Letter to the Gazette, 5 May 1921: Sir – I observed in your columns the other week an interesting article re the origin of the Clan Macaulay and Lord Macaulay’s ancestors. We have no definite historical proof that the Macaulays are of a Scandinavian origin. The name Macaulay is admittedly pure Norse, also their appearance [...]
Read more →Having been on the losing side in the Jacobite rising of 1715, the Seaforths had to forfeit their lands to the Crown. These were then administered by a body of Commissioners for a number of years (though the Seaforths were eventually allowed to buy them back, because no other buyer could be found.) It appears [...]
Read more →Dolly Doctor, in Tales and Traditions, tells of the wreck of a ship at Carnish in 1775. In the picture Sgeir an Iaruinn is the small island in the middle of the picture, with Shielibhig in the distance on the far left. All night the people round Uig Bay had listened to the cries of woe [...]
Read more →To go with the picture of Sgail and his crowd of excursionists, part of an article from the Uig News: In the 1930s there were four cars in Uig. The two ministers both had cars – one was a Vauxhall. The Doctor had a car and so did Norman Mackay, the Public Assistance Officer – he [...]
Read more →From Joni Buchanan’s The Lewis Land Struggle (Acair 1996): On Christmas Day 1908, 46 crofters and squatters met at the schoolhouse in Brenish (known as Islivig School) and passed eight resolutions demanding the breakup of Mangersta and Carnish farms: “So that without leaving the locality where they were born and where all associations and kinships that [...]
Read more →Willie Matheson (Mac Gille Chaluim) wrote in his Families of Lewis series that Nicolson was “perhaps the oldest surname in Lewis” and that the Macleods came into possession of the island by marriage into the family. The name disappears and does not surface again until the 18th century, when Angus Nicolson is on record as a joint-tacksman [...]
Read more →Click through for the full-size image. The odd name is missing; if you can identify, please do via the comments box.
Read more →From the 1851 Diary of John Munro Mackenzie, Chamberlain of the Lews. Carnish was cleared in the 1850s and the land added to Ardroil Farm. The small tenants at Mangersta moved to Doune Carloway in 1872/3, at their own request as the salt gales were damaging their crops. Both townships were resettled, Mangersta in 1911 and Carnish [...]
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