The 1891 graph showing that all but one of the nineteen households living in Inverey in 1891 were bilingual. Three houses were unoccupied, while #13 was the school.

 

In the case of the English speaking McDonald family in #16, the mother was born in England and, unsurprisingly, was not a Gaelic speaker and, although the father was a local Gaelic speaker, the children were not Gaelic speakers . However, in the case of the McIntosh family in #18, all the family are Gaelic speakers, including Mrs McIntosh, a widow in 1891, who was born Edzell, Forfar, a non-Gaelic speaking area by that time, though it is possible she had Gaelic speaking parents.

 

In the cases of households #7, #12 and #23, the non-Gaelic speakers were female servants born in lowland Aberdeenshire and were very unlikely to have been native Gaelic speakers. Both children (aged 13 and 11) in the Douglas family in #5 are recorded as Gaelic speakers. However, in the Robertson family in #8, the niece (aged 11) of the householder, and a girl aged 11 living with the Stuarts in #17, were non-Gaelic speaking. There are two other non-Gaelic speakers on the record - one was an infant of 7 months who has been omitted from the graph as, presumably, at that young age, she did not speak English/Scots either! The other was a young female school teacher from Auchterless in Aberdeenshire, an area with a fine Gaelic name (uachdar-lios - upper enclosure, ref. Alexander, 1952), but which had not been Gaelic speaking for many generations The latter case must surely be symptomatic of the attitude of Education Authority towards Gaelic at that time!

 

Comparison of the graphs for 1891 and 1911 shows a big change in the number of Gaelic speakers in the village. The number of households was reduced from 25 to 20 – the house numbering used in the two Census reports was different, but they can be co-ordinated since, in most cases, many of the same residents can be seen, with an age difference of 20 years. (See appendix 2).

 

In 1891, there was only one non-Gaelic speaking household while in 1911, only one such household remained, where the household had more than one person. In the 1911 Census, twenty-four residents, identified as Gaelic speakers in the 1891 census, are recorded. Of these, only ten of are recorded as having Gaelic in 1911, indicating that the language was disappearing from everyday speech, for most people.

 

One of the more frequently found surnames in upper Deeside is Lamont. Probably the most famous person from the village was John Lamond, who, having left Inverey at age 12 to have an education in Germany, was later known as Johann von Lamont (1805-1879). He went on to carry out research in magnetism and in astronomy, eventually becoming Astronomer to the King of Bavaria. It seems that he never returned to Inverey - however, there is a monument to his memory in Inverey village in Gaelic, English and German.