Michael T Tracy

David Ballingall (1775-1859) Michael T Tracy

The last child of George Ballingall, a tenant farmer, and his third wife, Janet Jelly, David Ballingall was born at the ancestral home of the family at Rameldry in Kettle Parish, Fife in 1775. He would eventually assume the familial tenancy of Rameldry and farm these lands for the rest of his life. Later, Ballingall held two nineteen year leases of Little Feddinch in Cameron Parish from 1807 until 1844 where he married and had a family of five children. He then with his younger son, John, took over the farm of Higham in Dunbog Parish on the Marquis of Zetland's estate and in 1858 the neighboring farm of Dunbog. In sport, he was a keen curler and a member of the Abdie Curling Club since 1845 up until a few years before his death. In his Last Will and Testament made a few years before his death, he gave his tenancy leases of the farms of Higham and Rameldry to his youngest son, John and appointed his cousins, James Buist of Kirktonbarns and George Ballingall of Cookston as executors of his will. This then is the narrative of the life and times of David Ballingall, a farmer of Fife.