One Remarkable McGregor Woman
by Ann McGregor Stadden

Mary Menzie left Moneydie, Scotland in the era of 1800. Mary came from a large family of Menzies. When she arrived in the United States of America her family settled in the Johnstown area of New York State. It was here that she met and married Gregor McGregor.

Gregor departed the Gaelic homeland in the year of 1804, to the eastern shores of the USA. The McGregors had farms in Vermont and New Hampshire. Previously Gregor was a shepherd in the Loch Rannoch area of Perthshire, Scotland.

When Madison was President in 1812, Gregor arrived in New York. Mary and Gregor married June 14, 1814. (Ann Stadden, the writer, has pages from the family bible confirming the marriage date.) They had two children in New York. Duncan, named after Gregor’s father Duncan McGregor born in 1742, and John, named after Mary’s father John Menzie, possibly buried on the family farm (Lot. A, N.T.R. Aldborough Township, Elgin County, Ontario). There is a possible descendancy here to Rob Roy McGregor, still to be proven, but looks good so far.

A well documented and passed down story tells us that Mary McGregor was well versed in Sir Walter Scott and Burns. Not having many books to bring with her, she memorized some of their works.

They arrived in Ontario in 1816. It was here that they erected a log cabin. Gregor and Mary fulfilled the scriptural injunction of “love your neighbour”.

Mary would have started her day by unbanking the fire and rekindling it into warmth and brightness, to cook the family “parritch” in her black cast iron pot which would be swung over the hot bed of coals. One notable day, when Duncan was four and John three, Gregor came down with the “Ague” or flu. This day was to be like no other day in their lives. As the story unfolds, in early spring it was hot and humid and a perfect breeding ground for pesky insects like the common Mosquito. The Ague is like Malaria; the patient becomes very sick with aches and pains as well as a parched fever. Mary had a pot of “Camphor” in the coals to clarify the putrid air. Gregor, the day before, had started to make ready a split rail fence for around the newly cleared garden area and corn crop. With great perseverance and instruction from Gregor, this youthful, remarkable, McGregor woman (Ann’s gr gr gr. Grandmother, Mary) set about to fell, trim, and spit rails and finish the garden fencing. What a colossal undertaking this slip of a Scottish lassie took upon herself. Mary also had her own chores to perform such as clothes to wash, which would be drying on the surrounding bushes, and cooking supper. A common meal in those days was a roasted turkey which was in abundance in the area at the time.

Mary was a well known woman in the area and of bright intellect. (Mary is from whom Ann gets her love to write poetry, and her sense of “hard work pays off”.) We will end this saga with Gregor’s favourite saying' “The worse the medicine to take, the surer the cure”. Gregor was highly respected for all those noble qualities that make up true manhood.

Mary and Gregor are buried in McKinlay cemetery, which is located at Number Three Highway, Elgin County, Ontario, Canada. The McKinlay burial grounds in Canada is quite like St. Brides, Pass of Leny, near Callander, Scotland, which is also a McKinlay burial grounds. President McKinley descends from this line of McKinlays as well as Gregor and Mary’s third son James’s wife, Mary McKinlay, Ann’s direct line, but that is another story.

Sources;
Pioneer Sketches of Kent and Elgin Counties, by Henry Watson. 1896-1899
Story passed down to Ann McGregor Stadden.