Skellesta (Shetland) - Family History

The Skellesta branch of the family, like many other branches, has a rather obscure start. The, first mention of Dempsters in Shetland is in 1610, when William Dempster was in dispute with two servants of Laurence Sinclair of Burgh. The nature of the dispute is unknown, and William Dempster appears twice more in the records, firstly in connection with the above case, and later in the same year when he (together with a great many more people) is made to pay a surety that he will not ship certain goods to the islands¹.

After this appearance, he seems to drop out of the records which have been studied so far, except for an entry in the IGI which appears to relate to his will made some time before 1648. The IGI entry gives a lot of names, but no details of relationships, however the actual will which exists in the comissary court records of Shetland gives considerably more detail. It is on this that the genealogy page of this line is largely based.

After the will of William Dempster however, the Dempsters seem to largely disappear from Shetland for more than a century, though according to a researcher interested in that branch, this may be because they changed their name to Laurenson as they descended from Laurence Dempster, who appears to be a son of William².

The oral tradition on Shetland is that Laurence Dempster was married to Catherine whose maiden surname was also Dempster and that Laurence Dempster's parents were William Dempster and Agnes Donaldson³.

Until William can be more positively identified, the link to the Aberdeenshire Dempsters will only be one interesting possibility of many. By the 1600s there were Dempsters spread from Dornoch south, and it's perfectly possible that William could have originated from any of the areas of Scotland trading with the northern isles.

However, if William, son of Archibald Dempster of Hassiewells can be identified with William Dempster in Skellesta, it may also throw some light on what Professor Thomas Dempster was on about in his biographical note on the family. In this note Thomas makes out that his wicked eldest brother, James, was outlawed to the islands and there engaged in piracy, burning the Bishop of Orkney out of house and home amongst other acts, before travelling to the Low Countries in military service and ending his life by being executed - dragged to death between four horses⁴.

James Dempster, younger of Auchterless, Thomas Dempster's eldest brother did a lot of things in his life, and none of the ones which make the official record are honourable. However, I have as yet found no trace of him located in any islands - northern or hebridean - and given the fact that he was living (and active) in Aberdeenshire in 1609⁵. and dead by 1614⁶., this leaves only a very short period of 5 years to look for the outlawing and piracy. Neither appear. In fact it seems most likely that James was dead by the end of 1612 as his father issues a charter with the consent of Robert Dempster (his second son) and his three daughters in February 1613⁷..

The thing about Thomas Dempster is that he was almost exclusively on the continent from 1588 till his death in 1625, and he may have had garbled information - William, the only contemporary Dempster found on any of the islands seems to fit the bill much better. Many an "honest" merchant of the day made a bit of extra profit by attacking foreign shipping, and a generation previously it had been rife - Francis Drake, Walter Ralegh and so forth.

Obviously a great deal of work needs to be done on this, pinning down William's will, checking to see if there was an attack on the Bishop of Orkney and so on, but he (be it James or William) could prove an interesting ancestor for someone.

Footnotes:

1 Spalding Club: Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen & Banff , iii 570

2 Rosemary A.Baxter, pers comm 1997

3 Rosemary A.Baxter, pers comm 1997, quoting late Geordie Gear of Lingness, local historian

4 Dictionary of National Biography, 336

5 New Spalding Club, Littlejohn, D. (ed): Records of the Sheriff Court of Aberdeenshire, ii 150

6 The Register Of The Privy Council Of Scotland Volume X 1613-1616, 414

7 Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, 822

© James Dempster 1997