A history of the children and grandchildren of James P McKenzie and his wife Mary Brown had made brief reference to James having a half-brother who inherited the majority of their father’s estate, leading to James’ decision to immigrate. The writer thought that there might also have been a half-sister, but wasn’t certain. There was very little said about the mother or mothers, which was in some way understandable as this history was concentrating on the McKenzie surname, but also disappointing to me that the mother or mothers didn’t even merit being named -- probably not the fault of the writer, but because the names simply hadn't been passed down.
To my delight I learned that mother’s maiden names were regularly recorded in Scottish baptismal registers, making it so much easier to learn about both parents at once. (How I wish someone had told the English to do the same!) James Paterson McKenzie’s mother was Jane Warrack, and Warrack has proven such a singular name that every time I find a new genealogy database to try, I search for it because it almost always finds its way back to Aberdeenshire.
Jane Warrack was the last Warrack to appear in my direct ancestry and she died 135 years ago this year, but I do know some things about her. She was born in circa 1809 in Towie, but no baptismal record is in the church register, so her exact birthdate isn’t known. She died on her own farm in nearby Strathdon on 23 May 1876. In her 67 years she lived what appears to our eyes to have been a very modern family life, possibly even something out of a soap opera with its myriad entanglements and complicated relationship paths. I haven’t found any record of her early years, not until her marriage on 29 November 1835 at the age of 26, so already one-third of her life is hidden from me.
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| Marriage of William McEnzie & Jean Warrack at Rhynie, 29 November 1835. |
Her husband, William McKenzie, was a brewer at Newseat, near the village of Rhynie where they married. Jane’s residence and occupation, if she had one, are not recorded.
When Jane Warrack married William McKenzie, she became stepmother to his nine-year-old son by a previous relationship with Elizabeth (Eliza) Winton. She was also about six months pregnant. On the night of 23 and 24 February 1836, she gave birth to twin boys on either side of midnight. The elder, born on the 23rd, William Alexander, named for his father and for his maternal grandfather. The younger was James Paterson, very likely named for the local doctor of the same name, born on the 24th. Jane was 26 or 27 years old, it was her first (known) pregnancy, there were twins, it was a winter’s night, her husband had some money: it seems reasonable to assume that the doctor was called instead of, or as well as, the midwife. It might well have been a difficult delivery, as Jane didn’t have another child for 8 years. The twins were baptised at Rhynie Church on 10 March that year, and their father’s occupation had changed in the four months since his wedding from being a brewer at Newseat to being a distiller at Glennoth, also near Rhynie.
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| Baptism of William Alexander and James Paterson, twin sons of William McEnzie and Jean Warrock, Rhynie, 10 March 1836. |
Here’s where family stories make a return: the legend passed along to us is that William McKenzie lost his arm or his lower arm in an accident at work and his employer found him a new situation as the local innkeeper at Kennethmont. The Aberdeen Journal of the period, which records interesting titbits of rural life as well as the goings-on in Aberdeen itself, doesn’t mention any such incident, but William did indeed become the innkeeper and local publican at Kirkhill in the parish of Kennethmont.
William’s story ends here (for now!): the last recorded evidence I have of him was on 16 December 1844 when his posthumous daughter Jane was baptised at Kennethmont, so, on the assumption that she was baptised as an infant, William died probably during 1844, but the Kennethmont burial registers for this time have not survived and I was unable to find William's grave in either the old or new cemeteries there.
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| Baptism of Jane McKenzie, Kennethmont, 1 December 1844. Her mother's name is not recorded, although it does state that "the mother of the child being sponsor". |
Jane Warrack now ran the Kennethmont Inn and looked after her three children, and possibly her stepson Joseph. Again I have a gap in my knowledge of her life, and it’s a significant gap: aged 35, newly widowed, three young children and a business – what did she do? I really have no idea. She had three brothers and a sister living nearby, so presumably she had some family support. I’ve never found any definite evidence of William’s parents or siblings, if any, but that’s not to say that they weren’t around, just that I haven’t been able to make the connection – too many McKenzies in the area!
On 26 February 1849, Jane married Alexander Watson, a forester. He was aged about 36 and Jane was 40.
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| Marriage of Jane Warrack or McKenzie to Alexander Watson, 26 February 1849, Kennethmont. |
Upon their marriage, Alexander would have assumed control over any assets which Jane had inherited from her first husband. Again, family history has a vague and tantalising hint about life during these times: the story is that the marriage began well, but he was an alcoholic and wasted all her money until she left him. A descendant of William Alexander, the elder twin, wrote in the 1950s of visiting the boarding school in Aberdeen where the twins had studied and seeing their names in the school register, but I’ve never been able to find this. The twins were both living at home in 1851 when the census-taker came calling at the Kennethmont Inn and found Alexander and Jane, twins William Alexander and James Paterson, their sister Jane McKenzie, and another child – Isabel Watson, the daughter of Jane Warrack and Alexander Watson, baptised 1 September 1850.
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| Baptism of Isobel Watson, 1 September 1850, Kennethmont. Her mother's name was not recorded. |
William Alexander’s family tell of an argument he had with his stepfather about Alexander Watson having squandered the money William Alexander expected to inherit from his father when he turned 18. I can’t say whether or not this is true, but the date fits: the family says that William Alexander left home, never to return, and found his way to Canada, and sure enough in 1855, aged 19, he arrived in what would later become Ontario. He joined with other ex-pat Scots in Perth County and cleared his own land for a farm. In 1860 he married Margaret Gordon, the daughter of the adjacent landowner, and they had two children, but Margaret died in childbirth with the second. Undaunted, William Alexander mourned for a few months, then married the daughter of the adjacent landowner on the other side, Martha Boyle, and they had six further children.
James Paterson remained in Scotland with his mother, stepfather, sister and half-sister, near to his half-brother Joseph, now a shoemaker, who had gone to live in Marnoch with his mother Elizabeth – and also with his year-old son, William, whose mother I haven't been able to identify. (Phew!)
By 1861 Jane, now 52, was running the Kennethmont Inn, apparently without her husband Alexander Watson, and only her daughter Isobel was living at home with her. A cousin, Helen Warrack, was visiting at the time of the census, and Jane’s son James Paterson was living next door with his wife, the former Mary Brown who had previously been the McKenzie family's servant. Jane McKenzie, Jane Warrack’s elder daughter, was in domestic service at the Manse in Kennethmont.
Had Jane Warrack left her husband? Had he left her? I’ve never been able to track him down on subsequent censuses. Jane told the census-taker that she was married, and she’d give the same status in 1871; her death certificate in 1876 said that she was "Married to Alexander Watson, Innkeeper & forester, previously widow of William McKenzie, Distiller", so she hadn’t been twice widowed, but I still cannot locate Alexander Watson with any degree of certainty.
In the last years of her life, Jane welcomed a number of grandchildren. Between their marriage in 1858 and their immigration to Canada in 1868, James Paterson McKenzie and Mary Brown had six children, four of whom were born in Kennethmont where Jane would have been nearby to help with the growing family. In 1867 Jane's daughter Jane McKenzie returned to Kennethmont to give birth to her first child, whom she named William Alexander Black, presumably after her father and after the baby’s father, William Black of Gartly.
At around the same time as James and Mary left Scotland, Jane Warrack left the Kennethmont Inn and moved to a farm at Balachailach on Deskryside in the parish of Strathdon, near her birthplace of Towie. Her unmarried brother James had the farm next door, and her other unmarried brother John was at nearby Invernochty, Bellabeg, also in Strathdon, while his unmarried sister Isabella kept house for him. Jane brought with her to Strathdon her grandson William Alexander Black, and hadn’t been long on her new farm before her daughter Jane turned up to have another baby. This time the birth certificate did not give the father’s name, and the baby, Isabella, was left in the care of her grandmother and once the baby was old enough, Jane McKenzie returned to life in domestic service in the City of Aberdeen. I don’t know where Isobel Watson was during this time, but she had returned to Strathdon in 1876 when Jane contracted influenza and died on 23 May 1876 at 8:30 in the evening. She is buried in Strathdon with her siblings John, James and Isabella; neither of her husbands and none of her children are mentioned on her grave.
Monumental inscription at Strathdon: In memory of John Warrack farmer Invernochty d. there 24 Feb. 1879 at 75, his brother James died Ballochoillach 15 Sep. 1877 at 70, his sister Jane died there 23 May 1876 at 67, his sister Isabella died Newton, Towie 6 May 1885 at 84.
I haven't seen her grave or even visited Strathdon, but a cousin who has said that she was frustrated in her search to find any family graves, both because of the moss and lichen on the older stones, and also because of the wet weather on the day of her visit.
Of Jane's two children who remained in Scotland, Jane McKenzie eventually married, on 28 December 1883, with her half-sister Isobel as witness, to James Mackie, a brewery worker ten years her junior. Three years later their daughter was born and they named her Jane Watson – Jane Warrack’s married name. The family retired to Fetteresso, Kincardineshire, where Jane died aged 79 in 1923. Jane Watson Mackie would die, unmarried and apparently childless (I say that because it so often appears that the unmarried women in some branches of my tree were only very rarely childless!) aged only 47.
Of Jane McKenzie’s first two children, William Alexander Black had died aged only 24 of tuberculosis, with his mother at his side, and his death certificate says that his father had predeceased him. Isabella McKenzie went into domestic service in Aberdeen, working with her aunt Isobel Watson, but I have been unable to trace her after 1891 when she was 20 years old. Presumably she married and she has definitely since died, and her marriage and death records might just have her reputed father’s name on it, but despite ordering many, many marriage and death certificates for Isabella McKenzies (and all variant spellings thereof), I’ve never found her and I would love to know what happened to her. Is her family still in Scotland? Did she join her uncles in Canada or set out somewhere else entirely?
Isobel Watson never married and does not appear to have had any children. I have not found her in the 1871 census when she would have been 20, nor in 1911 when she would have been 60. She died in Aberdeen on 6 December 1929, aged 79, and the informant was her niece Jane Watson Mackie, the daughter of Jane McKenzie and James Mackie. On her death certificate her full name appears for the first time – Isobel Warrack Watson.
So that’s the details of Jane, my nearest Warrack relative, and her family. Of her parents I know very little beyond their names and the information on their grave at Kildrummy (near Towie). Jane’s mother died when Jane was only about five years old, and, as there aren’t any baptismal records for any of the children of Alexander Warrack and Isobel Glennie, what I know of Jane’s siblings is only what I’ve been able to piece together from censuses, vital records, church records and family wills which mention the siblings. I know of five; there might have been others. The eldest three, Isabella, John and James, never married, but Jane married twice and Peter, the youngest known sibling, married once and had a family of five. Peter’s second son, John, married for the first time when he was 41, to his landlady, a widow with two grown children. After her death, John remarried – at the age of 70 – to a bride of 36, and became a father for the first time a month before his 72nd birthday. I'm in touch with John's grandchildren and have to smile at the thought that I’m e-mailing my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s great-nieces and great-nephews, and they’re not much older than I am.
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