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Mar

28

Nurse Isabella Macaskill – Gravir

Isabella MacAskill, the third eldest child of nine belonging to Donald (Domhnull Og Dhomhnuill a’ Phiobair) and Peggy MacAskill (Peigi Ruadh MacLennan)was born at the Buaile Ghlas, opposite 32 Gravir in 1885.

As a young woman she emigrated to Canada and worked as a cook in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She saved her earnings and when she returned to Scotland she qualified as a mid-wife in 1923 and had enough savings put aside to enable her to enter The Cottage Nurses Training Home in Govan for training as a district nurse and mid-wife. She completed her training in 1928. In those days nurses had to pay for their own training and support themselves during the three year course leading to qualification.
The Duchess of Montrose was President of the Training Home and a friendship developed between the two women which helped Isabella secure a number of private nursing posts. Nurse MacAskill’s niece, Morag Matheson has sent us a number of friendly, affectionate letters which the Duchess had written from Buchanan Castle, Drymen, Glasgow to her aunt arranging for her to be picked up by her chauffeur driven carriage for various outings and visits. Indeed on one occasion she enclosed a ten shilling note as a gift to her.
A letter dated June 23rd. 1929 reads:-
“Dear Nurse MacAskill, I should be glad just to see you, as you were resting when I called yesterday afternoon. I shall be sending our Motor tomorrow morning to Killearn Station and on its way back passing Drymen Station I will tell the chauffeur to stop at Mrs MacKie’s door and call for you. Then if you come up here in the motor to see me you could afterwards walk back to Drymen Station. The Motor will call for you at 11.15. Signed – The Duchess of Montrose”
Returning to her native village in the thirties, Isabella became widely known throughout the Isle of Lewis as Relief District Nurse. A thrifty lady she also sent money to her father which helped him to buy the croft at number nine, Gravir and build a new family home on the croft.
Morag remembers her aunt as a remarkable and determined woman of her time and says that the entire family treated her with awe and respect. She died in 1970

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Mar

22

Gaelic students visit Gravir Museum

at home / education / people

A group of Gaelic students spent an interesting week in the Pairc community as part of a new initiative by Co-Chomunn na Pairc.

The residential course was based at Ravenspoint in Kershader with students staying in the on-site hostel. Each day the students had a Gaelic class in the morning and in the afternoon they visited Gaelic speaking homes to allow them to join in Gaelic conversation. In the evenings they visited locations like the Gravir Museum where members of the Comunn Eachdraidh described many of the artefacts and their uses in Gaelic. Local artists provided the entertainement for a celeidh on the final evening.

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Mar

14

The Best Kind of Education

at home / children / church / education / emigration / people

The Angus Macleod archive, now accessible to everyone at the Ravenspoint Centre, Kershader, South Lochs, contains much material on the early history of education in Lewis, and particularly the Pairc area where the late Angus ‘Ease’ Macleod was born at Calbost in 1916. Visitors can read about the first parish school of Lochs established in Keose in 1796, the Gaelic schools opened in Gravir, Marvig, Loch Shell, Cromore, and Kershader between 1822 and 1832, and the five schools in South Lochs following the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 which once had over 500 pupils under the age of 14!
But perhaps the most memorable item on education in the archive is the following short story told in Angus’s own words and written in his own hand:
‘They say that the home is the main and best source of education. For some unknown reason the following incident which happened to me while I was still a very small boy of probably five or six years old remains in my memory as vividly as the day it happened about 80 years ago. Certainly, I was not more than seven years old, because my grandfather, John Macleod, died in 1924.
My paternal grandparents’ thatched house was close to our own house and there was as usual a small window at the top of the wall in the thatch in the byre end of the house, consisting of a single pane of glass of about one foot square. Probably it was a portable window for the purpose of letting the hens in and out of the byre (uinneag nan cearc).
Boys will be boys, and idle hands are mischievous hands. Seemingly I felt challenged to aim a stone at this window. It took me quite a while and a lot of stones before I eventually scored a direct hit and crashed a stone through the glass. It was then that I realised my guilt and the folly of my action, and I ran to hide under the nearby rock, much the same as the story of Adam and Eve.
After a suitable while I innocently popped my head up to see if all was clear, and lo and behold, there was my grandfather, a tall quiet dignified man, reputed to be an unusually strong person. There was nothing for it but to face the consequences. To my surprise he did not scold me as expected, but said quietly: ‘Angus, you should not have broken the window.’
Then we both walked away silently. That was my first and abiding practical moral lesson in right and wrong. The old man was then over 80 years, an experienced man. As a young Gaelic speaking child whose mother passed away when he was very young, he emigrated to Canada, in the service of the Hudson Bay company.He used to say he learned to read his Bible sitting under a tree in Canada. In his old age he was a man of the Book and read it regularly and preached from it as a local Church Elder in the Village Prayer House both on Sunday and weekday prayer meeting.’
The above extract from the Angus Macleod archive is reproduced by kind permission of Angus’s family. The archive has been made available to the public at the Ravenspoint Centre, Kershader, South Lochs as part of a project led by The Islands Book Trust and Comunn Eachdraidh na Pairc.

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Mar

08

A Brief History of Donald Smith, Cromore

at home / fishing / military / people / transport

An extract from our ‘Aig an Obair’ series published in our newsletter, Tional and based on an original recording in Donald’s own words.
Here is a brief history of the life of Donald Smith, 15 Cromore. His father was Finlay, son of ‘Big John Muldonaich’, and his mother was Ishbel, daughter of Roderick.
“I was born in Cromore in 1907 where I went to school at five years of age. The headmaster was Mr Duncan. Many people made out that he was no use, but looking back I am not of that opinion. It is said that his predecessor, Mr Bruce, was good at teaching Gaelic. When Mr Duncan came he was of the opinion that the children were fluent enough as they naturally spoke in Gaelic, but they were in need of being taught English. When the Gravir minister came to give us a test he didn’t agree. There were only two or three able to read and write Gaelic, and he was wild. The two fell out, and the headmaster ordered the minister to leave. When the argument was over, Mr Duncan said, “Well, if that man is in Heaven, I’ll walk out.” Mr Duncan was good at teaching us psalms. I learned more English psalms in the day school than I did in Sunday school. I still remember five or six of them. There was one that our Finlay always requested when the headmaster gave us a choice of which one to sing, and this is it: –
‘When he cometh, when he cometh
To make up his jewels
All his jewels precious jewels
His loved and his own.’
I was about seven years of age the first time I went to Stornoway by boat. There was no road round the loch then. We slept in the home of Donald, Kenneth’s son of 19 Cromore. At that time they were living on Mackenzie Street. We came home in a small boat belonging to Alastair the Tailor. We left from the Battery in Stornoway with my father and another two or three men, rowing to Cromore.
When I left school I worked at home on the fishing, the croft and odd jobs round about.
When they started building the Nurse’s cottage in Gravir they took a lorry from Stornoway to take supplies from the quay to the house. My father thought it would be handy to have one based in the community. And that was what happened. He brought over a one tonne truck from Callanish. She arrived in Cromore on the boat ‘Good Hope’. She was put ashore at the point where the quay is now. My father steered her home up the hill. He would let me drive her. It wasn’t long before I wrecked her. I would go round the district with her, but since the road was not complete, I couldn’t go past Habost with her. I remember going to Kershader to take people to Lemreway for the wedding of Iain, son of ‘Domhnull Chalum’ and Mary, daughter of ‘Domhnull Bhig’.

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Feb

03

From Patagonia to Crobeg

crofting / emigration / people

WHEN Charles Menendez MacLeod (Charlie Barley) bought the Crobeag Farm, including Eilean Chaluim Cille, in 1957, he was in essence returning to the land of his forefathers. It was in Garyvard, a short distance across Loch Erisort from St. Colms’ Isle that his great, great, great-grandfather, Torquil MacLeod, and his wife, Ann Matheson, lived in the late 17th and early 18th Century. Their son, Donald, moved over the Loch to Keose on his marriage to Ann MacDonald thereby establishing the family’s association with the croft at 5 Keose that was to remain their home until Charles’ father, Murdo, moved to Ropework Cottage, Stornoway, after his marriage to Chrissie MacKenzie. Chrissie was a descendant of Charles MacKenzie (1776-1845), of Leurbost, who had moved to 7 Keose around 1819. On the paternal side, his family had links to the Martins of Ensay, Harris, and the MacDonalds of Ranish.
Charlie’s father had left Keose to go and work on the sheep farming stations of Patagonia in South America. Bruce Chatwin’s book, In Patagonia, describes the setting up of the sheep farms in 1877 when Henry Reynard, an English trader in Punta Arenas, ferried a flock from the Falkland Islands and set it to graze on Elizabeth Island in the Straits of Magellan. It multiplied prodigiously and other merchants took the hint. The leading entrepreneurs were a ruthless Asturian, Jose Menendez, and his amiable Jewish son-in-law, Moritz Braun. The two were rivals at first, but later combined to assemble an empire of estancias, coal mines, freezers, department stores, merchant ships and a salvage department that was reputedly closer to piracy than salvage. Menendez died in 1918, leaving a proportion of his millions to King Alphonso XIII of Spain and was buried at Punta Arenas. The Braun and Menendez families continued to dominate the territory through their Company, La Anonima. They imported stud flocks from New Zealand, shepherds and their dogs from the Western Isles and farm managers from the British Army who stamped the smartness of the parade ground over the entire operation and turned the Province of Santa Cruz into a Spanish speaking outpost of the British Empire.
Murdo MacLeod spent several years in Patagonia in the employment of a family named Menendez. They were kindly and generous sheep farmers and Murdo enjoyed his time working with them so much so that when his son, Charles, was born in 1915, he was given the second name Menendez in tribute to Murdo’s affection for the family.
Charlie’s mother, Chrissie MacKenzie, was the daughter of Charles MacKenzie (born1853) and Kirsty MacKay whose forebears lived at 4 Achmore. On the maternal side, she was related to the MacAulays of Uig.