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JOHN TAYLOR's native Orkney was lately experiencing additional pairings and interrings, an expanded number of matches and dispatches, more of the married and of the buried, some increase with those wed and with those dead. Hectorine Mancriell's Friday wedding ceremony to a Kirkwall merchant, James Marnack, at the Orphir Church Manse on January 17, 1862, was probably conducted by the resident Reverend Heddleston. Just like Hectorine, Margaret Norn was also from nearby Houton, immediately west of Orphir town, and she had already wed Robert Garriock from way up on the Isle of Sanday. And John Kitchson from the Isle of Sanday had taken Jane Sinclair of Gouides as his wife. Mary Firth of Kirkwall had married John Walls who lived at Grenega, just outside Kirkwall on the Orphir road. JOHN's cousin Cathrine Taylor was named after their grandmother, same as their Aunt Cathrine; and the younger woman had lived down on South Ronaldsay Isle at the Bow of Earston before she married a fellow Orcadian. Her new husband was John Garriock, whose father, Ness, lived in the community of Irland, just north of Orphir town and about halfway up the road on the trek over to Stromness. Peter Flett, having lost his previous spouse and their two sons to fatal illnesses four years earlier, went to a prayer meeting at Cot one evening and returned in his usual health. About 11:00 the same night, he told his recently-acquired bride that he feared his own mortal end was near; and Peter died at 8:00 the following morning. The same fate struck a man at Inen-the-Brakes; a supposedly healthy Malcomb Davy went to bed one winter evening, and before daybreak the sad conclusive facts revealed he would never rise again. A traumatized John Budge was rescued in an insensible state from the dangerous Scapa Flow's chilly waters at Hame of Houton, but his pair of companions were not as fortunate in the boating accident. The trio from Ting-of-Tongas were returning from selling fish at Stromness, and had accomplished the first five miles of their homeward journey through Clestrain Sound before John's brother-in-law, James Norn, tumbled partway out of the watercraft. When James' 81-year-old father, Robert, attempted to drag the younger Orcadian back in, the vessel tipped and capsized. Both father and son drowned, while John just barely managed to survive the catastrophe there in the waters just to the west of the little village of Orphir. |
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