Tartan
of the
Month:
MacKenzie
Tartan
of the
Month:
MacKenzie
Local personality Helen Mann enthralled over thirty members and guests at the June 23 meeting with a talk on her unique family background.
A young Seaforth Highlanders lance-corporal from the poor Gorbals district of Glasgow serving during World War II was sent to Shanghai where he met a young White Russian émigré. They married and Helen, their only child, was born back in the UK just after the war ended.
The story really began when Helen's maternal grandmother arrived in England from Manchuria when Helen was four years old. Her grandmother was then 69 years old and spoke Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French and German, but no English. She effectively raised Helen while the family moved around the world on military service. Helen learned Russian of necessity at this early age, and her childhood memories of strange tales from strange lands eventually came back to interest Helen. Her grandmother remained with the family for the rest of her life and is buried on the Clyde Coast of Scotland.
When Helen retired after 34 years at the British Consulate in Houston and an M.B.E., she decided to devote two years to tracking down her grandmother's family. The Society was honored to hear this first presentation of her research, and what a tale it was. Starting from a privileged life in early-twentieth-century Russia, the family went through the disruption of WWI, flight to the Manchuria region of China to escape from the Bolshevik revolutionaries, the Chinese Revolution, the invasion by Japan and the turmoil of WWII.
Helen illustrated her talk with artifacts and photographs that were the prized possessions of her relatives all through this period. Everyone present was totally absorbed by the presentation and there were lots of questions.
Thanks so much Helen. Good luck with the ongoing project and hopefully with your book based on it.
We are delighted to honor Helen and her family by making Mackenzie, the tartan of the Seaforth Highlanders, Tartan of the Month for July.
The Society takes a summer vacation during July and August. We'll be back at St Thomas Episcopal School in September with a presentation entitled "Building the Flag". More details soon.
June 24, 2008
