by Margaret » Tue May 28, 2013 12:42 pm
Hello all, I've just came across this forum as I was searching my family online (my great grandfather) Alexander MacKelvie m Jeannie Maxwell McMurchy. The (McMurchy/)Colville side of the family has been relatively easy to trace, but I have been really struggling with the MacKelvie side.
Alexander MacKelvie (b 3 Aug 1834, m 1 June 1864, d 10 July 1883) and I believe had 8 or 9 children.
His father was Thomas MacKelvie or possibly Kelvie (?) and according to family history was a sea man born in Campbeltown (year unknown) , married to Marion Watson (who was born in Killean in 1806 (or 1813?) and she died in November 1878). I don't know when Thomas died but the 1861 census says Marion is by then the widow of a seaman. As far as I know they had two sons, Alexander (my gt grandfather b 1834 (above), and Thomas, born 1838 approx) ---
Thomas MacKelvie's parents were Thomas (also a sea man, born 1816 ??? unlikely) and Martha Campbell (info unknown).
Marion Watson's mother was Margaret, born in Killean about 1774, and the 1841 census states that she (Margret) is a pauper in Campbeltown with her family which consisted of her two daughters Marion (Murran) (b 1806) and Margaret (born c 1804) in Killean.
I have absolutely no information on any first wife for Alexander (before Marion) and all that I have on their generation or earlier is as above - please can someone fill in any details on anything and everything ..!
I have been searching census records recently and come up with the info above, and it does seem that spellings become a bit of a phonetic issue - so I also was interested in the comment that the surname is also spelt McKelvie (as well as Kelvie and Kelvey ..?)
My mother made some notes in the 1980s before she died: "Life has changed so much this century that I thought I would write a little about my life and the family that I belonged to. I am very proud to be a MacKelvie as I think they were a remarkable lot. The early history is sketchy. The first one I know of was Thomas Kelvie, a seaman, who married a Martha Campbell. He died in 1816 and his grave is in a small graveyard just outside Campbeltown on the Carradale Road. His son, Thomas, married Marian Watson and died in 1832. He was also a seaman and lived in Campbeltown. In those days it was a busy fishing port. My grandfather, Alexander, born in 1834, married Jeannie McMurchie, who was a distiller’s daughter. In those days there were many distilleries in and around Campbeltown, and that and fishing were the main industries of the town. In 1846 Alexander went to John Beith as a clerk. He became a distiller and was obviously a wealth man as he built the family house, Jeanniefield, named after his wife, a beautiful house overlooking the harbour and which remained in the family until after the death of my cousin Alastair in 1984. He also built the one next door, Gowanbank, for the McMurchies, his wife’s family. However there was a famous bank crash when the Bank of Glasgow became bankrupt, and he lost all of his money. Shortly after, both he and his wife died in their 50s of TB, which was very prevalent at the time, leaving a young family of 7 children, the youngest Jim being only a year old. Their children, my father and his siblings, were a remarkable lot. They were brought up by their McMurchie aunt who lived next door and to whom them were very devoted. They all began their education at the Campbeltown Grammar School but all finished their school in Edinburgh. As each one finished school and had a job, they helped to finance the next one, because the family had been left badly off."
Re Alexander MacKelvie's descendants - I have information on the following 6 generations - and am probably meeting up with some of Alastair's family later this summer. (His grandfather and my grandfather were 2 of the siblings).
Many thanks