St. Kilda Lost Its People - The Stones Remained

St Kilda was lived on for roughly four thousand years. Rachel Gillies was the last person born on the island. She left in 1930, at eight years old, on a ship called the Harebell. She died in 2016, and two countries ran her obituary. She has a death certificate. Most of St Kilda has a cleit, a stone storage hut that's still standing, with no name attached to who built it. In 1549, a church visit to the island recorded rents and baptisms and nothing else. A century and a half later, a travel account mentions an entire oral tradition in passing, then moves on to describe a well instead. A smallpox outbreak in 1727 killed ninety-four people in two weeks and left behind a number, not a list. Parish registers, photographs, and government files only started naming people once an institution actually needed names to function. #stkilda