George Ballingall (1714-1793)

He held tenancy over the lands of Rameldry in Kettle Parish, Fife since 1735 and ended with his death 58 years later. However, the tenancy would continue in the Ballingall family for another 120 years lasting until 1913. George Ballingall was born in 1714 at Cults farm, in Cults Parish, the eldest son of Thomas Ballingall (1693-1752), a heritor and tenant farmer and spent his childhood at Clatto farm in Kettle Parish. George Ballingall would also become a heritor of the lands of Gallowhill in nearby Kennoway Parish in 1720 at the age of six years old. George Ballingall had 16 children by his three wives: one by his first wife, Margaret Christie; nine by his second wife, Christian Goodsir; and six by his third wife, Janet Jelly. George Ballingall, as a tenant farmer of Rameldry, typified the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit in Scottish farming in the mid-18th-century. He would live through the height of the Scottish Enlightenment when new science was being brought to bear on Scottish agriculture and he would play a part in those exciting changes. Ballingall was a well-respected agriculturalist of his time throughout the parish of Kettle. This then is the narrative of the life and times of George Ballingall.