Person:Margaret McDougall (6)

Margaret McDougall (nee Black) was the illegitimate daughter of Alexander McDougall, a stone mason, and Mary Black a domestic servant and later a dairy maid. Alexander never married Mary, but after Margaret’s birth he married Anne McDonald with whom he had a family. He took Margaret in to his family and had all the children baptized in Urquhart in 1866. When Anne died in 1871 following complications from the birth of a daughter, Alexander and his sister Catherine brought up the family at a croft called Ardachy or The Sheiling in Upper Lenie, up the hill from Drumnadrochit and overlooking loch Ness.

There are only five homes in Upper Lenie, and all but one have been demolished and rebuilt, including The Sheiling. There’s also a new large holiday home there called The Sheiling, but it is not on the site of the original croft.

Margaret was a lady's maid for the Bradley Martin's, an American family who rented Balmacaan House from the Earl of Seafield. The Martin's had three children who were privately tutored, and Margaret accompanied them to their lessons. Margaret married James McGillivray, the coachman at Balmacaan. James lived in Tornabrack, a croft just off the road down the hill from Lenie on the way to Lewiston. When Balmacaan had electricity installed, James was trained as the electrician and maintained the hydro-electric plant that powered the house. That became his profession for the rest of his life when they moved to Inverness.

Joyce Robson (nee Morland) remembers seeing Balmacaan as a child of four, and can describe the columned portico at the front of the house. This is borne out by photographs of the property taken by Cornelia Craven (nee Martin) in 1910. Joyce recalls travelling to Ardesier with her grandmother Margaret, who visited someone in the Black family nicknamed "dash yer Maggie", from the greeting that she always gave Margaret. Joyce also remembers visiting relatives on the McGillivray side who lived in Foyers across the loch from Drumnadrochit, possibly James' sister Catherine.

1. ↑ Ian Allan. Glen Urquhart Baptisms 1866 - 1892.