Just a note to anyone looking for the family in Benbecula. Norman, Jessie and family were not in Uachdar but in the Uachdar of Gramsdale. Uachdar in this context just means rather than literally the cream, the upper (part). There is not much inn it geographically but I think the upper part of Gramsdale will have been up on the hill or ridge a mile or so east of the centre of the then township of Uachdar and overlooking the original inn and landing place for the ferry that served Benbecula from Carinis when the tide was too high to use the North Ford.
I suspect that the family left too early for there to be much of a trace remaining though some of the younger children may have been picked up by the Old Parish Register, which was the Protestant record of the day. Quite a few families in that area had drifted in from North Uist and, if I read the posts aright, Norman and family were Presbyterian. That makes North Uist an almosr certain origin as until just before that, Benbecula was overwhelmingly Catholic bar a few families imported by the Factor, Duncan Shaw and Norman cannot have fallen into that category as he was an agricultural labourer and not a tenant. In fact I am a bit surprised at that status as, if he was indeed at Waterloo then he would have been in receipt of an army pension which, in cash starved Benbecula, was wealth indeed and attractive to the late Clanranald estate because it guaranteed the rent could be paid.
