Thank you, Jim, for your welcome and for having set up the ?mail list for the surname McGregor. ?I do not expect to find anyone who connects to me via this list. ?But I am going to accept your invitation to tell the story of my own McGregor family. ?It is as romantic as the surname itself. ?My McGregor family would be found in California.

Robert McGregor was the captain of a boat (according to family lore he was captain….I have never found a Captain of a boat who fits his description) that carried Irish potato famine victims from Ireland to New York. ?During one voyage he fell in love with a young Irish woman named Mary Ann Hair. ?They were married in New York. ?Their first child was born in New York. ?This child was born c.1754. ?I don’t remember where I came up with this date. ?I have not put a source to the date.

Sometime after the birth of Robert, James took work on a ship going to California. ?And after he was settled, Mary Ann and baby Robert sailed from NY to the isthmus of Panama where they rode a mule from the shore on the Atlantic to the Pacific. ?They then took another ship from there to San Francisco. I think that I have been told that one could take a boat from San Fran to Sacramento at that time….and that Robert met them in Sacramento. ?

The couple raised their family in Cherokee, CA. ?It is now a rather well preserved spot in the California mountains. ?I was lucky enough to have visited more than 12 years ago. ?Robert’s tomb stone still can be read in the cemetery there. ?His stone says that he was born c. 1816 in Edinburg, Scotland. ?The family consisted of two other male children besides my grandmother’s grandfather, James. ?James had three brothers: ?William, Robert, and George. ? I have no information of any sort about brother Robert….except that he is listed as miner in a census. ?William was a miner and George very little about George either