When I first came upon Peter, whilst compiling my comprehensive &
detailed family tree of the ‘Kerrs of
Harris’ some four years ago, it was inevitable that a small frisson of
excitement occurred: Were we related, by any chance?
Let us look at what the three censuses have to tell us about Peter
& his family:
1841
Peter Kerr, 45, Tenant, Kentulavig, b. Inverness
Margaret, 40, b. Inverness
Mary, 15, b. Inverness
Kenneth, 12, b. Inverness
John, 10, b. Inverness
Effy, 8, b. Inverness
Catherine, 5, b.Inverness
Donald, 8 months, b. Inverness
1851
Peter Kerr, 55, Dry Mason, Kintulavick, Harris, b. Harris
Margaret, 50, Wife, b. Harris
Rachel, 16, Daughter, b. Harris
William, 11, Son, b. Harris
1861
Peter Kerr,
67, Stone Mason, Soroba Lower, Craignish, Argyll, b. Harris
Margaret,
62, Wife, b. Harris
Rachel Stables, 25, Daughter, A Painter’s Wife, b.
Harris
Margaret
Stables, 2, Granddaughter, b. Craignish
Phemie
Stables, 8 months, Granddaughter, b. Craignish
Roderick
Kerr, 6, Grandson, b. Harris
We can see
that Peter & Margaret had at least 6 or 8 children born between circa 1825
and 1840 in Harris and that he was a mason. Incidentally, he would have been in
the right place at the right time to have been involved in the construction of
the Telford Church on Berneray, but equally likely was ‘merely’ responsible for
domestic buildings and/or dykes on the island?
Peter died at
2 o’clock in the afternoon of the 22nd of February 1862, aged 60, at
Soroba, Craignish. He had been suffering
from diseased kidneys and an ulcerated bladder for several years. His parents,
both deceased, were a Farmer, Donald Kerr, and his wife Sarah Ferguson, and
Peter’s widow had been born Margaret MacAskill. The death was registered by
Peter’s son, William.
That was
pretty much all that I had established about him (although I had followed his descendants
a little further) until quite recently when I learnt that a Patrick Keir had
been a tenant in Rushgarry on the Island of Berneray in 1830 and that he was
believed to be the mason who appears a decade later on mainland Harris.
Revisiting
my research in the light of this new knowledge I realised that we have
corroboration in the form of Peter’s wife’s, his mother’s & his own name
for MacAskill & Ferguson are family names particularly well associated with
Berneray whilst the Gaelic Padruig (which we see as ‘Patrick in 1830) was usually
anglicised on the island in later years into Peter rather than Patrick.
The use of ‘Keir’
in 1830 suggests to me an Anglicisation of ‘Cearr’ which also fuels another
little fire of mine:
Alexander ‘Keir’ (for ‘brown or, perhaps,
swarthy) Shaw was one of the possible progenitors of the Shaw families of
Harris. Did some of his descendants in the area choose to adopt his ‘moniker’
as a way of distinguishing themselves from their other Shaw neighbours in the
region? If so, were my own earliest island ancestors, Malcolm Kerr & Effie
Shaw, perhaps distantly related by very early roots in Rothiemurchus?
I really don’t
know, but I’m reasonably satisfied that my namesake was a son of Berneray although
the pattern of his son’s names appears quite different to the predominantly Malcolm/Angus/John
repetition that occurs in my own family.
I should
also point out this family which appears in the ‘Register of Emigrants
from the Western Isles of Scotland 1750-1900, Volume 1 Isle of Harris’:
Peter Kerr,
Margaret Kerr, (Wife), John, Rachel, Donald, William, Catherine, Kenneth, Effie
& Mary
They are stated as having left Harris between 1850
& 1859 for ‘Port Uncertain’.
I think it
is clear that this is the same family and thus that their destination (or,
rather, the place where at least some of the family, including both the parents,
emigrated to) was Craignish in Argyll.
Finally, and
taking a real flight of fancy, if Peter’s father Donald Kerr was an (otherwise
unrecorded) farmerof that name on Berneray, then perhaps he & ‘my’ Malcolm
were in some way related, perhaps even brothers? They were certainly contemporaries
( & neighbours across the Sound) so maybe my flight of fancy as to one
possible origin of my family name in these parts isn’t quite as wild as I first
thought...
