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Note: John Jack was a farmer at Priesthill (Preesthill) according to his son's death certificate in 1855. There was a farm at Priesthill on a 1650 map of the area. Other sources tell us that Priesthill had been famred for a,long time before that. It was near Boydstown and was a farm rather than a village. Sources suggest that two thirds of the land in the area was given to pasture, mainly cows whilst the remainder was for crops. The Statistical Account of 1791-99 tells us that potatoes were the main crop in the area.
The account further tells us that the Maxwells of Pollok sold off small parcels of land between 6 and 160 acres to local famers in 1795. In addition to this Pollokshaws was a thriving weaving town so the farmers had a ready market there for their produce. It is unclear who the Priesthill land belonged to but my guess would be either the Dunlops of Househill or the Maxwells of Pollok. It is not unreasonable to speculate therefore that John Jack was in a position to purchase a parcel of land. Furthermore, his death coincided with John Jack Jnr's move to Grahamston near Barrhead where it appears he purchased some land in what is now 17-19 Graham Street. I wonder therefore if the remaining siblings bought John Jack Jnr's share of the estate from him and that this enabled him to purchase land in Graham Street.
John Jack's grave is in Kirk Lane cemetery. This is a sad and abandoned corner of Pollokshaws. His wife is named as Lillias Wardrop. The headstone clearly idenitifes James as a farmer and it is quite ornate which would lend weight to the argument that he was reasonably prosperous. On the headstone are the names of two children who died in infancy but the death date of John Jack is not cited anywhere. Lillias Wardrop pre-deceased him but it is unclear by how long.
As a little aside. In this graveyard is the grave of Elizabeth Thompson whose maiden name was Burns. Her father was a well known poet from Ayrshire and she was his illgetimate daughter by Ann Park wand was born in Leith. She did not stay all of her life in Pollokshaws but certainly stayed there at the start of her marriage and for the years of her life. John Jack alomst certainly wrote poetry which she passed on to her father so the Jacks are the Bards of the nation (nice theory eh?)
There was quite a community of Jacks and Wardrops in the Barony parish which is to the south of Glasgow around modern day Pollokshaws. The births of children after 1780 are in the Eastwood Parish which could suggest one of two things (a) the parish boundary changed (b) the family moved from Barony to the Eastwood Parish. Priesthill is certainly on the border of the two. Jacks did not appear in Barony OPRs prior to the beginning of the 18th century. Only two names feature and that is of two women Agnes and Marie who got married in 1698 and 1699. In 1702 Jean Jack, quite worryingly, married Hugh Cunningham but there is no evidence here to suggest that they are ancestors of the Cunningham side. There does not appear to be any link with our Jacks here at this stage.
It was from 1725 onwards that the Jack presence in this parish increased. Prior to 1749 there were 24 Jack births and 17 Jacks married in Barony but by the end of the century just under 100 Jacks had been born and 52 had been married in the parish. The following half century up to 1855 saw the trend continue with 177 Jack births and 143 marriages.
The introduction into Eastwood was far more modest with only a handful of Jacks being resident in the parish up to 1854. The bulk of these entries were linked to John Jack and Lillias Wardrop. The first entries for Neilston are in 1756 one of whom is a John Jack who married in 1765 but I don't think this is our John Jack. Once again the number of Jacks in Neilston only showed sings of increasing between 1825 and 1855 but even then it does not amount to more than 30 entries in births and marriages. About six of the births are from our John Jack and two of the marriages are his too!
The evidence seems to suggest that the Jacks moved to Eastwood/Neilston in the early 19th century. However, this John Jack appears to have stayed put in Priesthill which was near the thriving weaving village of Pollokshaws which witnessed rapid growth and development around the time of his death. His farm at Priesthill was still in existence immediately post war when it was bulldozed to make way for what has become the rather deprived council housing scheme called Priesthill, so at least the name remains. Some of the land is still open and there is a rise which might well have been the Priest Hill.
The photographs of Pollokshaws in the scrapbook give some idea of the kind of place it was with its tenements and narrow streets. They also an impression of what Pollokshaws became i.e. a slum village in desperate need of improved housing by the end of the 19th century.
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