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From: "Jo Currie" <>
Subject: Fw: A bevy of Mull & Iona people
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 17:22:13 -0000

-----Original Message-----
From: Jo Currie <>
To: <>
Date: Saturday, March 17, 2001 3:22 PM
Subject: A bevy of Mull & Iona people


>Unusually, I am appealing to the List for news of a branch of my own family
>who disappeared into Australia in 1852. Some members of the MacPhail
family,
>associated with the drovers in Torosay, and with the poet Dugald MacPhail,
>moved from Torosay to Iona in 1847-48, when they offered a sufficient rent
>for two good Iona farms to Factor Mor. The patriarch was Duncan
>MacPhail,(1779-1863) married to Flora MacKinnon (1791-1866). Their sons
>Duncan MacPhail (1812-1890) and Angus MacPhail (1816-1862) remained in Iona
>and died there, but two other sons, Hugh (born c. 1822) and Colin (b.1828)
>emigrated to Australia in 1852 with their sister Marion MacPhail, who had
>married an Iona man, John Macdonald. John Macdonald's family were boat
>builders (parents Donald Macdonald(c.1780-post 1863) and Catherine
>McGilvray). I don't know if Marion MacPhail ever reached Australia, or how
>long she lived once there, or where they went to. She must have died before
>1871, for her husband John Macdonald returned to Scotland. Here, in 1871,
he
>married his own brother-in-law's widow, Marion Lamont, widow of Angus
>MacPhail who had died in 1862. Needless to say, she married her own
>sister-in-law's widower !!! I have heard a STORY that he had returned to
>Iona so that his children could have a good education. Anyway, he and any
>children he may have had, and Marion or Sally Lamont, and perhaps her
>surviving children, returned to Australia, where he claimed to be a Landed
>Proprietor. [ Marriage Certificate, Govan, 1871] Marion/Sally Lamont had
>pretended to be only 44 on her marriage to John Macdonald, but in fact she
>was 48. I am looking for her death in Australia under the name of Macdonald
>or Lamont. I have no idea where she lived, in Australia, but it is likely
to
>have been where a large number of Ross of Mull and Iona emigrants went
>together. If she died about 1900, she would have been 77, but her age may
>have come down to 70. Her daughter, Catherine MacPhail, my great
>grandmother, remained in Iona and Tiree.
>Does anyone know of a John Macdonald from Iona, a Precentor, born 1823, who
>married two Marions, and died in Australia ? Or of Hugh (b.1822) and Colin
>MacPhail (b. 1828) from Iona, his brothers-in-law ? I can give lots of
>information on all the extended families at this end in exchange for any
>clues about Australia.
>Jo Currie, Edinburgh.
>
>

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• Fw: A bevy of Mull & Iona people by "Jo Currie" <>