The Mysterious Tale of Jenny Morrison MacKay

Have you ever started digging into a family tree and found that no matter how much you dug, all you got was a big empty hole? If so, you will know how I feel about Jenny MacKay. I first heard of Jenny about 10 years ago. Stephanie, a lady from Canada, contacted me because she had come across an old Rootsweb message of mine about my Great Uncle Doctor Robert Morrison. She was trying to trace her G Grandfather, also Robert Morrison, and reputed to be a doctor. We confirmed very quickly that she was hunting for a different Robert Morrison. But I started doing some research to try to help her regardless. Let me explain what I have found, and more importantly what I haven’t found! Jenny (aka Janet, Jessie) died in Toronto, Canada in 1939. Her son James Stuart Morrison registered her death. The certificate shows her age as 81 and her parents as William Morrison (newspaper proprietor) and Janet Morrison nee Robertson. It also showed that she had been married twice – first to Robert Morrison and second to William Campbell MacKay. The story which Stephanie told me about the family was almost totally based on oral family history. This is what she told me: Her grandfather James Stuart Morrison claimed to have been born in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland on 4th July 1884. He had written to GRO Edinburgh many years before to get a copy of his birth certificate but they could not trace his birth anywhere in Scotland. His father was Robert Morrison and the family got the impression that he was doctor, had served in the Boer War and died young when he caught an illness from a patient. James had a brother called Sydney Morrison and a sister, possibly called Margaret, who died as a baby. Sydney married and settled in England after WW1 and had a son Douglas Nichol Morrison who may have served in WW11. James had attended Daniel Stewart’s College in Edinburgh He ran away to sea at a young age, landed up in California at the time of the San Francisco earthquake (1906), worked his way across the USA as a singing waiter and landed up in Philadelphia where he stayed for several years before moving to Canada to join the Canadian forces during WW1. Jenny remarried before WW1 to William Campbell MacKay but he turned out to be a waster who spent all her money and then ran off and left her. She later joined James in the USA and then followed him to Canada. She called herself Jenny but the family knew her real name was Janet. Stephanie has some actual documents and artefacts: Several letters from James to his (then) future wife written while he was in Europe during WW1. Most of them are about mundane matters but he does give several snippets of information. One letter says that he went on pass to Dundee to see his aunt who had looked after him for almost 5 years and I quote “…while my father was at Heidelberg. My mother could only take my brother who was the younger”. In another letter, he tells his fiancé about his brother (although he doesn’t mention him by name). He says that his brother joined up with the Imperial Yeomanry in 1914 and spent most of 1916 in hospital in England and then got a cushy desk job - he won the Military Medal and was promoted to sergeant in 1916, then in 1917 got his commission as an officer and was to be sent to Africa as an interpreter. James went on to say that his brother had been in Sierra Leone for a few years and picked up a few dialects which were now proving useful. Steph has a copy of a newspaper clipping about an Australian soldier called Morrison who died in WW1 – it was amongst old papers belonging to James (and possibly originally belonged to Jenny). She has a copy of a small book of poetry published by William Morrison & Co. of Hawick and featuring a poem by Margaret Gregg Morrison – this book was reputed to have come from Scotland with Jenny. She has Jenny’s death certificate and James’ marriage certificate – the only information from these that I have not already mentioned, is that the marriage certificate shows that James’ father came from Oban. She has some items which Jenny took with her from Scotland to Canada which have a monogrammed ‘M’ on them (inkwell, blotter, napkin rings, etc.). A letter from Daniel Stewart’s College – it is in reply to a letter from James asking whether they have a record of his date of birth. It says that they do not, but that they can confirm that he enrolled there in Sept 1891 and they estimate that he would have been around 10 years of age. Their records also showed that his previous school was Wallacetown Public School, Dundee and that his father is recorded as William Morrison of 4 Northumberland Place, Edinburgh. Steph’s mother, the daughter of James Stuart Morrison is still alive. She remembers her father, who died when she was quite young, as an educated man who had excellent manners. He insisted on using linen napkins at the table. He wrote naturally in beautiful flowing copperplate style writing. Steph traced James’ draft papers for the US Army (he was rejected – that’s why he went to Canada to enlist) – they show him as having one brother who was disabled and they also show his date of birth as exactly two years younger – we think James deliberately lied about his age on these papers. She also traced his Canadian Army records from 1917 – they give all information as per the data we already had.