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Introduction / Westray Grays / Early Westray Grays Miscellaneous Gray InformationVarious other people named Gray, with connections to Westray, Papa Westray or Eday, have been found. However, their relationship to the known families, if any, has not been established. The index to Wills and Testaments in the national archives of Scotland includes an entry for Jonet Gray, spouse to William Rid in Nether Clet, in the Isle of Westray, Orkney, dated 1623. Laurance Murray and his wife Is. Gray (presumably Isabel or Isabella Gray) had two sons and four daughters baptised in Westray between 1741 and 1751:
A Margaret Gray who was born around 1773 or 1774 appears at Manseboat in Eday in the 1861 census. The death register for Eday indicates that she was a daughter of William Gray and Jane Liddle. The censuses indicate that she was born in Eday although this cannot always be relied upon. She died at the age of eighty nine in 1863. It is noted that Henry Gray and Jane Liddell had a daughter baptised in Westray on 20th June 1773. Jane Gray was born in Westray about 1800 (parents unknown). She married James Sclater. David Groat and his wife Barbara Gray had a daughter, Barbara, christened on 30th May 1808. John Murray and his wife Margaret Gray had two daughters baptised in Eday:
James Gray paid rent on the croft of Hammer, Pharay, in 1810. There is the possibility that this was the James Gray who married Jane Harcus. There were Harcuses on the island at the time with a William Harcus at Bull. It is also possible that William Gray, the son of James Gray and Jane Harcus married Barbara Allan and their sons were the origins of the Grays in Eday and Papa Westray. Barbara Allan’s aunt, Marion Allan, married James Harcus and they are thought to have moved from Westray to Pharay with their family somewhere between 1806 and 1809/10. This is based on the parish of birth of their children. It should be emphasised that the identity of James Gray at Hammer in 1810 is very much in the realms of speculation and may well no longer be verifiable. Robert Gray married Catherine Bigland in Westray on 11th July 1815. There were only two Robert Grays recorded in Westray who would have been adults in 1816 - the son of George Gray and Margaret Seater, who was born in 1754, and the son of George Gray and Jean Reid, born in 1779. The latter married in 1808, and by 1816 was in the midst of producing a large family. The older Robert Gray married Marion Meal and had several children, and would have been 61 years old in 1815. Perhaps Marion had died, and Robert married for a second time. There was a Catherine Bigland born in Westray in 1776, who would have been 39 years old in 1815. In the 1841 census, a Catherine Bigland, age 70, was recorded with Thomas and Margaret Bigland at Lighthouse, Westray. The following gravestones record the deaths of Grays in Westray but their relationship to other Grays is not known:
In the 1841 census, there was a boy named William Gray, age 10, born in Orkney, who was staying at South Tuan, Westray. The only William Gray listed in the IGI who was born between 1826 and 1833 was the son of James Gray and Catherine Symison who was born in South Ronaldsay in 1829. The head of the household at South Tuan in 1841 was James Robertson, son of Alexander Robertson and Mary Seater, born in Westray in 1795. | |||
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