Introduction / Westray Grays / George Gray and Margaret Seatter / George Gray and Jean Reid / Robert Gray and Christian Harcus / George Gray and Ann Thomson / George Gray and Catherine Hewison

Elizabeth Hewison and William Leask

Elizabeth Hewison was born 27 October 1859 at Grindley, the fourth surviving daughter of Murdoch Hewison and Barbara Harcus When her widowed father remarried and moved to Breckowall, Elizabeth moved there also. She was eleven years old when her oldest sister Catherine Hewison married and moved to America. Her other two sisters were then living at Grindley. In 1878, Elizabeth was sent to a dressmaker's school in the main island of Orkney. Apparently this was not agreeable to her and she returned home after one quarter.

Elizabeth married William Leask an Englishman on 21 December 1881 at Breckowall.

William Leask was born 4 August 1855 in Foxes Quey England. By age 11, his parents had both died and he was raised by his older sister. In 1869, at age 14, he was indentured as an apprentice joiner to the nearby Jarrow Chemical Company. In 1876 his indenture had been paid up to that date, and that he was taken by a Captain Scollay to Westray.

It is suggested that Captain Scollay was a relative and that he had served in the Crimean War in 1854. William visited the Scollays on Westray, although it is not known whether Captain Scollay was Orcadian.. There are several Scollay families in the 1871 census at Bisgoes, however no man who would have been the estimated age of Captain Scollay.

On Westray, William Leask met Elizabeth Hewison, they were married in 1881. At that time, William's residence was Portsmouth England and subsequently William and Elizabeth returned to Portsmouth where their first child, William Hewison Jr., was born. William Sr. worked as a carpenter, but due to uncertain employment, the Leasks decided to emigrate. Elizabeth refused to go to Australia because some people had died of typhoid on route and she did not want to expose William Jr. to that threat. Instead they decided to go to American to join her sister Catherine Hewison Gray and her family in Iowa. After sailing for five weeks to Quebec and then traveling in wood-burning train down the St. Lawrence route, they arrived at Mason City on June 10 1883. Elizabeth was very ill with typhoid.

William Leask built houses in Mason City and their family grew to nine children. Surviving correspondence reveals steady visiting between Catherine and Elizabeth and their families. Elizabeth fell very ill suddenly on 22 June 1902 and died at age 42 of an aneurism. Her youngest child Lily Catherine was age 5 months at that time and she was raised for two years by her aunt Catherine at the Grays farm in Manly. The Leask family moved to Waterloo Iowa in 1906 where Mr. Leask continued to build houses and later worked at Naumans Millworks.