Honoring Our Ancestors
- membershipthemacki
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
By The McKinnon Sisters: Kay, Carolyn, Betty, and Shirley
This article was taken from the Fall 2025 Shank Bone e-newsletter, which members receive quarterly. To read all articles in newsletters going back to the early 1980s, JOIN Clan MacKinnon Society today!
When most people think about Scottish emigration, they think about Nova Scotia in Canada, Australia or the Carolinas in the USA. A sometimes-overlooked area is the easternmost area of Ontario, Canada. There are several counties there that were, and still are, heavily Scottish with much of the Scots coming in the very early 1800’s. My family’s Scottish immigrants arrived in Canada from the Lochaber/Fort William area in 1831. Our 3X great-grandparents, John (the Weaver) McKinnon and Mary McPhee, along with 6 children settled in Dalkeith, Ontario were they then added 4 more children to the family.
In 1991, two of my sisters went to that area, somewhat on a whim, and decided to do some basic snooping around. They were given the names of a few people that might be able to help finding info about John the Weaver and Mary. It was enough to make us realize that we all (5 sisters and Mom) need to go back and do some serious work! Plus, there was this really great Highland Games in Maxville that we needed to check out so in 1993 we all piled into a minivan and headed out from Minnesota to Maxville.
What a gold mine we found in the people of that area – especially Harold MacMillan. He turned out to be our 3rd cousin once removed and a walking encyclopedia of the history of the entire area. He took us to St Columba Presbyterian Kirk near Dalkeith and there we discovered the headstone for Mary and John the Weaver! Out of the gazillion McPhees and McKinnons in the area, thank God that John was always called “the Weaver” as it helped to distinguish him from all the other John McKinnons about!
The headstone (See photo number 1) was a light tan sandstone and the inscription still fairly legible. We were so excited to have found this physical evidence of our first ancestors to arrive from Scotland! Later, Harold drove us around and showed us their first home (yes, it’s still there), the land they eventually owned and various other interesting bits. We vowed to come back and we have several times (always around the Glengarry/Maxville Games time, of course!).
By 2018, we noticed that the headstone (see photo number 2) was in very bad shape.
Tilting and sinking into the ground, turning a dark gray and deteriorating. It was
basically illegible. Something needed to be done. Our sister, Carolyn contacted a local
monument company that could do the work for us. It was a challenge to
communicate with them long distance and a bit of a language barrier (French vs
Minnesotan) but after several months of back and forth, the work began.
Straightening it and putting it on a concrete base to prevent sinking. We then
discovered they could not simply re-engrave the lettering as that font was no longer
available. It was originally hand-chiseled!
We needed to have the entire stone ground down to remove the dark gray and the
existing lettering and then re-engrave the lettering. We chose to keep the exact
wording as it was originally done. We did not have their birth or death dates and did
not want to guess at those since this is a historical artifact but we did have their
marriage record from Scotland. After much discussion we chose to add that info to
help future genealogists. Of course, things always cost more than what you initially
anticipated but we felt it was still important to get it done.
Enter Clan MacKinnon Society and their wonderful Grants program! Applying for a Grant was so easy and we were awarded $400 to help defray some of the costs. The end result of the headstone was beautifully done and we are so pleased. Thank you to Clan MacKinnon Society for the generous Grant. We are hoping this “new stone” (see photo number 3) will last for a few more centuries and does an honor to our ancestors who made the difficult decision to emigrate, come to North America (with 6 children, no less) and start a new life where John and Mary’s now thousands of decedents live and thrive in the 21st century.
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