Catholic Connections

We McWilliams, at least those in my piece of the story, are mostly a pretty Presbyterian lot, brought up in the Church of Scotland. Undoubtedly, though, this hasn’t always been the case. In the distant past our ancestors were almost certainly Catholic. The Scottish Reformation of 1560 tried to outlaw Catholicism and the practising of Mass, but some parts of the country remained staunch to their Catholic heritage. These tended to be fairly remote parts, where the law did not have much of a reach, and one of these areas was rural Banffshire – particularly the upper reaches of Inveravon and the Cabrach, and the town of Huntly (or Strathbogie as it was) in Aberdeenshire.

As testimony to this, the remote college at Scalan in the Braes of Glenlivet was once a seminary and was one of the few places in Scotland where the Roman Catholic faith was kept alive during the troubled times of the 18^th century. For much of that time Scalan was the only place in Scotland where young men were trained to be priests. To this day there is a strong Catholic presence in large parts of Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, and the Scalan building remains open as a museum.

Scalan

Some entries back I quoted from a document written by Hugh Duff McWilliam (HDM) in 1903, and here is an extract:

“As illustrating that the name was formerly McPherson, there is a tradition that a certain John McWilliam (said to be a brother of Alexander and William first, of the family in Delgarvan) quitted Glenlivet and settled in Bracklach in the Parish of Cabrach some years prior to 1745 and that at the ’45 he paid a substitute to take part in the rising and dressed him in the MacPherson tartan”

At the Aberdeen Family research Centre I have had it confirmed that John McWilliam and his family were resident at Bracklach at that time and also that they were Catholic. HDM suggests that he was a brother of Alexander and William McWilliam of Delgarvan – and I believe from the dates we see here that this William McWilliam was likely an ancestor of our very own Lewis McWilliam. Maybe this means that our own McWilliam family had been Catholic until the time of the Jacobite setbacks and ultimate defeat! Or maybe it means that John McWilliam married a Catholic and decided to convert. These are only guesses, but there is undoubtedly a Catholic connection!

Then there was that McPherson connection I referred to some time ago too – and HDM makes mention of Abbé Paul McPherson. Again, like the Prof, he is someone of special interest because he rose to real prominence (in the Catholic Church in this case) – and therefore much is known about his life. Paul was born in 1756 into a Catholic family on a croft at Scalan. His mother died when he was just 6 years old and he was educated by an old neighbour and at the seminary. At the age of just 13 he left to train at the Scots Colleges in Rome and Valladolid, and he grew up to be a priest who was also an important diplomat for the Vatican. There is absolutely no evidence that his ancestors were any of those McWilliams who were perhaps encouraged to change their surname to McPherson (as claimed by HDM). Nevertheless I am sure he merits a mention here as I consider the Catholic connections in our past.  There is more about him here. http://www.scalan.co.uk/scalannews32.htm

Most of the tenanted farms around Banffshire and beyond were parts of huge areas of land owned by the Dukes of Gordon. The Dukes were based predominantly at Huntly Castle but they owned several other large houses and estates and much farmland. The small farms at Smithston and Glencorrie were part of this.  The first two Dukes of Gordon (and their predecessors as Marquesses of Huntly) were Catholic by heritage and they stood staunchly by this heritage through the difficult times of the Reformation and beyond. Then things started to get complicated.

”During the Jacobite Uprisings of 1715 - 1716 and 1745 - 1746 there were Gordons on both sides. The 2nd Duke of Gordon followed the Jacobites in 1715, but Cosmo Gordon, 3rd Duke of Gordon supported the British government by the time of the 1745 uprising, while his brother, Lord Lewis Gordon, raised two regiments against him at the Battle of Inverurie (1745), the Battle of Falkirk (1746) and the Battle of Culloden (1746).”

I don’t blame John McWilliam of Bracklach for steering clear of all this and paying someone else to go and take his place at Culloden!

The importance of the Dukes of Gordon to the defence of Catholicism is well know and documented. I like this little summary though, as part of a short history of the town of Huntly.

http://www.gordonschools.aberdeenshire.sch.uk/Huntly/HistoryOfHuntly.htm

And finally, two people I have to bring in here are brothers Alexander McWilliam (born 1902) and John Lewis McWilliam (born 1903), who both grew up to be Catholic priests who were well-known in northeast Scotland.
They were born in Buckie (on the Banffshire coast), with grandparents from Tomintoul.  I have no evidence of family connection to our own Lewis McWilliam, but these two surely deserve a mention here.

Canon Alexander (or Sandy as he preferred to be known – and with spelling of MacWilliam) trained at the Scots College in Rome before working as parish priest in Orkney, Chapeltown (Glenlivet) and St. Peter’s Aberdeen.

Canon Lewis (as he preferred to be known) trained at Valladolid in Spain, and became parish priest in Aberdeen, Stonehaven and Beauly before coming to St. Margaret’s in Huntly where he worked until the day he died at age 91 in 1995. I attach a link to his obituary in the Glasgow Herald as well as to a Scalan interview.

I can’t find an obituary for Sandy, but there are many references to him out there – including the attached Scalan story about St. Peter’s in Aberdeen.

They were both clearly great old fellows and people it would have been a pleasure to meet.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/canon-john-mcwilliam-1.656557

http://www.scalan.co.uk/canonlewis.htm

http://www.scalan.co.uk/StPeters.htm

Canon Lewis McWilliam

The Prof: John Alexander MacWilliam (1857 - 1937)

Some blog entries back I referred briefly to Professor John Alexander MacWilliam (1857 – 1937), who was Professor of Physiology at Aberdeen University for all of 41 years from the age of 29 to the age of 70. Since then I have come across much information on this distinguished member of our family – in large part through a lady who got in touch with me as a result of the brief mention. This lady (TW) and her husband happen to be the current owners of a house in Cults of which the Prof and his new wife were the first owners back in 1892. These folks were owners of the local pharmacy for 30 years or so, and so they had many very old and interesting references to the Prof in the pharmacy archives. Amongst other coincidences was that TW herself was born and raised in the same part of Inverness-shire as the Prof.

I won’t try to go deeply into the Prof’s career here, but it is quite clear that he was someone special, whose research has led to a better understanding of the workings of the human heart and in the long term to important innovations such as the pacemaker and the defibrillator. One result of the status he achieved is that many aspects of his life are quite well documented, and I think it is worthwhile to try to summarise some of this here – at least from the aspect of interest in the family heritage.

John Alexander was one of three children born at Culmill Farm at Kiltarlity near Beauly to William McWilliam (originally from Inveravon) and his wife Isabella Cumming (originally from Knockando). The first son and the Prof’s older brother, William Lewis McWilliam, became farmer at Culmill. He married Mary Burns. He died in 1936 aged 81, and his wife died in 1919 at the age of 63. They did not have children and are buried in Kiltarlity churchyard along with the parents William and Isabella. The Prof also had a sister, Isabella Helen McWilliam, born in 1859, who sadly died aged just 16 months. It is maybe worth a brief note here that the spelling McW or MacW seems to have been entirely down to a matter of personal preference. The Prof's work until about 1889 is published under the name J.A. McWilliam, but after that he appears to prefer the MacWilliam spelling.

The Prof’s paternal grandparents were Alexander McWilliam (b. 1768?, Inveravon) and Elspet Gordon (b.1788,  Knockando), and maternal grandparents were John Cumming (b. 1774, Knockando) and Helen Cruickshank (b. 1777, Knockando). 

Our own Lewis McW was an older brother of the Prof’s grandfather Alexander, and so we can describe relationships such as that Lewis was the Prof’s great uncle. Interestingly, the material I have on the Prof seems to confirm most of the previous generation (i.e. 6 of his 8 great-grandparents), including that the parents of our Lewis and his brother Alexander were William McWilliam and his wife Anne Cruickshank.  This makes William and Anne my gggg-grandparents.

And as mentioned elsewhere the Prof was first cousin of Hugh Duff McWilliam – whose work dated 1903 has been a great help to me in looking back through the McWilliam generations.

I have more on the Prof’s various McW family connections – too much to include here. I know that the Prof married twice, but that he had no offspring. I would certainly be interested to hear from anyone who has a more direct family connection. The Prof’s mother’s family are well worth a mention though.  His maternal grandparents (John and Helen Cumming) were the founders of the Cardhu distillery, and the family owned the business until selling it to the Johnny Walker company in 1893! http://www.scotchwhisky.net/distilleries/cardhu.htm

In 1889 at the age of 32, the Prof married Edith Constance Wise, from a wealthy Irish family (and the sister of Berkeley Dean Wise – very much a leading civil engineer of the time). Sadly Edith died in November 1893 at the age of just 33 – having contracted malaria just two months earlier while on a trip with her husband. It is understood that she had stayed in the Canary Islands (and malaria was very much present there then) while The Prof travelled on to South Africa before returning - on a ship which was travelling from Bombay to Southampton. The Cults pharmacy records show how the Prof was prescribing medication for his sick wife, but they must both have recognised that her condition was incurable in those days. It goes without saying that this must have been a very sad period. In 1897 the Prof moved from their “Wayside” home in Cults to a new home albeit just a few hundred yards away at Inverdee. In 1898 he was married for a second time, to Florence Edith Thomas from Wrexham in North Wales.

The Prof died of heart failure in January 1937, in a nursing home at 35 Drumsheugh Gardens in Edinburgh. I had to do a double take when I first saw this information – because this is exactly the building where I was born just over 10 years later!

To reinforce the message that the Prof was a man of distinction, the National Portrait Gallery in London have two photographic portraits of him, and I am pleased to have managed to obtain copies. At the time of writing I don’t have exact dates for these, but I suspect that the overcoat picture shows him at maybe in his mid 50s (so approx 1912) and the studio picture is maybe in his later 60s (approx 1925).

Finally this entry would not be complete without a big word of thanks to T and A for their help!
And a postscript is that the Prof now has his own Wikipedia entry - here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Alexander_MacWilliam

More old McWilliam photos

Thanks again to Helen Bennett I have managed to lay my hands on some more very old photos from the McWilliam archive – which Helen received from her mother, Margaret McWilliam. The photos seem to date mostly from the early 1870s, and there are several factors which give this away – for instance, my grandfather, Rob (born 1873) features as a very young baby, with his parents and alongside his two elder brothers.

The photos, as was normal for the time, are all posed in studio settings, usually with the photographer details on the back of the pictures. The sitters are sometimes easily identifiable, but some of them we are not so sure of. Many are from studios in Dufftown, Keith, Huntly or Elgin. Others are from Glasgow, Edinburgh or even London – and these tend to be the ones we can’t readily identify. The furthest flung of those identifiable, though, is from Chicago, and we are confident that this is of John McWilliam (1826 – 1884) and his son Edward (1865 – 1924).

I will start with a photo which we believe to be of my gg-grandfather, James McWilliam (1804 – 1872) – who features in his own earlier blog entry here. This is the first time I have seen a photo of him and I doubt very much whether we will ever come across any more! The photo was taken in Dufftown by Wood and Henry photographers.

James McWilliam

If we guess him to be about aged 66 in the photo, this means it was taken around 1870.

And here is a photo of his gravestone on which his daughter Margaret (who predeceased him when she was just 20) is also remembered, but before the addition of the name of his wife Margaret (who died just a year after him in 1873) or of his sons who are also now remembered there. I now have a photo of the updated stone (after James's death) which I will post in my separate entry for him.

Next we have a photo of my g-grandparents, Robert McWilliam (1844 – 1915) and Elizabeth Green (1849 – 1934), a head and shoulders of Robert on his own, and one of Robert and Elizabeth with their three eldest sons (James, Alex and Rob). And one of James and Alex on their own.

Robert and Elizabeth McWilliam (née Green)

c

d

b

These next photos, taken in Huntly, we believe to be of Ann Spence (1815 - 1895, wife of Alexander Green 1801 - 1890) and three of her daughters (probably Ann b.1847, Elizabeth b.1848, Jane b.1854) and taken about 1868. Elizabeth married Robert McWilliam. They were my great-grandparents and are featured as a couple above. And of course Ann Spence and Alexander Green were gg-grandparents.

Now here is the Chicago photo, which we believe to be of John McWilliam (1826 – 1884) and his young son Edward (1865 – 1924) at the age of about 3 or 4. John emigrated to Illinois in the 1850s – after his father James had spent many years in New York State before returning to Smithston. John was the oldest brother of my g-grandfather Robert. I suppose that makes him my gg-uncle. And more importantly he is the gg-grandfather of Lucy, Mark, Chalmer, Glenn and Stuart.

And finally, I am going to include some of the unidentified photos, in the hope that we may one day get around to knowing more about the people here.  

unknown - taken Dunedin, New Zealand

unknown - taken in Aberdeen

unknown - taken in Edinburgh

unknown - taken in Keith

unknown - taken in Glasgow - look like a music-hall act!

Unknown - taken in Elgin

Unknown - taken in Elgin

Unknown - taken in Elgin

Unknown - taken in Edinburgh

Unknown - taken in Keith

Unknown - taken in  London

Unknown - person and source

Unknown - person and source

McWilliam cousin reunion. Elgin, June 2012

The Laichmoray gathering, June 2012

A couple of weeks ago we managed a small gathering of McWilliam cousins. 16 of us met for drinks and dinner at the Laichmoray Hotel in Elgin, with most folks staying in the hotel for the night, and a few of us heading for Dufftown and Glencorrie the following day. I certainly place value on staying in touch with the extended family, and I think it is fair to say that we all enjoyed the occasion. Sadly we have lost two cousins, Elizabeth and George,  since the last gathering two years ago, and our good wishes go out especially to those who couldn’t make it this time due to ill health!

The Glencorrie team

And here's a reminder of the larger gathering in Edinburgh a couple of years ago!

Edinburgh gathering, May 2010

Visit to Inveravon, Glencorrie and Mortlach church

When I was up north a couple of weeks ago I travelled past Inveravon church, and through Glenlivet and Tomintoul to Aberdeen. Two days later I was accompanied by cousin Kathleen and Dad’s cousin Helen on a trip through the Cabrach to Glencorrie and Dufftown.

At Inveravon churchyard I wanted to see the gravestone that HDM referred to – that of William McWillie (who died in 1685) and his wife Katherine Gordon. The one that goes " Heir lyes ane honest man called William McWillie, who livid in the Cories, who departed the 10 of June, 1685 ; and Ketren Gordene, his  spouse." I was disappointed that I couldn’t find it, but very interested to meet a lady called Tricia Lawson who has lived close by the church for some 40 years. She knows a lot about the history of the church and the area, and told me that she also had heard of this very stone (from a former minister there) but did not know where it is - or was. She also had heard that the stone had been carried there by the McWilliams. She pointed out that the present church building dates from about 1806 and that it is positioned directly over part of the original graveyard. Tricia has said she will get in touch if she ever finds out any more about the story of this stone. 

Here is a photo of the church as it is today. 

By the way Tricia pointed out the location of Delgarvan to me (where it seems that our Lewis McWilliam originated) – on a bend in the Spey about a mile or so north of the church, but she was able to tell me that there is nothing much left there now after the remains of the buildings were flattened for road-building in the 1960s.

From the church I drove up through Glenlivet to Tomnavoulin (near the Corries farm once inhabited by McWillie alias McWilliam families) before heading on to Aberdeen for Laura’s birthday meal. I didn’t have time to linger long, but stopped to take these photos of the old packhorse bridge at Bridgend and of this fine bull guarding the road up to Easter Corrie.

We had a fine day for our journey through the Cabrach to Dufftown on the Sunday – myself + Helen and Kathleen, and Kathleen’s husband Eddie. Helen was a Dufftown quine and knew Glencorrie in her youth – the home of her mother and various uncles, aunts and cousins. We drove up to the farm and took a short wander round the house, the two cottages and various outbuildings. It is still very much a working farm, but the present occupants seem also to run a business contracting out farm equipment – such as two big combine harvesters.

We didn’t meet the occupants, but we took a couple of pictures – the farmhouse, and the two cottages – one of which would have been the boyhood home of my father.

Helen remembered that they used to have music and dancing in the loft of one of the barns. I can picture the scene in my mind, but the building is stripped to a functional minimum these days.

After a light lunch in a Dufftown cafe, we had a wander round the graveyard at Mortlach church - a fine old and historic place.

There are at least three generations of our ancestors there (in fact four generations in my case), and I attach here photos of the gravestones.

Finally there is another stone here which took our interest. It isn’t in memory of a McWilliam, but a Moir. I was really quite surprised to see wording which was very similar to that on the stone that HDM described at Inveravon – and of course it is of a very similar age. Here is a photo and a transcription.

“Heir lyes ane honest man called John Moir Husband to Elspet Reid who was killed in the defence of his own property at Walk Miln of Bolvenie the 13 day of October 1660.  Memento Mori”

I conclude from this, and a few other such inscriptions I have come across in recent weeks that this form of wording seems to have been quite common in the  17^th century.

And as a footnote, here is me with the statue of an Aberdeen Angus bull – on the outskirts of Alford on the return journey to Aberdeen.

McWilliam and McPherson

The Braes of Glenlivet

Some years ago I came across an interesting document in the archives of Aberdeen University library. It is titled “Notes respecting the Family of McPherson or McWilliam of Corries of Glenlivet in the County of Banff”, and was written by H. (Hugh) Duff MacWilliam of Hawthorn, Buckingham Road, Harrow View, Middlesex. I referred to some of his other work in a previous post, and I will refer to him again as HDM. The document is dated 1903. I don’t know much about HDM’s life, but he was born in Archiestown in 1859 – the son of Alexander McWilliam (of the Corries, Glenlivet family) and Jessie Ann McQueen, and he was a cousin of John Alexander MacWilliam (physiology professor also referred to in previous post).

This is a seven page hand-written document, presenting information extracts from a number of sources regarding people of the name McWilliam (or variations such as McKullie, McCullie, McVillie, Macwillie) and McPherson who lived in the Corries in Glenlivet. Glenlivet is in Inveravon parish, and HDM’s sources include parish registers from there, Banff Sasine Register, Elgin Commissary records, tombstone(s) at Inveravon Parish Church, the Inventory of Charters at Gordon Castle. The Sasine Register is an old form of register of feudal property title. The references are all from the years 1637 to 1750.

I am including reference to this here because I believe there is a link between the Inveravon McWilliam folks and my own well-established line at Glencorrie in Mortlach – and some onward links to branches of the family in Cabrach parish. I discussed my evidence for this in my last post.

The HDM document is mainly in tabular format, which is difficult to transcribe here. I attach a scanned copy (below) of the whole thing. Here, though, is a transcription of the long note at the end of the document, in which HDM makes some interesting observations.

“As illustrating that the name was formerly McPherson, there is a tradition that a certain John McWilliam (said to be a brother of Alexander and William first, of the family in Delgarvan) quitted Glenlivet and settled in Bracklach in the Parish of Cabrach some years prior to 1745 and that at the ’45 he paid a substitute to take part in the rising and dressed him in the MacPherson tartan.

The late Mr William McWilliam of Culmill, Beauly and formerly of Delgarvan stated in reply to an enquiry in the year 1884 that he had always heard that his family belonged to the Clan McPherson. It is also said that when George Macpherson Esq. Of Invereshie succeeded to the Ballindalloch Estate in 1806 he was desirous that all the McWilliams, McWillies or McCullies should if possible adopt the name Macpherson.  The Abbe (Paul) Macpherson (1756 – 1846), a native of Glenlivet states in his M.S. Memoirs that his ancestor was a certain John of the family of Macpherson of Phoness in Badenoch who removed to Glenlivet in the 16^th Century. Mr James Macpherson of Edinburgh, a scientist in Macpherson genealogy, expressed the view that probably from this John all the Macphersons in Glenlivet were descended.”

Some of HDM’s comments here suggest links between McPherson and McWilliam (or variations of the spellings, McVillie, McKullie etc), e.g. because of the fairly common occurrence of aliases (McPherson alias McVillie). I am particularly intrigued by the John McWilliam in the Cabrach who is reputed to have paid a substitute to take his part in the 1745 rising (and presumably fairly likely death), dressed in the MacPherson tartan!  

MacPherson is a historic Scottish clan, with an active clan association. I have checked with one of their vice-presidents (Alan G. MacP) and he tells me that he is aware of some of these uses of “aliases” and that this was all fairly common practice. “ Variations in Highland surnames were generally a means of distinguishing individuals by use of a patronymic that with usage transforms into a true surname.”

The bottom line for me is that I am not sure yet what to make of these MacPherson links. McWilliam is not a clan (or at least hasn’t been since the 13^th century or so), and maybe there were some attempts to encompass them within the MacPherson clan, or perhaps the Clan Chattan, which was/is an association of clans – including MacPherson, MacIntosh, Davidson and others, but not McWilliam. If you want a tartan we probably have more right to Gordon than any of these.