William and Margaret McKay’s journey in genealogy began in the summer of 1964 when, unable to take a conventional holiday, they began to trace William’s family who for several generations had lived on the shores of the Firth of Forth close to Edinburgh. Little was known then of their forebears but Scotland’s people, the Sutherland Estate papers and the clan Seanachaidh took them back, first to John McKay McKinlay, William McKay’s great, great grandfather, a fisherman/crofter in Lotts, Skerray on the coast of the Far North of Scotland, and then to the 1700’s and the little township of Strathskerray where they found William’s 4 x great grandfather, also a John McKay McKinlay. It is a story that touches on illicit whisky distilling, tussles with the factor, eviction, and poverty of a depth that is hard to imagine today.