Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

These are the earliest photos from Rhoda’s family album from way before 1940.

My mother, Rhoda Campbell Harkness, nee MacGillivray, was an avid collector of family photos and other family memorabilia stretching back to the early 1900s.

She married Alexander Whitecross Harkness, a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). The photo album thus includes some of his relations, such as his cousin, Sir Peter Heatly, the renowned Scottish international diver and swimmer.

My mother’s mother, Morag Campbell, was born on the Isle of Eigg in western Scotland, so the photo album also includes a photo of her, and her father, my great grandfather, Ruaridh Campbell, the Ferryman of Eigg.

There is also a Harkness wedding photo from the 1920s, showing my father as a young boy, and his mother and father.

His mother was Georgina Hume (Sir Peter Heatly’s auntie). Both my father and his father were electrical engineers (and my brother, Alistair); so one of the photos shows my grandfather, Alexander Whitecross Harkness, sitting on a gunboat with his wife, Georgina, anchored at Rosyth Naval dockyard where he worked during World War One.

Another photo shows the Whitecrosses in Wick or Orkney – the grandparents of my father – but the information gets a little hazy here.

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