A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the tragic death of a little girl who lived at the Buchanness Lighthouse in 1869.   As I promised, I collected some wild flowers to lay on her grave.  It had been a chance encounter seeing the stone that first time, and all I foucssed on was the inscription Buchanness Lighthouse.  It was only when I started researching the family, I pieced together a little of the story, and was quite moved.

When I put the flowers on her grave the other day I took in the whole scene:  there were two stones here, and a little heart shaped memorial at the foot of Elizabeth’s one.  But the heart was not for Elizabeth; no this was for a John McGaw, and the faint inscription on the neighbouring stone was for the same family.  They had lived at Buchanness lighthouse too, a few years after the Grierson family.

I had wondered about how a lighthouse family could afford the substantial stone for Elizabeth.  Now with a stone close by for the McGaw family and no other stones round about it started to make sense, especially since I had not been able to find an entry for either family in the Burial Register for the Kirkyard.  I had also been told that this grassy area without stones was where the prisoners were buried. I think Elizabeth and the McGaws will have been buried in common ground, or ground that the Lighthouse Board acquired.  Indeed I wonder if the Board paid for the stones?   Here is another line of research I might try, to see if there are any records held by the Lighthouse Board.  Perhaps as visit to the Lighthouse Museum in Fraserburgh might produce some information?

Like Grierson, (Elizabeth’s name) McGaw is not a common name and I was quickly able to find out just a little about this family.   Robert McGaw married his wife Isabella in Wigtonshire.  (There are losts of McGaws in that area.)  He trained as a joiner, but then got a job as a lightkeeper, and I have found him in the Pentland Skerries and the Black Isle.  One of their five sons was born at Rosemarkie, and another in South Ronaldsay in Orkney. Tragedy hit the family 1n 1888 when Robert and Isabella were at Buchanness. Isabella gave birth to a premature baby who lived just 33 hours. Baby John McGaw is buried beside Elizabeth, and the little heart remembers him. Just a few months later, Isabella died from Typhoid Fever (as had Elizabeth Grierson) and she is buried beside her son and both their names inscribed on the Peterhead granite stone.

Robert was left to look after four boys, aged between two and seven years old. Fortunately the family rallied round and I read in the 1891 Census that Robert’s unmarried elder sister Elizabeth, a dressmaker, was then living with the family at the Buchannes Lighthouse and will have been looking after the children.

There the trail goes cold. I have not been able to find any mention of the family again in official records. I wonder if they emigrated and began a new life in Canada, or America.