Clan Donald Magazine No11 (1987) Online
The Tormore Connection
This article is about a family which has
had a separate identity for only a little over two hundred years. In
no way is its history remarkable but it is probably fairly typical
of that of many Highland families of similar origin. For that reason
it may be of wider interest than might at first be thought.
It starts with one of the founding fathers of the Corps of Marines -
formed in 1755 but not created "Royal" until 1802. This was Donald,
third son of Roderick of Camuscross in Sleat, the 5th Macdonald of
Castleton, the Castletons being a cadet branch of the Macdonalds of
Sleat. After some service with Loudon's Highlanders and possibly,
earlier, in the Black Watch, Donald, along with some hundred other
officers, was commissioned in the Marines on 2nd April, 1755 as 1st
Lieutenant in the 7th Company at Portsmouth, being promoted to
Captain in December of the same year. He was then about 30 years of
age and continued his Marine service until June, 1772, when he went
on half-pay.
In 1774 he was enrolled as a freeholder of Inverness-shire, having
been assigned a life rent of Tormore and other lands in Sleat by his
Chief, Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat. About the same time he
married Elizabeth Macfarlane of Gavistock and they had three sons
and four daughters. Of Donald as a person really nothing is known.
Boswell in his "Tour to the Hebrides" mentions meeting him in
September, 1773, and comments that "I took a liking to him from his
first appearance" but what that exactly implies is of course
uncertain. Boswell incidentally gets the regiment to which Donald
belonged wrong and the statement in "Brave Sons of Skye" that he
served in the Macdonald Highlanders is also wrong.
Donald died before April, 1789, when his eldest son, Alexander, took
over the tack of Tormore. His two younger sons, Roderick and Donald,
however followed in their father's footsteps by becoming soldiers,
both joining the 21st Foot, later to become the Royal Scots
Fusiliers. Roderick served from 1805 to 1816, when he went on
half-pay and probably retired to Capstill, which adjoins Tormore.
"Brave Sons", quoting his daughter Eliza, says that he served in
Egypt and Spain but no record of whom he married nor any details of
his son and daughter have been found. Young Donald joined the 21st
Foot in 1809 and, after distinguishing himself against the French in
Sicily, was killed in 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans. His
daughter, Flora, married Fleet Surgeon John Moody and their son,
John Macdonald Moody (1839-1921) followed his grandfather's example
and joined the Royal Marines and reached the rank of Major-General,
becoming Commandant General and earning a knighthood. The General's
grandson is the Reverend Aubrey Moody, Vicar of Feering, Essex, who
before taking Holy orders served in the Coldstream Guards and No 3
Commando.
Except for the eldest, Diana, nothing is known of Donald's daughters
but their names - Anne, Jennie and Magdalene. Diana married Colonel
Donald MacLeod of Colbost, who served in the Madras Army from 1767
to 1787, and they had three sons and an unmarried daughter. The two
younger sons both became Major-Generals in the Madras Army, while
the eldest became a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service
- Sir John Macpherson MacLeod KCSI PC. Both the younger sons are
known to have had offspring but all contact with their descendants
has been lost; Sir John is believed to have had no children. Colonel
MacLeod had bought St. Kilda from Alexander MacLeod of Bernera in
1804 and his heir, Sir John, built there in 1861 the row of "white
houses" known as "The Street"; in 1871 he sold the island to MacLeod
of MacLeod.
Alexander, who succeeded his father at Tormore, married Isabella
Chisholm of Salamanan, Moidart, and they had six daughters and four
sons, of whom sadly one of the former and two of the latter died
young. Portraits painted about 1840 show them to have been a
handsome and well-suited couple. Alexander was twenty-six years
older than Isabella and she outlived him by thirty years. He died
aged seventy-seven in 1857 and his obituary notice in the Inverness
Courier records that in him "the poor man lost a compassionate, a
considerate and a helping friend, and the upper classes have lost a
good and agreeable man with whom it was always a pleasure to
associate". He was still remembered in Sleat in 1935 by a tale, told
with amusement, of his having to sit on a creel at a wedding in Aird
of Sleat.
All Alexander's surviving daughters married. The youngest two both
married doctors. Penelope married Dr. Roderick MacLean, the parish
doctor of South Uist, and Johanna married Dr. Edward Campbell,
Medical Officer of Health for Sleat. Both had a child but no
grandchildren.
Of the others Eliza, the eldest, married Charles Hutchins, an
Edinburgh dental surgeon, and they had five children but of all but
two of them practically nothing is known. Ella, the youngest,
married Donald Archibald Martin, son of the Reverend Angus Martin,
Minister of Snizort, and they emigrated to British Columbia where
contact was lost. Macdonald Hutchins, the elder son, became an
indigo planter in Behar, India; he married Alice Laura Lyall and
their son was Lieut-Colonel Charles David Macdonald Hutchins of the
Gordon Highlanders, commonly known as Tim. Tim served with his
regiment in both World Wars and had the misfortune to be made a
prisoner of war in 1940 with the 51st Division at St Valery. He
retired from the Army in 1949 and, with his wife, Ivy (nee Barbenson)
and their children, Laura and David, emigrated to Tasmania where he
farmed. Laura later returned to the U.K. and runs a Welsh pony stud
farm in Gloucestershire. David became an agronomist in New South
Wales; he is married and has four children, all with the fore-name
of Macdonald, as does David himself.
Alexander's two middle daughters married two brothers, Henry and
Albert Oxley respectively, whom they had met when the brothers were
on a yachting cruise round Skye and with whom they emigrated to
Ontario, Canada. There are now many descendants of Henry and Barbara
Diana, living mainly in Ontario and New York State, USA. Those with
whom contact has been maintained are Mrs. Patricia Taylor of
Willowdale, Ontario, who has visited Sleat, and Mrs. Jean Carter of
Norval, Ontario, both great granddaughters of Henry and both with
children and grandchildren. The only known descendants of Albert and
Annabella are the family of Bruce Norton Oxley, a great grandson,
who now live in California. Bruce married Carol Lou Crowl and has
three children and with them and his wife has visited Tormore. At
present he is director of the horse programme at the Thacher School,
Ojia, having previously had a ranch at Etna, also in California, now
run by his son, David. Bruce's father, Albert E.C. Oxley served in
the RFC/RAFin World War 1 as did his uncle Malcolm G. Macdonald
Oxley, who was killed in action in 1918.
Alexander was succeeded at Tormore by his elder surviving son,
another Donald, at the age of twenty-one. In addition to Tormore he
leased other farms and became a farmer of considerable repute. He
also undertook factoring, notably for Lord Macdonald from 1872 to
1880 and for his cousin, Sir John MacLeod, and his trustees in
Glendale from 1864 to 1882. For some twenty years he was involved in
the Highland and Mexico Land Livestock Company, which was a
financial failure. He relinquished his lease of Tormore about 1892
and bought the estate of Lyndale which he later sold. He died in
1912 at Sligachan Hotel. His factoring of Glendale was criticised at
the Napier Commission (1883); this he refuted in his own evidence.
He was also criticised in cross-examination for his dealings in meal
and cattle with the people of Sleat. This drew forth a letter of
protest to the Commission, signed by some seventy Sleat crofters,
which said inter alia "we always considered and still know Tormore
to be the people's best friend". He was long remembered in Sleat and
as late as 1973 a crofter there still had a copy of his Oban Times'
obituary notice.
Donald, not having married, the representation of the family passed
on his death to his younger brother, Malcolm Neil, always known as
Calum. Calum, like a number of other Skyemen, was an indigo planter
in Behar, India, going there about 1868, and while there being a
member of the Behar Light Horse, a volunteer unit in which he became
a captain. He seems to have been a character, who liked the "good
life", and for his somewhat extravagant style of living earned the
nickname of "The Duke". He retired about 1889 and settled in the
Inverness/Nairn area, where he gained some repute as a fisherman and
golfer. Calum married Louisa Ethel Wright, a sister of Francis
Nelson Wright of the Indian Civil Service, and they had one daughter
and six sons, one of whom died in infancy.
Two of Calum's sons had successful careers in the armed forces. The
second, Malcolm Henry Somerled - another Calum -joined the Royal
Navy in 1895 and served until his retirement as Captain in 1935. He
won the D.S.O. in H.M.S. Dublin, one of Beatty's light cruisers, at
the Battle of Jutland, and in 1919 was on the staff of the Naval
Section of the British Delegation to the Peace Conference, being
awarded the OBE and French Legion of Honour. From 1921 until its
disbandment in 1935, he was on the staff of the International
Dardanelles Commission in Constantinople and from 1937 to 1939 was
Administrator, British Observer Corps, Portugal, overseeing
non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Reverting to active
service again in World War II, he served in Iceland, Crete and
Cyprus, (awarded the Greek War Cross), finally retiring in 1945 at
the age of sixty-six. He married but had no children.
Roderick William, the third son - Rory - joined the Indian Army,
36th Sikhs, in 1901 but was seconded to the Burma Police in 1904.
Reverting to the Army in 1914, he served on the North West Frontier
and in Mesopotamia, where he twice had to take command of his
battalion and won the D.S.O. Returning to the Burma Police in 1919,
he became Inspector General in 1923, which post he retained until
his retirement in 1932, when he took up apple farming in Essex. For
his police service he was awarded the C.I.E. and the King's Police
Medal. In World War II he was re-employed for two years as a Group
Commander, Royal Army Pioneer Corps, and later commanded the 7th
Essex, Home Guard Battalion. He married Hilda Fox-Jones without
issue but they adopted his sister's daughter.
Eva Lillian, the sister, spent all her grown-up life in India, dying
there in 1942. She married three times and by her second husband had
her only child, Pamela Winifred Mary Macdonald-Boyce. Pamela married
Bertrand Pleydell-Bouverie of the Radnor family and they have two
sons and a daughter and four grandchildren. Pamela served in the
A.T.S. in World War II and is a painter of animals; Bertrand served
in the Royal Navy and is a sculptor. They met at art school and
often exhibit together.
Calum's fourth son, James Alexander, sadly had a short life dying in
Malaya of blackwater fever at the early age of twenty-eight. His
fifth son, Lauchlan, however, had a long life, dying at the age of
eighty-nine after a career of some variety. He was working in a tea
garden in Bengal in 1914 when he joined the Indian Army and served
in Mesopotamia. He resigned from the Army in 1921 because of his
wife's health and returned to the U.K., entering commerce. In 1940
he joined the British Army, Cameron Highlanders, serving firstly in
the Inverness area and later in Northern Ireland. He married firstly
Lillah Banhan and after her death Edith Lemon but had no children.
He lived to 1982.
Calum did not survive his brother long dying in 1913, when his
eldest son, Donald Perceval, became head of the family. Donald had
followed in his father's footsteps as an indigo planter in Behar,
where he had been born. He, however, contracted rheumatic fever,
which seriously affected his heart, so that he had to return to the
U.K. and was a semi-invalid for some years. When sufficiently
recovered, he became an assistant master at a private school in
Surrey. With this experience behind him, and on his marriage to
Alice, daughter of Judge T.W. Wheeler, K.C., he purchased a small
private school, Penrhyn Lodge, Westgate-on-Sea, which, on it
prospering, he moved in 1913 to larger premises at Deal, which he
named Tormore School. Within three years, however, the zeppelin
raids on East Kent forced the school to move twice and it did not
return to Deal until 1919. Sadly the strain of the war years with
its shortage of assistant staff had taken its toll of Donald's
health and he died within three months of his return at the early
age of forty-two. His wife, with the help of a partner, continued
the school for some years before relinquishing it.
Donald and Alice had two children, a son, Donald Malcolm Thomas, and
a daughter Eva Letitia Diana.
Diana, the younger, after college and university, taught in girls
schools in Hertfordshire and in Switzerland, but she gave up
teaching in 1940 and for three years drove an ambulance in London
including the Blitz. In 1943, however, she joined the Probation
Service and was posted to the Tunbridge Wells area. Later from 1948
to 1964 she was Senior Probation Officer, Medway Towns. A competent
cricketer she was Chairman of the Kent Womens' Cricket Association
for ten years. She was also a keen soroptimist and for two years was
President of the Soroptimist's South Eastern Area. She retired in
1964 and with her mother moved to Nairn to be near her brother but
sadly died there the next year, aged only fifty-five. She never
married.
Donald and Alice's son - yet another Calum - after three years as a
surveyor's assistant in a coal mine, took a short service commission
as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. In 1934 he obtained a permanent
commission, serving until he retired in 1961 as an Air Vice-Marshal,
from the post of Director General of Manning, Air Ministry, having
served in India, 1936-38, France, 1939-40, and Egypt, 1950-52 (CB)
as well as the UK. On retirement he was for three years a Crofters
Commissioner living in Nairn. From 1977 to 1981 he was National
Chairman of the Royal British Legion Scotland, by which time he had
moved to Seil Island, Argyll.
This Calum married Kathleen Mary de Vere, only daughter of John
Theodore Hunt of Waterford, India and Oxford and they have four
daughters and one son. The two youngest daughters, both unmarried,
hold interesting posts in London. Frances, after jobs in the U.S.A.,
Australia and Switzerland is a producer of B.B.C. Radio, while
Margaret is an archivist with the India Office Library, part of the
London Library. Elizabeth, the eldest child teaches at Birkenhead
High School for girls and lectures in local history; she is married
to Peter Davey and has two boys and one girl. Susan, the second
child is a doctor married to a doctor, J.B. Thompson, who is in
practice in Bury St. Edmunds, while Susan is a part-time
pediatrician in a local hospital; they have three boys all of whom
play a musical instrument. The son, Donald, who came third, after a
spell at local authority social work is the Director of the
Fitzgerald Project of the Rainer Foundation in London
(rehabilitation of 15 to 18 year olds). He married Kathleen Mulhare
and has a daughter and a son.
And there this tale of this family ends - for the moment. It
contains nothing that would hit the headlines of a national
newspaper and even the present worldwide spread of the descendants
of a quite ordinary couple is hardly remarkable. Many a Highland
family can probably illustrate the same phenomena.
The almost complete absence of any professional careers amongst the
menfolk of this family might raise comment but, when the lack of
such opportunities in the Highlands are considered and the
pioneering spirit of the Highland blood is taken into account, this
is hardly surprising.
What can be claimed is that each generation did its duty; men and
women each in their own way have taken responsibility and pulled
their full weight in their respective communities.
(The foregoing article was written at the Editor's request and the
author wishes to remain anonymous.)
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