HISTORICAL REVIEW This is a tale of old of The Cheeryble Grants by Mrs Aileen Garrow, 3 Institution Road, Fochabers.
Whenever we motor south by the A9 road over Drumochter Summit, we still find some cause for complaint in spite of all the recent improvements to the road. There are too many heavy lorries about, or too few petrol stations, and every now and then those tiresome roadworks. But really, we should count among our blessings the speed and comfort of modern travel and consider the hills two hundred years ago. For them the road was rough, uncertain track and their only means of transport – a farm horse and cart! The family in question were the Grants of the Haugh of Elchies, a farm still to be seen today just across the Spey from Aberlour. Nowadays we may yet learn of their exploits by hearsay from the descendants of their relatives in Edinvillie or Aberlour, but the most detailed record of their lives is “The Story of the ‘Cheeryble’Grants” by the Rev. W Hume Elliot. That book which was published in 1906 is the source of this article.
William Grant and his wife Grace (nee McKenzie of Tombrek, Ballindalloch) occupied the Haugh as tennants from the time of their marriage in February 1767 and 7 of their 8 children were born there. They may appear to have been a cheerful, hard-working couple, generous, fond of company and in character complementing each other nicely. Grace was, perhaps, the more dominant personality, very resourceful and determined. William had a quieter, more compliant nature but he possessed tremendous physical strength and was a noted athlete of lasting fame in the district. We are told that for more than a century afterwards a “knockin’ stane” could be seen at the Haugh, which William could lift and hold out in his hands. The stone was of granite with a circular hole in which grain was ground before the days of mills and it was reckoned to weigh about 3 hundredweight’s. Eventually, Grace and the older children tackled much of the farm work themselves and William, to eke out their livelihood, set up in business as a part-time cattle-dealer. He bought livestock locally and herded them south by the old drove roads to sell at the ‘Great Tryst’ market at Falkirk or Hallow Fair in Edinburgh.
Sometimes, he had to go over the border in quest of English markets when demand for cattle trade slumped and William suffered heavy financial losses. That same year on Speyside, severe spring frosts were followed by gales, which tore out the young corn along with come of the lighter soil on the Haugh. A summer deluge then flooded the riverside fields as the Spey rose in spate and the Grants’ crops were entirely wiped out. The family now faced both famine and debt.
They were enterprising folk, however, and determined not to become beggars. William (Junior), aged 14, took a job herding sheep for one of their relatives, Mr D Kemp, at the farm of Westerton, while the rest of the family sought a long-term solution to their problems. With her customary resilience, Grace soon devised a scheme to restore their fortunes. She had often listened with some interest as her husband described the far-off places he passed with his cattle. Latterly, each time he came home, he told her of the expanding cotton industry he witnessed in places like Manchester and Bury. Everywhere the talk was of new inventions like Arkwright’s ‘throstle’ and Crompton’s spinning ‘mule’ being put to work in the factories and always more workers were required. There was a good living to be made in Lancashire if only they could get there. A bold venture it might well be, but together they resolved to sell up and migrate. They were sure they could find employment for the whole family in the cotton mills and vowed they would some day be able to pay off their creditors on Speyside. Little could they know it then, but the journey they were about to embark upon was to lead them to fame as well as fortune. One day they would make a name of distinction for themselves in England’s social and industrial history and would even inspire the creation of some characters in a famous novel. But in the autumn of 1783 all that, like their destination, lay a long way off. A LONG LONG JOURNEY TO LANCASHIRE Many of the Grants’ relatives were dumbfounded at the news of the proposed journey “hunders o’ miles awa’ tae the Sooth, an’ them wi’ seeven bairns on their hauns”. Others put their trust in Providence and Grace’s common sense. Most of their friends just did the practical thing and gave them money and warm clothing for the long, dreich road ahead. At last, farewells were said, the horse was yoked to the cart (these were the only items held back from the sale of their goods) and the family, all 9 of them, set forth. At the time of their departure, James, the eldest son, was 15 years old, his brother William was 14 and Sister Elizabeth was 10. John was next at 8 and then came Mary who was 6. Three year old Isabella and little Daniel, an infant of no more than six months, were the youngest children in the cart. The first night of the journey was spent in Advie, at the farm called Achvochkie, the home of Grace’s brother, William McKenzie. If precise accounts of the rest of the journey are scarce, here at least, the events of that night were well recorded by the McKenzie family. In later years, when the Grants had become famous, old Mrs McKenzie never tired of telling her grandchildren of the anxious evening that was spent round the fire at Achvochkie with the Grant family, mapping out the journey ahead through the mountain passes and across the rivers. At last it was time for rest and Mrs McKenzie saw to it that everyone went off to bed – except herself. Determined to ensure that the family would have ‘plenty to eat by the way’, she stayed up all night long baking round after round of good thick oatcakes which she toasted well on both sides over the peat fire. That done, she packed them carefully, along with a goodly quantity of oatmeal, butter and eggs and placed all the food in the cart. In morning the Grants protested vigorously about her hard night’s work, but she brushed their protests aside with a simple, blunt reply, “Ye’ll hae a lang road afore ye, and gey few hooses”. ‘Lang’ indeed it must have been, more than 300 miles ‘lang’, a trek of wearisome, toiling travel by a family of so many young children, beset by cold on the hills and danger through the forests. Disappointingly, the exact route and duration of the journey can now only be surmised as no reliable record of it has survived. But there is no doubt that William’s experience of the drove roads would have served them well, taking them most probably by Strathspey and Badenoch across Drumochter to Blair Atholl and by the Pass of Killiecrankie to Perth, through some of Scotland’s grandest scenery if they could only have viewed it at leisure. From Stirling and the Border country they would head for Carlisle and Cumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. At long last, near their journey’s end, we can turn to some proper evidence to find out precisely where they were travelling and how, in spite of exhaustion they felt about it all. Fifty years later, in a letter to a London journalist, William (Junior) recalled the historic moment of their arrival in Lancashire – “We came by the way of Skipton to Manchester. As we passed along the old road, we stopped for a time on the Park estate (overlooking Ramsbottom) to view the valley below. My father exclaimed, “What a beautiful valley! May God Almighty bless it! It reminds me of Speyside, but the River Irwell is not so large as the Spey”. To the travel-weary family on that Lancashire hill, it must have seemed that the promised land was in sight at last, but night fell before they could quite reach it, and the grimmest night of the whole journey it surely was. Many years later William (Junior) on a return visit to Speyside told his relatives in full and frank detail just how they spent that night. Grace gave the last of the oatcakes from Advie to the younger children and there was no other food left. They had no money left either to buy food or pay for shelter at an inn. Strangers in a strange land, they could not bring themselves to beg for help and prepared to spend the night huddled together on the open hill-side. But before they went to sleep, they sought comfort in a sacred family custom still commonly practised in those days – the children gathered round their father and mother and “lifted up their voices in prayer to God, to relieve them in their sore trouble and send food to feed the hungry”. When morning came, they found their prayers were answered. As they bravely made ready to set off once more, 2 gentlemen out shooting on the hill noticed them, approached and asked how they came to be there. Listening to William’s description of his family’s plight, the strangers were deeply moved. They pressed two sovereigns into his hands, turned and hurried away. With the means now to obtain food and shelter, the Grants took heart once more and set off to find work and make a new home in Lancashire. FAMILY ENTERPRISE It really is a pity that the names of the kind gentlemen whose timely gift of money rescued the Grants from destitution on the last day of their journey were never known and placed on record, especially in view of their eventual prosperity and fame. That simple act of charity had far-reaching results, far more than could ever have been foreseen. There is no doubt that the immense relief and gratitude they felt at the time stayed with them through life. They, in their turn to have wealth and power, responded promptly to all in need who came their way, providing jobs, money, food and clothing. Their great fame really rose from this – quiet, sincere benevolence that looked for no reward – other than the relief of distress that they themselves had once known only too well. But, in the first instance, it was to some one already famous that they turned as they made their way to Sir Richard Arkwright to seek work. Alas, there was a waiting list for jobs there and the letters of introduction that William presented to the great inventor were to no avail. Back northwards they trudged six and a half miles to Hampson Mill near Bury. Here, the owner, James Dinwiddie, Calico Printer and Manufacturer was a fellow Scot and an old friend of William Grant. He promptly took on the older boys, James and William provided jobs in due course for John and Elizabeth and helped the family to find their first home in England – a low, grey-slated cottage at Haslam Bank, about a mile from the mill. The father did not work at the mill for long, disliking the confined routine of factory work after long years on the fields and drove roads. Instead he set up his own enterprise as an itinerant seller of small goods – especially ‘fents’ which were oddments of cloth and variously patterned vest pieces for jackets and waistcoats. At the factory gates and round the public houses and doors of the growing town of Bury he called regularly and courteously, discovering what people required and conscientiously supplying it. Gradually he widened the scope of his trade and the range of his stock. Sorrow and distress still dogged the family, however. One stormy morning in November, 1784 eight year old Mary, who was lightly built and lame, set off as usual for her work at Hinds Mill on the other side of the River Irwell. When she failed to return at night, her parents searched frantically and enquired everywhere only to discover that she had never reached her place of work. Some days later a neighbour called and told them of a dream he’d had in which he saw “Mrs. Grant’s daughter lying in the Irwell”. A search was made at the exact spot he indicated and there the child’s body was found. They could only guess that she had been swept into the river by the gale. The pathetic inscription on her tombstone in Bank Street, Bury, shows how sorrow brought the Grants close to their origin and old home in Elchies: “Here resteth Mary, daughter of William Grant of Strathspey, North Britain, who died in the 8th year of her age.” The tragedy of her loss served also to intensify the great family loyalty for which the Grants were known and respected, and in 1788 the eighth and last child was born, a son called Charles. By now the older boys were helping to supply materials for their father’s customers, bleaching and printing attractive pieces of cloth in their spare rime, all with the blessing of James Dinwiddie. Under his guidance James, William and John completed their apprenticeship. Eventually Daniel, too, began his training at Hampson Mill. In time, James left Bury and returned north to Glasgow to set up his own textile business there. Young William, hard-working and attentive, so impressed James Dinwiddie that he offered him a partnership in his business but this was declined in favour of starting up a family business in a modest shop in Bolton Street, Bury, where they sold linen, woollens and all kinds of checked and printed materials and travelled widely in the North of England promoting and selling textiles. Soon they moved again, this time to more spacious and dignified premises in the busy centre of Bury. As they prospered they slowly overcame the resentment which many Lancashire folk showed towards them – after all they were incomers with strange ways and even stranger accents! Admiration and affection replaced prejudice as the local people warmed to their honesty and earnest desire to please and satisfy their customers. Some of their old-fashioned Scottish habits and tastes also helped them to make friends. They were always early risers and tidied their shop well each morning before they opened their doors punctually for business, were most polite and kept no one waiting. They were very hospitable, always ready with a warm welcome and a hearty meal for friends and customers who came from a distance. They were soon noted for their great love of music and the entertainment they provided for their own and the public’s benefit by means of a very novel instrument – “a new invented Patent Barrel Organ with Bell, Drum and Triangle, with Four Barrels and Two and Thirty Tunes!” The machine was set up in their front window and every evening people gathered round to listen to the variety of melodies it performed. FAME AND FORTUNE For the Grants to commit their capital plus their combined skills and energies as they did to the production of printed cotton cloth in the first decade of the nineteenth century was a move both opportune and shrewd. The return on their investment was excellent. Nationwide – world-wide, in fact, there was a fast-growing demand for coloured fabrics and their profits, reckoned to be upwards of 25/- on each bolt of 25 yards of cloth, were the highest they had ever been – or would ever be – throughout the textile boom. (A century later the profit on the same length of cloth would fall as low as 1/6.) So it was that in the year 1800 William (Junior), John and Daniel, to be joined later by Charles, removed to premises in Manchester where they set up in business as William Grant and Brothers, Calico Printers. Daniel was the firm’s commercial traveller, taking samples of their cloth all over the North of England and to the major market towns of Scotland in pursuit of orders. His charm and buoyant good humour won him customers everywhere, with the help of an excellent product, of course. The story is told about the head of a Glasgow drapery who was so wearied by Daniel’s sales talk that he snatched his samples from him and pitched them out into the muddy street. Undaunted, Daniel picked them up, wiped them clean and darted back into the shop. His hazel eyes twinkling with excitement. “Now, sir, I’m sure you’ll give me an order – there’s a fortune in these – just look at them now”. He won his order and the lifelong friendship of the shopkeeper. Tempted as they must have been to expand while the going was so good, they did not forget that there were some old debts to be discharged on Speyside first. They now had the means and also a sacred, avowed obligation to do so, and the task was undertaken. On the evening before they were to set off for Scotland, the family all met, joined by Daniel – just back from one of his selling trips. It’s not hard to picture the occasion, the nostalgia of it, the emotional, anxious planning they must have done, and to lighten it all the fun and laughter they always shared. The evening closed as always with family prayers, a Bible reading and a favourite hymn, this time, we are told, it was a very touching choice, apt and full of meaning for the Grants: “O God of Bethel, by whose hand, Thy people still are fed, Who through this weary pilgrimage Hast all our fathers led. ………………………………………. God of our fathers be the God Of their succeeding race”. For the journey south in 1783 they had travelled in a farm-cart packed with children, oatcakes, butter and eggs, but for the journey back north in 1806, they had a horse-drawn coach that held bags of gold, gifts of clothes for their relatives and only 2 of the family – young William and his eldest sister, Elizabeth. Sadly, the parents never returned to Speyside, deterred by painful memories perhaps, or other reasons we can only guess at now. On their arrival, William and Elizabeth announced that their errant was the payment of debts, asked for claims to be submitted to them, then settled them in full. Sociably, they did the rounds of family and friends, staying in some very humble homes which were built mainly of turf and thatched with heather. During a heavy downpour one night, Elizabeth sharing the ‘best room’ with her cousin found the rain falling on her bed. Out came her umbrella a novel contraption to the hill-folk, no doubt. Amid much laughter she adjusted it to ward off the drips and on her return to Manchester she sent money to her cousin “out of which a new and comfortable house was built”. The Grants’ generosity to their folk in the North flowed on as their prosperity grew, with boxes of warm woollen goods, money to help enterprising friends start up in business and yet more to pay to educate promising youngsters. When the great floods of 1829 swept away homes and farmlands on Speyside, £100 came from the Grants to swell ‘The Flood Fund’. Later in the same year – 1806 – they purchased the “Old Ground” printing works and estate at Ramsbottom from Sir Robert Peel, father of the famous Prime Minister. They had watched workmen erecting the factory in that ‘beautiful valley’ of the River Irwell so admired and blessed by their father as they stood on the hillside above it in 1783. It had been countryside of fields and woods then with only an old corn-mill to use the springs of clear water flowing down the hill – but it was the water which made it a choice industrial site. Peel had set up a dozen buildings there to house what was then a modern, complex fabric-printing process, much of it unfamiliar to the Grants. But this, too, they mastered, pursued their policy of strong yet kindly management of their workforce and prepared to shoulder the financial burden of further expansion. In William’s own words: “In 1812 we purchased the Nuttall Spinning factory …. Where the workforce had long been short of employment and were destitute. We ordered the manager to get new machinery of first-rate construction and we extended the building. But before we began to spin or manufacture we clothed all the workers at our own expense, prepared an entertainment for them and observed that the interests of masters and servants are bound together, that we knew how to reward merit and would give constant employment and liberal wages to all our faithful servants”. The brothers all worked long, hard hours at their business, but it was their team-work, the willing, harmonious blending of their individual skills that was the key to their brilliant success. William was “the model executive wrote Rev. W. Hume Elliot. He was a plodder with a splendid grasp of every detail of that large business, yet he never lost sight of the whole operation and its ultimate aim. He was the one who could motivate and manage the workers. John was an overseer and maintained the upkeep of all the properties they kept buying. Charles, the youngest and best educated was a forceful character (like his mother) and very much the inventor, the brains behind the modernisation of the whole printing process. He devised and built “The Square” to replace Peel’s rambling mill. Hailed the most modern calico factory in Europe, it stood 3 storeys high and concentrated all the processes within one truly square building surrounded by water. The raw materials went in at one side and the manufactured goods, ready for the market, came out at the other – anticipating the production line of a whole century later. But it was Daniel, the traveller, brilliant and lively, who had the vision and the drive to pursue the export of their goods overseas. As the orders flowed in from abroad, they generated more wealth to offset the cost of buying the factories and enable the brothers to modernise, with the purchase of real estate like Blackley Hall and the handsome mansion ‘Springside’ into the bargain. One of their contemporaries, well-travelled himself, paid them this compliment on the success of their export trade: “While your name had been sounded in my ears at Singapore and Calcutta in the East, it has been just as favourably mentioned in New Orleans and New York in the Western World”. But what of their parents, William and Grace, all this time? They were comfortably installed in Grant Lodge in Ramsbottom where William, genial and contented, but rather lame from rheumatism, could still walk out every day in the open country, and Grace, energetic and spirited as ever, had ample means to entertain her friends and provide food for the needy who came daily to her door. “While she lived, she ruled us,” her family confessed but they never questioned her authority. She took great pleasure in the flowers, shrubs and trees which grew profusely around the Lodge. One day, when she was in her late seventies, she noticed a group of workmen prepare to fell the trees at Topwood just above her house. Up the hill she went at a brisk pace and ordered them to stop at once. As soon as they obeyed she proceeded back down past her house to the factory to her sons, protesting vigorously – those trees must be left to grow! Eighty years later, the same trees still crowned the hillside at Topwood. Spared for many years to watch the growing prosperity of their sons with great pride, William and Grace found immense joy in the company of their closely united family, all so respectful of their parents. William died in 1817 and Grace in 1821, and they were laid to rest in Bank Street cemetery in Bury where little Mary was buried in 1784 and Elizabeth, aged 35, in 1808. In 1827 the brothers bought the Park estate in Ramsbottom and the very next year they built on it a monument – Grant’s Tower – to commemorate their father’s a first arrival in that valley. It was erected on the exact spot where he had stood, admiring the scene and the river below. His parents had expressly asked William to build a Sunday school and “erect a Church to worship God in, according to the ritual of the Church of Scotland.” The requests were honoured and the foundation stone for the new church was laid in 1832. Built at a cost of £5.000, it was completed in 1834 and called St. Andrews Church. Can it be just a coincidence that the beautiful building as depicted in Rev. W. Elliot’s book shows such a marked resemblance to Aberlour Parish Church, which was erected some 20 years before it? To honour the memory of their parents the family placed an ornate tablet on the east wall of St. Andrew’s Church bearing a most appropriate inscription: ‘Sacred to the memory of William Grant, Esqr., of Elchies, Morayshire, Scotland; and Grant Lodge, Ramsbottom. Born 1733. Died 29th July, 1817. Aged 84. “The Effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much.” St. James, chap. 5, ver. 16. Also Grace, his wife. Born 1742. Died 16th May, 1821. Aged 79 . “Her children arise up and called her blessed.” Prov., chap. 31, ver. 29.’ Stories abound in Mr. Elliot’s book, some amusing, some very touching, that tell of the generous, thoughtful and compassionate acts performed by William and Daniel Grant, so often with humour and self-effacing modesty – they were fascinating, unforgettable characters. “For half a century their firm held a prominent place among the great houses of Manchester and always liberally supported schools, libraries and the charitable institutions of that important period. At their homes they were profusely hospitable, they scattered money freely by the way, were never above pulling up and alighting from their carriage to chat and quietly assist an old neighbour whose face recalled to them the struggle of their own earlier years.” Unforgettable characters they were indeed, eventually to be immortalised by the novelist Charles Dickens who had heard reports of their distinguished careers and generosity and who is said to have met them at a dinner party in Manchester in 1839. His observant eye saw them as the perfect models for 2 famous characters, the very exemplary brothers Charles and Ned Cheeryble in his novel, “Nicholas Nickleby.” Perhaps the greatest tribute ever paid to them is to be found in Dickens’ preface to that book: “It may be right to say that there are 2 characters in this book which are drawn from life …. Those who take an interest in this tale will be glad to learn that the Brothers Cheeryble do live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, noble nature and unbounded benevolence are no creatures of the author’s brain, but are prompting every day some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the pride and honour. May, 1848.” He was referring to William and Daniel Grant – ever afterwards known as “The Cheeryble Grants.” HISTORICAL REVIEW This is a tale of old of The Cheeryble Grants by Mrs Aileen Garrow, 3 Institution Road, Fochabers Whenever we motor south by the A9 road over Drumochter Summit, we still find some cause for complaint in spite of all the recent improvements to the road. There are too many heavy lorries about, or too few petrol stations, and every now and then those tiresome roadworks. But really, we should count among our blessings the speed and comfort of modern travel and consider the hills two hundred years ago. For them the road was rough, uncertain track and their only means of transport – a farm horse and cart! The family in question were the Grants of the Haugh of Elchies, a farm still to be seen today just across the Spey from Aberlour. Nowadays we may yet learn of their exploits by hearsay from the descendants of their relatives in Edinvillie or Aberlour, but the most detailed record of their lives is “The Story of the ‘Cheeryble’Grants” by the Rev. W Hume Elliot. That book which was published in 1906 is the source of this article. William Grant and his wife Grace (nee McKenzie of Tombrek, Ballindalloch) occupied the Haugh as tennants from the time of their marriage in February 1767 and 7 of their 8 children were born there. They may appear to have been a cheerful, hard-working couple, generous, fond of company and in character complementing each other nicely. Grace was, perhaps, the more dominant personality, very resourceful and determined. William had a quieter, more compliant nature but he possessed tremendous physical strength and was a noted athlete of lasting fame in the district. We are told that for more than a century afterwards a “knockin’ stane” could be seen at the Haugh, which William could lift and hold out in his hands. The stone was of granite with a circular hole in which grain was ground before the days of mills and it was reckoned to weigh about 3 hundredweight’s. Eventually, Grace and the older children tackled much of the farm work themselves and William, to eke out their livelihood, set up in business as a part-time cattle-dealer. He bought livestock locally and herded them south by the old drove roads to sell at the ‘Great Tryst’ market at Falkirk or Hallow Fair in Edinburgh. Sometimes, he had to go over the border in quest of English markets when demand for cattle trade slumped and William suffered heavy financial losses. That same year on Speyside, severe spring frosts were followed by gales, which tore out the young corn along with come of the lighter soil on the Haugh. A summer deluge then flooded the riverside fields as the Spey rose in spate and the Grants’ crops were entirely wiped out. The family now faced both famine and debt. They were enterprising folk, however, and determined not to become beggars. William (Junior), aged 14, took a job herding sheep for one of their relatives, Mr D Kemp, at the farm of Westerton, while the rest of the family sought a long-term solution to their problems. With her customary resilience, Grace soon devised a scheme to restore their fortunes. She had often listened with some interest as her husband described the far-off places he passed with his cattle. Latterly, each time he came home, he told her of the expanding cotton industry he witnessed in places like Manchester and Bury. Everywhere the talk was of new inventions like Arkwright’s ‘throstle’ and Crompton’s spinning ‘mule’ being put to work in the factories and always more workers were required. There was a good living to be made in Lancashire if only they could get there. A bold venture it might well be, but together they resolved to sell up and migrate. They were sure they could find employment for the whole family in the cotton mills and vowed they would some day be able to pay off their creditors on Speyside. Little could they know it then, but the journey they were about to embark upon was to lead them to fame as well as fortune. One day they would make a name of distinction for themselves in England’s social and industrial history and would even inspire the creation of some characters in a famous novel. But in the autumn of 1783 all that, like their destination, lay a long way off. A LONG LONG JOURNEY TO LANCASHIRE Many of the Grants’ relatives were dumbfounded at the news of the proposed journey “hunders o’ miles awa’ tae the Sooth, an’ them wi’ seeven bairns on their hauns”. Others put their trust in Providence and Grace’s common sense. Most of their friends just did the practical thing and gave them money and warm clothing for the long, dreich road ahead. At last, farewells were said, the horse was yoked to the cart (these were the only items held back from the sale of their goods) and the family, all 9 of them, set forth. At the time of their departure, James, the eldest son, was 15 years old, his brother William was 14 and Sister Elizabeth was 10. John was next at 8 and then came Mary who was 6. Three year old Isabella and little Daniel, an infant of no more than six months, were the youngest children in the cart. The first night of the journey was spent in Advie, at the farm called Achvochkie, the home of Grace’s brother, William McKenzie. If precise accounts of the rest of the journey are scarce, here at least, the events of that night were well recorded by the McKenzie family. In later years, when the Grants had become famous, old Mrs McKenzie never tired of telling her grandchildren of the anxious evening that was spent round the fire at Achvochkie with the Grant family, mapping out the journey ahead through the mountain passes and across the rivers. At last it was time for rest and Mrs McKenzie saw to it that everyone went off to bed – except herself. Determined to ensure that the family would have ‘plenty to eat by the way’, she stayed up all night long baking round after round of good thick oatcakes which she toasted well on both sides over the peat fire. That done, she packed them carefully, along with a goodly quantity of oatmeal, butter and eggs and placed all the food in the cart. In morning the Grants protested vigorously about her hard night’s work, but she brushed their protests aside with a simple, blunt reply, “Ye’ll hae a lang road afore ye, and gey few hooses”. ‘Lang’ indeed it must have been, more than 300 miles ‘lang’, a trek of wearisome, toiling travel by a family of so many young children, beset by cold on the hills and danger through the forests. Disappointingly, the exact route and duration of the journey can now only be surmised as no reliable record of it has survived. But there is no doubt that William’s experience of the drove roads would have served them well, taking them most probably by Strathspey and Badenoch across Drumochter to Blair Atholl and by the Pass of Killiecrankie to Perth, through some of Scotland’s grandest scenery if they could only have viewed it at leisure. From Stirling and the Border country they would head for Carlisle and Cumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. At long last, near their journey’s end, we can turn to some proper evidence to find out precisely where they were travelling and how, in spite of exhaustion they felt about it all. Fifty years later, in a letter to a London journalist, William (Junior) recalled the historic moment of their arrival in Lancashire – “We came by the way of Skipton to Manchester. As we passed along the old road, we stopped for a time on the Park estate (overlooking Ramsbottom) to view the valley below. My father exclaimed, “What a beautiful valley! May God Almighty bless it! It reminds me of Speyside, but the River Irwell is not so large as the Spey”. To the travel-weary family on that Lancashire hill, it must have seemed that the promised land was in sight at last, but night fell before they could quite reach it, and the grimmest night of the whole journey it surely was. Many years later William (Junior) on a return visit to Speyside told his relatives in full and frank detail just how they spent that night. Grace gave the last of the oatcakes from Advie to the younger children and there was no other food left. They had no money left either to buy food or pay for shelter at an inn. Strangers in a strange land, they could not bring themselves to beg for help and prepared to spend the night huddled together on the open hill-side. But before they went to sleep, they sought comfort in a sacred family custom still commonly practised in those days – the children gathered round their father and mother and “lifted up their voices in prayer to God, to relieve them in their sore trouble and send food to feed the hungry”. When morning came, they found their prayers were answered. As they bravely made ready to set off once more, 2 gentlemen out shooting on the hill noticed them, approached and asked how they came to be there. Listening to William’s description of his family’s plight, the strangers were deeply moved. They pressed two sovereigns into his hands, turned and hurried away. With the means now to obtain food and shelter, the Grants took heart once more and set off to find work and make a new home in Lancashire. FAMILY ENTERPRISE It really is a pity that the names of the kind gentlemen whose timely gift of money rescued the Grants from destitution on the last day of their journey were never known and placed on record, especially in view of their eventual prosperity and fame. That simple act of charity had far-reaching results, far more than could ever have been foreseen. There is no doubt that the immense relief and gratitude they felt at the time stayed with them through life. They, in their turn to have wealth and power, responded promptly to all in need who came their way, providing jobs, money, food and clothing. Their great fame really rose from this – quiet, sincere benevolence that looked for no reward – other than the relief of distress that they themselves had once known only too well. But, in the first instance, it was to some one already famous that they turned as they made their way to Sir Richard Arkwright to seek work. Alas, there was a waiting list for jobs there and the letters of introduction that William presented to the great inventor were to no avail. Back northwards they trudged six and a half miles to Hampson Mill near Bury. Here, the owner, James Dinwiddie, Calico Printer and Manufacturer was a fellow Scot and an old friend of William Grant. He promptly took on the older boys, James and William provided jobs in due course for John and Elizabeth and helped the family to find their first home in England – a low, grey-slated cottage at Haslam Bank, about a mile from the mill. The father did not work at the mill for long, disliking the confined routine of factory work after long years on the fields and drove roads. Instead he set up his own enterprise as an itinerant seller of small goods – especially ‘fents’ which were oddments of cloth and variously patterned vest pieces for jackets and waistcoats. At the factory gates and round the public houses and doors of the growing town of Bury he called regularly and courteously, discovering what people required and conscientiously supplying it. Gradually he widened the scope of his trade and the range of his stock. Sorrow and distress still dogged the family, however. One stormy morning in November, 1784 eight year old Mary, who was lightly built and lame, set off as usual for her work at Hinds Mill on the other side of the River Irwell. When she failed to return at night, her parents searched frantically and enquired everywhere only to discover that she had never reached her place of work. Some days later a neighbour called and told them of a dream he’d had in which he saw “Mrs. Grant’s daughter lying in the Irwell”. A search was made at the exact spot he indicated and there the child’s body was found. They could only guess that she had been swept into the river by the gale. The pathetic inscription on her tombstone in Bank Street, Bury, shows how sorrow brought the Grants close to their origin and old home in Elchies: “Here resteth Mary, daughter of William Grant of Strathspey, North Britain, who died in the 8th year of her age.” The tragedy of her loss served also to intensify the great family loyalty for which the Grants were known and respected, and in 1788 the eighth and last child was born, a son called Charles. By now the older boys were helping to supply materials for their father’s customers, bleaching and printing attractive pieces of cloth in their spare rime, all with the blessing of James Dinwiddie. Under his guidance James, William and John completed their apprenticeship. Eventually Daniel, too, began his training at Hampson Mill. In time, James left Bury and returned north to Glasgow to set up his own textile business there. Young William, hard-working and attentive, so impressed James Dinwiddie that he offered him a partnership in his business but this was declined in favour of starting up a family business in a modest shop in Bolton Street, Bury, where they sold linen, woollens and all kinds of checked and printed materials and travelled widely in the North of England promoting and selling textiles. Soon they moved again, this time to more spacious and dignified premises in the busy centre of Bury. As they prospered they slowly overcame the resentment which many Lancashire folk showed towards them – after all they were incomers with strange ways and even stranger accents! Admiration and affection replaced prejudice as the local people warmed to their honesty and earnest desire to please and satisfy their customers. Some of their old-fashioned Scottish habits and tastes also helped them to make friends. They were always early risers and tidied their shop well each morning before they opened their doors punctually for business, were most polite and kept no one waiting. They were very hospitable, always ready with a warm welcome and a hearty meal for friends and customers who came from a distance. They were soon noted for their great love of music and the entertainment they provided for their own and the public’s benefit by means of a very novel instrument – “a new invented Patent Barrel Organ with Bell, Drum and Triangle, with Four Barrels and Two and Thirty Tunes!” The machine was set up in their front window and every evening people gathered round to listen to the variety of melodies it performed. FAME AND FORTUNE For the Grants to commit their capital plus their combined skills and energies as they did to the production of printed cotton cloth in the first decade of the nineteenth century was a move both opportune and shrewd. The return on their investment was excellent. Nationwide – world-wide, in fact, there was a fast-growing demand for coloured fabrics and their profits, reckoned to be upwards of 25/- on each bolt of 25 yards of cloth, were the highest they had ever been – or would ever be – throughout the textile boom. (A century later the profit on the same length of cloth would fall as low as 1/6.) So it was that in the year 1800 William (Junior), John and Daniel, to be joined later by Charles, removed to premises in Manchester where they set up in business as William Grant and Brothers, Calico Printers. Daniel was the firm’s commercial traveller, taking samples of their cloth all over the North of England and to the major market towns of Scotland in pursuit of orders. His charm and buoyant good humour won him customers everywhere, with the help of an excellent product, of course. The story is told about the head of a Glasgow drapery who was so wearied by Daniel’s sales talk that he snatched his samples from him and pitched them out into the muddy street. Undaunted, Daniel picked them up, wiped them clean and darted back into the shop. His hazel eyes twinkling with excitement. “Now, sir, I’m sure you’ll give me an order – there’s a fortune in these – just look at them now”. He won his order and the lifelong friendship of the shopkeeper. Tempted as they must have been to expand while the going was so good, they did not forget that there were some old debts to be discharged on Speyside first. They now had the means and also a sacred, avowed obligation to do so, and the task was undertaken. On the evening before they were to set off for Scotland, the family all met, joined by Daniel – just back from one of his selling trips. It’s not hard to picture the occasion, the nostalgia of it, the emotional, anxious planning they must have done, and to lighten it all the fun and laughter they always shared. The evening closed as always with family prayers, a Bible reading and a favourite hymn, this time, we are told, it was a very touching choice, apt and full of meaning for the Grants: “O God of Bethel, by whose hand, Thy people still are fed, Who through this weary pilgrimage Hast all our fathers led. ………………………………………. God of our fathers be the God Of their succeeding race”. For the journey south in 1783 they had travelled in a farm-cart packed with children, oatcakes, butter and eggs, but for the journey back north in 1806, they had a horse-drawn coach that held bags of gold, gifts of clothes for their relatives and only 2 of the family – young William and his eldest sister, Elizabeth. Sadly, the parents never returned to Speyside, deterred by painful memories perhaps, or other reasons we can only guess at now. On their arrival, William and Elizabeth announced that their errant was the payment of debts, asked for claims to be submitted to them, then settled them in full. Sociably, they did the rounds of family and friends, staying in some very humble homes which were built mainly of turf and thatched with heather. During a heavy downpour one night, Elizabeth sharing the ‘best room’ with her cousin found the rain falling on her bed. Out came her umbrella a novel contraption to the hill-folk, no doubt. Amid much laughter she adjusted it to ward off the drips and on her return to Manchester she sent money to her cousin “out of which a new and comfortable house was built”.
The Grants’ generosity to their folk in the North flowed on as their prosperity grew, with boxes of warm woollen goods, money to help enterprising friends start up in business and yet more to pay to educate promising youngsters. When the great floods of 1829 swept away homes and farmlands on Speyside, £100 came from the Grants to swell ‘The Flood Fund’. Later in the same year – 1806 – they purchased the “Old Ground” printing works and estate at Ramsbottom from Sir Robert Peel, father of the famous Prime Minister. They had watched workmen erecting the factory in that ‘beautiful valley’ of the River Irwell so admired and blessed by their father as they stood on the hillside above it in 1783. It had been countryside of fields and woods then with only an old corn-mill to use the springs of clear water flowing down the hill – but it was the water which made it a choice industrial site. Peel had set up a dozen buildings there to house what was then a modern, complex fabric-printing process, much of it unfamiliar to the Grants. But this, too, they mastered, pursued their policy of strong yet kindly management of their workforce and prepared to shoulder the financial burden of further expansion. In William’s own words: “In 1812 we purchased the Nuttall Spinning factory …. Where the workforce had long been short of employment and were destitute. We ordered the manager to get new machinery of first-rate construction and we extended the building. But before we began to spin or manufacture we clothed all the workers at our own expense, prepared an entertainment for them and observed that the interests of masters and servants are bound together, that we knew how to reward merit and would give constant employment and liberal wages to all our faithful servants”.
The brothers all worked long, hard hours at their business, but it was their team-work, the willing, harmonious blending of their individual skills that was the key to their brilliant success. William was “the model executive wrote Rev. W. Hume Elliot. He was a plodder with a splendid grasp of every detail of that large business, yet he never lost sight of the whole operation and its ultimate aim. He was the one who could motivate and manage the workers. John was an overseer and maintained the upkeep of all the properties they kept buying. Charles, the youngest and best educated was a forceful character (like his mother) and very much the inventor, the brains behind the modernisation of the whole printing process. He devised and built “The Square” to replace Peel’s rambling mill. Hailed the most modern calico factory in Europe, it stood 3 storeys high and concentrated all the processes within one truly square building surrounded by water. The raw materials went in at one side and the manufactured goods, ready for the market, came out at the other – anticipating the production line of a whole century later. But it was Daniel, the traveller, brilliant and lively, who had the vision and the drive to pursue the export of their goods overseas. As the orders flowed in from abroad, they generated more wealth to offset the cost of buying the factories and enable the brothers to modernise, with the purchase of real estate like Blackley Hall and the handsome mansion ‘Springside’ into the bargain.
One of their contemporaries, well-travelled himself, paid them this compliment on the success of their export trade: “While your name had been sounded in my ears at Singapore and Calcutta in the East, it has been just as favourably mentioned in New Orleans and New York in the Western World”. But what of their parents, William and Grace, all this time? They were comfortably installed in Grant Lodge in Ramsbottom where William, genial and contented, but rather lame from rheumatism, could still walk out every day in the open country, and Grace, energetic and spirited as ever, had ample means to entertain her friends and provide food for the needy who came daily to her door. “While she lived, she ruled us,” her family confessed but they never questioned her authority. She took great pleasure in the flowers, shrubs and trees which grew profusely around the Lodge. One day, when she was in her late seventies, she noticed a group of workmen prepare to fell the trees at Topwood just above her house. Up the hill she went at a brisk pace and ordered them to stop at once. As soon as they obeyed she proceeded back down past her house to the factory to her sons, protesting vigorously – those trees must be left to grow! Eighty years later, the same trees still crowned the hillside at Topwood. Spared for many years to watch the growing prosperity of their sons with great pride, William and Grace found immense joy in the company of their closely united family, all so respectful of their parents.
William died in 1817 and Grace in 1821, and they were laid to rest in Bank Street cemetery in Bury where little Mary was buried in 1784 and Elizabeth, aged 35, in 1808. In 1827 the brothers bought the Park estate in Ramsbottom and the very next year they built on it a monument – Grant’s Tower – to commemorate their father’s a first arrival in that valley. It was erected on the exact spot where he had stood, admiring the scene and the river below. His parents had expressly asked William to build a Sunday school and “erect a Church to worship God in, according to the ritual of the Church of Scotland.” The requests were honoured and the foundation stone for the new church was laid in 1832. Built at a cost of £5.000, it was completed in 1834 and called St. Andrews Church. Can it be just a coincidence that the beautiful building as depicted in Rev. W. Elliot’s book shows such a marked resemblance to Aberlour Parish Church, which was erected some 20 years before it? To honour the memory of their parents the family placed an ornate tablet on the east wall of St. Andrew’s Church bearing a most appropriate inscription: ‘Sacred to the memory of William Grant, Esqr., of Elchies, Morayshire, Scotland; and Grant Lodge, Ramsbottom. Born 1733. Died 29th July, 1817. Aged 84. “The Effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much.” St. James, chap. 5, ver. 16. Also Grace, his wife. Born 1742. Died 16th May, 1821. Aged 79 . “Her children arise up and called her blessed.” Prov., chap. 31, ver. 29.’
Stories abound in Mr. Elliot’s book, some amusing, some very touching, that tell of the generous, thoughtful and compassionate acts performed by William and Daniel Grant, so often with humour and self-effacing modesty – they were fascinating, unforgettable characters. “For half a century their firm held a prominent place among the great houses of Manchester and always liberally supported schools, libraries and the charitable institutions of that important period. At their homes they were profusely hospitable, they scattered money freely by the way, were never above pulling up and alighting from their carriage to chat and quietly assist an old neighbour whose face recalled to them the struggle of their own earlier years.”
Unforgettable characters they were indeed, eventually to be immortalised by the novelist Charles Dickens who had heard reports of their distinguished careers and generosity and who is said to have met them at a dinner party in Manchester in 1839. His observant eye saw them as the perfect models for 2 famous characters, the very exemplary brothers Charles and Ned Cheeryble in his novel, “Nicholas Nickleby.” Perhaps the greatest tribute ever paid to them is to be found in Dickens’ preface to that book: “It may be right to say that there are 2 characters in this book which are drawn from life …. Those who take an interest in this tale will be glad to learn that the Brothers Cheeryble do live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, noble nature and unbounded benevolence are no creatures of the author’s brain, but are prompting every day some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the pride and honour. May, 1848.” He was referring to William and Daniel Grant – ever afterwards known as “The Cheeryble Grants.”
New site with a great story of the Grant Family .