a stack of straw. He gave the alarm and the conflagration was at once tackled, but the straw being dry and a stiff breeze fanning the flames, the blaze had too good a hold to be put out. Hampered by the scarcity of water, practically nothing could be done to save the threshing. The mill caught fire and was practically reduced to scrap, but happily it was possible to save the engine, which was backed away from the blaze. On the field there was stacked the produce of 124 acres, and as far as can be gathered 101 bags of newly threshed grain were entirely destroyed. Several other bags were severely scorched, and about 59 bags of barley were saved.
How the fire originated has not been definitely established, but it is believed that a spark from the engine may have set up smouldering in the stack, which ultimately burst into flame. The damage, which has not yet been fully assessed, it considerable, but is covered by insurance.
The threshing mill belonged to Messrs Howey, of Reston, and it is fortunate for the owners that one of the men helping with the threshing was able to save the engine. Mr Howey’s men were at dinner at Lamberton farm when the fire broke out, but the engine had been backed clear of the fire before they reached the scene. The blaze fortunately did not reach the stack of roofing timber lying near or else this would have gone too. The timber was alone worth over £600. The fire was still smouldering on Saturday, but the burning heaps were isolated.
GOLDEN WEDDING
On Friday last Mr & Mrs Robert Ogilvie, Tower Road, Tweedmouth, celebrated their golden wedding. Both natives of the Fenham district, Mr Ogilvie was born at Greenside Mill, and his wife, Miss Elizabeth Ann Patrick, was born at Fenwick Granary. Married in 1871, they first lived at Mount Hooley, coming to Tweedmouth two years later. They have resided in Tweedmouth for 33 years in their present house. Mr Ogilvie, though having reached the advanced age of 76 years, still possess excellent health, and his wife, 71 years old, is also hale and hearty. The worthy couple have one son and four daughters. Mr Ogilvie is at present employed as a drainer with Mr Pearson, at West Sunnyside, and formerly worked on the N.E.R., finishing last year owing to having reached the age limit. He has been an active, energetic man all his life, and in his early years used to walk as far as five and six miles to his job, and later a heavy day’s work tramped home again. He has always been a keen football enthusiast, attending matches regularly in latter years as a spectator.
This blog was written by Emily Rowe, a PHD student engaged on the ‘Northern Bridge – Carr-Ellison Project’. The aim of the project is to explore the records and histories of international trade and maritime transnational links between north-east England and the wider world through the records of Cotesworth, Carr and Ellison families held at Northumberland Archives and Tyne & Wear Archives.
“…a Merchant has the most anxious time which can never be lessened while he thinks it worth following…[I] often had the Mortification of seeing the very best concerted plans Overturned by a Variety of Untoward Accidents”
– Ralph Carr
Ralph Carr (1711-1806) was a successful businessman in eighteenth-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was a merchant adventurer, exporting local resources such as corn and coal, and dealing with commodities from iron and timber to wine and whale-oil. He had contacts all over Northern Europe, with his mercantile activities stretching from Amsterdam to St Petersburg. Around 1750, Ralph Carr extended his reach even further as he began to trade with New York and Boston.
Carr’s Atlantic dealings likely started off as a favour. He had merchant friends in Amsterdam looking for a convenient route through British customs. Cargo from Europe to America needed to stop in Britain and pay taxes. Ralph Carr facilitated this for his Dutch friends and filled the boats with ballast – heavy cargo such as grindstones and coal that provided stability for the ship to make its long journey east. Carr’s profit from this agreement was small…so he began to try to sell goods of his own to the American merchants.
In a 1750 letter to a Boston merchant, a copy of which is at Northumberland Archives, Carr tries to convince the merchant to purchase goods from the north-east:
‘‘We have many articles than answer well with you, & yearly ship great quantities for my friends in Boston and all parts of America as they are cheaper here than in any part of England…Lead, Shott, sheet Lead, Grindstones…& every sort of Glassware & Earthenwares…Cloth, Blanketts, Rugs, & all kings of Woolen Goods, we have also bought.”
Carr sent many letters of this sort to his contacts in America. He stressed the variety of goods the North of England had to offer and promised that they came cheaper than anywhere else in England and Europe. But the response was disappointing. American merchants were not interested in most of the goods Carr offered them – they only wanted cheap ballast and sometimes earthenware. One Boston merchant did put in some orders for glassware, lead, and linens, but never paid Carr and the dispute went on for years. Carr wrote to the merchant in 1752:
“I am really quite tired out with writing to you year after year upon this same disagreeable subject and am sorry for your repeated promises which only pass for words of course, however, I shall wait until the Fall for their accomplishment and no longer.”
Despite his many successes as a merchant, Carr was never able to crack the American market. Lack of interest in his wares and caution on Carr’s side over selling to Americans on credit rather than cash meant that despite his connections, Carr’s dealings with American trade were frustrating and had very modest profits. In a 1756 letter, Carr wrote to two New York merchants, “I absolutely refused to be concern’d with any ships [to New York] save such as Enter’d every pennyworth of their goods fairly and above board”. By 1765, however, the Newcastle-America trade came to a grinding halt when the British government demanded bonds of £2000 from all merchants trading with America and the Newcastle merchants refused to comply. British-imposed taxes on shipped goods to and from America were a source of growing resentment on both sides and the escalation of these frustrations, just twenty years after Carr attempted to trade with Boston, led to the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
Sources
Digital copy of portrait of Ralph Carr, Northumberland Archives, ref: ZCE/F/4/1/2/9.
Copy letter from Ralph Carr, Newcastle upon Tyne, to Benjamin Tenouil Esq. [at Boston, America] (1750), Northumberland Archives, ref: ZCE/E/3/5/1/14/1033.
Note by Ralph Carr, Newcastle upon Tyne, to William Fletcher [at Boston, America] (1752), Northumberland Archives, ref: ZCE/E/3/5/1/14/1133.
Copy letter from Ralph Carr & Co., Newcastle upon Tyne, to Messrs Philip and John Livingston and David Provost [at New York, America] (1756), ZCE/E/3/5/1/14/1214.
A. W. Purdue, Merchants and Gentry in North-East England 1650-1830: The Carrs and the Ellisons (University of Sunderland Press, 1999), pp. 141-86.
William I. Roberts, III, ‘Ralph Carr: A Newcastle Merchant and the American Colonial Trade’, The Business History Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1968), pp. 271-287
