Introduction / Families / Cooper / Barbara Cooper and William Hewison / Margaret Hewison and William Gray

Jane Gray and John Dearness Drever

Jane Gray (b. 4th November 1850) was the sixth child of William Gray and Margaret Hewison. She was born and brought up with the family at North Hammar.

She married John Dearness Drever (b. 30th April 1851) on 16th January 1874. He was youngest son of Thomas Drever and Jean Bain from Roadside. They stayed at Roadside before moving to Millhouse in Rapness, close to Moa where his father’s family came from.

In the 1881 census, his occupation is given as miller and they worked nine acres of ground.

Robert Gray, Jane’s brother, was also a miller at a Millhouse in 1881 but this was elsewhere in Westray.

Jane Gray and John Drever had three children:

• Margaret Drever b. 6th January 1875 at Roadside who married William Drever

• Thomas Drever b. 29th November 1878

• Isabella Jane Drever b. 4th December 1885 at Millhouse. Isabella died at Helzie on 28th June 1962 at the age of seventy six.

They had moved to Helzie in Rapness by the time of the 1901 census where the family included their two daughters and Jane’s mother, Margaret Hewison who was now widowed. John’s occupation is now given as farmer. Their daughter Margaret, then twenty six, was a dressmaker and Isabella Drever helped on the farm.

Jane Gray died on 21st March 1912 at Helzie at the age of sixty one. John Drever was to live almost another twenty years and died there on 2nd January 1932. He was eighty.