Donald Lamont with his children
Photograph of Donald Lamont (1829-1909) with his children.
Courtesy of Mr Gene Lamont
Sarah MacDonald was nine years old when she and her widowed mother left Salum to emigrate to Canada in the late 1840s. Her mother died during the voyage but she was fostered by a family of MacKinnons and settled with them in Kincardine Township in Ontario.
She married a native of Tiree, Donald Lamont, the son of Peter Lamont and Ann MacLean, crofters with a large family who emigrated from Cornaigbeg in 1851. Sarah, with her love of books and learning and ability to read and write in Gaelic and English, became a school teacher.
The couple had nine children although Sarah became paralysed from the waist down after her sixth pregnancy. Confined to her home, she concentrated on the education of her children. In later years an acquaintance of the family observed ‘that all a Lamont needs to make him or her happy is a book.’
Black and white photograph of Donald Lamont and his children in the 1870s.
Donald Lamont (1829-1909), husband of Sarah MacDonald, with their children in the 1870s.