Murray

Well. I didn't know what I was going to write about this time, but I've just had a phone call from a cousin on Mum's side of the family to say his dad has died as the result of a tragic accident up in the Hebrides. I didn't want to probe too much on the phone, but as I hope to go to his funeral in Dumfries&Galloway this week, I will no doubt find out more.

I have to say I'm quite stunned, so goodness knows how his sons are feeling. I only got to know Murray relatively recently after I did a bit of family research, latterly with the help of a professional genealogist. It turned out that Murray's dad, brother of my grandad, had moved to England to work, married there and brought his son up there, and Murray himself had married and brought up his own family there too, though he and his wife decided to retire to Scotland some years ago. Unfortunately I never met Audrey who died before I "found" Murray, but he and I met a few times, normally in the town of Moffat about halfroads between us, and, incidentally, the town where our ancestors had lived. The first time we met we went to look at the houses they had lived in, and explored the old graveyard where some of them were buried.

This is a photo of Murray outside the house where our common ancestor, Thomas, was born in 1857. It is possible that the family moved there a few years earlier, but that is the first confirmed date I have of the family being there, not having seen the 1841 or 51 census records yet! I'll have to get back to that soon.


I had hoped this summer that Murray and I could take a trip to Lanarkshire to look for the house where his grandmother, Jeanie, was born - most likely a ruin now or even non existent, but now I'll be doing that trip on my own. I'm sorry he never got to do that.

I never knew my grandfather or his brothers, and it seems that Murray never knew his uncle, (my grandfather) who had gone to the north of England to work. Murray as a boy would come visiting his other uncle in Glasgow and met his other west of Scotland cousins but he never met my mum. I think that Murray's dad and my grandad may have fallen out with each other, which might account for a few things that came to light while I was researching my own branch of the family!!!

This is Thomas, my great grandfather, Murray's grandfather, with Jeannie, his wife, at the wedding of their eldest son, my grandfather....

.... and on the right a family photo taken around about the millennium. Murray and Audrey are on the right. They had two sons who are also pictured here with their wives and children. The family is bigger now though.

Well, my sympathy to the family. See you on Friday.

To everyone else, talk again soon.