Sin, Sheep and Scotsmen: John George Adair and the Derryveagh evictions 1861

Abstract

The sixteen townlands of the district of Derryveagh lie to the north and west of the small village of Church Hill on the road west from Letterkenny. On the morning of Monday, 8 April 1861, the sub-sheriff of the County Donegal, Samuel Crookshank, accompanied by a special force of 200 constables, proceeded along the rough, unfinished road that stretched along the north-western shore of Lough Gartan to Lough Barra in the west, evicting from their houses and lands the 47 families who lived in Derryveagh. By 10 April the work was finished: 244 persons, comprising 85 adults and 159 children, were evicted; 28 houses unroofed or levelled; 11,602 acres of virtually barren land cleared of human habitation. The desolation was only slightly mitigated by the restoration of about a fifth of those evicted as caretakers of their former holding.