Descendants of Norman and Janet (Bethune) URQUHART
Introduction
This web-page contains family historical events for many of the known descendants of Norman Urquhart and his wife, the former Janet Bethune. This couple along with many others sailed from the Scottish Highlands to Colonial North Carolina arriving some undetermined date prior to 1774.
The exact date and the ship's name on which they sailed has not been determined, although some researchers claim to have found this information but no adequate documentation has been located on which to base this claim.
This web-page is a "work in progress" web-site and may be updated as additional or corrected information is received. It is a joint effort with contributions having been made by many individuals who have spent many hours of research and have graciously submitted the results of that research effort to the web-page author.
About Me
My connection to this family comes through my maternal grandmother who had the pages from her parents' family Bible. Countless times she would get those pages out and we would discuss who these people were and how they were related to her. I don't believe she actually knew her grand-parents except for the names in those pages, mainly because her parents had left Alabama shortly after the Civil War to settle in Bossier Parish, Louisiana. That sparked a desire within me to find out who those people were, where they lived and died, and any other pertinent information I could locate. My first real break came in the form of a business sign in San Antonio, Texas in the 1980 time period.
One day my wife and I were driving around on the east side of San Antonio and I spotted a sign that read "Lockey Income Tax Service". I told my wife that my grandmother's maiden name was Lockey and I was going to find out who that business belonged to.
A few days later I made that phone call and found out that we were cousins! I knew that my great-grandmother was Mary Frances Mae Urquhart and had married George Washington Lockey in Alabama, somewhere near Montgomery. I later decided to locate any other family members with the Urquhart surname by mailing a letter to "every" Urquhart name in the Montgomery, Alabama telephone book. It was from that mailing that I made my first Urquhart contact! As the old saying goes "the rest is history".
In 1995, while in the Air Force Reserves, I was privileged to get a trip to Scotland and on the way over I told the aircraft commander about the family coming from the Highlands. When we landed at Glasgow Airport, he rented a van and we went of an excursion to the Loch Ness area, stopping along the way (of course) to sample some of the Scottish hospitality better known as the "pubs". Having walked over the same soil that my great-great-great-great-grandparents had walked on was an excitement that cannot be described.