Introduction / Families / Sinclair / William Sinclair / Robert Sinclair and Jane Drever / Robert Sinclair and Mary Reid

Betsy Reid Sinclair and James Fergus

Betsy Reid Sinclair (b. 9th November 1864) was a daughter of Robert Sinclair and Mary Reid. She moved with the family from Eday to Yorkton, North West Territories in 1884.

She married James Fergus (b. 7th February 1859) on 11th September 1886. James was born in Kirkwall and the son of James Fergus and Mary Rendall in Kirkwall. He and his brothers David, George and William Fergus had gone to Canada with Betsy’s aunt (Charlotte Stevenson) and cousins (brothers of John Flaws Reid) in 1883.

James and his brothers George and William Fergus had spent some time in South Africa looking for farmland prior to returning to Orkney and subsequently emigrating to Canada.

Betsy and James had no family but adopted twin girls born on 26th March 1897 who married men from Tofield, Alberta:

• Mary St. Clair (Clara) Fergus who married Ernie Rogers and died in 1977

• Susanna (Susie) Margaretta Fergus who married Al Innes.

James was a musician who played the bagpipes, fiddle and concertina and a bit of a ventriloquist. He died in a snowstorm on 7th February 1900 at the age of forty one. He’d sold his oxen for a team of horses and set off from Yorkton in a blizzard. It is thought that the horses may have started off in the direction of their old home. James’s body was found a few days later.

Betsy died on 26th April 1907 at the age of forty three and the girls stayed with Betsy’s brother, Robert Sinclair, until 1910 when they moved to her sister, Barbara Sinclair, in Tofield, Alberta.