The Stoddart & Muckle Families of Newbattle
Battles! For the peasants of Newbattle, every day was a fight against the domination of insatiable lairds, merciless coal masters, disease, cruel weather, and hunger. Add to this the ever-present wars and religious oppression in Scotland, and the result is an unspeakable brew of suffering and subjugation. It was in and near Newbattle that the Stoddart and Muckle families wrangled to survive these daily struggles.
Newbattle sits about a mile south of Dalkeith in Edinburghshire, now called Midlothian. Its fertile soil was worked by tenant farmers, and its rich veins of coal were mined by men, women, and children. Each Midlothian parish had a main church where everyone worshipped, a minister, a kirk, and a committee of landowners who managed the community’s spiritual affairs. Though the people had fought for and attained freedom from Religious authorities, multiple Presbyterian schisms caused strife and complicated religious worship, and relations between the Churches of Scotland and England—suffice to say, times for the Stoddart and Muckles families were tense.
They had also endured centuries of war and clan conflicts. From the fourteenth to sixteenth century, Scotland experienced constant turmoil, including the Wars of Scottish Independence, the War of the Roses, the Scottish Civil War, the Bishop’s War, and constant struggles with English Kings. The seventeenth century saw more Civil Wars and the Union of the Crowns in 1603, which brought James VI of Scotland to the English throne as James I. And John Stoddart and Thomas Muckle were alive to witness the eighteenth-century Jacobite Revolts, and certainly felt the full aftereffects of the deposition of James VII, which ended the break with dynastic rule and consolidated the powers of landowners, causing the upper classes to become even more oppressive.
Born on Christmas day of 1728 to parents William and Margaret, John Stoddart came from a line of ancestors who battled religious authority such as James Ross, Lord Ross of Halkhead, who faithfully served Mary, Queen of Scots. John’s forebearers also include Scottish monarchs up to Robert II, Anglo-Saxon kings through the marriage of Malcolm III of Scotland to Saint Margaret of Scotland, Earl Cochrane of Dundonald, and John Gilmour of Craigmillar. But famous ancestors can’t fill empty stomachs, and when John’s father died when he was eleven, the lad found work as a collier to support his widowed mother. The mines were a hostile, dangerous environment where collapses, explosions, or poisonous gasses could instantly maim or kill. It was a battle he needed to take on…
For Complete Details, go to “American Pioneer Biographies, European, African, Colonial & Republic Families Of America’s East Coast From 1500-2000, Volume 1, Edition 3” at https://arcifc.com/genealogy/books-and-blog/
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