Torquil MacLean

Island story

Torquil MacLean is commemorated at R4-007 with Isabella/Bell MacLean and Daniel T. MacLean. Ruth Munro’s retrospective list of Pictou Island families names Torquil as a fisherman, Bell as his wife, and Katie, Bell, John, Willard, Charlotte, Dan and Howard as their family. That list describes a broad family period rather than a single 1901 census household. Other family records connect Torquil and Bell to Charlotte Margaret MacLean, later wife of East Lighthouse keeper Archie MacDonald. Sidney Willard Hooper’s obituary recalls fishing with grandfather Torquil. Annabell’s 1916 marriage, delayed birth application and 1972 death registration independently name Torquil as her father; the relationship no longer rests on the obituary alone. Charlotte Margaret’s delayed birth application also names Torquil and Isabell as her parents. The children’s later applications report differing birthplaces for Torquil, including Pictou Island and Charlottetown, PEI; they do not settle his own birthplace. Certified census-search extracts accompanying the children’s delayed registrations identify Turkle/Bella in 1901 and Torquil/Isabella in 1911. These are later transcriptions of those households, not newly inspected census ink. Torquil does not appear by that name in the Island’s 1921 or 1931 census records. Daniel Theodore McLean’s 1929 death registration independently names Torquil as his father. John Hector’s original marriage to Margaret Ann McCallum on 20 April 1922 names Torquil McLean and Isabelle McLean as his parents, supplying an independent connection to the John H. and Margaret Ann household later recorded in the 1931 Island census. The marriage describes John Hector as an Island-born farmer; his son Gerald’s contemporary birth later that year describes him as a fisherman. These occupations refer to John Hector, not to his parents.