IF Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona, from Forres, was Canada’s richest man in the 1900s, his younger cousin George Stephen, from Dufftown, was not far behind. And as 1st Baron Mount Stephen, he was the first Canadian to attain a peerage.

His origins were humble. He was born in Dufftown on June 5, 1829, the oldest of eight children of William Stephen, a carpenter, and Elspet, daughter of John Smith of Knockando.

George was educated at the parish school of Mortlach but left at the age of 14 to become a stable boy. At 15 he was apprenticed to an Aberdeen draper and silk mercer, before moving to London in 1848 – first working for a draper and then at a wholesale dry goods house.

At the age of 21, he emigrated to Canada to work for his cousin William Stephen, a Montreal draper, and on his cousin’s death in 1862 became sole proprietor. Driven by a desire to succeed, and his strong work ethic, Stephen demonstrated a strong business acumen. By 1866 he was running his own successful wool-importing company and investing in other textile businesses.

With his business booming, he started buying shares of the Bank of Montreal. His abilities saw him appointed director in 1873 and president of Canada’s largest bank in 1876 – and the most powerful financial figure in the country.

Stephen revolutionised the bank’s thinking, investing in the high yield, but high-risk business of railways. The first venture was the St Paul and Pacific railroad, a group of six investors, including his cousin Donald Alexander Smith from Forres, taking the risk and making their fortunes as it grew in to the St Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba railroad.

Stephen, as chief financier, headed the group that built the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). By feigning reluctance to accept the challenge from the Canadian Government, Stephen drove down the terms to the group’s advantage, but even then the challenge was a mammoth one – to drive the railway through the Rockies to British Columbia.

As president, Stephen little anticipated the enormous difficulties, natural, financial and political, facing the new company. He had underestimated the construction costs. From January, 1884, to April, 1885, his resourcefulness was put to the test – at the edge of bankruptcy, the railway was bailed out by a Government guarantee.

In November, 1885, the last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, and the country finally tied by rail. To a significant extent, George Stephen from Dufftown was the person most responsible for the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the opening up of Canada to new settlers.

But it was the St Paul, Minnesota, and Manitoba railroad that was more profitable and which gathered more of his attention. By 1888 he resigned as president of the CPR.

In 1891 he became Baron Mount Stephen, the title derived from a mountain in the Kicking Horse River Valley of British Columbia, previously named in his honour. In 1892 he made his permanent home in England, at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

Towards the end of his long life he turned his attention away from business, giving generously to hospitals in London, Montreal, Aberdeen and his native county.

George Stephen married Charlotte Annie Kane on March 8, 1853, but she died in 1896. They had one adopted daughter, who married Baron Northcote.

Stephen married Georgina Mary Tufnell in 1897. She had been lady-in-waiting to Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, mother of Queen Mary, and Lord Mount Stephen and his second wife regularly entertained the Queen at Brocket Hall.

George Stephen, the boy from Dufftown who changed the face of Canada, died on November 29, 1921, his barony but not his legacy becoming extinct on his death.

Today his contribution is commemorated by a plaque on Dufftown Tower.

Educated at Anderson Institution, he joined the town clerk’s office at the age of 16, but two years later, emigrated to Canada to join the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Success came very slowly. After counting skins at the Lachine warehouse for three years, he was promoted to junior trader at remote Tadoussac on the St Lawrence River, and then at the even more secluded Mingan. In 1847, he deserted his post and was banished to Rigolet, a tiny post in eastern Labrador.

Without complaint, Smith toiled there and in North West River engaging in the fur trade and exporting seal oil, salmon and cranberries. He built a cannery, imported livestock and grew vegetables.

In 1853, he married Isabella Sophia Hardisty, daughter of the chief trader in North West River, and in that same year Smith became chief trader. He was promoted to the post of chief factor in 1862, with control over all of Labrador, and in 1869 became head of the company’s Montreal department.

In his new position, Smith played a key role in the pacification of the Red River uprising of 1869-70, his negotiations assisting in the creation of the province of Manitoba. Smith’s political career saw mixed success, winning the Selkirk Manitoba seat for the Federal Tories in 1871 and for the Liberals in 1873 and 1878.

The 1878 contest was declared corrupt and his seat declared vacant. He returned to politics in 1887, and in 1896 was given the position of Canada’s High Commissioner in London. But it is as a businessman that Smith’s fame lies. He began to build his fortune while employed in Labrador, investing his, and his colleagues, surplus earnings in outside enterprises, principally the Bank of Montreal.

He used his own funds and those of the trusts he managed to purchase the Hudson’s Bay Company shares for himself, shrewdly realising that the company’s future lay in the settlement of the north-west prairies.

Smith became governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1889, presiding over its transformation from a company solely involved in the fur trade to one dealing in real estate, natural resources, and wholesale and general retail business. The boy from Forres had matured into an astute and incredibly successful businessman.

Donald Smith, later Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal of Glencoe and Colonsay. Smith also played an important role in the development of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was completed in 1885. While his partners looked after the challenging financial details and even more challenging construction problems, Smith formed the North West Land Company to maximise profits on the railway’s land grant. At the same time, he took control of the Bank of Montreal, becoming its president in 1887. One of his partners in the Canadian Pacific Railway was his cousin from Dufftown, George Stephen.

Through his business acumen and control of these companies he benefited enormously from the immigration boom in the western Canadian prairies.

By the turn of the century, he was easily the wealthiest Canadian of his time. His business commitments never faltered, and towards the end of his life he served as chairman of Burmah Oil and the newly created Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

Smith was knighted in 1886 and became Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal of Glencoe and Colonsay in 1897. He was a noted philanthropist, particularly generous to Aberdeen University, although many other institutions of higher learning as well as hospitals benefited from his magnanimity.

Smith was open-handed in regard to his home county, with Leanchoil Hospital a major beneficiary. He was given the freedom of the Burgh of Forres in 1900. During the Boer War, he personally funded an entire mounted regiment, Strathcona’s Horse.

He died in London on January 21, 1914, and was buried at Highgate cemetery.

In this Year of Homecoming, when we look to those of Scottish descent finding their roots, Canada, where so many settled, owes a tremendous debt to the boy from Forres.

Moray’s sainted martyr

JOHN Ogilvie hailed from a land-owning family of ancient lineage, but he left his native area around Keith, aged 12, to head for the Continent and further his education. He intended returning to play his part in the affairs of Scotland. At the age of just 36, however, he would be dead – executed because of his religion, after being subjected to the most abominable torture against a background of fierce intolerance that was sweeping Scotland. His was a cause celebre in which the King played an active role, but the cruelty and injustice of his fate shocked many people.

Ogilvie’s life may have been short, but his legacy has been long-lasting – so much so that 400 years later, we are still telling this tale of heroism, unbreakable spirit and unshakeable faith.

Securing a place in history could not have been further from the thoughts of this son of Walter Ogilvie, baron of Drum-na-Keith, whose own father, James, had been treasurer to Mary Queen of Scots. The family tree is said to have stretched back to William, King of Scotland, and Queen Margaret, herself later to be made a Saint. The Ogilvies were firm Calvinists. Just 20 years before John Ogilvie’s birth in 1579, John Knox had succeeded in switching Scotland’s state religion from Catholicism to Calvinism, later known as Presbyterianism, and the Catholic faith was now forbidden, with fierce purges instigated to stamp it out.

The Protestant King James (VI of Scotland and I of England) insisted that he should be the head of all matters civil and spiritual, and that no one should bow to the Pope of Rome.

Such was the fear of influence from the still Catholic Europe that permits had to be granted for travelling abroad, and Walter Ogilvie – closely related to Sir Walter Ogilvie, later Lord Deskford – obtained one for his son, who set off from home with an uncle in 1592. The route Ogilvie took was not the one that his family had planned. He travelled widely and studied, and listened to scholars, both Calvinist and Catholic, discussing religion. That proved a source of inspiration, and at the age of just 17 he converted to Catholicism. The Jesuit order was close to his heart, and he traversed the Continent to achieve his aim of becoming a priest. Having enrolled in the Scots College at Louvain in Belgium, he took his vows at Graz in the Austrian Tyrol, and in 1610 was ordained in Paris. Appointed a confessor to students at Rouen in France, he met priests exiled from Scotland for saying Mass or ministering to parishioners, and realising the heavy burden of Catholics in Scotland, longed to return to his native land.

He applied to his superiors for permission to go home. Twice he was refused, but his persistence eventually paid off. There was then no other Jesuit priest in Scotland – almost no priests at all, in fact – so this represented an extraordinary vote of confidence in a young man.

It was a dangerous mission. To cover his tracks and evade the many spies, he took a roundabout route by way of Mainz in Germany, and landed on the east coast of Scotland in 1613, taking on the identity of John Watson, a soldier returning from European wars and now trying his hand at horse dealing. Jesuit historians say he headed for his native North-east, where the Catholic faith was still flickering under the protection of the powerful Gordon, Earl of Huntly, and his superiors may have felt he would be safest here.

Father Ogilvie is thought to have spent Christmas at Strathbogie, and may even have visited Grant of Ballindalloch, who was fined around this time for harbouring a priest. Most noblemen wanted little to do with the visitor. Going against the King would cost them their position and land holdings; they pretended to be faithful to the new religion so as to retain their wealth. However, others of professional or lower classes responded. He returned to Edinburgh after Christmas, and one version of Ogilvie’s life story states that he set out for London to see King James himself.

“He tells us nothing about the purpose of his journey, but it so impressed the King that he gave Father Ogilvie a safe conduct to France in order to further the scheme. It must have had merit concerning the King’s constant preoccupation, the loyalty of his Catholic subjects. He would dearly have wished to have the Pope accept him as a Protestant King.

“It may be that the episode had the effect later of making the King more unrelenting towards the priest, since it would appear that he (Ogilvie) was unable to deliver an assurance of loyalty.”

From France, Father Ogilvie returned to Scotland in June, 1614, to continue his covert mission work, mainly around Edinburgh, Glasgow and Renfrewshire. “The harvest is great,” he wrote. He is said even to have penetrated Edinburgh Castle to comfort prisoners.

But the net was closing in on him. He travelled to Glasgow to reconcile five men to the church, but one was a spy, Adam Boyd, who had contacted the Protestant Archbishop of Glasgow, John Spottiswoode, and appointee of the King, and a trap was set.

On October 14, the priest was arrested, imprisoned in the Archbishop’s palace, and appeared before the burgh court of Glasgow. The nightmare was about to begin. Tortured for his faith for five months after his arrest, John Ogilvie was subjected to starvation, beatings, torture and sleep deprivation – but he met it all with equanimity, humour and courage.

Father Ogilvie was moved to Edinburgh for further investigation by the Privy Council, and was ordered to be subjected to the torture of the Vigil or Waking, which had been designed to ensure confessions of witchcraft. The prisoner was kept awake by being punched, thrown to the stone floor, and pierced by sharp instruments or “witch’s bridles”. This went on for eight days and nine nights, until a doctor pronounced that he was within hours of death. Through all this, he refused to disclose the names of Catholics to whom he had been ministering. After a few hours’ rest, he was brought back in front of the judges, still resisting threats and promises to save his skin.

He was taken by horseback to Glasgow, where for weeks he was shackled to a heavy iron, unable to sit up without help. In a letter smuggled out of prison, he wrote: “I lie burdened with an iron weight of 200lb, awaiting death unless I accept what is offered with the King’s clemency; that is, a rich provostry and abjure the faith. Having been tortured once by a vigil of nine nights and eight days, I now await a second torture and afterwards death. The gaoler will be coming back.”

Banishment for saying Mass was no longer an option. The Ogilvie case had now gone further, and the King wanted him to repudiate the Pope or die. King James intervened directly to draft a list of five questions, designed to force the priest into accepting, or rejecting, the “divine right” of the King in all matters, spiritual and temporal.

Father Ogilvie was finally put on trial for treason on March 10, 1615, at the Tolbooth in Glasgow’s Square. Facing the charges, he declared that he would die in defence of the King’s civil authority, but he could not obey him on spiritual matters. Two hours after the trial began, the jury found him guilty, and he was condemned to be hanged and quartered that afternoon.

Father Ogilvie spent three hours in prayer while the judges and jury went to lunch. Then the sheriff came to escort him to the public square for execution. Holding the rosary, the Jesuit mounted the scaffold and prayed briefly. A last-minute reprieve of his life and the promise of a substantial sum of money was refused. He declared his loyalty to the King, and made it clear he was dying “for religion alone”, adding: “For that, I am prepared to give even a hundred lives.”

Father Ogilvie threw his rosary into the crowd. It struck a Hungarian merchant visiting the city, and became the instrument of his conversion. The hangman tied the priest’s hands, led him up the ladder and pushed him off. He did not die immediately, so the executioner grabbed his legs and pulled him down to end his agony. The crowd murmured against the injustice of the execution, and instead of the body being quartered, it was spirited away to be buried secretly in a criminal’s plot on the outskirts of Glasgow.

In the years after his death, John Ogilvie was revered as a martyr throughout Europe, wherever his story was told. The Scripture scholar Cornelius a Lapide, who had known Ogilvie at Jesuit college, wrote: “It is clear from the account of his martyrdom that he astonished the Calvinists, for although unconquered by torture and still bold and ready in debate, he opened not his mouth against his tormentors.”

Following the Reformation of 1560, the Catholic Church almost died – but it stayed alive in corners of Scotland, not least in parts of what is now Moray, where at Scalan, in Glenlivet, a seminary operated from 1716-32, producing priests who headed out to all parts of the country to minister in secret.

These brave men were following in the footsteps of the likes of Ogilvie.

In the latter half of the 1700s, the Penal Laws were relaxed, and in 1793 largely abolished, allowing Catholics again to practise their religion openly and free of fear.

It’s a miracle!

JOHN Ogilvie’s formal canonisation in Rome in 1976 made him the first Scottish saint since Queen Margaret of Scotland in 1250. He had been beatified, given the title of Blessed, in 1929, and a campaign to have him raised to the sainthood was successful after the recovery from cancer of a 63-year-old Glasgow docker, John Fagan, in 1967 was declared a miracle and attributed to John Ogilvie, after whom Mr Fagan’s parish was named.

Given only a short time to live, he was unable to eat because of stomach cancer, and his weight dropped to five stones. Then one morning he woke and startled his wife by saying, “I’m hungry”. To the astonishment of doctors, Mr Fagan went on to make a full recovery, and was present at the canonisation at the Vatican.

Moray Connections celebrates the achievements of those from Moray who made their mark nationally or internationally.  For most, that meant going out to the world.

But in the case of one nineteenth century Moravian, the scientific world came to Moray, to visit him.

That man was George Gordon, Church of Scotland Minister for Birnie.  The Elgin Museum now stands as a monument to the lifework of this remarkable man who chose to devote his great talents to the study of Moray.

And if as a minister he may have failed the expectations of his congregation by reading passages from the bible rather than delivering a sermon, he certainly never failed to bring credit to this special part of Scotland.

George Gordon was born on 23 July 1801 at Urquhart Manse, the first son of the Reverend William Gordon and his wife Margaret who was daughter of Joseph Anderson, Church of Scotland Minister at Birnie.

George Gordon attended Elgin Academy, leaving at the age of 14 to attend Marischal College, part of Aberdeen University.

After graduating MA in 1819, he went on to the University of Edinburgh where he attended those lectures that were a necessary part of the training for a doctorate in medicine.  This was to allow him to continue his scientific training whether or not he intended to become a doctor.

In Edinburgh, taking many of the same lecture courses was a brilliant group of students that included Charles Darwin and Hugh Falconer and John Grant Malcomson of Forres.

Starting with natural history in 1821 and ending with geology and botany in 1829 his education in Edinburgh was to shape his future activities.  Between 1827 and 1928 he also studied theology in the capital.

He returned to Moray and had to wait before becoming minister of Birnie in November 1832, with the assistance of the Earl of Moray.

Gordon married Anna Stephen of Bruceland on 20 March 1834 and his eight children all grew up in the manse.

The manse at Birnie became a hot house of scientific thought as well as a family home.  The 1851 census lists the minister, his wife, seven children, a governess, a wet nurse, four indoor servants and one outdoor servant – a total of sixteen!

Gordon became a champion of Moray, totally absorbed in the scientific and antiquarian aspects of a province which to him extended beyond the county boundary, as far as Beauly.

Initially botany took up his leisure time and by 1839 he had completed a Flora of Moray.  He and his friends actively scoured the countryside making the first records of its rich and varied plant life.

In the 1840s Gordon set about recording the fauna of Moray, beginning with its mammals, birds and fishes and then moving on to the invertebrate.  Most of his findings were published in The Zoologist.

These achievements were made possible through the support of a large network of friends, both professional and amateur, many stretching back to his university classes and he continued to work with them throughout his long life.

Gordon was a willing sharer of knowledge, a constant questor for information and a great giver of information to those less well informed.  His many letters to the great scientists of the day and to so many other interested in science serve as a proud record of support so freely given.

It was the geology of Moray that proved to be of the greatest interest to scientists.  Gordon and his friends had found fossil fish in the local sandstones in the 1830s and from this interest the Elgin and Morayshire Scientific Association was formed in 1836 with Gordon as a founder member.  In 1843 the association built the Elgin Museum.

Geologists continuously visited Moray to research the fossils and the sandstones and called on Gordon’s excellent knowledge of the area.

Such was the respect given to him that he was rewarded with an honorary degree from Marischal College in 1859.

Gordon remained active in science up to his death, a touchstone of knowledge about Moray for all who studied the area.

He died on 12 December 1893 at his home Braebirnie, Mayne Road, Elgin and was buried at Birnie Kirk.

Today his past can be celebrated both by visiting Elgin Museum and by sharing his love and understanding of the flora, fauna, geology and archaeology of Moray.

And yet without the Clearances and Patrick Sellar in particular, would we be celebrating this Year of Homecoming 2009?

Patrick Sellar was born on 5 December 1780, the only son of Thomas Sellar, solicitor and his wife Jean Plenderleath, daughter of an Edinburgh minister.

Patrick had a privileged childhood, was educated at Edinburgh University and joined his father’s flourishing legal practice in 1803, some five years before his father purchased the estate of Westfield near Elgin.

In 1809 Patrick and William Young a local farmer and improvement entrepreneur, were called to Sutherland to advise Lady Stafford, Countess of Sutherland on plans for the improvement of her vast highland estates of some 1.5 million acres.  In 1810 they were appointed to manage the estate.

It was a challenging time.  The demise of the old clan systems meant that those living on an estate were no longer a resource to be called upon in time of battle but were now seen as a liability, standing in the way of modern farming methods and the maximising of the landowners’ incomes.  Sellar was mainly responsible for rent collection and removals.

He recalled: “Lord and Lady Stafford were pleased humanely to order the new arrangement of this country.  That the interior should be possessed by Cheviot shepherds, and the people brought down to the coast and placed in lots of less than three acres, sufficient for the maintenance of an industrious family, pinched enough to cause them to turn their attention to the fishing.  This was a most benevolent action to put these barbarous Highlanders into a position where they could better associate together, apply themselves to industry, educate their children and advance in civilisation.”

In parallel with his core duties Sellar acquired a large arable farm and then bid successfully for a large new sheep farm in Strathnaver.  The scene was set for a seething bitterness carried through future generations.

The removals by Sellar were particularly severe.  An eyewitness account relates that:
“The consternation and confusion were extreme.  Little or no time was given for the removal of persons or property, the people striving to remove the sick and the helpless before the fire should reach them.

The cries of the women and children, the roaring of the affrighted cattle, hunted at the same time by the yelling dogs of the shepherds, amid the smoke and fire, altogether presented a scene that completely baffles description.”  At the township of Rosal “The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins”.

On 13 June 1814, Sellar was involved in the eviction of William Chisholm and his wife from their croft.  During the eviction the roof was set on fire, with Chisholm’s mother-in-law, Margaret Mackay, still inside.  She was rescued by her daughter and taken to a nearby shed, where she died five days later.  Sellar was put on trial at Inverness in April 1816 for acts of gross inhumanity, including culpable homicide.  Tried by a jury of landowners from outside Sutherland he was completely exonerated!

Sellar was eased out of the Sutherland management, but he had left his indelible mark, some 15,000 people being cleared from the Sutherland Estates between 1811 and 1821.  Patrick Sellar remained one of the greatest sheep farmers in the Highlands, widely respected as an agricultural adviser and sheep expert and influential in establishing wool and sheep markets.

In 1819 he married Anne, daughter of Thomas Craig of Barmuckity, near Elgin.  They had nine children, with one son becoming professor of Latin in Edinburgh University and another a successful MP.  Between 1838 and 1844 he bought two estates in Morven Argyll, evicting 230 people, but soon fell out with his neighbours.  After a long illness he died on 20 October 1851 at Park Place, Elgin and was buried at Elgin Cathedral on 1 November.

For many, Patrick Sellar from Moray embodies the Highland Clearances.  He was single minded, severely critical of the old highland ways and thought that the highlanders should emigrate for everybody’s sake.  In retrospect, did he merely accelerate the inevitable, whereby overpopulation and poverty would have driven those highlanders to the new industrial cities, or to the coast or overseas in due course?

What is indisputable is that his methods, even for the harsh times of the early 19th century, were severe.  But did his actions directly contribute to the rich cultures of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand and those Scottish connections which we celebrate during this Year of Homecoming?

Of all those Moravians who made their mark nationally or internationally, few could have had as colourful a career as the boy from Dallas, James Philip, rancher, senator, gold prospector, the man who saved the buffalo from extinction, the brother-in-law of Sioux Chief, Crazy Horse.

Born at Auchness Farm, Dallas, one of nine children of farmer George Philip and his wife Christina (nee Smith) on 30 April 1858, Jimmie Philip’s childhood was coloured by tales of the American frontier and by working on the farm, skills he would put to good use in his later life.

At the age of fifteen in 1874, Philip left Scotland to follow his older brother George to a settlement at Victoria, Kansas.  He worked long hours, his already powerful stature being put to good advantage, but the lure of gold was stronger than life as a plains farmer.

Jimmie moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming where he worked as a cowboy to raise money for a gold mining expedition.  Here his Moray tongue earned him the name “Scotty” by which he would be known for the rest of his life.

The gold of the Black Hills beckoned, but this was sacred territory for the native Americans and Scotty Philip was able to prospect for gold only for a short time before the army threw him out.  Spring 1877 found Scotty back in Wyoming and employed as a government teamster at Fort Laramie.  He moved to Fort Robinson where he worked the range as a cowboy and as a messenger for the army.  With typical Scottish thrift, with the money earned he purchased a tea of mules and a freight wagon and began to build up a herd of cattle.

It was at Fort Robinson that Scotty met and in 1879 married Sarah (Sally) Laribee, daughter of a French father and Cheyenne mother and whose younger half sister was wife of Crazy Horse who defeated Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

After their marriage they moved to Clay Creek where Scotty began ranching and hauling freight from Nebraska to the Black Hills and from Fort Pierre to Deadwood.

Freighting was very successful, he continued building his herd of cattle and in 1881 moved to a ranch at the mouth of Grindstone Creek, not far from the present day city of Philip, named after this man from Moray.

Throughout the 1880s he continued to prosper, his ranch being on part of the native American reservation and therefore free from encroachment by other white men.  When South Dakota became a state Philip was one of its first senators.  By 1898 he owned a cattle empire.

When building his ranching empire Philip met Pete Dupree who had managed to catch five buffalo calves during the last big hunt on the Grand River in 1881.  After Dupree’s death Scotty determined to prevent the extinction of the buffalo and purchased the herd from his estate.  In 1901 Scotty drove the herd, now some fifty animals, to a pasture he had specifically constructed along the Missouri River.

The herd would grow to nearly 1,000 head and would later stock national and state parks throughout the United States.  Indeed, shortly after Philip’s death, Custer National Park purchased 36 head which were used, in turn, to stock other parks and refuges.

In order to collect the graves of his five deceased children Scotty laid out his family cemetery, completing it on the night of Saturday July 22, 1911.  In the early hours of the next morning, July 23, without warning, Scotty died of a cerebral haemorrhage.  It is recorded that people travelled for 3 days to attend his funeral.  Alex Johnston, the agent for the Chicago and North Western Railroad even had to lay on a special train for mourners.

Newspapers reported “At the final resting place a great gathering assembled.  The buffaloes came down from the hills to watch the funeral.  Tears coursed down the cheeks of hard drinking, hard swearing, hard working cowboys – unashamed.”

In life, James “Scotty” Philip made a significant contribution to his community in South Dakota.  Even more tellingly his legacy as “The Buffalo King” lives on in National Parks and in environmental practice.

James “Scotty” Philip is one of twelve Moravians whose national or international contributions are being celebrated in “Moray Connections” during this Year of Homecoming 2009, through a website, trail and events across Moray.

Other celebrities are: Macbeth; James Ogilvie, Scotland’s first saint for 400 years; William Marshall, composer; Lord Strathcona; Lord Mountstephen; Patrick Sellar; George Gordon; Hugh Falconer; William Baxter; James Ramsay MacDonald; and John Smith Grant of Glenlivet.  Each will be featured in the Northern Scot in the coming months.

Through finding out about these twelve lives communities and individuals will be encouraged to discover their own history, with Family History events taking place throughout the year.

William Marshall was born at Fochabers, Banffshire, on the 27th December 1748. When about twelve years of age he entered the service of the Duke of Gordon and soon rose to be butler and house-steward. That he was a great favourite with the members of the Duke’s family and with the many distinguished guests, especially ladies, who visited the castle may be gathered from the titles of many of his compositions. No doubt he felt flattered by such recognition of his musical gifts, yet J. MacGregor in his Memoir rather bluntly remarks: “Many, who perhaps imagined at the time that they were conferring honour on the minstrel by giving their names to being remembered at all, after their fleeting pilgrimage of life has passed away.”

In addition to composing music Marshall devoted much of his spare time to the study of mechanics, astronomy, architecture and land surveying, and even to the making of clocks. He was a keen sportsman; a dancer and athlete of considerable local repute. He left Gordon Castle in 1790 and, a short time after, settled at Keithmore farm. Soon he was appointed factor to the Duke and continued in that capacity up to 1817. About 1822 he retired to Newfield Cottage, Dandaleith, near Craigellachie Bridge. William Marshall died on the 29th of May, 1833, and was buried in Bellie churchyard.

Of Marshall’s earliest efforts 49 were published in two numbers by Neil Steward, Edinburgh, in 1781, while several of the airs written after that date appeared first in other composers’ works, particularly those of the Gows. At the request of his many patrons Marshall gathered his scattered compositions and sold their copyright in 1822 to Alexander Robertson, Edinburgh. Robertson issued 176 of them in the same year. A selection containing 81 of his then remaining and subsequent compositions – 2 of them being repetitions – was issued by the same publisher about 1845. The 1822 and 1845 collections contain between them almost all the airs in the 1781 collection with most of their names changed.

Burns proved himself to be a sound judge of Scots music when he dubbed Marshall “The first composer of strathspeys of the age.” The Marquis of Huntly’s Farewell (“The King of Strathspeys”), The Marquis of Huntly’s Strathspey (formerly “Reel”), The Marchioness of Huntly and Craigellachie Bridge have long been recognised as masterpieces. The most popular of his other compositions, especially for orchestras, are The Bog of Gight, The Duke of Gordon’s Birthday, Lord Alexander Gordon, Miss Agnes Ross (now called Lasses, look before you), Miss Farquharson of Invercauld (previously called Lady Louisa Gordon, and latterly Miss M’Leod’s Favourite), and Newfield Cottage (renamed Mr. Marshall’s Strathspey in Gow’s second collection and Mr. Marshall’s Favourite in Gow’s Beauties).

Although it is true that few of Marshall’s finest strathspeys look their best at H +188, the speed advocated by G.F. Graham J.T. Surenne, J.S. Skinner and others for the dance, it may also be argued that choosing a speed to take the most out of a so-called strathspey is more important form a musical point of view than restricting to a certain arbitrary speed an air which continues to be popular in spite of its gradual dissociation from the dance. We cannot equally commend any of Marshall’s 80 reel compositions: several of them appear to be deficient in that combination of buoyancy and easy flow more characteristic of south-country reels, and to have too much of that “deliberateness” to which, strange as it may seem, his strathspeys owe much of their beauty. But he as a wealth of slow and slowish strathspeys which have a repose and charm all their own. It may even be said that inasmuch as Marshall’s compositions best reflect the musical outlook of most Scots music enthusiasts they possess a native appeal which even greater brilliancy of effort on the part of another composer can scarcely diminish.

James Ramsay MacDonald from Lossiemouth was the first British Labour prime minister.  MacDonald played a conspicuous part in the political history of 20th century Britain and yet never forgot his Lossiemouth roots.

As part of the Moray Connections programme a Ramsay MacDonald trail has been established in his home town and will be launched at the Family History Fair in Lossiemouth Library on 29th August, the building he opened in January 1904.

The story of Ramsay MacDonald is told within the trail leaflet by his granddaughter Iona Kielhorn and forms much of the following narrative.

James Ramsay MacDonald, the illegitimate son of a servant girl, Annie Ramsay, and a ploughman, John MacDonald, who had met working at Claydales farm, Alves, was born in Gregory Place, Lossiemouth in 1866.  Very soon after his birth his mother moved with him to her mother’s cottage (Isabella Ramsay nee Allan) in Allan Lane.  From there JRM or Jimmie as he was then known went to Drainie Public (Parish) School.  A very talented pupil, he became a pupil teacher at 15.

His aim was to study science at a London college.  He secured odd jobs in Bristol and London while trying to pass entrance exams, living on a weekly packet of oatmeal from his mother in Lossie.  He started talking on political platforms and met his wife Margaret Gladstone while doing this.  Initially involved with the Liberal party, he was attracted to join Labour.

His wife’s family was well off compared to Ramsay’s and Margaret’s money enabled JRM to travel abroad and meet socialists and other politicians all over the world – South Africa after the Boer war, USA, Australia, India, Canada etc.  MPs were not paid at all until 1911.

All his life JRM thought of Lossiemouth as a lifeline to escape London stress.  In 1909 he built his house, the Hillocks, for his mother to look after his 6 children while he was abroad.  2 were born in Lossie and the older ones started school there.  In 1910 his mother Annie Ramsay died and in 1911 his wife Margaret died.

Certain elements of Lossie did not admire JRM.  He was not allowed to build the Hillocks on Prospect Terrace as he had wanted (“Red bastards don’t build up here”) and in 1916 his stand against Britain’s entry into the 1st World War saw him expelled from Moray Golf Club.  This ban was not lifted till 1929, when JRM was Prime Minister for the second time.  JRM, however, refused to return to Moray Golf Club but continued playing at Spey Bay.  In 1915 the word “traitor” was smeared in white paint on the Hillocks’ outside wall!

Ramsay MacDonald first became a Labour MP for Leicester in 1905 and leader of the Labour party in 1911.

He became the first Socialist Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1924 with the support of the Liberals but the government barely survived a year in office.  In 1929 he became Prime Minister for the second time but there was a worldwide economic recession and the necessary public expenditure cuts split the Labour Party.  In 1931 he became Prime Minister of a National Government, a largely Conservative dominated administration and soldiered on as PM until 1935.  While he was working in 10 Downing Street nearly all the parlour maids and kitchen staff were from Lossiemouth as JRM liked the sound of the accent around him.

Between 1924 and 1934 JRM flew from Croydon to Lossie, landing on farmer Mustard’s field in Muirton.  The pilot would then collect fuel with a bucket from the garage on the Elgin Road/Inchbroom Road junction for the return journey!

In 1932 at a Peace Conference in Geneva JRM was secretly told that his friend, Kurt Hahn, headmaster of a modern-thinking school in Salem, Germany, has been imprisoned by Adolf Hitler, and asked to help free him.  Within weeks Kurt Hahn was out of prison and in Moray planning his new school.  JRM’s letter to the German ambassador can be seen framed in Gordonstoun School today.

JRM refused to accept a knighthood 3 times.  On 5th November 1937 he and his daughter set sail on the liner Reina del Pacifica, for South America, but on 9th November MacDonald died of heart failure following a game of deck quoits.  His body was returned to Britain on the cruiser HMS Apollo.  After a memorial service in Westminster Abbey his ashes were brought up to Lossiemouth by train and buried in the family grave in Spynie.

Whatever one’s views of Ramsay MacDonald’s politics, the reality is that this man from Moray was able to claim a political first, as well as influencing our history.

Why a cup and not a glass?  Because in recognising the life and achievements of Hugh Falconer we celebrate a Moray great who brought tea drinking to the ordinary man and woman in Victorian Britain.

And we also celebrate a great thinker and scientist whose work influenced Charles Darwin, who left the fascinating legacy of the Falconer Museum in his home town, and who may have been the first person to discover a fossil ape.

Falconer was born in Forres on 29 February 1808, one of five sons and two daughters of David Falconer and his wife Isabel Macrae.

After graduating MA from Aberdeen University in 1826 he studied medicine at Edinburgh University, becoming an MD in 1829.  During this time he attended the botanical classes of Professor Graham and the geology classes of Professor Robert Jameson, the teacher of Charles Darwin, two great interests that were to dominate his life.

He became an assistant surgeon in the British East India Company in 1830 and upon his arrival in Bengal studied fossil bones from upper Burma.  His published study of the fossils established his reputation among scientists in India.

In 1832 Hugh Falconer became Superintendent of Saharanpur/Serempore Botanic Gardens.  He became widely known for his study of fossil mammals in the Sewalik Hills including mastodons, elephants, rhinoceros, pig and giraffe, making groundbreaking discoveries that were to inform theories of evolution.  There were also fossil fishes, crocodiles and even a giant tortoise fossil which caught the public imagination.  To aid his research Falconer captured living animals to compare their anatomy with his fossil material.  He also published geological studies and for these valuable discoveries he and Professor Cautley received in 1837 the highest award from the Geological Society of London, the Wallaston Medal.

In 1834 Falconer investigated the commercial feasibility of growing tea in India, tea plants were introduced, black tea became competitive with Chinese tea and a British institution was born!

In 1842 Falconer left India because of ill health, accompanied by 70 large chests of dried plants and 5 tonnes of fossils, bones and geological specimens, many of which were put to the British Museum.

He travelled throughout Europe making geological observations and in 1845 was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.  During this home leave, work was begun on the illustrations for what was to become his best known publication Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis.

By 1848 Falconer was appointed superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden and Professor of Botany in the Medical College, Calcutta, near his older brother, Alexander Falconer, a Calcutta merchant.  Through his botanical work the cultivation of Anchona, which produces quinine, was introduced to help treat malaria.  He selected and arranged the Bengal exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and continued his work on fossils.

However, his health was impaired and he returned to London, visiting Palestine, Syria and the Crimea, during the siege of Sevastopol.

In Europe a second phase of his career began.  In particular he became an expert on elephant and mastodon fossils and an active member of the scientific community being vice president of the Royal Society 1863-1864.

He died at his London home on 31 January 1865 and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.

Hugh Falconer’s legacy to scientific thought was considerable.  His work in India benefited the health and economic welfare of the community.

Locally we can discover more about his fascinating life at the Falconer Museum, Forres.

Hugh Falconer’s achievements deserve to be more widely celebrated.  He was a great man from Moray, just one of several notable Moravians celebrated by “The Moray Connections” Year of Homecoming initiative.