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Facts and Events
| Name |
Gilbert MCILVANE |
| Gender |
Male |
| Marriage |
Bef 1715 |
to Unknown |
References
- The McIlvains of Carrick.
At home in Thomaston, Quinton had had at least four children, John and Gilbert by his first wife, and Anna and James by his second wife. There are Testaments at Register House left by Quinton in 1694 and 1699, and by Gilbert, his brother in 1688. In 1694 John is designated Quinton's ‘air’, and in 1699 John was to make a bond with one, Andrew Kerr over debts. So Quinton's first son, John, inherited Thomaston in 1699. This John had an only son, also John, and at the same period, there was a third John, probably the son of the second Gilbert. One of these is briefly referred to in Kirkoswald Session records as having had an affair with Elizabeth Cumming in 1701.
These Kirk Session records report a saga which led to the excommunication of the only son John. Evidently this spoilt young man became a real thorn in the flesh to the elders. In the Spring of 1723 he was enjoying himself with his father's maidservant, Joan Semple. He invited her up to his room in the castle and evidently provoked a quarrel. Joan Semple got so angry that she threatened to report him to the Kirk Session. John retaliated by storming out of the room, locking the door, and taking away the key. Some time later the old Laird discovered that Joan Semple was locked in his son’s room on her own, but the doting father blamed her for the misbehaviour. He wrote a letter to the Maybole magistrates and had her put in goal in the cellars of Maybole town house, on the charge of the scandal of uncleanness. Joan Semple must have had some influential friends because on June 25th she was allowed to appear before the Kirkoswald Session to plead her case, and she accused young John of seducing her. When John discovered what had happened he got some friends to smuggle Joan Semple out of goal and arranged for her to go into hiding. Meantime the Kirkoswald minister believed Joan Semple story, and at the meeting on July 5th minuted that Joan Semple must appear before him. From that time on there is a note in the margin of the minute book every time ‘Young Grimmat’ was discussed. John did not answer the first summons so on September 15th he was given fifteen days to appear. On October 6th he pleaded innocence, whereupon the minister retorted that, if he was innocent, why did he go to all the trouble to organise Joan Semple escape from goal? He refused to confess so was given, so was given thirty days to reconsider his statement. The matter was reported at the meetings of December 15th, January 12th, 1724, January 14th, and July 19th but John never came back. Therefore on July 31st he was reported to Presbytery. At subsequent meetings on October 25th, November 8th, December 6th, January 16th, 1725, and April 12th the case was raised with no developments. On May 2nd John was threatened with excommunication and, in the margin of the minutes of December 29th 1725, there is the terse heading ‘Grimmat excommunicated’. But the story did not end there. On February 20th 1728, John and Joan Semple had the nerve to appear before the Session to explain that they were in fact living together and were married, when asked ‘how?’ they replied it was before a justice of the peace, about three years earlier. They had decided to confess because they were finding it embarrassing to be considered to be cohabiting! The last entry in the minutes is in shaky handwriting, the writer obviously having aged considerably, but in 1730 the matter was still being considered. What exactly happened we will never know. One record says John went off to America; but he left a will when he died childless and without a legal wife in 1739, and with colossal debts. His father did not die until 1740.
SOURCE:
- In the early 1700s Gilbert, Quintin’s second son moved to Glengennet in the parish of Barr and he lived there for about 40 years. Glengennet, “popularly known as Pingarroch”, or Pinjerrock, had been a small barony in the sixteenth century and is referred to as the forty shilling land of Nether Glengennet. The land stretches from the Girvan road into Barr for about two miles eastward on the north side of the river Stinchar. The ruins of the ancient house can still be seen just north-east of the village, but the land is now farmed from an imposing Victorian farmhouse on a bluff further east. The old parish records of Barr are well and fairly legibly kept from 1690. Gilbert MacIlvean had two sons baptised, William in 1715 and Quintin in 1720. Unfortunately at that date the wife’s name is not given. According to the Kirk Session minutes, Gilbert became a deacon in 1735. Marriage records are incomplete, but in 1753 Quintin married Jean Doak. She and her twin sister Elizabeth were born in 1724 to James Doak in Auchenarrock, the next farm to Grimmet, but in Kirkmichael parish, in which kirkyard there is an old and interesting tombstone which gives Jean’s background.
Jean Doak’s grandfather, Gilbert, was born in 1663 and married Margaret Fliming, born 1680. He was the manager of a small wauk mill in the village. The village landowners were the Kennedies and in 1653, the corn and waulk mills are named as part of the barony of Kirkmichael. When Abercrummie was writing, about 1690, he said there was no clachan by the church, but a settlement must have grown quite rapidly, because in the early 1700s it became known as a village of weavers, with a reputation as a source of Ayrshire needlework. Gilbert Doak’s standing as a waulkmiller is commemorated on the back of his gravestone, where there are carvings of waulking shears and a millwheel. There is also a ploughshare and a searing iron and, at the bottom, a ploughman with a team of four oxen and a boy with a goad; which would indicate that he was also a well-to-do farmer. He died in 1722 and his wife in 1731. On the front of the stone is a small shield with their initials. They had three sons, John, James, and Robert. James married and farmed Auchenarrock and his daughter Jean married the second Quinton MacIlvean.
Quintin and Jean Doak’s children were baptised - Jean 1756, James 1759, John 1761, Kathrine 1763, William 1766, Isabella 1767 when her mother was 43.
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