McKay Family and More

On Monday (8/28) I dug out the big knotweed clumps around the McKay grave markers.  These are very different from the other headstones and monuments in Clark’s.  They are flat and set in the ground like modern stones.  They appear to be granite and carved by an amateur hand.  They are difficult to read and therefore difficult to photograph.  I put flour on them and rubbed it into the letters and Ta Da, easy to read.  I will put the information in Find a Grave, but the photos will have to wait until tomorrow since my picky photographer wasn’t happy with his results.

The dates don’t agree with the town records.  I think they were carved after the 3rd person died in 1915, so memory might have been a bit faulty.

You can go to a website called Island Register.  It has genealogies for families connected to Prince Edward Island.  Many Gloucester families, including ours, have strong connections to Nova Scotia.

The McKays are descended from John McKay and Janet Anderson. Two sons, Robert Neil and Hugh, were born in Murray Harbor South on Prince Edward Island.  Robert married Elizabeth Armstrong in Liverpool.  She died, and he married her sister Margaret, moved to Gloucester and settled in with a large family. On February 14, 1876, while on a passage from Fortune Bay to Boston, aboard the Schooner “Alice Myrick”, he was swept overboard and drowned.  Rumor has it that the captain, who was later convicted of a murder, had a hand in his death and stole a large amount of gold that Robert had with him.

Margaret, his widow then married his brother Hugh. 

To recap…Robert married the two sisters and Margaret married the two brothers.

Hugh, a blacksmith, also drowned, although the circumstances are not clear.

Sunday (8/27) Carol cleaned six tombstones while Sandy, Kathy and I reset two headstones.  Baby Mary C Benson is straight and level, as is Robert N. McKay.  Kathy found and pieced together a monument that has caused her a bit of grief for some time.