Craig: The information you copied appears to come from the “JandJ” site maintained by two sisters who have done a fantastic job assembling a huge data base. Much of it may have been imported from other sites but I think they assembled the “Durness” content themselves. I checked my own family on it, both Morrisons and Mackays, and in both cases they show three generations farther back than my research took me. I contacted one of the sisters and asked the source and was told “church records”. At that point I lost faith in it because, to the best off my knowledge, there are no church records of that kind in Durness that go farther back than the parish register, which commenced in 1764.
Prior to 1855 when registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages became law, marriages and christenings ( and in some parishes births and deaths) were recorded by the minister in the Parish Register. The Durness Parish Register commenced in 1764, and I have a photocopy of an extract/transcript of it by a Dr. Hew Morrison for the years 1764 to 1814. ( I’m not sure why he stopped in 1814).This published transcript is available “on line”.
The Durness register is one of the most informative because the minister took the time to record most of his parishioners’ eke names. This was important because this was how they were known in every-day life, and because of the need to distinguish between so many duplications of the same names, such as Donald Morrison for example. Eke names, or nick names, took several forms: physical descriptions (bain/fair; dubh/black; ruaidh [roy]/red, or beag; mor); location (Aberach); occupation (gobhainn); patyronymic (mac/mhic/ic ; son of or nin daughter of) The last –mentioned was the most common, and the most helpful for us because they often contained two generations.
To answer one of your questions, or perhaps two, I would have no confidence in information which predates the parish register, other than the patronymics, unless I was able to verify it, nor do I know of any other source that you could research. You could research some Mackays (those descended from the chiefly line) in the “Book of MacKay” and in the “History of the House and Clan of Mackay”, so you may find some of the MacLeods’ wives’ families there.
But you have gone back further than Murdoch. We know, from his patronymic, that his father was Angus-the-fair MacLeod. Assuming Murdoch was approx. 30 when he married, he was probably born 1758 +/-, and Angus about 1728. But these dates are conjecture to give a rough idea.
Skimming through the transcript, which is in chronological order, I noticed four others that had the same patronymic as Murdoch (Macnish bain). They were:John (married Ann MacKenzie 1779); Donald Jr./little (married Ann Mackay/Dalrymple 1779); Donald Sr./Mor (married Barbara Campbell 1768); Angus (christened son Angus in 1776). They were almost certainly Murdoch’s brothers. There may also be sisters in the register but they are more difficult to spot, because the wives are either not listed (in early christenings) or they are at the end of the “registration”.
I have been going on long enough so I will stop, except to encourage you to make a lot of use of Google to find out general information about the Parish of Durness. It is a tremendous source.
Ian
