Finding a family
Beverley Mathias
One bright May morning over twenty years ago, I set out to find evidence of my ancestors. The Isle of Lewis was bleak and beautiful, the road long, winding and narrow as I drove my hired car out of Stornoway and across the island carefully watching out for, and observing, the passing places marked alongside the road. I had waited thirty-five years for this day, and now hoped I could find evidence of my family's life on this island. Passing flocks of black faced sheep, slowing down for them as they crossed the road, marvelling at the wonderful views of the sea and the moors I realised how much my great-grandfather must have missed his homeland. Eventually I reached the west side of the island, and Carloway, the village after which my great-grandfather had named his house in Australia. One street sweeping down the hill and over the water, then up the other side. Some houses either side, a road off to the right, and one to the left but no sign of a cemetery. Just back from the corner, behind the war memorial was a large Free Church, and beside it, facing the main road, was a school. It was the school in a photograph my mother had shown me of the opening of the Pentland Road. Nothing much had changed in the 80 years since then. Opposite the Free Church was a man mending a gate post. I parked the car and walked across.
"Excuse me can you please tell me where I will find the cemetery?" was my hesitant request. The man looked at me from under his cap, carefully laid the hammer on the ground beside him, leaned on the post and spoke "You will be Alick Mackenzie's granddaughter and you will be looking for Ranald's grave", he said in a soft Gaelic voice. I was stunned into silence for a few moments. How did he know who I was? Was it my Australian accent? Surely not, after all there must have been plenty of Antipodeans looking for their ancestors.
"I'm Alick's great-granddaughter but who is Ranald?" I replied.
"Come in and I will tell you about your family" was his response.
I followed him into a sturdy two storey stone house. The kitchen was large, warmed by a solid fuel cooker, furnished with a sofa and chairs alongside the table and cupboards one would expect. The man and his wife welcomed me, bade me sit and put in front of me crowdie, scones, biscuits, cakes - all homemade, plus a cup of strong tea.
They explained that the cemetery was on the coast about a mile or so from the village, and that Ranald was an ancestor who had been the schoolmaster in the village about 100 years before. These strangers told me of cousins I had living in Berkshire in England, of cousins in Canada, and of two elderly relatives living in sheltered accommodation in Stornoway. I was overwhelmed. When I left Stornoway the most I was expecting was one of two graves that I could use to reconstruct some of the limited family history that was in my head, and probably distorted over time. After numerous cups of tea, scones, cakes and further conversation, my head full of information only partly understood, I left to take up the story in three dimensions by visiting the cemetery and the nursing homes.
My journey took on a different aspect. I was travelling not just to see gravestones, but to meet real people, people who might remember my great-grandfather or his siblings.
The finger post on the main road simply gave the name of the area. The cemetery sits on a cliff top overlooking a spectacular beach and the Atlantic Ocean. After some investigation I found Ranald's grave and discovered that he was a Macdonald. I hadn't known I was related to the Macdonalds. But Mackenzie graves? There were plenty, but nobody related to me.
Driving across the island again I thought about which of the nursing homes to visit. I had verbal instructions as to how to find each of them, but knew there was insufficient time in the day to visit both. From something that had been said during that incredible conversation in the kitchen at Carloway, I decided to visit Dun Berisay to find out about one of these previously unknown relatives. On enquiring at reception I was told I could visit Mrs Macleod of Tarbert (there are so many Macleods, Mackenzies, Smiths, Morrisons, that they are identified by their place of birth or residence). I was taken down a corridor to her room and told she was bedridden but quite alert. After knocking gently on the door, the nurse went in and said there was a visitor.
"You're Grace's girl" said the elderly lady in the bed. "Yes I am" I replied, stunned again at what others seemed to know about me. It could not have been my Australian accent this time, as I had not even opened my mouth.
We talked for ages, until she was too tired to talk any more. I found out that my grandmother and other Mackenzie relatives in Australia had kept in touch with these relatives in Stornoway and Reading and that they knew of me, and my two brothers. I knew nothing of them. I found out that the great-great aunt who had sent me my fifth birthday present lived in 'the granite house' in Cromwell Street in Stornoway. And I discovered that some of my Mackenzie relatives were buried in the cemetery just outside the town.
Returning to the place where I was staying I mulled over what I had learnt that day about the family I did not know existed. I had gone to find gravestones, but I had returned knowing about living relatives. I will never forget the sentence spoken to me that morning.
"Come away in and I will tell you about your family." Moran taing Iain.
