Dave MacLeod - In search of
Scottish roots
His branch of the MacQuarries had emigrated long ago, but their
ancestral home in the Hebrides still called to him.
By Brian MacQuarrie
As I lean on the spray-slicked rail of a large Scottish ferry, a
seven-hour westward journey from the mainland behind me, the desolate
peaks of South Uist emerge from the mist above the stormy North
Atlantic. The first view of this remote island, a majestic but treeless
place, reminds me that Scotland
is not all tartan kilts, jaunty golfers, and single-malt whisky. For
here, on the edge of Europe, this splinter of the Outer Hebrides is a
whipping boy for nature, which has pummeled and furrowed it with deep
lines of unimaginable age.
South Uist (EWE-ist) is also the place that my
great-great-great-grandfather left in 1825 for an uncertain future in
the rocky forests of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. I have come to
find this man, a young emigrant named Duncan MacQuarrie, among the ruins
that once were home to thousands like
him, the remnants of a broken clan system whose people were scattered
like chaff in the wind.
The Clansman, a 325-foot ferry built tough to withstand the Sea of the
Hebrides, turns hard toward Lochboisdale harbor, snatches of summer
sunshine still puncturing the far-northern mist at 9:30 p.m. As I watch
the crew lash the boat snug, I think of how Duncan, 175 years ago, was
the last of his
line to stand on this shore.
The past has always been present in my family, and that is why I have
come. From stories of Canadian pioneer life to evocative songs of
Highland lore to images of plaids and broadswords and bagpipes bringing
clansmen home from battle, I have been steeped in the romance of mythic
Scotland.
But I also know some of the reality. My ancestors never prospered on
Cape Breton Island or, later, in Boston. My great-grandfather died at 32
from lung disease he contracted in a Boston brassworks, and my
grandfather left school at 12 to help support his family with work in a
South Boston livery stable. But his uncomplaining resilience always
impressed me, and the fondness for Scottish culture that my father
embedded in our souls made my journey to South Uist both compelling and
natural.
But what would I find in such a place, a spit of rock and peat whose
most populous days lay 200 years behind it? I come knowing nearly
nothing of Duncan MacQuarrie - only that he carved a meager living out
of the Cape Breton forest because his homeland could no longer support
him. I know he belonged to Scotland's smallest clan, a family of ancient
heritage but scant fame whose fate mirrored that of its Celtic neighbors
throughout the Highlands. Duncan MacQuarrie's forebears were part of the
region's long, reluctant transition from medieval feudalism to agrarian
capitalism, a change marked by sporadic uprisings against the British
crown that ended disastrously for the Highland rebels in 1746.
Brutal reprisals followed that final rebellion, the wrath of England's
empire builders falling against a people who did not speak their
language, did not share their perception of "civilized"
society, and refused to swear allegiance to a British king before their
chief. The endgame was exile, and my ancestor became part of that
flood.
Thirty minutes after my ferry ties up in Lochboisdale, and 3 miles down
the road, I check in at a bed and breakfast. There, an elderly woman
whose English reflects the soft, lilting tones of a Gaelic speaker asks
me my business on South Uist, an island so far from the tourist track. I
offer my answer casually, thinking mostly of bed and a good night's
rest.
"Oh," she replies, smiling slightly. "My auntie was a
MacQuarrie."
The next morning, a bright but windy beginning to my first day on South
Uist, I pocket the names and telephone numbers of my landlady's
MacQuarrie connections and head to an archeological excavation 5 miles
to the north. There, in the ghost town of Milton, a multinational team
that includes archeologists from Boston University kneel in the dirt as
they slowly uncover the jumbled foundation of a two-century-old home, a
place that once sheltered a dozen or more people from the bitter
weather. I had heard of this work through an acquaintance in Boston and
planned my trip around the dig. In their efforts, I believed, lay a rare
chance to learn about the life and times of my ancestor, perhaps even to
find the ruins of his home.
The team leader, James Symonds, who heads an archeological research and
consulting group at the University of Sheffield in England, has been
drawn to the Hebrides for the last four summers by this puzzle:
"Where have the people gone, and why?"
Symonds first asked himself that question while visiting South Uist
during a 1992 dig at an Iron Age fort. That excavation seemed a natural
digression for mainstream British archeology, which Symonds says tends
to explore prehistoric, Roman, or medieval ruins in England. But looking
around South Uist, roughly 20 miles long and 7 miles wide, Symonds was
struck by its hundreds of old, abandoned homes and foundations, some
clustered in whole villages that have vanished into history. "It
occurred to me that there was a big story here that no one had thought
of," Symonds says.
So, by rekindling interest in the saga of Prince Charles Edward Stuart,
the Bonnie Prince Charlie of Highland lore who led the 1745-46 rebellion
to reclaim the British throne for the Stuarts, Symonds secured a
government grant and volunteers from Earthwatch, an environmental
organization based
in Maynard, Massachusetts. Their goal: to excavate the ruins of a Milton
home believed to be the birthplace of Flora MacDonald, a legendary rebel
sympathizer who hid the prince from his English pursuers and ferried him
to safety.
Once Symonds began digging there, he could trace none of the pottery and
other artifacts to MacDonald's time. But Symonds's curiosity had been
whetted, and his findings generated backing for continued annual
excavations.
At its peak in the early 1800s, Milton may have been home to 100 people,
tenants of the chief of Clanranald, a branch of the MacDonalds who once
swaggered through the Hebrides as the mighty Lords of the Isles. Few of
these tenants had any written right to the land. But under the code of
the
ancient clan system, the tenants would not have been concerned about
paper rights. The chief was their patriarch, a combination of judge,
landlord, and field general who held near-absolute power over his clan
but could be expected to act in their interests. Under the old ways,
evicting tenants for profit
would have been unthinkable.
For previous centuries, the islanders' lives had changed little: They
raised livestock, kept sheep near mountain shelters called sheilings,
and fished and farmed for food. But these pursuits were merely for
sustenance. Since the dawn of Celtic Scotland in the sixth century,
warriors had represented the real wealth of the Highlands.
At the start of the 19th century, only two generations after Bonnie
Prince Charlie's quixotic disaster, the clan system had been obliterated
by the victors. Now, instead of warriors, the debt-burdened chiefs
calculated their worth by the number of Great Cheviot sheep that they
could shear for England's textile mills.
They also saw profit in Hebridean kelp, or seaweed, which enjoyed a
skyrocketing demand during the European trade embargoes of the
Napoleonic wars. The islanders harvested the kelp, then laboriously
processed it on the beach into glass, soap, and fertilizer. During the
kelp season, which coincided with the winter's worst weather, the men
lived in stone-reinforced pits about 5 feet deep and 6 feet wide that
they burrowed in the sand. "These are things that would shock
us," says Stephen Davis, a Nova Scotia archeologist, peering into
his excavation of a jarringly primitive kelp shelter. "People lived
here, and died here probably."
A South Uist family was expected to harvest 3 to 4 tons of kelp a year,
just to meet their rent as tenants. But at least, for a while, the work
was available. After 1815, with the end of the wars, the old trade
routes to Europe reopened and the bottom eventually fell out of the
Scottish kelp market. Suddenly, South Uist's 7,500 people found
themselves unable to pay rent for land that their families had held for
a millennium.
The chief of Clanranald tried various work schemes and welfare projects
to help his tenants. But the islanders, who could not compete with the
profit potential of the sheep that replaced them, were forced by the
clan's leaders to move to less and less desirable land. Finally, when
charity or patience ran out, thousands of islanders were forced onto
emigrant ships that sailed for the New World.
They left behind the signature "black houses" that Symonds
finds fascinating. Double walls of stone, compressing an insulating
layer of turf, formed the outside of these 30-foot-long dwellings. A
thatch roof, held down with heather ropes and stone weights, kept out
the rain. And the hearth, placed in the middle of the floor, filled the
house with a thick, peaty smoke that escaped only through the solitary
door. The interiors were "dark, dank, unsanitary and
foul-smelling," reads a plaque at the South Uist museum. "The
furniture was nearly nonexistent. Beasts and humans entered by the same
door."
In such a primitive place, my great-great-great-grandfather most likely
was born. Here, among the moss-covered ruins of stark homes built by
long-forgotten families, I begin my search.
The search starts with these scraps of fact: Duncan MacQuarrie, born
1802 in Scotland; left unmarried from Lochboisdale, South Uist, 1825;
died sometime after 1881 on Cape Breton Island.
From my father's questioning of older relatives in the 1950s, we also
knew these facts: Duncan disembarked at what is now Port Hawkesbury, at
the southern tip of Cape Breton, a rugged island separated from the rest
of Nova Scotia by the Strait of Canso. After booking further passage on
a coastal vessel to the growing town of Mabou, Duncan walked 20 miles
inland to Ainslie Glen. There, he staked a pioneer's claim to what my
grandfather's relations, nearly 50 years ago, still recalled as a
"terrible hard farm to work."
Duncan cleared and worked that hillside forest, scratching out an
existence among 226 rocky acres that had been passed over by the first
wave of Highland emigrants who settled Cape Breton in the late 18th
century. For sheer toil, the routines of a pioneer farmer there must not
have differed much from
his life in the Western Isles of Scotland.
Cape Breton's mountains also reminded the emigrants of their native
land, according to contemporary accounts, but little else could comfort
them. The formidable forests, so different from their treeless island
home, made the women weep when they thought of clearing them. And the
winters, shorn of the
Gulf Stream that kept the Hebrides relatively mild, were longer and more
brutal.
Duncan married Catherine MacKinnon, another Scottish native. Their first
child, Donald, most likely was named for his paternal grandfather in
keeping with Highland tradition. With this in mind, my South Uist search
also cast its net for Duncan's probable father, a Donald MacQuarrie who
had been born
in the last half of the 1700s. If I found Donald in the few records of
the time, I would also find my emigrant ancestor. Such a quest, I
figured, would be aided by the scarcity of MacQuarries in the far
Western Isles, then and now. At the time of Duncan's departure, the clan
had been clustered 60 miles
southeast of South Uist on the tiny island of Ulva and the neighboring
Isle of Mull.
What drew Duncan MacQuarrie's family to South Uist will never be known.
But Ulva had been different from South Uist. MacQuarries had lived on
Ulva for more than 1,000 years, a small but ancient family that traced
its line to conquering kings and held a seat of honor at the councils of
far-flung island
warlords. Alliances with powerful neighbors, the MacLeans, offered the
small MacQuarrie clan some protection. But the family paid its ultimate
fealty to the MacDonalds, who ruled much of the Hebrides with a fierce
independence that not even Scottish kings could curb.
The MacQuarries, as did most island clans, switched allegiances to suit
their needs, even backing the English crown if Scottish rule from
distant Edinburgh did not satisfy. But more often than not, the
MacQuarries took the field for Scotland, fighting with Robert the Bruce
in 1314 to wrest independence
from England, and with a Highland army in 1651 that backed the Stuarts
against Oliver Cromwell. In that campaign, according to clan histories,
only 40 of 800 MacQuarries and MacLeans survived a hellish rear-guard
action near Edinburgh.
A century later, after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie's small but
determined army, the clans disintegrated under Draconian government
policies designed to prevent future uprisings. Clan tartans were banned;
weapons could not be carried; and the playing of bagpipes was
prohibited.
Ulva became one of the first victims of the Highland Clearances, a name
given to the systematic depopulation of Celtic Scotland. Lachlan
MacQuarrie, the 16th and last chief of the clan, had dug himself a
debt-lined pit from which he and his kin could not escape. Sold for
sheep runs in 1777, Ulva
steadily lost its people.
Amid the family's general misfortune, however, one bright light shone.
Major General Lachlan Macquarie, a cousin of the last chief, crowned a
long army career with an appointment to Sydney as colonial governor of
New South Wales. Macquarie's social reforms for ex-convicts in the penal
colony, as well as an aggressive public works agenda, earned him
recognition as the "Father of Australia."
These clansmen from Ulva, the last chief and the famous soldier, were
near-contemporaries of Duncan MacQuarrie. But unlike the cousins, Duncan
spent his early days in a place where those without lineage or army
commission were consigned to a shadow life. Anonymity, I discover, was
the norm for a place where comprehensive tenant records were not kept
before the 1830s. A scrap of documentation could exist, BU archeologist
Mary Beaudry tells me, but a better place to seek Duncan MacQuarrie
might be in the long memories of the living.
Matters of family and centuries-old genealogy hold great sway on South
Uist. The inquisitive, friendly welcome that I receive within my first
hour on the island repeats itself time and again in the two weeks I
spend rambling up and down South Uist's few, twisting roads.
My visit coincides with the island's annual Gaelic festival, and spirits
seem to be universally buoyed as a result. The raucous sound of bagpipes
fills one smoky pub until the early-morning hours, as young men play the
centuries-old airs in a friendly, whisky-aided competition. And nightly
ceilidhs (KAY-lees)
- hours-long gatherings for song, fiddle music, and dance - set feet to
tapping and voices to singing across all generations.
This place seems to have a
soul, detached from the mainland's 21st-century world, that speaks to an
isolated culture content with itself - a nonmaterialistic people who
accept hard work and respect the 50
generations that preceded them here.
One glimpse of that world comes through the eyes and memory of Donald
Allan MacQuarrie, the patriarch of the only MacQuarrie family on South
Uist. When I arrive at his door, unannounced, I think that this tall,
husky, 53-year-old may open the genie's bottle that holds the clues to
my ancestors. He has no such clues, however, only a brief genealogy
passed down from his grandfather that traces his family to North Uist,
another island more than 40 miles away. But Donald Allan, as the
islanders call him, helps open a window on a culture that has changed
subtly but perceptibly within his lifetime.
After warming slowly to the preposterous sight of an American stranger
on his doorstep, Donald Allan offers me a dram of whisky, a practice
that is repeated throughout the trip. When I beg off, explaining that I
do not wish to mix whisky with cold medicine, Donald Allan looks
surprised. Then he smiles, leans forward, and winks: "Och, and I
suppose that would be fatal."
Score one for Donald Allan. I call for a whisky (the Scots spell the
word without an "e"), and we talk for two hours of old
MacQuarries and South Uist. He lives in a "council house," a
tidy, county-subsidized home near the crossroads village of Daliburgh.
But he was born in a typical Highland cottage, a whitewashed stone home
with a thatch roof and dirt floor that overlooked a small lake, or loch,
filled with trout and salmon. Donald Allan drives me there in his car,
pushing tapes of bagpipe music into the
cassette player as we barrel along the narrow main road toward
Lochboisdale.
"I'm awfully, awfully
interested in pipe music," Donald Allan says slowly and seriously.
"The rest of the family does not know what good music is. They
think it's boring, you see. But it's not."
While showing me the
roofless ruins of his three-room boyhood home, a place once thought so
picturesque that it adorned postcards, Donald Allan talks wistfully of
the grandfather who raised him, Angus MacQuarrie, a sailor in the
British Merchant Navy who roamed the world from Aberdeen to Rangoon.
"He was a tall, thin
man. Very regimental. Yes, yes," Donald Allan says. "My
grandmother did all the [farm] work. The only things my grandfather knew
were ropes and knots and weather."
Donald Allan relates other memories, such as the day when he was 12
years old and first drove the family's cattle 5 miles to auction.
Thinking of it, he motions me to the car, bagpipe music blaring again,
and off we speed to the piles of stones that once formed the walls of
the island cattle mart. "The village would all drive the beasts
down. Yes, and the dogs would be barking and fighting," Donald
Allan says, smiling at the memory. "It was a big day, the day of
the cattle sale. There used to be hundreds of people here."
Now, many sales take place on the mainland, and the price of a South
Uist "beast" is determined more by simple weight than by
trained eyes and cagey bidding. And now, Donald Allan says, he would not
move back to his boyhood home, even if he could, because his wife
prefers living close to the shops.
There is other telling evidence of a shift on South Uist. Donald Allan
reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out a mobile phone, talking
through the bagpipe music to check if his wife has returned from Mass.
"Handy things, these," he says, admiringly. At the house,
Donald Allan's son appears, turning on the television to watch a
mainland soccer match, an all-day peat fire warming the room. This
24-year-old son, one of eight children, is named Duncan MacQuarrie, a
modern namesake of my mysterious ancestor. He works in aquaculture,
breeding salmon in a pen in Lochboisdale harbor, a business that helps
keep a few young people home. "It's a job," Duncan says,
almost dismissively. On the wall is a photo of him at a family wedding,
wearing a rented kilt and smiling broadly. His hair, cut short and
spiked, is dyed blond.
Donald Allan MacQuarrie
could not lead me to my great-great-great-grandfather, but my quest
becomes something of a mission for many of my new contacts. The museum
supervisor, for example, advises me to talk to Iain Smith, a 92-year-old
man who lives on "MacQuarrie's land" in the far south of the
island. No matter that Neil MacQuarrie, whose farm, or croft, it had
been, left South Uist more than 150 years ago. The name has stuck in
this place where the 1840s smack of recent history.
The pub crowd tells me where to find old Iain: "Now, take the road
south from Daliburgh. You'll see a left, but don't take that. Take the
next right. And as you drive along, you'll see a wee cottage by a sharp
turn. That's Iain's. You'll know it, because there'll be a dog lying by
the side of the road."
The directions, imprecise as they seem, could not be better. There is
the turn, there is a sheepdog, and there is a wee cottage by the side of
the road. As luck has it, Iain has just returned home with a neighbor.
After the obligatory whisky, Iain speaks in Gaelic of Neil MacQuarrie:
"He was godfather to my father." No memory of a Duncan, Iain's
friend translates, but the old man insists we visit the ruined
MacQuarrie croft anyway.
So off we go on a wet Sunday afternoon, Iain Smith leading the way up
and over uneven ground with a shepherd's staff to support him.
"This would have been a big croft for the time," Smith says,
surveying yet another pile of stones.
South Uist has not produced the connection I had sought, and neither has
the local croft data I researched. I call Bill Lawson, a former Scottish
university professor who has spent 40 years compiling old croft records
of the Western Isles. Such a list will always be incomplete because of
the paucity of records, but Lawson has made the challenge part of his
life's work. As a result, his books on croft histories have become
something of a bible in island homes.
Using a database that lists birth and death records in Scotland as well
as Nova Scotia immigrant statistics, Lawson points me toward a Donald
MacQuarrie, born in 1750 in Sollas, North Uist, as the likely connection
for my family. Because my ancestor named his first son Donald, Lawson
notes, this
could be the link. The records show no other Donald MacQuarrie from the
Western Isles who could have been Duncan's father.
Up to North Uist I drive, via a one-lane causeway and the intervening
island of Benbecula. I duck into a telephone booth by the side of the
road, find an Iain MacQuarrie in Sollas, and call to introduce myself.
An invitation follows.
"Brian MacQuarrie, I presume," Iain says in greeting at the
house, jokingly reversing the roles of Stanley and Livingstone.
"Well, well," he murmurs, using a common Highland phrase to
break the ice as he leads me into his trim farmhouse. "So, do you
think we're cousins?"
I think the possibility exists. I recite my genealogy, and Iain
retrieves his copy of Lawson's croft history for North Uist. Excitedly,
he tells me that the Donald MacQuarrie uncovered by Lawson had been his
direct ancestor, too.
If ever there was a link to my past, Iain MacQuarrie appears to be it.
We have some things in common: both 48 years old, both divorced, both
fathers of girls. But the similarities end there. I write for a
newspaper; Iain raises cattle and sheep and drives a school bus to make
ends meet. But the
interest in shared blood transcends the 3,000-mile distance between us -
strangers, really - and all the cultural ramifications of growing up in
two very different places.
The consuming subject of the afternoon becomes the MacQuarrie experience
in the Uists. And like old Iain and Donald Allan, the younger Iain takes
me on a tour of the village where my great-great-great-grandfather might
have been born. That village, Sollas, contains the best soil in all of
North Uist. The coastal plain is broad and fertile, lying between a line
of mountains and a spectacular coastline with wide, white sand beaches
and an arc of dunes that would do Nauset proud.
Today's beauty masks the trauma that hit here in 1851, when Lord
MacDonald ordered a "redundant" population moved to less
desirable land to stanch the financial bleeding that had placed him
200,000 pounds in debt. When the villagers would not move, according to
contemporary newspaper accounts, a detachment of Glasgow police was
summoned to descend on the town.
The Sollas men stood aside, apparently to avoid arrest, but their women
pelted the police with rocks. They received truncheon blows in return,
but the resistance caused the police, sickened by the job, to halt the
beatings. "The story goes that one of the women's ringleaders was a
MacQuarrie," Iain
says. "After the battle, there was so much blood on their heads
that when they washed their faces and hands in the stream, you could see
the blood being carried away. To this day, it's called the Stream of
Blood."
Iain MacQuarrie takes me to that stream, a rocky rivulet that tumbles
from the mountains to the sea. He then drives home to play a prized
videotape, his record of a 1999 ceremony that marked the 100th
anniversary of the return of the tenant farmers to reclaim their
ancestors' land. As the videotape
rolls, Iain tells me more tales of struggle. He recounts how the evicted
MacQuarries of Sollas, with children, cattle, and roof timbers in tow,
walked for two days across bare mountains and through trackless bogs to
reach their new home in Loch Euphort. "It was bleak ground,"
Iain says.
But when I drive to Loch Euphort, I do not see the pain of wresting a
living from the thin soil - only pristine coves, jagged peaks rising
from deep ocean, and small homes with million-dollar views.
Later, as I return to South Uist through a wide Highland pass, the
glimmering beaches of Sollas disappearing behind me, I decide that
discovering Duncan MacQuarrie's 200-year-old home is no longer
necessary.
I have found my ancestor. I have found him in the welcoming spirit of
these gentle people and in this hard but beautiful land that toughened
him physically while demanding humility.
Duncan left one rocky land for another, but he did not leave behind a
love for the place. The music and spirit of Cape Breton, even today, are
testament to the cultural affection that he and other immigrants
instilled in their descendants.
I know Duncan better now. And I thank him for laying the foundation of
the opportunities I enjoy. But now, more than ever, the imagery of an
old Canadian boat song tugs at me. And although I cherish my Boston
home, I now feel better connected to the haunting words of this emigrant
lament:
From the lone sheiling of the misty island, Mountains divide us and a
waste of seas. Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, and
we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Hebridean Connections –
New Fly-Drive Packages Take You Back To Your Roots
Seallam! Visitor Centre at Taobh Tuath (Northton)
on the Isle of Harris is now the home of Co Leis Thu? Genealogical
Research Service for the Western Isles. Consultant Genealogist Bill
Lawson, who is based there, has developed in excess of a staggering
30,000 family trees covering the area from Barra in the south to Lewis
in the north. Much of the painstaking research has depended heavily on
the strong oral tradition of the area which plays an important part in
piecing the jig-saw together. Bill enthuses, "In an area where oral
tradition is as strong as in the Western Isles of Scotland it is
important to know where one fits into the community - not Co Thu? -Who
are you? - but Co Leis Thu?- Who do you belong to? Genealogy in such a
community is not just a barren list of names and dates, but a living
series of links with the other people in that community. As people move
out of that community, many feel that it becomes even more important to
know and understand these links, and wish to compile family trees and
relationship charts."
"This is especially true in the
emigrant areas, such as Canada, USA and Australia, where more and more
people are trying to make a definite link with the old family homeland.
In some cases, this can be difficult, because of lack of source
material."
"One of our recent clients, Mrs
Helen MacPherson, knew from her own family tradition that her Campbells
went to Cape Breton from Barra, but we have been able to establish the
detail that, although her ancestor was originally from Barra, he
actually married in Glasgow on 4th June 1812. With the information from his marriage register, we are
hopeful that we will in due course be able to identify which village in
Barra he came from, and whether there are any relatives still traceable
on Barra".
"There are many, many more people
out there in a similar position to Helen that we can help. This new
initiative will make it much easier for visitors by providing one
product which can meet all their needs."
Western Isles Tourist Board, in
partnership with Transport & Tourism Developments [UK], recognised
the huge potential of the asset and developed a new fly-drive package
holiday to make it easy for visitors to experience the stunning
environment that their ancestors had left behind. Angus MacMillan, Chief
Executive of Western Isles Tourist Board, is positive that the new
product will be popular with visitors from around the world, he says,
"We have something very special to offer everyone trying to
research their roots in the Western Isles. Visitors can combine an
exceptionally beautiful environment, a vibrant Gaelic culture and an
expert Genealogist with access to a wealth of research information. This
new package will be promoted on our web site and will help attract many
new visitors to the Western Isles."
Dan McGrory of Transport & Tourism
Developments has introduced a number of new tourism products to the
Western Isles and is very excited about the potential of Hebridean
Connections, "The success of any new product depends on a number of
factors, mainly the unique elements of the experience which can not be
experienced anywhere else. Over the past few months I have been very
impressed with the commitment of both Bill & Chris Lawson who
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seen the incredible emotion which is generated by providing links
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For more info please contact consultant
Genealogist Bill Lawson at :
Co
Leis Thu? Genealogy Research Service
FOR THE WESTERN ISLES OF SCOTLAND
Phone & Fax 01859 520 258
e-mail coleisthu@cs.com
Consultant Genealogist Bill Lawson
Seallam! Northton (Taobh Tuath) Isle of Harris HS3 3JA
Dan McGrory, Transport & Tourism
Developments [UK]
e-mail : dan@mcgrory.fsbusiness.co.uk
Tel / fax : 0141 634 4876 Mobile : 0411 397322
For booking details please contact Bill
Tinto at Scotia Travel on
Tel: 0141 305 5050 Fax: 0141 305 5051
e-mail: harris@scotiatravel.com
web: www.scotiatravel.com |