Description Comment on 1792 Letter from Thomas MacKay

Comment of 1792 Letter to Alexander Fraser, Middle River, Nova Scotia from Tho. Mackay, Lairg, Sutherlandshire, Scotland.

The subject letter to Alexander Fraser, Middle River, leaves some doubt about which Alexander as the recipient.  There were several of them.  A paragraph from the Memoirs of Dr. James MacGregor dated 1859 sheds some light on this question.  It reads:

"It was not till the next time I visited the Middle River that I became acquainted with Kenneth Fraser, an amiable Christian, whom I never met without a smile on his coutenance.  At home he had been under the ministry of the Rev. Thomas MacKay, in Lairg, Sutherlandshire."

Kenneth Fraser and family after arriving on the Hector, first went to Londonderry for a time, then to Horton, past Windsor, where they lived for 12 years before returning to Pictou's Middle River.  Kenneth had a son Alexander who must be the one to whom the letter is addressed.  Rev. MacKay asked about Alexander's father who was then living but who died at age 55 in 1792 the year the letter arrived.

W.S. Fraser 1996