Photographs from the Estate of Mary MacIver
The enclosed photographs are from the Estate of Mary MacIver, Verdun, Montreal ( Mairi Anndra) of 15 Gravir. Most of the photographs seem to be taken in Gravir and include family and neighbours.
Oct
03
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 Posted by cepaircadmin | 0 comments
Mar
14
The Best Kind of Education
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.