My Great Grandmother Annabella Boswell was born in New South Wales, Australia, in 1826. Annabella Boswells Diary of her early life in Australia makes fascinating reading and can still be bought through Amazon

Her Campbell Grandparents had emigrated to Australia in 1817 as “Free Settlers” together with 11 of their children including their eldest daughter married to a Macleod of Raasey (Raasey is a small island of the coast of the Isle of Skye) and her 2 children. John Campbell was a Kinsman of the Earl of Breadalbane and acted as the Earls Factor of his lands around Appin in Argyll. Appin is only twelve miles from Glencoe!

John Campbell lived and farmed sheep at Lochend - later renamed Kinlochlaich.

After the end of the Napolianic Wars wool for soldiers uniforms was no longer in demand and wool prices fell. Sheep farmers struggled and it was this and mounting debts that drove John to emigrate to Australia. Annabelle relates her Grandmother's tales of the three month journey by sea in her book. The descendants of the many Campbell children who emigrated with their parents  in 1817 are scattered all over Australia. One of them includes the Governor of Queensland!

Annabella's mother, Georgina, met her father John Innes who was also a Free Settler emigrant from Thurso in Caithness and married him. They had 2 daughters Annabella & Margaret. Their father died very young and the widow and her daughters were taken care of by John Innes's brother Major George Innes. He lived inland from Part Macquarrie and named the Lake on the shores of which he built his house Lake Innes. Glen Innes is also named after him. The ruins of Innes House are preserved and can be visited and a model of the beautiful house can be seen in the Museum at Port Macquarrie as can artifacts including some of Annabella's clothes! Annabella has wonderful descriptions of life at Innes house in her book including the Piper who piped at breakfast and the convicts who worked the land.

Annabella & her sister were sent to school in Sydney. Later she met Patrick Boswell, a Scot from Ayrshire and a kinsman of James Boswell the Biographer, who was working as an Accountant in Newcastle. In 1863 they were married in the Cathedral in Newcastle - 4 of their 5 children were born in Australia. My Grandfather John Boswell was their youngest son and was born after they returned to Scotland to manage the family estate of Garallen.

Later my Grandfather bought Auchinleck House and Estate from his kinsman, Lord Talbot de Malihide, an Irishman whose mother was the daughter of James Boswell the Biographer. My grandfather John Boswell was a gifted sportsman, an Oxford Blue both for rowing and Rugby. He Captained the Scottish Rugby Team from 1891-93 and his obituary states that he was the best forward Scotland had ever had! In World War I as the Colonel of the Ayrshire Yeomanry he took the Regiment to Gallopoli, Egypt and Palestine.

Boswell was a keen Piper and judged both piping and Scottish dancing around the country. Annabella Boswell lived to a ripe old age and died aged 82 in 1908  She was a wonderful horsewoman - a skill learned from her early days in Australia. We can deduce from her writings produced after she came to Scotland, that for the rest of her life she yearned  for the country of her birth - Australia.