Facts and traditions collected for a family record

LEAVING HOME. 133
Samuel M'Connell, the grandfather, seems to have been a prosperous
man, farming part of Drumbuy as well as Hannastoun and Barskeoch,
and leaving a will of some pretensions ; but his son James was not so
fortunate, and became more and more embarrassed in his circumstances
as my father grew into manhood.
This state of things had its influence, no doubt, in determining that
my father should leave home to seek an opening for himself in life.
This he did in 1781, I believe about the 12th February, when in his
nineteenth year. But other circumstances conspired to bring about this
important step.
Whilst his father had been becoming less able to support his increas-
ing family, and his position as tenant at Hannastoun, (which he was
forced to relinquish in the following year,) his late mother's brothers,
the Cannons or Cannans, were prospering in their worldly circumstances.
One of them, Alexander Cannon, a planter in Jamaica, wrote on July
25, 1779, a letter, yet extant, to James M'Connell, the father, inquiring
what James, the son, was going to do, and rather advising him to be a
carpenter. Another brother, William Cannon, had settled at Chowbent,
Lancashire, as a machine-maker ; and a third brother, David, also well
off, lived then or afterwards in Chowbent. A fourth brother succeeded
to his father in the farm of Shield.
Adam Murray, a young man of New Galloway, in the same parish,
had, in 1780, (a year before my father,) gone to Chowbent to James's
uncle, Mr William Cannon, and Mr Cannon had as partner a Mr Smith,
also from the same district of country ; so that James, in going to
Chowbent to learn machine-making with Cannon & Smith, and to
live in the house of his uncle, did not go altogether to strangers.
George Murray, brother to Adam before mentioned, and Alexander
Smith, also from the same part of Scotland, followed, and continued
his friends through life, and, like himself, became rich men ; and John