Clan Morrison, Ancient and Modern
CLAN MORRISON
by Andrew Morrison, Viscount Dunrossil
Contents
PART ONE: CLAN MORRISON – ANCIENT AND MODERN
The Morrisons
Origins of the Morrison Name
What is a Sept? Do we have any?
The Brieves? Were they Clan Chiefs?
The Troubles of the Lews
The Search for a Chief
Arms, Mottos, Emblems and Tartans
The Morrison Chiefs; Officers of the Clan
PART TWO: THE MORRISONS AND SCOTTISH HISTORY
Prehistory of the Islands
The Kingdom of the Isles
The Kingdom of Scotland
The ’45 and the Clearances
PART THREE: CLAN MORRISON SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
Introduction and Mission
History
Officers
PART FOUR: SOME FAMOUS MORRISONS
PART ONE: CLAN MORRISON ANCIENT AND MODERN
THE MORRISONS
“These Morrisons have been famed throughout the ages for their wit, poetry, music, philosophy, medicine and science, for their independence of mind and sobriety of judgment, and for their benevolence of heart and unfailing hospitality.”
Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica
Morrison is the 18th most common name in Scotland. (In case you’re wondering, the most common are Smith and Brown!) In the Highlands and Islands it is one of the nine most common names, along with MacDonald, MacLeod, MacKenzie, MacKay, Campbell, MacLean, Ross, and Fraser (Smith is tenth). It is the third most common name in the Outer Hebrides, after MacDonald and MacLeod.
From this we can see that Morrison is a common Scottish name, with a strong concentration in the Highlands, and especially in the Outer Hebrides. There are more Morrisons in Scotland than, for instance, Grahams, Douglases, Gordons, MacGregors, Buchanans, Sinclairs, Munros, or Leslies. And in the Highlands, Morrisons today outnumber such famous clans as the Stewarts, Camerons, Murrays or McIntoshes.
And yet the Morrisons do not easily fit the template of a standard Highland Clan. Our ancestors did not all live in one area, with a great castle in the center of it and a chief who led the clan out regularly to do battle with its neighbors, or to risk all in those interminable Scottish dynastic squabbles. Morrison was not a name to strike fear in the hearts of other clans.
The name occurs spontaneously throughout Scotland, and has various derivations. Modern DNA has made this clear. And yet it is also more than a patronymic, for instance like Anderson, because there really was a concentration in one part of Scotland, and a history of Morrisons indeed riding (or more likely striding) to battle with their neighbors in the area. As small as this group was, they did indeed act like a clan. And if they were not known for terrorizing their neighbors, they were at least famous for some other qualities, according to the great Gaelic collector of folklore, Alexander Carmichael.
For this reason, when the Lord Lyon recognized Dr. John Morrison of Ruchdi as Chief of the Morrisons in 1968, he made sure to recognize somebody from the Outer Hebrides, where the highest concentration of the name had always been, but he was also careful to name him as the first chief of the “name and arms” of Morrison, bringing together all of the Morrisons for the first time into a single modern clan, regardless of where they came from in Scotland.
The chief today is Dr. J. Ruaridh Morrison of Ruchdi, grandson of Dr. John. To highlight again what a modern clan we are, Ru and his American born wife, Dr. Ann Michelle Morrison, live in the New World, in the United States, although they spend part of every summer in the Outer Hebrides. Ru’s heir, Alasdair, will one day become the first American-born chief of the clan.
ORIGINS OF THE MORRISON NAME
We mentioned in the previous section that the name can be a patronymic, son of Morris or Maurice. This was no doubt the origin of some of the mainland Morrisons, including perhaps such distinguished Morrisons as those who held the castle of Bognie in Aberdeenshire or the Barony of Prestongrange. This would explain their “canting” or punning arms, which included the heads of three Saracens or Moors. Some have suggested that this is the exclusive derivation of the name: this is absurd. Maurice is by no means as common a first name as, say, Andrew, especially in Scotland, or Peter, Thomas, John., Fergus and Calum But there are far more Morrisons in the Highlands than Andersons, Patersons, Thomsons, Johnstons, Fergusons or MacCallums.
A second derivation could be Mary’s son. It has been suggested that orphans left abandoned at the church door might be so called if the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This is also unlikely to account for very many.
Most often the name seems to be formed from a Gaelic original. The most common would have been some form of mac Gille Mhuire, which again means son of the servant of Mary, or Gilmore. This has been Anglicized as Morrison, Muirison and Gilmore, and their variant spellings, and in some places as McLemore, Gallamore, MacIllvury and even Murray. It is widely assumed that this was the origin of the name in the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, but it occurs also on the mainland. Ironically, perhaps because of the squeamishness to do with the names of saints in the Presbyterian northern isles, the name is now rendered back into Gaelic as Moireasdain.
Finally, in other parts of the Hebrides the name may be a contraction of O’Muirgheasain or Murchison, a distinguished family of Gaelic bards originally from Ireland.
The largest population of Morrisons in the Outer Hebrides is in Lewis, and in the northernmost district of Ness (or Nis) the Morrisons were a strong and even dominant factor, especially in the heyday of the Brieves of Habost. The island with the greatest concentration of Morrisons, however, is Harris. This would have been true even when most of Harris’s people lived in adjacent small islands like Pabbay and Taransay, both of which were cleared in the 1840s.
The family of the chief, known in Gaelic as Teaghlach Phabaigh, the family of Pabbay, would have come originally from Harris. For the last four hundred years or so they have been on North Uist, just across the sound of Harris.
WHAT IS A SEPT AND DO WE HAVE ANY?
Sept is simply an Irish term for a clan. A stroll around the clan tents at a Highland Games will show what appears to be some sort of unofficial competition to list the most names under the heading, “Septs of our clan.” Most are completely spurious. Several are just patronymics which occur throughout Scotland, like Anderson, while others are variant forms of the main clan name, like Gilmore and Morrison. Others again are professional names, like Smith, Harper, Walker, Taylor or Dewar, which might be found anywhere. If the name means anything useful, it would refer to a family, which lived within the territory controlled by a larger clan and tended to look to that larger clan for protection. Beatons, for instance, served as physicians to both the Macdonalds and Macleods, and their family can be found listed as a sept of both. Increasingly, the tendency is for these smaller families to identify as a clan themselves.
So what names might be associated with Clan Morrison, other than simple variants of the name? Obviously Brieve, MacBrieve and Judge would fall into this category. Other names which might disguise a Morrison would include Smith, if found in the Western Isles, and MacKinnon. Most Mackinnons would be part of their own Skye-based clan, but several found especially in the Uig area of Lewis are really Morrisons. The difference can be seen in the Gaelic spelling of the name: the Skye clan are really mac Fionnan, while the Lewis ones are mac Ciannan, sons of Cian. These apparently descend from a Cian Morrison who left Taransay and settled in Uig, which would have been MacAulay country, a hard place for a Morrison to live, given the history of tension between the local MacAulays and the Morrisons of Ness. Consequently, these Morrisons disguised their name by using a patronymic.
WHO WERE THE BRIEVES? WERE THEY CLAN CHIEFS?
A brieve or breitheamh was a judge, who administered the traditional Celtic Brehon law. Brehon law differed from Scottish law in a number of ways. First, it did not incorporate feudal concepts of land ownership. This meant land was owned communally, not by an individual. The relationship between chief and clan had many aspects, but landlord-tenant was not one of them. Second, it was essentially civil law. There was no criminal law because the state was not a party to any legal transaction. Instead of asking who did something wrong, and then how should they be punished, Brehon law asks who suffered some harm, and whose job is it to compensate them? There was a strict system of compensation, with precise monetary values assigned, for instance, to wounds, based on their size and severity, and which laid out even how much of the compensation should go to the physician.
Interestingly, there is no sense in legislating about private morality in such a system. It’s a case of no harm, no foul. This is also a reminder that in the old Celtic system it was not the job of kings, chiefs or political leaders to make law, which would not be expected to change from generation to generation. Their job was to lead in battle, protect their clan and bring glory to their line.
To become a brieve required years of study, usually at a university in Ireland, whose roots probably went back to the days of the Druids. Inevitably, it became a family specialization, and the brieves in the Isles tended to be Morrisons, with the senior brieve, who operated out of Habost in Ness, acting almost like a clan chief, despite having to arbitrate in disputes among other clans.
Some of the reports, when Dr. John was made chief, said that the Morrisons had a chief again after a break of 350 years, and in many ways this is a fair reflection on the authority wielded by the brieves. The important distinction, however, is that their influence never extended very far beyond the isles. Dr. John was the first chief of all the Morrisons.
At one point a Morrison heiress in Ness married a Macdonald, who changed his name to Morrison and succeeded his father-in-law as the next brieve. To a modern eye it might seem as if the last brieves were therefore technically Macdonalds, but that is not how the medieval Celtic mind looked at it. The Macdonald not only married into the Morrisons, but was adopted into the clan too, becoming fully a Morrison. Chiefships in Scottish law often pass through the female line, as long as the lady concerned keeps (or reverts to) her maiden name.
The brieves, because of their education, would probably have been regarded as being wiser and more literate than their neighbors, and would have been consulted on a variety of non-legal matters too. They would have been Keepers of Tradition, like the old bards. After the brieveship ended it is hardly surprising to find so many Morrisons going into the church, where they may have played a similar role in their communities.
At the funeral of Dr. John on North Uist, two of the three ministers were Morrisons and the third’s mother was a Morrison. And in Sir Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore, almost all of the names have been changed to protect the not so innocent, but the Protestant minister is still a Morrison.
“THE TROUBLES OF THE LEWS”
In about 1570 Hugh the Brieve confessed on his deathbed to being the natural father of the presumed heir of the Macleods, Torquil Conanach. This triggered a civil war in Lewis, which ended with the brieve and all his family dead, and ownership of the island passing to the family of Torquil’s wayward mother, the Mackenzies of Kintail and Strathconan, in 1610. Mackenzie later became Lord Seaforth, taking his title from the long sea loch which marks the southern border of Lewis.
In between, a company of men from Fife in the east of Scotland, was commissioned by James VI to pacify and colonize the area, as the British were to do later in America, Africa and Asia. As shocking as that is to us today, it is a sign that by that time the isles were still not considered truly a part of Scotland, but rather an overseas colony or possession, inhabited by creatures, for whom the ordinary rules of civilized behavior did not apply. King James even commissioned the first Marquess of Huntly to “extirpate the barbarous peoples of the isles.”
The Mackenzies’ claim to Lewis did not involve Torquil’s mother at all, but arose from their purchase of the commission granted by James to the Gentlemen of Fife. As for how James thought the land was his to give away or to sell, that will have to wait for the section on the Kingdom of Scotland below.
THE CLAN SOCIETY AND THE LORD LYON: THE SEARCH FOR A CHIEF
The Morrison Clan Society was formed in Scotland in 1909 with the plan of acquiring for the name of Morrison all the usual paraphernalia of a clan, including, most importantly, a chief. Under Scottish law a chief can be chosen from a clan but must be recognized as such by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, supreme judge of Heraldry in Scotland.
Provisional arms were granted to the society while the search for a chief began. These arms, which are derived from the canting arms of mainland Morrison families, feature the three Saracens’ heads and the motto, Prudentia Praestat, prudence prevails, and a second motto of Uno Corde, with one heart. Both admirable sentiments, but it is noticeable that both are in Latin, which would not have been a language of much significance to Hebridean Morrisons, of course. The expectation was that at some point these arms would be superseded by the arms of a Morrison chief.
Various names were put up to the Court of the Lord Lyon over the years, but none was accepted. The problem was that Lyon insisted the claimant be an armiger, someone with their own coat of arms, registered in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Edinburgh, and also that they come from the Outer Hebrides, since that was the only area where Morrisons had really functioned like a clan. Historically very few people from the Outer Hebrides had been granted arms in Scotland. The isle of Lewis was only governed by Edinburgh for less than a hundred years, from 1610 to 1707, and to this day island clans are very poorly represented when it comes to Scottish titles. It is remarkable, and shameful, that the chief of the Macleods or Macdonald of Sleat or Clanranald, or the MacLeans of Duart have no peerage between them, while titles were freely dished out to Norman families of far less distinction down south or in the east of Scotland.
Finally, in 1959, the then Speaker of the House of Commons, W.S. Morrison, was about to be created Viscount Dunrossil and was persuaded by the Lord Lyon to register his new arms in Scotland. Shakes Morrison, as he was known, was a native Gaelic speaker, both of whose parents had been born in the Outer Hebrides. He ticked all Lyon’s boxes. However, when Lyon put it to him that he should also be chief, he pointed out that he had older brothers, and that the oldest, a retired eye surgeon, was an uncommonly modest, even shy man, unlikely to warm to the idea. Shy or not, he made it clear that Dr. John, as the oldest, was the head of the family.
Chief John, Shakes and their brothers with their parents
Shakes set off for Australia, where he was to die in office as Governor-General, but not before recording his new arms in the form of a differenced version, those of a younger son, of the arms to be created for his brother. It took another eight years before Dr. John, then in his eighties, humbly submitted to pressure from all parties and agreed to raise his standard as chief. At that point the modern Clan Morrison officially came into being, and acquired its full status as a “noble community” under Scottish Law.
When Dr. John was created chief, he in turn appointed Lord Margadale as a subsidiary chieftain over Islay, the Sudreys and Southwest Scotland, and appointed his nephew, the second Lord Dunrossil, then Head of Chancery at the British High Commission in Ottawa, as chieftain over North America. Lyon also looked forward to a time when it might be possible to matriculate arms for other subsidiary area chieftains, including ones in Habost/Ness, Bognie/Aberdeenshire and Lothian, “analogous to the…Clan Donald and Clan Chattan.”
Today both Dr. Ru Morrison of Ruchdi as chief and his cousin Andrew, the third Viscount Dunrossil, are members of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs, although Lord Dunrossil was elected in his own right, and the position was not automatically heritable. This was a singular honor, no other clan having more than one vote on the council.
Not bad for a group of barbarous, uncivilized islanders.
Arms of Dr. J. Ruaraidh Morrison of Ruchdi, Chief of Clan Morrison
Badge that may be worn by members of Clan Morrison, incorporating Chief’s Crest
ARMS, MOTTOS, BANNERS, EMBLEMS AND TARTANS
Under Scottish law there is no such thing as a family coat of arms. Arms are the personal and heritable achievement or possession of an individual armiger, or, in some cases, of a corporation or society. A member of a clan can demonstrate their membership and allegiance by wearing their chief’s crest (the very top part of the arms, above the shield and helm), surrounded by a strap and buckle, usually carrying the chief’s motto.
The shield of the chief, divided by a bend sinister or diagonal line, shows a castle to the bottom right, as one looks at it, and a lion to the top left. The castle represents the seana casteal or old castle of Pabbay, of which the chief’s family were reputed to have been the keepers, but can also be taken to represent the fortress of Dun Eistein in Ness, while the lion is a reference to the Royal arms of Norway, because of the tradition that the founder of the clan was the son of a Norse king. The chief’s shield has dolphins as supporters, to remind us that his family, like so many of the clan, comes from the islands. There are two mottos: the principal motto, Teaghlach Phabaigh, means the family of Pabbay, and the other, Dun Eistein, is the name of a fortified stack off the northeast coast of Lewis, another reminder of the importance of the Ness district and the Brieves in clan history. It is acceptable to use either of these on one’s strap. Lewis Morrisons, for instance, might be expected to prefer the Dun Eistein motto, while others might prefer the Teaghlach Phabaigh motto.
There are two main tartan designs in use by members of the clan, though both appear in “ancient,” “modern” or “weathered” versions. The Green Morrison, sometimes also called the society tartan, was authorized by the Morrison Clan Society in 1909 and is essentially the same as the MacKay green, but with a red line added. It has been suggested that this was in gratitude for the hospitality of the MacKays to the Morrisons in the area of Durness in the northwest of Scotland. Some sixty Morrison families settled there after a Morrison from Lewis married the daughter of a MacKay bishop of Caithness, and was given the land in dowry. Even today, there are as many Morrisons in Durness as MacKays.
There was an old tradition that there had been an ancient red Morrison tartan, which had presumably been lost over the years. In 1935 a black house on Lewis was being demolished when a bible was found hidden in one of the walls. In it was the date, 1747, and a strip of red tartan. 1747, the year after Culloden, was the year that the Parliament in Westminster passed various laws designed to prevent any further risings by the old Gaelic clans. Among the new laws were ones banning the wearing of the kilt, the wearing of tartan and the playing of bagpipes. This red tartan was officially acknowledged by the Lord Lyon in his recognition of Dr. John. It is the tartan which the chiefs of the clan have chosen to wear ever since and it is thus sometimes referred to as the chief’s tartan, but it can be worn by any member of the clan, in fact by anyone at all. A few years ago, it was even used by the clothing firm L.L. Bean in the design of a shirt.
There are no laws governing the wearing of tartans, but there are strict and precise rules governing heraldry in Scotland. These even extend to the size and shape of a person’s banner or personal flag. These rules may be found on the website of the Court of the Lord Lyon, and many questions are answered in the FAQ section of the website of the Society of Scottish Armigers, whose former chairman was Viscount Dunrossil and whose President is the Lord Lyon. At a clan tent, for instance, one should not display the Lion Rampant, which is the personal banner of the Queen as queen of Scotland, nor the banner of the chief, unless either the chief himself is present or he has officially commissioned one to do so.
There are also conventions that apply to the wearing of feathers in one’s bonnet. Only an armiger, someone with a personal coat of arms recorded in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Edinburgh, may wear a feather in their cap. Most armigers may wear only one. Chiefs, and only chiefs, may wear three feathers. Two feathers is something of a grey area, being reserved by tradition for the heir of the chief and the head of a major armigerous family, ideally with supporters in their arms, and preferably carrying the title of chieftain of a subsidiary house of the clan. In addition, the chairman of certain officially recognized societies, like the Society of Scottish Armigers, may be granted two.
It has been traditional for Scottish clans to identify an emblem, typically a flower of some sort, with strong associations for the clan. Thus the emblem for Scotland is the thistle and for England, the rose. The Morrison emblem is driftwood (or driftweed), which is both a humorous reference to the fact that nothing much grows on the islands, especially trees, because of the gale force winds, making driftwood such a valuable commodity, and to the story that the founder of the clan and his mother were washed ashore after a shipwreck, clinging to a piece of driftwood.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES (and photos) OF THE THREE MORRISON CHIEFS AND A WORD FROM RU
Dr. John Morrison of Ruchdi when he raised his standard. Dr. Iain , the second chief, is next to him in the glasses, with Ru in front of Iain.
Chief Iain leading the clan up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh during the Gathering 2009
Chief Ru at the Loon Mountain Games in NH 2012
Chief Ru and family, when he was Chief of the Games at Stone Mountain 2015
Ruchdi
OFFICERS OF THE CLAN, AS APPOINTED BY THE CHIEF
HEREDITARY CHIEFTAIN OF ISLAY AND THE SOUTHWEST: Lord Margadale
CHIEFTAIN OF NORTH AMERICA: Viscount Dunrossil
SEANNACHIE: Chris Gillmore
PART TWO: THE MORRISONS AND SCOTTISH HISTORY
PREHISTORY OF THE ISLANDS
There is a tendency to think of our history as beginning with the emergence of clans. Dr. Mairi Macleod, official archeologist of the Western Isles, while giving a tour to some Morrisons who had come from overseas, stressed that we should think of the ancient monuments like Callanish or the Broch at Dun Carloway as having been built by our common ancestors, long before we were called Morrisons or Macleods. Those of us whose ancestors did indeed come from the islands are Hebrideans first, Gaels second, and Morrisons third.
The beautiful standing stone circle at Callanish, or Calanais, is around five thousand years old, older than its main rival Stone Henge in England. It is one of many such circles all over the Outer Hebrides and Orkney. This is the same era that produced stone burial chambers like the Langass Barpa and also the first crannog, or island dun. Crannogs are fortified houses or towers built on what were often artificial islands in the middle of a loch. They can be found throughout Scotland and Ireland, but the earliest recorded is in Loch Olabhat in North Uist. Two thousand years before the Trojan War and the beginnings of Greek civilization, a thousand years before Knossos and the Minoan culture, our ancestors had an apparently sophisticated civilization of their own, at the other end of Europe.
The earliest known name for the Outer Hebrides is Domon or Dumna, after the word for deep, possibly a reference to a Goddess of the Deep. Ancient writers talk about the two main “British Isles,” Ierne (or Ireland) and Albion (or Britain proper). In these, Domon is sometimes classed with Ierne. The early Irish talked about the islands being inhabited by a race of giants and pirates, the Fomorians (fer mor, big man, or fer moir, man of the sea?). By the time of the Celtic saints (c.400-800 AD) the islanders had adopted Pictish culture: a Pictish symbol stone has been found on the island of Pabbay, near Barra, and another on Raasay, off Skye. (Pabbay, which means priests’ isle in Old Norse, is the name given to a number of small islands in the Hebrides.) The dedications to Saint Moluag, rival and contemporary of Columba, in places like Raasay, Pabbay, in the Sound of Harris, and Ness, all of them places later associated with Morrisons, suggest again that the language of the isles may have been Pictish before it was Gaelic. Pictish may also have been the language and ethnicity of most of the people of Ireland at the time.
Looking at maps of Europe, it is easy to think of the Hebrides as being very remote. The Romans were the first people to place an emphasis on building roads across the land, connecting cities, and very hard work it was. The Greeks always built their colonies (like Nice, Marseilles, Naples, Syracuse and Byzantium) on the seacoast, and travel across the thickly forested land was considered very dangerous. The roads that mattered were the sea roads, on which trade and ideas were carried. The Outer Hebrides were much more at the center of this world than we realize. Of course, this also made them an attractive target for a new breed of raiders.
THE KINGDOM OF THE ISLES
The Viking raids, swiftly followed by full scale Viking settlement, began around 800. Today 98% of the place names in the Outer Hebrides are still in Old Norse, and the people who lived in the islands were called Gal-Gael or foreign Gaels. The islands in general were called, in Gaelic, the Innse Gall or islands of the foreigners. A mixed race kingdom began to emerge extending from the Isle of Man in the south to Lewis in the north. The Vikings referred to these islands as the Sudreys or south islands, since they were, after all, to the south of Norway. Various part-Norse warlords sought to carve out a kingdom for themselves in the area. One of these was Somerled, ancestor of the MacDonalds, who lived from 1113-1164. He established what first was called the Kingdom of the Isles, later the lordship, with its capital on the Inner Hebridean island of Islay. The people of the Outer Hebrides have been ruled from Finlaggan in Islay much longer than from Edinburgh. Despite his Viking name, Somerled posed as a champion of Gaelic culture and the Gaelic language was quickly re-established throughout the isles. All this time the over-king, to whom these kings responded, was the king of Norway.
Another of these kings, Olaf the Black, ruled in the Isle of Man from 1226-37. He is of particular interest because he is claimed as the ancestor of three clans, the Macleods, the Morrisons and the MacAulays, whose name actually means son of Olaf. Olaf spent a little time in Lewis, which he disliked, complaining that he and his men had nothing to eat, which they didn’t first catch or kill.
The Morrison story is that Olaf was ordered by Bishop Reginald to put aside his second wife Lauon, because she was a blood relative of his first wife, and that she was subsequently shipwrecked off Lewis. Her son, the eponymous Gilmore, then married the heiress of the Clan Gow (who may have been smiths) and settled in their territory on Pabbay. This would make the Morrisons cousins of the Macleods. Morrisons of Pabbay went on to become famous smiths themselves, and in later years were the armorers of the Macleods. John Morison, “Indweller of Lewis,” writing around 1680, says that the original clans of Lewis were the Morrisons, Nicolsons, MacAulays and MacIvers. The legend goes that the Nicolsons were dominant early, but the Macleods stole their patrimony in famously gory and treacherous fashion. The implication is that the Macleods were not among the earliest clans on the island.
It should be pointed out that there are other origin stories too, however. One says that the clan was retreating from a dangerous enemy after a defeat, when their path was blocked by a raging torrent. The chief prayed to the Virgin Mary and promised to dedicate the clan to her memory, if she would help them cross. In a scene reminiscent of Moses and the Red Sea, the waters parted, the Morrisons crossed, and the waters then came back together in time to obstruct their pursuers.
The kingdom, later the Lordship, of the Isles was a country knit by sea roads, linking Ireland, Britain and Norway. This was the context in which clans like the Morrisons emerged. The MacDonalds in the south and the Macleods in the north came to dominate the region, while other clans and families came to perform specific roles, which were often passed on from father to son. The MacBeths or Beatons were the doctors, their medical library apparently the finest in the world. The MacMhuirichs or Curries were hereditary bards and the Morrisons were the brieves or judges. The law they administered (and which they went to Ireland to study) was the traditional Celtic brehon law, not Scottish-Norman feudal law, right up to 1600.
Culturally, notwithstanding the name Innse Gall, the islanders came to identify themselves as entirely Gaelic, even taking over traditional Irish folk tales wholesale. Thus the Ossian stories, which James MacPherson collected in Skye and Uist with the help of a Captain Morrison, and which went on to become the biggest international best seller of the late 18thand early 19th centuries, are versions of the Irish Fenian Cycle. Finn mac Cool (Fionn mac Cumhaill) becomes Fingal in the Hebridean version. Strangely, Fingal means Fair-haired Foreigner or Viking, and yet the stories have him leading his fellow Gaels against invaders from Lochlan or Norway.
THE KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND
Meanwhile another kingdom was becoming established to the east. The kingdom of Alba, formed from a combination of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu and the Gaelic kingdom of Dal Riada came into existence around 900 and began to occupy much of the central mainland now associated with Scotland. Alba would eventually become Scotland, but at the time there were several other kingdoms in the space occupied by modern Scotland, and several different languages and ethnicities. Gaelic had replaced Pictish as the main language of Alba by 900, but in what we think of today as the Central Belt, the main language would at first have been British, the ancestor of modern Welsh. The kingdom of Strathclyde had its capital at Dumbarton, which means Fort of the Britons. And the southeast was part of the English (or Angle) kingdom of Northumbria, speaking a language called Inglis.
Incidentally some people claim that Gaelic was never the language or culture of more than a part of Scotland. This is completely false. For one thing, the word “Scot” seems originally to have meant “speaker of Gaelic.” Gaelic was perhaps not the exclusive or even dominant language in the Lowlands, but they were not originally part of Scotland. It was certainly the language of the kingdom of Alba.
Alba, or Scotland, then, was a small Gaelic-speaking kingdom bounded by the Forth to the south, and not including Caithness or Sutherland to the north, Argyll to the west or what are now the Lowlands, Borders and Galloway to the south. Even after the Kings of Scots acquired some of these territories, they were not considered part of the ancient country of Scotland, as we can tell from the early thirteenth century document De Situ Albanie. This means that Edinburgh, for instance, was not in Scotland. It was in the British kingdom of Lothian and later part of English Northumbria, while Glasgow was in British Strathclyde. Further evidence can be seen from the reign of Edgar: in a document dated 1098 he acknowledged Norse sovereignty over Kintyre and the Hebrides, and his brother David was given the title of Prince of the Cumbrians. Cumbria was roughly the old British or “Welsh” speaking Kingdom of Strathclyde, and it is fascinating to see the parallel with the use of the title Prince of Wales by England’s Edward I in 1301. In each case the use of the title by a relative of the King of a neighboring country marked a stage in the intended absorption of an ancient British kingdom or principality.
Scotland changed dramatically in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and began to look to the south, absorbing ideas from newly Norman England. The Anglo-Saxon Queen Margaret set out to “civilize” her husband Malcolm’s kingdom, introducing foreign customs, religious orders, a foreign patron saint and even foreign languages, French and English, into the Scottish court. Norman barons were streaming into the Lowlands after their conquest of England, and in short order they became the new landed aristocracy of Scotland, with little interest in learning its language. These Norman clans and families included the Stewarts, Bruces, Comyns, Montgomerys, Hays, Jardines and Crawfords. (Others ventured north into the Highlands and did more to assimilate, including the Sinclairs, Frasers, Grants, Murrays and Sutherlands). Margaret’s son, King David, the old Prince of the Cumbrians, introduced feudal law to Scotland, strengthening both his own position and that of these Norman barons, to whom the king granted charters, at the expense of the indigenous people, who found themselves reduced to the status of tenants without rights on what had been their own land. In Gaelic terms, oigreachd had replaced duthchas. By 1500 even the term “Scots language” had come to denote what was formerly called “Inglis”, while Gaelic was now referred to as “Erse” or Irish, and considered a foreign language itself!
None of this would have mattered to the people of the Isles, if Scotland had kept to itself, but inevitably it began to expand westwards. Following repeated incursions and provocations by the Scottish kings Alexander II and III, King Haakon of Norway had had enough. He raised a combined Norse and Hebridean fleet and sailed up the Clyde in October 1263. Stormy weather forced him to land the fleet at Largs, near Glasgow, where the Scots attacked and after heavy losses on both sides, the Norse withdrew, leaving their Hebridean allies unprotected again. Three years later, after Haakon had died, his successor, Magnus VI, effectively sold the Isles to the King of Scots at the Treaty of Perth. Orkney and Shetland remained Norse.
Until 1357 the isles were left alone, as Scotland fought for its life against England in the Wars of Independence. But in 1371 the Stewart dynasty began and Stewarts took deliberate aim at the power of the MacDonalds, who still controlled most of Argyll, all the way up the west coast. In 1411 Donald MacDonald of Islay inherited the Earldom of Ross from his wife and moved to secure his possessions in the north, which the Stewarts considered a threat to their own growing power. Besides the new Stewart Earl of Albany had designs on Ross himself. Characterizing MacDonald’s advance as an invasion, the Stewarts and their allies raised a powerful army from northeastern families and defeated the islanders at Harlaw near Aberdeen, paving the way for the north of the country to become securely Scottish. Twenty years later, an exasperated Lord of the Isles formed an alliance with Douglas in the Lowlands and the King of England to defeat these aggressive new Scoto-Normans and divide the land amongst themselves. Douglas was to take the old British Lowlands and MacDonald the Highlands, the original (Gaelic) Scotland. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where your loyalties lay, the King of Scots got wind of the pact and the Lords of the Isles were never a threat to Scottish power again. Even the title of Lord of the Isles was forfeit, and today is held by the heir to the throne of England, along with that of Prince of Wales, another formerly independent Celtic nation.
The Stewarts used three main tools in their cultural and political campaign to dominate and eventually absorb the Isles into an expanding Scotland: law, language and religion. They set up the Campbells as their proxies in Argyll, and the Campbells used the power of law to seize the lands of the Macleans and MacDonalds, in what has been called a steady campaign of judicial theft.
Everything came to a head under King James VI. The Statutes of Iona, forced on Highland chiefs after they had been tricked, kidnapped and held prisoner, broke their traditional power, and forced them to send their sons to be educated in Protestant schools in English. In Lewis, during the dynastic squabbles known as the Troubles of the Lews, James first commissioned a group of would be Scottish colonists known as the Fife Adventurers to conquer and settle the land, and later commanded the Earl of Huntly to “extirpate the barbarous peoples of the Isles,” in other words to commit genocide. It was good riddance for Gaelic Scotland when James followed the money down south to become James I of England. Thereafter his colonial aspirations were focused mainly on the Americas.
The Gentlemen of Fife were defeated but the islanders were left so weakened both by their civil war and by the struggle to defeat the men of Fife, that in 1610, when Mackenzie of Kintail bought the Fife men’s commission, he was able to take over the island without too much difficulty. This marks the end of the old independent island clans, the end of the old ways. The Macleods would never regain control of the island nor the Morrisons the brieveship. Scottish feudal law became the law of the islands and it was not repealed until 2000, by which time it had done untold damage.
THE ’45 AND THE CLEARANCES
In the following century, after the Stewarts had lost both the English and Scottish thrones, ironically because of their own renewed flirtation with Catholicism, Highland culture was to be a victim of the long-standing conflict between the two super powers of the day, England and France. France had a policy of trying to weaken England by stirring up domestic conflicts, which could serve to distract English forces. The most famous of these were in Scotland in 1745 and in America thirty years later. Whereas Scots have an understandable tendency to view the 45 in isolation, it was really a fairly minor sideshow in the War of Austrian Succession, which ran from 1740 to 1748 and, as usual, pitted Britain and France on opposite sides.
The original idea in 1744 was for a French army to invade southeast England under the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” who would then replace Parliament with a French-style, autocratic, pro-Catholic (and of course pro-French) government. But the French fleet was scattered in a storm, and the superior British fleet quickly resumed its protection of the channel. Coming through Scotland was a desperate alternative, and one to which the French were reluctant to commit many resources. It was always Charles’ plan to pass throughScotland and make for his grand prize, England, but Charles was careful not to share this information with his Scottish supporters, many of whom were hoping only to undo the Act of Union, passed in 1707, and have their own king and Parliament in Scotland again.
Charles landed in Catholic Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in July of 1745, and several Highland clans soon rallied to his standard. At first he was unbelievably successful, leading his Jacobite army all the way into Edinburgh. There the terrified citizens, following the propaganda of the day, were convinced these Celtic barbarians were going to slaughter them in their beds. After more victories Charles then marched them south into England, and advanced as far as Derby in early December. In London, on what became known as Black Monday, the Hanoverian King George II was desperately packing his bags, ready to flee back to Germany, his armies all defeated. Instead Charles’ Highland troops decided enough was enough. Expected reinforcements from English Jacobites failed to materialize, and the French declined to take on the English naval blockade. Besides, the Highlanders had never signed on for the conquest of England and now insisted on heading home. The moment had passed. The following April the king’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, led an army of German mercenaries and Protestant Scots, including Highlanders like the Campbells and Munros, to crush the rebels at Culloden Moor.
It’s tempting to portray Culloden as a battle between England and Scotland, or even between Highlander and Lowlander or Protestant and Catholic. In fact it was more complicated than that. Loyalties were divided within clans and even families. But whatever the forces and loyalties on the field, the principal loser was traditional Gaelic culture.
As bad as the carnage of the battle itself was, the aftermath was far worse. Charles himself escaped to the Outer Hebrides, where the local people hid and protected him, despite there being a large price on his head, until Flora MacDonald from South Uist secreted him away, dressed as her Irish maid, “over the sea to Skye.” From there he was able to catch a French frigate back to the continent. The Highland people were not so fortunate.
Not only were the immediate reprisals brutal, earning the Duke the nickname, “Butcher” Cumberland, but the Westminster Parliament passed a number of laws designed to permanently break Gaelic culture and make sure England never had to fear such an invasion again. The Acts of Proscription banned the wearing of kilts and the tartans, even the playing of bagpipes, as well as the owning of weapons. The Heritable Jurisdictions Act took away the remaining powers of the chiefs over their clans, including the ability to raise their own armies. As a result, the chiefs could no longer see value in having large numbers of men to call on. At the same time they needed money to help construct a new identity as members of the British landed aristocracy. With the arrival of the cheviot sheep, bred to withstand the cold Highland winters, it was possible for them to make far more money from sheep ranching than from traditional farming. “Improvement” was coming to the Gaidhealtachd.
Chiefs and landlords still did raise regiments for the crown from among those who remained. Highlanders played a crucial role in conquering and administering the Empire. With their pipes and kilts and love of a charge, they were the perfect cannon fodder for cautious Englishmen. General Wolfe sent them to take the supposedly impregnable Heights of Abraham in Quebec, reasoning that they just might succeed, but that it would, after all, be “no great mischief” if they all died. They succeeded, of course, and Canada became British in time to receive boatloads of displaced Highlanders in the new Maritime Provinces.
About the only good thing that can be said about the Clearances, from a Morrison perspective, is that because we did not have a chief at the time, whose powerless tenants we were, we did not have to suffer the shame and indignity of being evicted and transported by a man for whom we felt such a profound sense of (unrequited) loyalty. Instead it was left to MacDonalds, Macleods, MacKenzies and others to serve us ill, along with their own clansmen and women.
Pabbay and Taransay, islands on which much of the population of Harris lived, were cleared in the 1840s so that the factor for the Harris estate, a Campbell, could use them for his own personal sheep farm. Pabbay is still deserted, and looks uninhabitable. Such is the damage that sheep, and human greed, can do. In its time it was so fertile it was known as “the granary of Harris.”
The pretext for evicting the people of Pabbay was that they were distilling the finest whisky in the islands but without one of the precious government licenses, which were next to impossible to obtain back then. So good was the whisky that it was accepted as currency by the evangelical poet, John Morison, the Smith of Harris, when he did work for them.
A generation later the illegal production of whisky was still an issue for the Government, so that it sent an exciseman to cover the area of Harris and the Uists full time. Fortunately, Alexander Carmichael, the exciseman, was a man of great tact and sensitivity, who cared profoundly for the local people and their already endangered culture. He was to stay in the islands sixteen years. For a couple of those years he and his family lived in Trumisgarry, next door to Ruchdi. The father and grandparents of Dr. John, the future chief, contributed pieces to his great collection of Gaelic folklore, the Carmina Gadelica, and the families became close friends.
We should give the last word to this great scholar:
“These Morrisons have been famed throughout the ages for their wit, poetry, music, philosophy, medicine and science, for their independence of mind and sobriety of judgment and for their benevolence of heart and unfailing hospitality.”
PART 3: CLAN MORRISON SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
INTRODUCTION, MISSION AND ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
It is important to remember that the clan and the society are not the same. Membership in the clan is inherited, but membership in a society is usually paid for. You are born into a clan but you have to join a society. The society exists to promote an understanding of the clan, its history and its chief, and further to encourage the development of related Scottish or Celtic traditional skills and knowledge.
This difference should be reflected in the names of positions of authority within the two kinds of organization. Terms like chief, chieftain and seannachie are appropriate for clans, while those of chairman, president, treasurer, secretary and vice president, are appropriate for societies.
Including history, 1993 merger etc. , legal and tax status
OFFICERS
Patron: Dr. J. Ruaridh Morrison of Ruchdi, Chief of the Clan
Honorary Members: Dr. Ann Michelle Morrison
Alasdair Morrison
Marin Morrison
The Viscount Dunrossil
Anne M. Morrison, Chair Emerita
Position Holder Term Ends
Chairman: Chris Gillmore
Vice Chair: vacant
Secretary: Bob Morrison M.D.
Treasurer/Membership: June Alvarez
Historian: Bonnie Dunton
Chaplain: Rev. Charles Morrison
Editor of the Sgian Dubh: Roland Tremblay
Administrator of DNA program: Ed Holcombe
Administrator of Scholarship Program: Malcolm Morrison
At Large members: Neil Morrison
Jan Tremblay
Jennifer Wolcott
Dr. Bob Morrison
REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENTS: Jim Morrison (Senior VP)
NE: Jan Tremblay and Bonnie Dunton
Mid-Atlantic: Ed Holcombe
Southeast: Chris Gillmore
Midwest: Dr Bob Morrison
Southwest: Neil Morrison
Rockies: Rachel Morrison
Northwest and Alaska: Richard Lovell
West: Art Morrison
Eastern Canada
Western Canada
PART 4: SOME FAMOUS OR DISTINGUISHED MORRISONS
Two famous Morrisons at Stone Mountain 2015
JOHN WAYNE (MARION MORRISON) a.k.a. the DUKE (1907-1979)
It’s been said that other clans might have an Earl or Duke, but we have THE Duke. Born Winterset Iowa, weighing 13 pounds, educated USC in Los Angeles. Got work as an extra in Hollywood when on the USC football team. Perhaps the most famous and most admired American film star, who epitomized the gritty, independent-minded, high-character tough guy in westerns and war films. Appeared in 170 films, winning the Oscar for Best Actor in 1970 over Richard Burton, Dustin Hoffman and Peter O’Toole. Proud member of CMSNA.
SIR VAN MORRISON, the Belfast Cowboy, bn. 1945
Van the Man was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, very conscious of his Scottish ancestry, and of the legends tracing the Morrisons’ descent from the Vikings. He named his band the Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Originally a sax player in a big band which toured Germany, he became a singer and leader of pop group Them, recording hard rocking bluesy hits like Gloria in his teens, before embarking on a solo career. His early albums Astral Weeks and Moondance are among the best and most innovative ever made. Knighted in 2016 for services to music.
JIM MORRISON, The Doors, 1943-1971
Son of Rear-Admiral George Morrison, who commanded US forces at the Gulf of Tonkin, which provided the pretext for the invasion of South Vietnam. Studied film at UCLA and there was always a theatricality and dark poetic element to his career. Founded The Doors in 1965 with keyboardist Ray Manzerek. With his extraordinary good looks, he remained a pop icon for years after his early death in Paris. At the time of his death he was supposedly planning to marry the journalist and novelist Patricia Kennealy in the Cathedral of Saint John in Manhattan, wearing his Morrison kilt. They had already gone through a Celtic hand-fasting ceremony.
DAVID GILMOUR, guitarist, leader of Pink Floyd, bn. 1946
Born in Cambridge, England, the son of a senior lecturer in zoology at the university. Joined Pink Floyd in 1967 to replace lead Syd Barrett, whom he had known from college. Under Gilmour’s lead Pink Floyd became one of the most innovative and successful bands in music history. Dark Side of the Moon (1973) is the second best selling album of all time. It was on the Billboard charts for 14 years and on the British charts for ten years. In all the band has sold over 250 million albums.
FRED MORRISON, PIPER, bn. 1963
And if piping is your thing…Fred is the most highly regarded piper of our time. He has won the Macallan trophy at the Lorient festival a record seven times, and been voted Instrumentalist of the Year in the Scots Trad Music awards. Born in Glasgow, but lives in Benbecula near where his family originated, in South Uist. Multi-instrumentalist, pioneering the revival of the uillean pipes and his own reelpipes.
RUAIDHRI MAC MHUIRICH/RODERICK MORRISON (AN CLARSAIR DALL, THE BLIND HARPER), poet (c.1665-c.1714)
Son of John Morrison of Bragar, Lewis, who was also a fine poet, and therefore uncle to the Petty Seer, he became court poet and harper to Iain Breac Macleod of Dunvegan. His poetry was collected into an edition by William Matheson in 1970, together with appendices on the music and on the family of the Morrisons of Bragar. Ruaidhri’s life and work represent the glorious but poignant end of an era of Gaelic culture.
JOHN MORISON (THE SMITH OF HARRIS), poet (1790-1852)
“According to tradition the Morrisons were said to be strong and valiantly brave people and this could also be said about him.” Self-taught blacksmith-poet and preacher (he had only one month of schooling at Rodel). Joined the Free Church during the Disruption of 1843, was ordained and raised the funds to build the church at Manish. Much admired both for his life and his Gaelic poetry, much of it on religious themes.
GRANT MORRISON MBE, Comics and Graphic Novels, bn. Glasgow 1960
One of the giants of the comic book industry, known for reviving famous characters and adding a dark, surreal edge to them. Also award-winning playwright, screen-writer and author of a non-fiction analysis of superheroes, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero. Awarded the MBE in 2012 for services to film and literature.
REV. JOHN MORRISON (THE PETTY SEER), Minister of Petty near Inverness from 1759-1774.
Son of Rev. John Morrison of Urray in Ross, and grandson of the famous John Morrison, tacksman of Bragar in Lewis, who had “Ladies modesty, Bishop’s gravity, Lawyer’ eloquence, and Captain’s conduct, ” according to Martin Martin. John of Petty was a fine poet, known as “the bard,” and preacher, but is best remembered for his gift of prophecy, also known as Highland Second Sight. The only exponent of second sight more famous was the semi-legendary Brahan Seer, Kenneth Odhar, also from Lewis.
REV. ROBERT MORRISON, MISSIONARY to China (1782-1834)
Born in Northumberland, the son of James, a Scottish farm laborer. Spent 27 years in China, the first Protestant missionary to that country, where he produced the first printed translation of the Bible into Chinese and the first English-Chinese dictionary. Founded the first hospital/dispensary along western lines in Macao and the Anglo-Chinese College in Hong Kong. Mount Morrison (now renamed Yushan), the highest mountain in Taiwan, was named in his honor.
Dr. G.E. MORRISON (CHINESE MORRISON, MORRISON OF PEKING) (1862-1920)
Grandfather was farmer in Aberdeenshire. Uncle came to Australia to be Head of Scotch College in Melbourne for 47 years and father was Head of Geelong, where George was educated. Tall, fearless adventurer. Studied medicine at Edinburgh. Times Correspondent in China for years. His collection of Chinese books became the Oriental Library in Tokyo. Helped in Chinese revolution of 1911, resigning from the Times to become political advisor to the new Chinese Republic, which he represented at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
THOMAS MORRISON, d.1829. Builder, Educator
Born in Muthill, Perthshire. Built much of Edinburgh’s beautiful Georgian New Town, making a fortune in the process. Left an endowment to build a school. Morrison’s Academy opened in Crieff in 1860.
W.S. MORRISON, 1ST VISCOUNT DUNROSSIL, 1893-1961
Born near Oban in Argyll, the younger brother of future chief, Dr. John Morrison. Educated Edinburgh University, where he was elected the University Bard because of his Gaelic poetry and acquired the nickname Shakespeare or Shakes. Interrupted his studies to serve four years in WW1, winning MC and being mentioned in dispatches. MP for Cirencester and Tewksbury 1929-59, the last eight as Speaker. Created Viscount Dunrossil 1959 and appointed Governor-General of Australia. The leafy avenue leading to Government House in Canberra is named after him.
JOHN MORRISON, 2ND VISCOUNT DUNROSSIL, 1926-2000.
Left Oxford to join RAF in 1944. Flew Spitfires and later some of the first jets in the Air Force. As British Diplomat in South Africa arranged for law books to be smuggled into Robben Island for Nelson Mandela. Later Governor of Bermuda and Lord Lieutenant of the Western Isles of Scotland. Retired to North Uist and is buried there.
SCOTT MORRISON, PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA born 1968
Became PM and Leader of Liberal Party in August 2018. Born Sydney, educated U. of NSW. Entered Parliament in 2007. Former Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.
JIM GILMORE, born 1949, Governor of Virginia
BA and JD from University of Virginia. US Army Intelligence and Counter-intelligence. Elected Attorney General of Virginia in 1993 and Governor in 1997. Wore his Morrison tartan kilt to his inauguration. Chairman of Republican National Committee 2001. Explored running for President in 2008 and 2016, but found limited support.
BARON MARGADALE OF ISLAY IN THE COUNTY OF ARGYLL
Title created in 1965 for John Granville Morrison, a Conservative MP, descendant of James Morrison, the early 19th century businessman and Liberal MP. John’s mother, Lady Mary, was the daughter of the Liberal statesman Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville. Today the Granvilles own the island of North Uist. John was MP for Salisbury in Wiltshire from 1941-65. The current Lord, Alastair the 3rd Baron, was born in 1958.
MORISON OF BOGNIE, BARON OF FRENDRAUGHT AND LAIRD OF BOGNIE AND MOUNTBLAIRY
Alexander Morison, 1st of Bognie, was born about 1600. His son George married the widow of James Crichton, Viscount Frendraught. George was granted arms in 1673. Bognie Castle, also called Conzie, was built between 1660 and 1670 by the Morrisons in the Mains of Bognie (Bogniebraes), near Huntly in Aberdeenshire. George’s grandson Alexander (1727-1801) became 4th of Bognie and 3rd of Frendraught. Alexander’s daughter, Katherine, married John Forbes and the Bognie/Boyndlie line passed through them until Alexander Gordon Morison, born Canada in 1920, was found to be the heir in 1936. He moved to Bognie in 1947.
ALEXANDER MORISON OF PRESTONGRANGE
Alexander Morison, Advocate, acquired the Barony of Prestongrange, formerly part of the lands of Newbattle Abbey, from the second Earl of Lothian in 1622. The Morisons sold the Barony on to William Grant, another Advocate, who took the title Lord Prestongrange, in 1746. The 124 year ownership of this Barony is significant only because it caused a rare grant of arms to a Morrison.
WILLIAM MURDOCH MORRISON (1875-1956), GROCER
Brought up in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, he opened an egg and butter stall in 1899, gradually building the business into what became the fourth largest supermarket chain in the UK, Morrisons. Today Morrisons has 11% of the grocery market in the UK, with revenue of over 16 billion pounds.
JAMES MORRISON, BUSINESSMAN (1789-1857)
The son of an inn-keeper in Hampshire, England, he moved to London and married the daughter of a successful draper. He amassed an enormous fortune as a trader, with the motto, small profits and quick returns. A Liberal MP, whose descendants generally became Conservative MPs. Great collector of art and landed estates. He bought the Hebridean island of Islay for 500,000 pounds in 1854, as well as country homes in Fonthill (Wiltshire) and Basildon Park (Berkshire).
MARGARET MORRISON d. 1886/ANDREW CARNEGIE (1835-1919)
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Fife, to poor parents, who moved with him to Pennsylvania when he was 13. His mother, Margaret Morrison, was the primary bread-winner when he was young. Such was his devotion to her that he refused to marry until after she died, when he was 51, and he later named his only child after her. Carnegie sold his steel business into what became US Steel in 1901. His share of the proceeds was $225 million, or around $6.5 bn in today’s money. He had given away all but $30mn by the time he died, and that was then divided among other charities. He was a passionate supporter of libraries and educational causes, including African American education; an anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist, who tried to buy back the Philippines for the native population after it was annexed by the US.
J.A. MORRISON, founder of Morrison’s Cafeterias
Opened his first cafeteria in Mobile, AL, in 1920. At its peak the company had 151 Morrison’s in 13 states, and had expanded into catering for schools and hospitals. In 1998 the company was sold to Piccadilly Cafeterias, which later went bankrupt, as Southern dining tastes changed. Morrison was a restauranteur but not a businessman. By 1980 the company, which liked to call itself a family business, was 100% owned by descendants of Morrison’s friendly local banker, the aptly named Mr. Outlaw. Morrison did the food, while the Outlaws took care of the money.
SIR FRASER MORRISON, Morrison Construction, RMJM
Built a major worldwide construction firm, Morrison Construction, and later bought the Edinburgh architecture and design firm, RMJM Architecture, which had built the Falkirk Wheel, and advised on projects all over the world. The construction firm was sold to Anglian Water in 2000, and his oil business to Lloyds Bank. Sir Fraser was chairman of the Highlands and Islands Development Board from 1992-8 and the first chairman of the University of the Highlands and Islands project. He was knighted in 1993.
WALTER FREDERICK MORRISON, inventor of the Frisbee, bn. Utah 1920, d. 2010
In 1937 he started selling “flyin’ Cake Pans” on the beaches of Santa Monica. Having learned more about aerodynamics while flying a P-47 Thunderbolt in WW2, he came out with a plastic version, the Flyin’ Saucer, in 1948. In 1955 he designed the Pluto Platter, which he sold to the Wham-O toy company in 1957. Wham-O changed the name that same year to Frisbee, after finding that college students had started calling it that.
DANNY MORRISON, New Zealand Cricketer, bn. 1966
Danny was one of the most successful fast bowlers in NZ history, taking 286 wickets in 48 Tests and 96 ODIs. He was an almost equally unsuccessful batsman, at one time holding the record for ducks in Test cricket. Since retirement he has become a leading commentator on the game all over the world, where his larger than life personality translates so well to the small screen. His autobiography, Mad as I Wanna Be, was described by one commentator as “mental.”
JAMES MORRISON, WBA and Scotland football player, bn. 1986
James was born in County Durham, in England, and came through the Middlesborough youth system, before being transferred to West Bromwich Albion in 2007. He had appeared for England in Youth football, but in 2008 agreed to represent Scotland’s full international team, for which he qualified through his grandparents. He played 46 times for Scotland as a midfielder, several as captain, being one of the most dependable players during what was a depressing era in Scottish football.