Isabella M (MacLennan) MacRae (1757 - 1852)

Born 1757 in Applecross, Ross-shire, Scotland

Wife of Donald MacRae — married 1780 in Applecross, Ross-shire, Scotland

Descendants

Died 1 Apr 1852 at about age 95 in Middle River, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

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Biography

Isabella was born about 1757 in Glenshiel, Applecross, Ross-shire. She passed away in 1852. Macraes to New Zealand by Molly J Akers - Donald & Isabella with family arrived 7 Aug 1803 Prince Edward Island near Nova Scotia per 'Polly'. From PEI moved to Broad Cove, Cape Breton & abt 1812 settled in Middle River. One of 4 families first to settle at Middle River.

Donald MacRae and Isabella MacLennan were both born at Applecross, he in 1760, she in 1757.They married and around the year 1803 migrated to Prince Edward Island - 500 Highlanders in all, packed into the Folly, a small warship. They stayed there for several years, during which Mary, their eighth child, was born, to a mother who was forty-eight years old. After a short spell at Broad Cove, in Inverness County, they took up land in Middle River, one of the first four families to settle there. At Middle River they died, Isabella on April 1, 1852, Donald just eight days later. He was ninety-two, she ninety-five. One marvels constantly at the age reached by so many of these pioneer settlers. At the same time in heavily populated, disease-infested parts of England, someone could write: “He’s only fifty-two, he could live another ten years yet!” Within a few years of their death other MacRaes, insatiable for change, had moved on to New Zealand. Among them were descendants to the third and fourth generation. Their youngest daughter Mary, married to Duncan (Ban) MacKay, had ten children. Another daughter, Effie, married to John Campbell, died in Nova Scotia, but her husband and four daughters went to New Zealand. Elizabeth Campbell, wife of Captain Murdoch McKenzie of the Highland Lass, had a family of nine; and Mary Campbell, who died on the voyage, had three children. The MacRaes and the McKays become inextricably linked, at the same time spreading all over the world. And it all goes back to two husbands and two wives who decided, more than two hundred years ago, to abandon what they knew so well and seek something different in a distant land. - from "To the Ends of the Earth: Norman McLeod and the Highlanders' Migration to Nova Scotia and New Zealand" by Neil Robinson

Sources

• Lorna Denmead