Foulden, Scotland blacksmith details

[USCRx1977]

My Scottish Borders ancestor, William Jeffrey, started his family in the village of Foulden in 1800. In the Window Tax, July 1798, records on ScotlandsPlaces.org website, he is recorded as a taxpayer, "William Jaffrey, smith Foulden" (https://scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/digit...tax-volume-023).
In May 1804, a tack was agreed on in order for "William Jaffray, smith in Foulden," to rent the property of Swinewood Mill.
The village of Foulden was a very small village at that time with a population of 393 people in 1801. My question is: Would William Jeffrey have practiced his blacksmithing in the old Foulden 'smithy,' (https://portal.historicenvironment.s...nation/LB46580), or would he have been a smith on one of the local estates? Also, with a population of 393, how many blacksmiths usually would've practiced in a village this size?

[Lesley Robertson]

The simple answer is that there were no hard rules - just mostly tradition and financial. In much of the Borders, there would be a smithy in the village at the centre of the Parish, and some of the larger farms or estates also had their own. You can see this by searching for blacksmiths in the early censuses. As the 19th century moved on, and fewer horses were used on the farms, blacksmithing tended to centralise and some smiths extended their activities to bicycles and eventually cars.

There's an example in the Foulden graveyard where James Jeffrey (1820-1864), blacksmith at Nunlands (the smallest of the Foulden estates according to the Statistical Accounts) is mentioned on one of the Bowmaker family stones.
If your guy is described as "of Foulden", I think that you can be mostly certain that he was at the Foulden smithy. If it was like the Whistome smithy (my one place study), in the late 18th/early 19th centuries, there could have been a Master smith, a couple of Journeyman smiths and several apprentices. There's a photo of the Whitsome smithy in action on my OPS website HERE.

Be careful - there's a lot of Jeffreys (and variations) in the area and the family links are not always obvious, and not always smiths. I seem to have a couple of distinct lines for Whitsome. One of the Williams was a ploughman and another a wool merchants.

I'll have another look when the sun moves round, off my monitor!

PS I see that the Whitsome smith in the early-middle 1800s was a David Jaffrey. Married Janet Boyd.

PPS In 1825-26, the Foulden smith was Thos Wilkie according to Pigot's Directory.

[USCRx1977]

Thanks, Lesley,
I've re-looked at the Consolidated Schedules of Assessed Taxes (1798) for Foulden on the ScotlandPlaces website (https://scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/digit...es-volume-06/2), and as far as I can tell, William Jaffrey is the only listed "smith" for Foulden that was taxed.
As I previously mentioned, in 1804, he entered a tack to occupy the Swinewood Mill property (this was a corn mill on the Eye Water). Based on some other information I have about this William, it seems that he became known in later years as a miller. To verify this, I'm trying to determine who became the blacksmith in Foulden after 1804. Do you have any suggestions of documents that might show this information?
Thanks!

[Lesley Robertson]

I worked out the Whitsome ones by checking all the occupations of fathers in the Parish Records, but that’s not as easy to do now that everything is digital. Back in the mists of time, it was possible to buy a film copy of the OPR for a specified Parish - it was quite expensive, but certainly worth it... I spent a whole winter feeding the lot into a database!

We know from Pigot’s directory that the 1825 Smith was Thomas Wilkie. If you have a Scotland’s People account, you can search the index without charge, so you could search for baptisms and marriages to see when, if any, his family appear. It’s quite possible that he came next (baptisms in 1800s, young Smith & wife) or there might have been one before him (baptisms in the 1820s). If you don’t find anything, search for baptisms and his marriage in other Berwickshire parishes to get an idea of when he moved in. I’d also look at their database of wills - you might get an idea of when Wilkie died.

When did WJ die? If after 1825, Pigot’s might show him if he was a miller by then. Also, look for his will on SP. only a minority had them, but you never know.

[Lesley Robertson]

I've had a look at the SP index and my own database. Thomas Wilkie and his wife Agnes Hilson had daughters baptised in Whitsome in 1807 and 1808. They then had children baptised in Foulden in 1811, 1817, 1821 according to SP. My Whitsome database confirms that Agnes Hilson's husband was a blacksmith!
There are no other children of this couple baptised on SP. I think their marriage was 1806 in Channelkirk, although the bride's surname is given as Nilson rather than Hilson. The 2 handwritten capital letters are often confused.

Everything depends on when WJ gave up smithing in Foulden.

BTW according to GENUKI's online gazetteer for Berwickshire (thanks Viv), Swinewood Mill is in the parish of Coldingham.There's no mention of WJ in the Pigot's 1825 for Coldingham.

[Lesley Robertson]

Incidentally, is your William J the husband of Mary Lyall?

[grisel]

britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/200393912-
foulden-village-thistle-cottage-including-ancillary-structure-and-boundary-walls-foulden
Hello again. You may be interested in these details for Thistle Cottage Foulden, former smithy house with the former old smithy close by.
The smithy is marked on Victorian OS maps. I'm sure you know that George Jeffrey b Mordington was there in 1841and beyond.
www.alamy.com/stock-photo-once-the-
old-smithy-buildings-at-foulden-berwickshire-31297087.html and this photo of the old smithy itself, now modernised.

[grisel]

Moderator - please can you unclick the british listed buildings link for me. I didn't realised it contains adverts!

Done!
I was just contemplating both those urls when I noticed your second post. I didn't realise that Britishlistedbuildings contained adverts either (I'm sure that's new). Alamy is, of course, purely commercial