Discover Hugh Miller

The McKenzie Johnston family with great sadness have to announce that Marian (Merrie) died suddenly, but peacefully, in hospital on Friday 23rd October, aged 87. She is sorely missed by Henry, her husband of 60 years, by her children Stephanie, Robert and Miranda, and by her grandchildren and great-grandchild. Her funeral will take place on Tuesday 10th November at 12noon at St Michael’s Church (Sutton Court), Elmwood Rd, London W4 3DZ.
There will be a Service of Thanksgiving for her life in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh on Wednesday 18th November at 12:30pm.
Her ashes will be interred beside her parents’ graves in Cromarty (Scotland) on Thursday 19th November

A TRIBUTE from The Friends of Hugh Miller

WE will hugely miss the zeal, energy and love which Marian McKenzie Johnston brought to the Hugh Miller Museum and Birthplace Cottage, home of her beloved great great grandfather and his wife Lydia.

Marian’s contributions to Hugh Miller’s legacy in general and the Museum in particular were beyond measure valuable. She and her husband Henry spent some 10 years of meticulous research over the lengths of Britain to compile a full authoritative Genealogical Chart. It ran from the 16th Century, and covered Hugh’s ancestors, the Feddes line, and Lydia’s, the Mackenzies of Kintail, right down to her own grand-children.

She was also actively involved in bringing Lydia the recognition she deserved, as a considerable author in her own right, as well as Hugh’s intellectual foil, devoted spouse and posthumous champion. She was an inspiration behind the first biography, Lydia (Tuckwell Press, 2003), by the celebrated Black Isle writer Elizabeth Sutherland.

She was proud to perform the opening ceremony for Miller House on 8th April 2004, and went on to write a personal Foreword to its new Guidebook underlining the family’s ongoing connections and deep commitment to the Museum.

She also donated the remnant tea-set believed to have belonged to Hugh’s sea-captain father, which had continued in use by descendants who had taken it across two continents and back.

Marian agreed to become a Patron (one of three) of The Friends of Hugh Miller, when it was founded in 2006 to build support for the Museum's continued development.

She freely acknowledged the great assistance and support in all these projects which she received from her husband Henry, and the Friends has already expressed its condolences to him and all the family.

11 November 2009
By GHE
Nutritionist

Born: 11 November, 1922, in London.

Died: 23 October, 2009, in London, aged 86.

MERRIE McKenzie Johnston was the eldest daughter of Brigadier A A Middleton and his wife, Winifred Salvesen, daughter of the leading Scottish shiADVERTISEMENTp owner and whaling pioneer Theodore Salvesen. During several years of her education her parents were serving in India, and with her sister, Bright, she spent much of the holidays at her grandfather's home in Inverleith or in his somewhat pretentious house in Easter Ross, Carbisdale Castle.

After Sherborne School for girls she started to read modern languages at Edinburgh University, but left to join the WAAF in 1941. She was commissioned in 1942 as flight officer radar supervisor. On release in 1946 she returned to the university, graduating in 1947.

She married in 1949 Henry McKenzie Johnston, a childhood friend, who had been recruited to the Foreign Office after war service with the Black Watch. Their postings included Paris, Germany, Uruguay, Mexico, Trinidad and, finally, Munich, where Henry was appointed consul-general to cover the 1972 Olympic Games.

Merrie found plenty to keep her busy during those diplomatic years, apart from bringing up two daughters and a son. She set up and ran her households with great competence. She also did much to support other diplomatic wives, some of them quite bewildered in their first encounters with strange foreign countries. Sometimes her urge to organise others went a little far, but this was always far outweighed by the appreciation of the new friends whom she guided.

Stationed in Mexico she found time to study the country's archaeology, and in particular to learn about and locate some of the famous "open churches".

When Henry returned from Munich in 1973 they settled permanently in London. Merrie developed her interest in healthy food, qualifying in home economics and nutrition. She became a nutrition consultant, based on a commercial health club in London, and many people sought her advice.

She remained a loyal Scot, and returned frequently to her ancestral home, Cromarty, where she produced skilful watercolours of the landscape. She supported the National Trust for Scotland when it set up the Hugh Miller Museum in Cromarty, commemorating the 19th-century author and geologist, her great-great-grandfather. Her research enabled her to commission Elizabeth Sutherland to write a biography of Hugh's wife, Lydia.

Merrie took great pleasure in arranging, in 1995, the publication of Confessions of Custard, the diary of an Aldershot mule, written for Merrie and her sister by Colonel V R Burhardt, a gunner friend of their father. The Confessions will still delight readers of any age.

Her spirit and wit will be greatly missed by her many friends and relations.

IT ANNOUNCES AN APPEAL FOR FUNDING WHICH WILL HELP TO ENSURE THE MUSEUM STAYS OPEN BEYOND THE END OF THIS SEASON.

22 DECEMBER 2007

First, the rear and side walls of red sandstone were repointed in matching lime mortar.

Then two plaques inscribed by one of Britain's leadng letter-cutters, Charles Smith of Great Ouseburn, Yorkshire were installed in the rear wall.

One bears the advice of Miller to "Make a right use of your eyes". The other says: Miller's Yard: Garden of Wonders, Opened Spring 2008.

Main contractor, Kishorn Specialist Contractors, have been on site since the beginning of December, and the foundations of both the stairway and the upper pavement are now in place.

(Please see The Friends page for a more detailed report).

_____________________________

VisitScotland graded the museum overall at over 85 per cent out of 100 – the minimum level needed to secure all five stars.

Two of the key elements in any attraction, the information and interpretation, and the welcome, attitude and efficiency of staff, both scored 100 per cent.

The appearance of the building, its interior décor, cleanliness and presentation, were all marked at 90 per cent.

Among its comments, VisitScotland noted the “excellent” welcome from staff “as soon as visitors walk through the front door.” Décor was “very fresh, clean and tidy.”

Orientation provided verbally by staff was “clear and easy to follow”. Interpretation boards were “clear, simple and easy to understand, and should also be easy for children to understand and absorb.”

The touch screens (inter-active media) worked well and were easy to use, and appealed to younger visitors, and the final room had a “great hands-on area” for handling rocks and fossils.

VisitScotland also commended the new audio tour of the birthplace Cottage next door, and said the reading room there had a “fantastic selection” of Hugh Miller’s books, and other information about his life and family. There was a “nice selection” of goods in the cottage’s new shop.

The most exciting development at Miller House in 2005 will be the production for the first time in many years at the Miller Cromarty properties of “Living History”. This will take the form of a short play entitled A Meeting with Monsieur Agassiz.

The plot is extremely simple: The famed Swiss-born naturalist, Louis Agassiz, accompanied by the amateur geologist Lady Eliza Maria Gordon Cumming of Altyre, call at Miller House. Hugh and Lydia welcome them. Monsieur Agassiz announces that he is to name one of Hugh’s fossil fish discoveries after him, thereby making his name immortal. They are joined at one point by Lydia’s class of children and they all celebrate Hugh’s new found fame.

This quartet in period costume will make quite a little spectacle. Miller, the lad o’ pairts, wears his trademark shepherd’s plaid. Lydia is a pretty, accomplished woman of 25. Agassiz arrives fashionably attired from Paris, where he had once fought a duel. Lady Eliza is a celebrated beauty, with passions for fossil-hunting, plant-breeding and salmon-fishing.

Performing the play in period costume will be Timemasters, a small, Inverness-based troupe of professional actors specialising in Living History, led by actor/manager Duncan Cook. They have already performed at other National Trust for Scotland properties in the Highlands, including Brodie Castle and Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre, where Duncan is employed as interpretation officer.

Timemasters (“Bringing the past to life for you”) will perform A Meeting with Monsieur Agassiz three times a day, once a week, throughout July and August. The dates are, Friday 15 July, Saturday 23 July, Sunday 31 July; Wednesday 3 August, Thursday 11 August, Friday 19 August, and Saturday 27 August. The times of performances on each of these days will be 12.30, 2.00 and 3.30.

In the cast are: Duncan Cook as M. Agassiz; Shaun Hastings as Hugh Miller; Julia Duncan as Lydia; Victoria Lochore as Lady Gordon Cumming. They are all members of Equity, the actors’ union. Julia is involved in education at Brodie Castle, and Shaun and Victoria are both studying drama at Inverness College.

There will be an opportunity during the play to chat with and quiz the cast, and to meet them before and after each performance. Bookings can me made through the property manager (and scriptwriter), Martin Gostwick, on 01381 600245, or by email to mgostwick@nts.org.uk. The cost of tickets is £2 adults, £1 for senior citizens and people aged under 18.

It will also feature specially commissioned written contributions by a number of experts in Miller’s fields of interest. Contributors include Miller’s great great grand-daughter, Marian McKenzie Johnston, with an illuminating foreword; Dr James Robertson, author of the outstanding novel Joseph Knight, and of Introductions to the Miller masterpieces My Schools and Schoolmasters and Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland.

Dr Lizanne Henderson, Glasgow University history lecturer, comments on Miller’s significance as a folklorist; Professor Donald Macleod, principal of the Free Church College, bears witness to Miller’s Christian faith; Dr Michael Taylor of NMS describes the fossil collection; and Dr Sara Stevenson, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, discusses the Hill/Adamson calotypes.

In the Steps of Hugh Miller will therefore be more than just a conventional guidebook. It is intended to serve as an authoritative new popular biography, as well as introducing the public to the two historic buildings in Cromarty associated with the man. It is planned to retail it at all NTS bookshops and at other appropriate outlets nationwide.

Richard Beeching, of Balook Road, Callignee, Victoria, Australia, is a descendant of one of the Free Church’s founders, Rev William Fraser, at the time minister of Kilchrennan in Argyllshire.

Mr Fraser’s signature is prominent on the document signed by over 470 clergymen on 23 May 1843, which was in effect the Church’s founding charter. A scroll more than two metres long, the document was known as the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission.

The “separation” is described in history as The Disruption, because nearly half the ministers concerned walked out of the General Assembly of the Established Church of Scotland, to form their own church, the Free Church of Scotland.

They did this in order to restore to their congregations the right to elect ministers of their choice. This right had been enjoyed in the Established Church from the Reformation in 1560, until it was handed over to local landowners under the Patronage Act of 1712.

William Fraser was born on Gigha Island in 1801. He married in Glasgow in 1834, and came to Australia with most of his family in 1856, 13 years after the Disruption. He died in Bulla, Victoria in 1872.

His descendant, Mr Beeching, visited the museum not long after it opened in 2004, and was so impressed that he immediately offered to donate the scroll. He said: “I can’t think of a more appropriate place to house the deed, than the home of the writer who played such a prominent part in the founding of the Free Church.”

Copies of the Deed of Demission are quite scarce. The Free Church of Scotland Library, and the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, both have several. There were other deeds, for probationers and elders of the church.

The unique value of the copy gifted to Miller House is that it is known to have belonged to one of the ministers involved.

08.04 Verity Walker - A real asset to the Black Isle & the Highlands.

Anthony & Jane Bryant - A vision realized, well done to you all.

Felicity Sampays, 11, Cromarty - Hooray, it's so good.

Rev Archie Black, Inverness - Congratulations. Good to see a child-friendly presentation.

Robt Crerar, silversmith, Cellardyke - A triumph of the will!

09.04 Theo Seller - Comprehensive, beautifully laid out, engrossing.

Susan Christie - Elegant bright and beautiful display. Thoughtful use of space and great to see specific spaces designed to house some of the special exhibits, ie the bust of Hugh, the tapestry, the carving etc. Congratulations.

10.04 Katherine Cameron, Inverness - Entrancing exciting display in the mode that Hugh would have approved of. Plenty room for individual space so that one can read leisurely. Thank you for devising a treat for the mind and imagination.

11.04 Antonia Louise Robin Hall, 10, Cromarty - Thanks for letting me be a volunteer.

Catriona Mallows, 10, Cromarty - Very interesting and I love the computers.

20.04 Helen & John Pernie - Very erudite - I now understand more about local "mores."

4.5.04 Neil & Leena McLean - Very informative and educational.

8.5.04 Muriel Murray, Castletown Heritage Society - A terrific exhibition long overdue.

Stans and Albert von Derhoeff, Netherlands - Marvellous exhib, nicely done, we enjoyed it.

24.05 Tony & Judy Haverstich, Pennyslvania - Window on to another time, especially when coupled with My Schools & Schoolmasters.

31.05 Alan & Shona Henstock, Avoch, Black Isle - Fantastic! Will definitely be back for more visits.

2.6.04 Marjorie Finlayson, Aberfeldy - good to be back and see improvements.

4/7.04 Liam Alexander, 10, Cromarty - Brilliant games on the computer

do Fraser Thomson, 9, Cromarty – Brilliant. I would be glad to work here.

23/7/04 Linda Wellens, Aberdeen.- Nice fossil collection. Lovely presentations of fossils.

25.07.04 Patrick Anderson – I was here in 1965 and have a black and white photo of me in my wee boy’s kilt outside the house. This is a great improvement to the old days of 1965.

30/08/04 R Richardson, Birmingham, England - Great to hold a white shark’s tooth.

06/09/04 Ralphy O’Connor, St John’s Coll, Cambridge –Really good to see how so much extra space has been used so effectively – brilliant displays. Thank you.

17.09.04 A Paterson, Cromarty – What a wonderful environment for youngsters to be impressed.

24.09.04. John Mayhew, NTS head of policy-making – Great to see the culmination of all the plans I head about back in 1997

13.10.04 Michael Hughes - You have done Hugh Miller a great service by restoring his name and work to public knowledge. The great spirit of the man, his integrity and work have been beautifully captured. Thank you.