Chapter One:  Glen Orrin Roots, 1770s-1866 




Our story, like most, has no simple beginning.  Those bearing the name Munro or Monro are largely descendants of people who were tenants of the landowning families of the same name in Easter Ross in the Northern Highlands of Scotland - the Munros of Foulis (the senior branch who provided the clan chiefs), as well as the Munros of Novar, of Culcairn, of Milntown or Teaninich. The name itself probably derives from Norman-Scots 'Monros', meaning the people living in the more mountainous areas of Ross (a peninsula bounded by the Cromarty and Dornoch firths). Association with the ridge of high country running from east to west along the northern flank of the Cromarty Firth, and culminating in the massif of Ben Wyvis, may also be indicated by the choice of the golden eagle as the clan symbol, because it was from these highland reaches that the eagles emerged to soar over the arable and pastoral lowlands of Easter Ross. But however interesting it might be to begin with a history of the clan Munro, and its roots in the region, we must resist the temptation.  By the time we are able to identify our first ancestors - the individuals from whom Roderick, Alexander and Colin Munro are descended - the old 'ethno-feudal' clan system was well in decline, and people bearing the surname Munro were already scattered beyond the traditional homeland of 'Ferindonald', on the northern side of the Cromarty Firth.

Roderick, Alexander and Colin Munro, the brothers who provide the central focus of this social history, were born towards  the beginning of the nineteenth century - in 1813, 1822 and 1826 respectively - in the little clachan (settlement) of Faebait, hard against the hills that mark the southern flank of Glen Orrin.  But we first encounter the Munros of Glen Orrin some two generations earlier - in the 1770s.

The Orrin river flows from west to east across Ross-shire (Ross & Cromarty) in the Northern Highlands.  It is a southern tributary of the Conon river, and joins the main river shortly before it empties into the Cromarty Firth near the small, historic town of Dingwall.  The extensive catchment area comprising the Conon river system is usually called Mid Ross, to distinguish it from the other three areas - Easter Ross, the Black Isle and Wester Ross - that make up the county of Ross-shire. 
PictureParishes of Mid Ross
Historically, Mid Ross was divided for religious and administrative purposes into four parishes - Dingwall, Fodderty, Contin and Urray.  The Orrin river flows through Urray parish, and along its lower reaches, where it joins the main Conon river, there lies a broad bowl of relatively fertile agricultural land, which is sheltered by mountains to the west and north, and which rises to the steeper moorlands of the Black Isle peninsula to the east. Here, by the end of the eighteenth century, were to be found eleven landed estates whose proprietors were mainly members of the Mackenzie clan whose principal residences lay in the lower Conon basin (although they also owned extensive estates in Wester Ross whence the clan originated). Each estate had it own home farm and the rest of the arable land was leased to some 120 tenant farmers. These farmers and their servants grew oats and barley, and raised livestock for the market. However, on the less fertile ground, particularly the higher ground to the west, where the rivers swept out of long glens or valleys, a different kind of rural society was to be found. Here were small settlements of tenants-at-will - men known locally as mailers who, with their wives and families, scratched a bare living from holdings of only a few acres. They grew potatoes and oats for subsistence, raised a few cattle for meat or milk on the common grazing lands, and secured meagre cash incomes from casual or seasonal labour on the nearby farms.  Some also added to their earnings from a covert, small-scale distilling of whisky - an illicit activity which drew down the wrath of the Church as well as the State.  In this peaceful rural setting, and in a predominantly Gaelic-speaking community, we first meet our Munro family.