99935

Generation: D

John Mackenzie

In War I in Canadian Argylls. USA.

Jessie Petterson, from Larchmont, U.S.A. wrote:

"John Mackenzie, Kate's uncle visited us every year at Larchmont. He told me he got his first job through our Uncle John (Ben Reay) at Culrain Castle. He then went to Glasgow, and later to Canada. He was wounded in the first war. He came to U.S.A. in the early twenties, and visited us regularly from then on. He was great at telling us tales about the Highlands. He liked a good dram. He was very tight with money. After leaving the Grace Family (U.S.A. Shippers) he went with the Whitehouse Family. Mrs. Whitehouse was a sister of Ambassador Aldridge to the Court of St. James, during, I believe, the 1940s. We had great times together, but he never paid for any of it with his money. He contracted a sort of paralysis, and went to live with a niece in Minneapolis, makeing out his will and leaving everything to her. He stayed there only three months. When I returned from a visit to Scotland in 1956 I asked him to remember Kate and her mother who was then alive, but he did not. He died in January 1957. The niece received his estate, and those who were good to him in his last few months received nothing."