Evan Fraser of Balconie

Captain Evan B. Fraser of Balconie was an early nineteenth century landowner who founded the modern town of Evanton. The Reverend Thomas Munro, minister of Kiltearn, writing in the 1840s lists him among five landowners in the parish of Kiltearn at the time, and tells us that "all of them, except Captain Fraser, [are] non-resident in the parish". [Rev. Thomas Munro, "Kiltearn, County of Ross and Cromarty (1834-45)" in the "Statistical Account of 1834-45", vol.14, p.313.] He is to be distinguished from another Easter Ross landowner of the period, Evan Fraser of Inchcoulter. He founded Evanton in 1807, naming it after himself. The new village was a convenient way of absorbing the numbers of people in the parish who were being evicted to make way for sheep, a process which was part of the historical phenomenon known as the Highland Clearances. By the 1840s, the process meant that Evanton had a population of 500 people, more than a quarter of the population of the parish, which was 1800. ["ibid." p. 322]

ee Also

*Balconie Castle

Notes

References

* Uncles, Christopher J., "Easter Ross and the Black Isle", (Ochiltree, 1998)
* Munro, Rev. Thomas, "Kiltearn, County of Ross and Cromarty (1834-45)" in the "Statistical Account of 1834-45", vol.14, pp. 313-32