Introduction / Families / Groat / Robert Groat and Janet Guthrie / John Groat and Margaret Bain / Elizabeth Groat and Robert Drever

Margaret Drever and William Drever

Margaret Drever (b. 29th November 1863) was the oldest of the three children of Robert Drever and Elizabeth Groat of Roadside in Westray. She married William Drever (b. 5th May 1857), a son of James Drever and Isabella Bews of Mount Pleasant (the Hill) in Westray.

William was variously a boatman, fisherman and crofter. He and Margaret stayed at Roadside until some time between 1896 and 1899 when they moved to Mount Pleasant.

They had a family of nine children:

• Elizabeth Drever b. 12th March 1887 who married James Adamson Duncan in 1927 in Kirkcaldy, Fife. They had no family. She died on 2nd September 1962 at St Clair, Kirkwall.

• Isabella Drever b. 7th January 1889 who married a Mr Harvey and went to Canada where they had family

• James William Drever b. 25th August 1891 and died at Mount Pleasant on 16th April 1957.

• Thomima Drever b. 29th January 1894 who married James Barclay Strachan in 1919 at Rubislaw, Aberdeen. They lived in Methil where they had family.

• Robert Drever b. 10th August 1896 who married Mary Jane Foubister in 1924 in Kirkwall. They had a son.

• George Bews Drever b. 5th November 1899. He married Maggie Robina Muir in 1923 in St Andrews, Orkney. He was a lorry driver and died in Kirkwall on 28th January 1950, aged fifty.

• John Drever b. 29th January 1902 who married Winifred Maude Harvey from Birsay on 17th November 1926. This was in Vancouver, Canada. He died in New Westminster, British Columbia on 12th February 1983, aged eight one.

• Thomas Alfred Drever b. 17th May 1906 who married Helen Sinclair Flett in Harray in 1928. They had a family in Kirkwall where he worked in the Clerk of Works Dept.

• Jessie Robertson Drever b. 7th May 1909 who married Peter Stevenson in Stronsay and had two children

Margaret Drever died at Mount Pleasant on 24th October 1935 at the age of seventy two. William died there on 10th February 1940, aged eighty three.