Memorial to Kenneth, Elizabeth & Ella Macdonald

This photograph shows the memorial to Kenneth, Elizabeth & Ella Macdonald in Tomnahurich Cemetery, Inverness. Kenneth Macdonald was a lawyer and town clerk of Inverness for 40 years. He was also a volunteer army officer and a champion of the crofters' cause.<br /> <br /> Born in Inverness in January 1850, he attended Inverness Royal Academy before being apprenticed to a local solicitor, James Anderson. He left, aged 18, to study law at Glasgow University, where he distinguished himself by winning first prize in Scots Law and a special prize in mercantile and bankruptcy law. Besides attending law classes, he served for three years in the office of Glasgow solicitor William Lucas, whose son William later married Kenneth's only daughter Helen, known as Ella.<br /> <br /> Kenneth returned to Inverness as a fully-qualified solicitor at age 21 and set up in practice on his own. He and his wife, Elizabeth Mackenzie, lived at first in High Street then at the mansion 'Beech Lawn', on Culduthel Road.<br /> <br /> He championed several crofting communities facing eviction or extortion, including those involved in 1882 in the famous Braes dispute in Skye, when police and crofters clashed over grazings' rights. In addition he supported East Sutherland crofters from Skibo before the new Crofters' Commission and those from Airdens, Bonar Bridge, in the sheriff court.<br /> <br /> Kenneth served for many years in the Royal Artillery Volunteers, reaching the rank of colonel, and also as a member of Inverness School Board, helping to organise continuation and technical classes. He was also a member of the Gaelic Society of Inverness and his considerable research into and writings on the burgh's history were recognised with a Fellowship of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland.<br /> <br /> Elected to the town council in 1878, he soon became a bailie, but resigned three years later when appointed town clerk, a post he held with distinction until shortly before his death in 1921.