The 1851 census lists 12 separate farm   tenants with their families and another 10 farm worker’s families, in all about 160 men, women and children occupied in agriculture in Colintraive.

 

The largest tenanted farm was Ardentraive, with 76 arable acres.  At that time it was tenanted by Walter Black who lived there with his wife and two children.  Living in were a shepherd, a labourer, a milkmaid and a domestic servant.  He also employed two other farm servants.

 

There were two holdings at Upper Altgaltraig.  Duncan Brown and his wife and two children farmed 10 arable and 40 hill acres.  On the other farm, a further 10      arable and 40 hill acres, lived Peter Brown aged 83  with his brother, two grown sons, one of whom was a sailor, a daughter and two grand-children There was also a living in domestic servant.

 

Southhall was the home farm.  The family were not at home on census day, but   living in and in two nearby cottages lived two servants, a dairy maid, a cattleman, a gardener and his family, a labourer, a ploughman and family, 20 people in all.

 

By 1913 the number of farms had been reduced to 7, all let from the South Hall Estate; the home farm at South Hall was tenanted by Donald McNeill, John McLean was in Glaic, now a single unit, the Clarks in Couston and Ardbeg, the Simpsons in Ardentraive, Andrew McIntyre in Milton and Upper and Lower Altgaltraig, the Baxters in Fearnoch and the McKellars in Feorline.  Port an Eilean, one of Argyll’s few crofts, was tenanted by the Carmichael family.