An inter-church family in the North-East

Abstract

The following account is drawn almost entirely from the reminiscences of Sister Margaret Fraser, a Benedictine nun of Pincethorpe Priory near Rugby in England. She dictated them to her great-niece Ethel Fraser in 1873, and in 1987 they were typed by Ethel’s nephew, Lt. Col. Maurice Coleman. The latter’s son Mr Nicholas Coleman in 1998 transferred the script to a PC file and added some annotations. The substance of the reminiscences was published in Scalan News no. 26 (May 2003) and I am grateful to the editor, Mr Alasdair Roberts, for supplying the script. One particularly interesting feature of the account is the information it supplies on the household of Philip Robertson, Sr Margaret’s grandfather, in which his son James was brought up, for the latter was the well known Father Gallus Robertson, OSB. The unusual circumstances of the Buchan mission-station over several decades are also described. Sr Margaret relies on her conversations with her grandmother, Philip Robertson’s wife, who outlived her husband by twenty years or more and died in 1817, when Sr Margaret was fifteen. The account is naturally, given its origin, somewhat discursive and separated mentions have been drawn together here. Verification is added from printed sources where this is relevant, and the occasional amendment to what comes across as a remarkably accurate narrative is given. A copy of Mr Coleman’s print-out has been deposited in the Scottish Catholic Archives, GD 118. Sr Margaret’s grandmother was very much aware of her Gordon ancestry. Her great-grandfather was the celebrated General Patrick Gordon (1635–99), who gave notable service to the Tsar of Russia. His son John had a daughter, Catherine Gordon. An Irishman, Colonel O’Donovan, had left Ireland on account of his Catholic religion, taking with him his large fortune, with which he purchased property at Fontainebleau in France, not far from Paris to the south. On a visit to Scotland he married Catherine Gordon, aged just fourteen. This was about 1722 and four to five years later their second daughter Isabella was born. Not long after, when O’Donovan had died and his widow was aged 21, her brothers brought Kenneth Mackenzie to France to be her second husband. A son Alexander was born to them in March 1730. About 1740, however, Mackenzie persuaded his wife to sell the family’s property in France and move to England. The son Alexander