Welcome To Our Website
This is the home page of Bill and Karen McKay. We are now retired, and now back in Kirkliston lying to the south of the Queensferry Crossing over the river Forth, between Linlithgow and Edinburgh.
We’re just 15 minutes from Edinburgh Airport by car – go to the contact page for more location detail if interested.
This is a personal family website which, we hope, will provide some family background/history for anyone interested. We ourselves did not have children, but have an ongoing interest in identifying branches of family history from anyone who shares that interest. All contributions and queries most welcome.
The McKay and Lynch families have at least one thing in common – as a rule they don’t contact each other often or at all these days by any means other than social media which, of course, might as well be psychic media for those who choose to subscribe wisely or not at all. This website however welcomes all visitors without restriction or subscription.
All families are prone to ‘gilding the lily’ or skewed/biased memories (surreptitiously or innocently of course), however family ties and information reflected on this website aims to present the information honestly and as accurately as possible, or to state clearly where there could be uncertainty or where information is missing.
This website draws from preparatory work done earlier by various family members (primarily on the McKays side currently) and in particular with gratitude to Isobel Calder (Mann – originally from Keith, daughter of Mary Mann (McKay), now in Helensburgh), who compiled a family history booklet from the various sources within the family. The booklet has the title “The McKays of Montgrew” and will be of interest to branches of the family with roots in Montgrew farm near Keith, Banffshire. The booklet is downloadable from the Montgrew Page on this website covering John and Ida McKay’s family.
Bill’s maternal family line (Coull) also stems from the rural north east of Scotland and will be included on this website as much as is available currently.
Karen is a Lynch from the east end of Glasgow, born in Melbourne Street close to the Meat Market off Duke Street, where Karen’s father was a one-time employee. The Meat Market no longer exists. We are pursuing details of missing Lynch forebear connections who ‘immigrated’ from Ireland. Karen’s paternal great great grandparents (both of them) settled in Glasgow from Ireland in the 1850-1860’s (the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom until 1922 so strictly speaking the term immigrant is just used to emphasise significant change of location), and her maternal family line (Gordon) comes from the North of Scotland.
The information contained herein will always be subject to scrutiny and correction. We welcome new and additional information. Bill’s time spent occasionally at Register House in Edinburgh has so far helped to corroborate some family details, and can be a fascinating pastime. If you would like him to pursue any particular line of enquiry, please get in touch via the contact page on this website.
This iteration of the website is new as of 2018/19 and very much an ongoing work in progress, but we hope to have it more fully up and running soon incorporating information previously available in an earlier website incarnation. Needless to say, as generations of family continue to evolve and expand it can never be seen as a work completed.
No families are without blemish, self very much included, but there are amongst us fine upstanding people we can be proud of, and we should continue to have hope for future generations. We love them all.
Bill McKay, update January 2019
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