- Alex McKenzie
- Personal
-
Autobiographical Anecdotes
>
- Breakfast - 1940s & 50s
- Those Were the Days - 1950s
- Building Underwater Gear, 1950's
- Can't Let Go - 1953
- The Turning Point, 1957
- Mexico, October 1965
- Bilbo Baggins 1971
- A brush with death? 1977
- What I didn't do, 1979
- Brazil 1996
- Family Dinner Time
- Forbidden Fruit
- Solo Sailing Incident, ca 2000
- Joel Nichols - 2013
- Manatees, January 2014
- Motorcycle Incident, June 2014
- Time is a Thief, 2015
- Never Too Old to Learn, 2015
- Two Weeks in Rockport MA 2015
- A Fork in the Road - 2016
- The Winos
- Smooth Stones
- Change
- No One Would Have Guessed ... - 2017
- What I Discovered ...
- At This Time of Year ... 2017
-
AMC Trail Crew
>
-
The Trail Crew in Appalachia
>
- With the Trail Gang
- Recovery of the Old Bridle Path on Mt. Lafayette
- The Trail Spree of 1929
- Webster Cliff Trail 1912-1914
- Trail Bridges
- The Story of the Mahoosuc
- 1939 trail report
- June 1940 trail report
- Dec 1940 trail report
- 1941 trail plan
- A Vacation With Pay
- 25 Years of the AMC Trail Crew
- Five Thousand Trail Signs
- The AMC Trail System
- The Pace of the Grub-Hoe
- 1953 trails report
- 1954 trails report
- trail report - call for volunteers
- Trail Erosion
- Ethan Pond Shelter
- An Early AMC Trail Crew
- Great Gulf Shelter
- The AMC Trail Crew 1919-1964
- The Evolution of a Trailman
- Trail Crew Thoughts
- Trail Design. Construction & Maintenance
- Of Mules, Mice, and Madison
- The Green Plate Special
- 1980-81 trails report
- Trail Blazers
- White Mountain Trail Crew - 75 Years
- 1960 Trail Crew Resignation
-
The Trail Crew in Appalachia
>
- 2017 Summer Trip
-
Autobiographical Anecdotes
>
- Professional
- INWG Documents
- Family
-
Alexander A. McKenzie II
>
- Mount Washington >
-
LORAN
>
- Crusing the Labrador
- Acquisition of Canadian sites for Long-Range-Navigation Stations
- Sites #1 and #2: Loran Memo #108
- LRN Site No. 3
- Report of Construction at L.R.N. Site #3, 8/10-11/5 1942
- LRN Site No. 4 (Bonavista Point, Newfoundland)
- Supplies for Site 4
- Drawings Left at Site #4 by A.A. McKenzie
- Site 4 Letter of March 24, 1943
- LRN Site No. 5
- LRN Site No. 8
- LRN Site No. 9
- Test Plan - Eastern US
- LORAN - Part 1
- LORAN - Part 2
- LORAN - Part 3
- End of LORAN
- Genealogy >
-
Alexander A. McKenzie II
>
- Photos
-
Europe 2015 -first half
>
- Barcelona April 2015
- Pont du Gard France - April 24, 2015
- Nimes France - April 27, 2015
- Aix-en Provence - April 28, 2015
- Cote d'Azur - April 29, 2015
- Vence to Gourdon - April 30, 2015
- Eze France - May 1, 2015
- Milano - May 3, 2015
- Parco Burchina - May 6, 2015
- Ivrea & Aosta Valley - May 7, 2015
- Torino - May 9, 2015
- Europe 2015 - second half >
- Indianapolis Art Museum - July 2015
- Ringling Estate
- Oak Park 2017
- Frank Lloyd Wright in Florida
-
Europe 2015 -first half
>
- Edit Website
Breakfast
When I was a small boy, breakfast was oatmeal. Not the least of the reasons for this was the important role oatmeal had played in my father's family history.
My great great grandfather, Colin Mackenzie, was born about 1775, near Aberdeen, Scotland. We don't know how he learned his profession, but by the time he was a young man he was established as the miller at Mill of Inver in northeast Scotland, a few miles from the eventual site of Queen Victoria's Balmoral Castle. It is likely that oats and grain milled by Colin found their way to the Royal table.
Jean Anderson was the sister of the 10th and 11th Lairds of Candacraig, an estate of 13,500 acres with the River Don flowing through the property near Strathdon, a dozen miles northeast of Balmoral. Jean married a cousin, Alexander Anderson, and they had 11 children. One, named Alexander after his father, was born in 1805. Jean and her family had no share in the estate. With their economic prospects dim in Scotland, Alexander's parents and six of their children emigrated to Canada in 1833. Alexander, age 28, was part of the group of emigrees. They settled in western Quebec, close to the St. Lawrence River which formed the border with the state of New York.
Colin Mackenzie had four sons and they learned the miller's trade from their father. In 1845 his second son John had the opportunity to take over the operation of a mill in Tomintoul, 12 miles west of Strathdon and 16 miles north of Balmoral. With this bright prospect of employment, John married, moved to Tomintoul, and began raising a family.
In 1847 the 11th Laird of Candacraig died. A series of misfortunes in his family resulted in Alexander becoming his heir. This fantastic stroke of luck induced Alexander to return to Scotland and take over the Candacraig estate. However, after a few years he found that he did not enjoy life as a Scottish Laird, and decided to return to Canada. The story goes that his one dissatisfaction with life in Canada had been the inability of the French-Canadian millers to properly prepare oats for Scottish porridge, and with his new wealth he determined to recruit a Scottish miller to come to Canada and operate a mill for him. The recruit he found was John McKenzie!
In 1856 John, his pregnant wife, and four children, sailed for Canada with the support of Alexander. After only a few days at sea John's wife gave birth to a son, who they named James after the ship's captain. About a month later the ship landed at Quebec City, and the family traveled from there to Athelstan Canada where Alexander Anderson had built a mill near his home.
After John had worked four years in Alexander's mill, he and Alexander jointly purchased another mill in Burke, NY, a few miles away, and John moved his family to Burke. Two years later, John was able to buy out Alexander's share of the mill. In gratitude for all that Alexander had done to help him, John named his first son born in Burke (my great uncle) Alexander Anderson McKenzie. The next boy born in Burke was my grandfather, Charles, and he named his son after uncle Alexander. That is the origin of my name.
With that background, is it any wonder that my breakfast was always oatmeal?
Written as an assignment for the writers' group at The Fountains in May 2016. The assignment was to write about mealtime.