Our Clan Connections

From an early age I had close connections with my mother's
family, who were the McColls of Ballachulish near Glencoe in Argyllshire, Scotland.
Her father, Henry Stuart McColl, left there for New Zealand in 1860, along with
his father and grandfather, both Duncan McColl, when Henry was eighteen and unmarried.

                                    

                                         Henry Stuart McColl

Henry was the oldest of seven children who made the trip, the
youngest being the first child of Duncan's second wife Margaret McDonald.
Henry's uncle Archibald McColl, had also emigrated a year before, along with
his wife and eight children. The two Duncans and the Archibald McColls
settled around Brighton, Otago, where their descendants farmed and mined
coal for a century or more. Henry McColl continued to South and Central
Otago, where he had a succession of schoolmaster positions. When
he retired early from teaching at Hillend, Wangaloa & Macraes they shifted to the Catlins, living for a long period in Glenomaru, where he and his wife Joanna (Crawford)
raised eight children, including my mother.

                                     Joanna Crawford

Meanwhile Duncan jr and Margaret (McDonald) had had a second
child, Archie McColl, who was therefore a half-brother of my grandfather Henry.
He was born in New Zealand in 1862, but identified throughout his whole
life as a "highlander". As a child he was a champion piper, and as an adult

                             Archibald McColl III

a blade shearer and apiarist.  He spoke with a Scottish accent, had Gaelic
as well as English, and helped to bring up my mother after her father's death
in 1900, when Joanna's family was broken up among kindly relatives no doubt
to ease her burden. Archie McColl became a member of our family and
filled the role of "loving and beloved grandfather", living at Ocean View,
Brighton (New Zealand), until his death in the 1930's. He was a raconteur
of no mean repute, and regaled us with real and imagined stories of life
in early Otago. "Tell us another one, Uncle!" has become a family slogan.
He had been carefully taught about the Glencoe Massacre, and nursed a fierce
distrust of all Campbells. He also voted Labour on principle,
but was disenfranchised on one occasion when Labour nominated a Campbell
for the Chalmers electorate. Archie McColl was remembered by the poet
James K Baxter as a "great man", and I believe that he was referring to his
humility, goodness & integrity, rather than any worldly fame.
James K was a great-grandson of an earlier Archibald McColl, whose
daughter had married a Baxter. James K's father was the famous
New Zealand pacifist and writer Archie Baxter. A Baxter girl also
married a McColl boy, giving rise to the common Brighton phenomenon
of "double cousins".

These people, the Baxters and the McColls, predominantly of Brighton, became part of the tapestry of our childhood, and helped to provide the values that we all took further into life. Brave, industrious, frugal and friendly, they seemed to us to be a "noble race",
yet when I visited Ballachulish myself in the 70's and expressed such an
opinion, the parish minister described the emigrants of 1860 as "poor wretches"!
He told the tale of an old lady sitting on the deck of the Henrietta as it lay at anchor in Loch Linnhe before its four-month voyage to New Zealand. She sat
beside her cloth bag, all she owned in the world, and was asked "Oh, Mrs
McDonald, are ye no afeard going all that way?" Her response was,
"Och, no, we'll just gang through the Corran narrows and the worst
will be over!" How little she knew! I began to redraft my romantic
notions, but admired my forebears all the same.

My wife is Norah Donald, whose father Charles Mitchell Donald sr always
referred to his family as descended from the Lord of the Isles. His
immediate family were from in and around Glasgow, and his father
Thomas Donald IV (i.e. the fourth in our records) apparently sailed to
America early in the twentieth century for unknown reasons. We have been
unable to discover any trace of his life in North America, nor any record
of his death. He was born on March 10, 1861, and his fifth child Robert
was born in 1904, around the time that Thomas Donald left the family for
the New World in his forties. He would have been an old man by the
1930's. Did he found another family? Did he die during his working life?
Had he gone to seek his fortune for the sake of his working class family
in Glasgow? What became of Thomas Donald?

P.S. Aug 2008:  Detailed research and painstaking efforts from our cousins in Arizona and Bute have established that Thomas did indeed seek work in Paterson, New Jersey, where he almost certainly became a silk weaver, and fully intended to send money back to his poor wife and large family in Glasgow.   However, it seems that he was drowned, probably in one of the huge floods which engulfed the New Jersey area around that time.  Elizabeth received only one payment from America before that tragic end, and was forced to apply more than once for the meagre state assistance available at that time.

 

Elizabeth & Thomas Donald IV                         Charles Mitchell Donald sr

Having discovered a newly founded branch of the Clan Donald Society here in
Christchurch just a few years ago, Norah and I joined it with great
enthusiasm, as we both had our links with the clan. The McColls were
originally a clan in their own right from Loch Fyne, but later
became a sept of the Glencoe MacDonalds and close associates of the
Stewarts of Appin. The number of McColl gravestones around Glencoe,
Ballachulish and Fort William bear testimony to the location of their
last congregations. The fact that my great-grandfather took Margaret
McDonald as his second wife, who gave birth to our beloved Uncle Archie,
gives us another link to that clan. The Glasgow Donalds, my wife's
family, believed in their Highland connection, too, though the route
by which they came to Glasgow is difficult to ascertain. Her father's
insistence on the Isles origin seemed to be firmly rooted in oral history.

Robbed and Rescued

We had always wanted to visit Prague, and in 2003, complete with one new hip
joint each, we took the plunge.   Our son and his family were living in
Germany, so visiting them was the main purpose of our month-long trip.   We
had arranged a series of flights within Europe in order to visit Prague and
Budapest, two cities whose history fascinated us, as well as Vienna, where we
would stay a few days with our niece Jill, who has worked there for years.   

Our hotel in Prague was most modest, and in the same little street as the
famous and excellent restaurant U Kalicha (At the Chalice),  immortalized by
the fictional Good Soldier Svejk, whose comical figure graces its signs and
menus.    Our hotel manager Ivan was most helpful, advising us to leave our
passports and air tickets in his safe, and to beware of pickpockets
especially.    

We soon learned the systems of the trams and subway trains, and set about to
enjoy six days in this beautiful and wondrous city.      As a familiarization
ploy we took a conducted bus tour of its main features and landmarks,
including Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge and Wenceslas Square.    We then
spent the first few days on the trams, crossing the Vltava River many times
in the process.    And so it was that on Thursday, August 21, we left the
tram up on Castle Hill, and wandered down through a famous shopping street,
stopping for some time on a lovely summers day for the largest beers we had
ever handled!     At the foot of the hill was a busy Old Square, with cafes,
bars and a large tram stop.     

Aiming to return across town to our hotel, we went to board our tram, and
were split up by a jostling crowd or gang of gipsy women, who appeared to be
helping my wife Norah onto the tram, with me behind them.    They were
actually robbing her, and this was made easier by the fact that she still
depended on a walking stick for safety.     When she yelled "Shes got my
purse!" the women, all dressed in black, forced open the hydraulic tram doors
and escaped onto the street, followed by us, shouting "Polizia!" in all the
wrong languages.    They quickly disappeared, and only then did I discover
that my wallet had gone also, along with our video camera right out of its
substantial bag slung across my shoulders.   Now we are seasoned travellers,  
had taken reasonable precautions (deep pockets and the like), but these
people were experts, and could have done it to anyone.    There we stood,
crying and desolate, with not a penny in our pockets even to get a tram to
the hotel.   An English-speaking waiter at a nearby bar made several phone
calls for us, and directed us to the nearest police station, so that we could
get an official police report for insurance purposes.

We managed to persuade a taxi driver to get us to the hotel, where we had
just enough Euros to pay him, but we still had not been able to stop our
credit cards.    Ivan, at the desk of the Prague Lion Hotel, then came to our
rescue at once, by helping with crucial phone calls.    The first person we
rang was an Austrian friend of Jills called Brigitte (pron. brig-eater),
whom we had met just once before in New Zealand.    Brigitte works in Prague
and was going to meet us the next day for drinks, and immediately gave me her
address and tram directions, so that I could complete my telephoning about
cards etc at her flat.     
So by 5.30 pm we had stopped all four cards, and received a commitment from
Visa Global Assistance (VGA) in USA that a replacement emergency card would
be sent to Prague within 24 hours.   It actually arrived, properly embossed
with my name and correct expiry date, before 9 am the next morning.    We
tried it out immediately by paying our hotel bill a few days early.    We
then discovered, after three attempts at different banks and at American
Express, that our Visa Card was not one which could be used for Cash
Advances.    Brigitte then calmly loaned us 11000 Czech crowns, or about $750
NZ to tide us over.

I therefore phoned VGA again and requested emergency cash of about 500 Euros
or $1000 NZ.      An e-mail arrived that very evening (still Friday) saying
that the money had been wired through Western Union, and could be uplifted at
the Prague Main Rail Station.    On arrival at the station early Saturday
morning, I was told that I had to have the transfer number, and this I got by
phoning VGA for the third time, and once again receiving the most helpful,
courteous and intelligent service possible.  

Perhaps the most amazing thing about our Prague adventure was that we
continued to love and enjoy Prague for the remaining three days of our stay.  
Brigitte advised us to take cruises on the river boats where we could just
sit back, relax and enjoy the dramatic river scenery.   This was great advice
indeed, especially since we started by getting on the wrong boat, whose
conductress Hana made friends with us, gave us a free 90-min ride, and
practised her English with rare flair and enjoyment.    We have since
exchanged e-mails with her.     So Hana joined the ever-growing list of
angels who assisted in our rescue.     First there was Ivan of the Prague
Lion, then the English-speaking waiter, the heaven-sent and marvellous
Brigitte, the Visa Card people in the States, and Hana, the laughing, waving,
happy boat conductress.    There is also, of course, the fictional Svejk, the
Good Soldier, who will live on in our memory as the
infuriating batman, who, like us, spent some time in that little street
called Na Bojisti in the city of Prague.