Online seminar: John Dewar’s Diary: Keeping Shop and Making Stobs in Rosneath, 1843–52

Our first presentation in the Friends seminar series 2024/25, will take place via zoom on Friday 4 October 2024 at 14:30 UK time when Ronnie Black will present ‘John Dewar’s Diary: Keeping Shop and Making Stobs in Rosneath, 1843–52’.

John Dewar (1802–72), a self-educated native of Arrochar, spent the years 1862–72 collecting the history of the West Highlands in Gaelic from the mouths of the people, paid by the 8th duke of Argyll. Seven of his ten manuscripts are in the Argyll Archives. The Dewar Project was founded in 2017 with the aim of transcribing, translating and publishing this material in full. Its first product, John Dewar’s Islay, Jura and Colonsay, edited by Ronald Black and Christopher Dracup, appeared in July 2024. Its second, John Dewar’s Perthshire and Loch Lomond, due out in 2026, will include a full biography of Dewar. His life before 1859 is as yet undocumented, but Dewar MS 6 at Inveraray consists of four of his surviving pocket-books. The earliest is full of detailed jottings and numbers from the years 1843–52 which, when analysed, will help to fill that gap. What emerges is that Dewar spent these years in Rosneath running a grocery shop with his sister Christine and augmenting their income by cutting fence-posts (‘stobs’ or ‘stabs’). This, then, is a talk about food prices, the cost of living, the people and places of Rosneath, and the making of some of the earliest wire fences on the Argyll Estates.

Ronnie Black, a native of Cathcart (Glasgow) and a learner of Gaelic, is a former lecturer in Celtic at Edinburgh University, of which he is now an Honorary Fellow. He is editor of numerous books, author of The Campbells of the Ark, editor of West Highland Notes and Queries, and director of the Dewar Project. At the age of 78 he likes nothing better than exploring the sites mentioned by John Dewar in his stories.

The seminar will be given on Zoom.

Attendance at the seminar is free to members of the Friends. Non-members are asked to make a £10 donation to the Friends at Donate to Friends of the Argyll Papers (enthuse.com).

All attendees should book their place by emailing Alison at: friendsoftheargyllpapers@gmail.com

Online, Argyll Estates Archives, Inveraray, PA32 8XE,