McPhail Family Website

Class Structure

Highland rural society was organized within a layered agrarian system. At the top stood the landowners or clan chiefs, many of whom leased large sections of their estates to substantial leaseholders known as tacksmen. Below the tacksmen were tenants, who were farmers that worked defined portions of land in return for rent paid in money, produce, labor, or a combination of these. Tenants often held recognized family farms within small townships and formed the backbone of the rural agricultural economy. Beneath them were cottars, who occupied small cottages with little or no formal landholding. Cottars typically relied on seasonal labor, fishing, peat cutting, kelp gathering, or work for larger tenants in order to survive. While both tenants and cottars depended on the estate system, cottars generally occupied a more economically vulnerable position within Highland society. At the bottom of the class structure were labourers, who had no access to farmland for their subsistence. They worked manual labour for tenants and, in some cases, for tacksmen for meagre wages.

The McPhails of my ancestry fell mostly into the tenant and cottar classes. They were farmers who worked on land owned by the clan chief.

Economic Pressure

By the late 1700s, many Highland families on Mull and the surrounding Hebridean islands faced mounting pressures that made emigration increasingly attractive and, for some, unavoidable. Families such as the McPhails lived within a society undergoing profound economic and social change as the traditional Gaelic clan system gave way to a more commercial landholding structure.

For centuries, Highland tenants and cottars had lived under a clan-based social order in which chiefs were regarded not merely as landlords, but as kin leaders with mutual obligations to their people. By the late 1700s, however, many chiefs had become heavily influenced by Lowland and English economic practices. Estates were increasingly managed for profit, and land came to be viewed less as the foundation of a clan community and more as a commercial asset.

This transformation had serious consequences for ordinary Highland families. Tenant farmers faced steadily increasing rents and growing uncertainty about the renewal of their leases. Estate owners often consolidated smaller farms into larger holdings that could support commercial sheep operations, which generated greater revenue while requiring far fewer people. Families who had occupied the same land for generations could suddenly find themselves evicted from the property on which they lived and farmed.

Population growth further intensified the strain. As families expanded, farms were repeatedly subdivided among children until many holdings became too small to support a household. Dependence on potato cultivation increased, making communities vulnerable to crop failures and food shortages. Even established tenants often lived close to subsistence.

The situation was even more difficult for cottars. Many depended on access to shared grazing and peat-cutting rights, but as estates modernized and common rights declined, these fragile means of survival became increasingly uncertain. Economic downturns in other industries, such as kelp production, further reduced opportunities for income in the Hebrides.

At the same time, many Highlanders experienced a deep sense of cultural and social dislocation. The weakening of traditional clan relationships undermined longstanding expectations of loyalty and protection. Families who had once considered themselves part of a kin-based community increasingly found themselves treated as economic liabilities within a changing estate system.

The Dream

Against this background, Prince Edward Island offered possibilities that were typically out of reach to a lower to middle class family in Mull. Land was comparatively abundant, and families could often obtain larger and more secure holdings than were available in the Highlands. For many emigrants, the prospect that their children might farm their own land -- land that they owned -- represented a tantalizing improvement in both security and social standing.

PEI offered another kind of allure never considered possible by the Hebridean inhabitants. The forestry industry was a major economic force in PEI, and milled lumber was abundantly available to erect custom designed homes, even two-story houses. Compared to the stone and thatch dwellings of Mull, the promise of living in a wood-framed house must have seemed like an impossible dream.

The psychological impact of this transition can not be underestimated. Mull families were accustomed to damp stone-and-thatch dwellings set upon land they did not own and might lose. By contrast, within a generation in PEI, a family could live in a framed wooden farmhouse with multiple rooms, glass windows, painted siding, and detached agricultural buildings. Within a few generations their family could own the land they worked. Such opportunities symbolized much more than class or status. They offered improved shelter, permanence, independence, and prosperity.

The Reality

The transition was not immediate. Early immigrant housing in PEI could initially be extremely primitive. First-generation cabins could be cramped and austere. Newly arrived settlers lacked the means and access to sawmills, tools, livestock, or skilled labor. Clearing forests from land that was destined to become farmland was arduous.

By 1800 the first Gaelic-speaking communities were developing in PEI. By the mid-1800s, Gaelic had become the third most widely spoken language in British North America. New arrivals frequently settled among relatives or people who shared their language, religion, and customs, reducing some of the hardship of migration. Established settlers oriented and supported incoming immigrants for both altruistic motives and because community leaders understood that a larger immigrant population stood a better chance of survival and prosperity.

Life in PEI remained difficult. Some immigrant families prospered more quickly than others, and hardship remained a constant reality for many. Settlers faced forest clearing, primitive housing, harsh winters, and years of physical hardship. Yet despite these challenges, emigration offered many Highland families something increasingly difficult to secure at home: stability, opportunity, and the hope of preserving their family's future on land they could more confidently call their own.

McPhail families soon established stable land lease agreements to large, arable plots that supported sustainable and profitable farming and that were adjacent to waterways essential for commercial transportation. They built solid, dry, comfortable, multi-room wood-framed houses, barns, and other property buildings. Most families purchased their land outright within three or four generations. The McPhail brothers Neil, Colin, and John, who all sailed from Mull to PEI with their father Malcolm in 1810, puchased their own farmland plots seven years after arriving in Argyle Shore -- an unattainable dream in the Hebridean islands. While every day was still a challenge, PEI fulfilled its promise of a more stable and prosperous future.