Murray (Crieff & Demerara)

John Murray (1780-1849) was the son of Andrew Murray MD, a surgeon in Crieff, and Margaret Caw. By 1817 he was joint owner, with John Packwood Jennings, of plantation Vriesland and 257 enslaved people. Murray was married to Jenning's sister, Anne, and when Jennings died he asked that the Murrays take care of his two mixed-race children, John and Eliza. Their mother was 'the girl Betsey'.

The Murrays had one child, a daughter Eliza, who was born in 1819. Jennings died in 1823 and Vriesland had been sold by 1826, ending John Murray's connection to Demerara. However, the family presumably benefitted from this involvement. Their daughter Eliza married Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop, who added the Murray to his name at their marriage. He was a prominent Church lawyer, acting for the Free Church of Scotland after 1843, a a Liberal politician.

John and Eliza Jennings

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John Jennings (1819-?) and Eliza Jennings (1821-71) both came to Scotland under the care of the Murrays. In 1837, at the age of 16, Eliza married 45-year-old William Grant, a widowed handloom weaver in the parish of Rhu, Dunbartonshire. In 1853 the emigrated to New South Wales, with their children and Eliza's step children. John Jennings had emigrated earlier and married in Melbourbe in 1841 

My thanks to Kathy Burns for information which has made this entry possible.