Biography

CHARLES FLEMING 1821 – 1897

Charles was Scottish born in the parish of Essie and Nevay in Forfarshire, somewhat south of Brechin, on 25 February 1821. His parents were William and Margaret Fleming. He was married to Margaret Smith on the twenty-seventh of October 1842 at Friockheim. Charles was engaged in agricultural pursuits when his older children were born, the 1851 census registering him as a “Land Stewart” for D.D. Black Esq. at Pitforthie near Brechin.

David Dakers Black was the Town Clerk at Brechin and the land purchaser who was responsible for the eviction of some two hundred persons, crofters and their families, from Welsdale in the Shetland Islands, part of the Highland Clearances. Charles Fleming and his wife Margaret and Family were sent by Black to work as farm manager in the new pastoral enterprise at Weisdale for a period of years during the 1860s. Two of his daughters were born there.

To underline the permanence of the evictions the crofters’ cottages were demolished and some of the stone used to construct a large stone homestead. This was named Flemington; it was there that the Flemings lived.

Flemington was subsequently renamed Kergord House and it remains at Weisdale to this day, (2004). During the Second World War, 1939-1945, Kergord House was associated with a covert operation called the Shetland Bus centred on Scalloway, Shetland Islands, which assisted the Norwegian resistance movement. Kergord House was used as a training centre for saboteurs and intelligence personnel.

After a few more years back at Brechin, Charles and Margaret, along with their son James and daughter in-law Agnes and their Family and the single daughters of Charles and youngest son Willie, followed some of his elder sons to Otago aboard the ship Auckland in 1875. Charles was then fifty four and Margaret fifty eight.

They lived during the next decade mostly at Saddle Hill with Family and subsequently moved to Dunedin. Three of their daughters were married in the East Taieri Presbyterian Parish. Charles died on the twenty third of May 1897 aged seventy six.