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Although illiteracy is felt to be surprisingly high at present in Canada, we pretty much take it for granted that the great majority of us know basic arithmetic reasonably well. While Lowland Scotland had a relatively good educational system in general 300 or so years ago, counting and measuring by the masses were still founded largely on such everyday things as the typical hand or foot. There was relatively little immediate need for complex measurements and calculations. As the cash economy crept into everyday affairs, it became more and more important for people to do more and more with numbers.

Here, we have a snapshot of Ayrshire folk who took a special interest in "The New Math". A solid majority of the subscribers to this book were from Ayrshire. Most of the people listed below lived in the villages, as stated. It is important to note that we only show those farms that could reliably be identified as in Cumnock Parish. So, the number of farmers who subscribed is very under-represented in the following data. Some of the people listed here did not live in Ayrshire at the time, but their information is inserted below for various illustrative purposes.

Refer to our Lesson Plan: Classification and Properties of a Class of Objects. For the purposes of this Lesson Plan and the Exercises, you can consider the data below to represent a crude sampling of Ayrshire people who were interested in improving their grasp of arithmetic at the close of the eighteenth century.

 

Ayrshire Subscribers to
The Practical Figurer
Or An Improved System of Arithmetic
by William Halbert, Paisley 1789

1. Further notes in a future issue.
2. There were also three subscribers in Liverpool named Hewand, two of them joiners. Included to show migration to the industrial south.
3. There is a small possibility that this is Robert McCowan, father of James McCowan, later Coalmaster in Lesmahagow. James McCowan's library included a similar book.
4. Not in Ayrshire, but included to show the importance of trade.
5. Not in Ayrshire, but included because James Whiteford became a good friend and mentor of James McCowan. As a professional land surveyor and factor of Blackwood Estate in Lesmahagow, Whiteford (1760 app-1819/9/30) would be well-equipped to help the young entrepreneur in his negotiations with the landowner, James Corbet of Stockbriggs.
6. Not in Ayrshire. In fact Parnassus was probably just a fictitious residence chosen by poet Robert Burns. He had written his famous love poem, "O, Were I on Parnassus Hill" in 1788 shortly before Mr. Halbert's "Practical Figurer" was published. Burns had leased Ellisland farm in Dumfriesshire starting in 1788, but first had to spend a good number of months building a farmhouse. Twenty five miles up the Nith Valley, in New Cumnock Parish, is Corsincon Hill, made famous in that Burns' love poem -- "On Corsincon I'll glow'r and spell, And write how dear I love thee". It appears that Corsincon was Burns' substitute for Mount Parnassus in ancient Greece, for which he yearns in the poem.

Overall Distribution of Place of Residence of the Subscribers (Summary by D.B. McCowan):

• Ayrshire  156
• County Undetermined or Residence Not Stated   91
• Renfrewshire   21
• Dumbartonshire   15
• Glasgow   11
• Lanarkshire   4
• England   4
• Dumfriesshire   2
• Edinburgh   2
• West Indies   1
• Galloway   1
• Argyleshire   1

Note: Dumfries House is in Cumnock Parish, Ayrshire -- not in Dumfriesshire.

Related Lessons

• Math Lesson One: Classification and Properties of a Class of Objects (Lowland Occupations in 1790)
• Immigrant Values: Building a Country
• Burns Supper in Scarborough, Jan. 25 1834: Values of the Immigrants (A Short Play for Public Schools)

The Scarboro Heights Record V12 #2