MacRae, Kenneth

Milestones:                                       

Birth:                        1865 Arcan, Ross-shire                                                   

Marriage:June 23  1898 to Wilhelmina Clark

Death:       June 19, 1930 Caspar

Short Life summary

Kenneth MacRae was one of the eight children of John and Grace MacRae who were crofters on the Fairburn Estate on the banks of the River Conon. 

In 1888, aged 23 years he left home to cross the Atlantic for a new life in the USA. By 1890 he had found employment as a shepherd on the open ranges of central Wyoming. In 1893 Kenneth was joined by his older brother Duncan. The two of them set themselves up as sheep-farmers near the settlement of Medicine Bow. 

By 1895-96 Kenneth , now on his own again, was running his flock near the little town of Casper which lay to the north of Medicine Bow. In nearby Bessemer the Clark family, from Aberdeen had settled. Among the younger Clarks was Wilhelmina, who was in her early twenties when Kenneth fell for her. On 23rd June 1898, Kenneth and Wilhelmina were married.

But theirs had been the most fraught of engagements.  Kenneth stood trial accused of murdering a hired hand, Robert Gordon, not once, not twice, but three times, with verdicts of : mistrial, guilty, then ( on the judge’s refusing that verdict as perverse ) not guilty.  [200]

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Obituary

One of the eight children of John and Grace MacRae, crofters at Arcan, Kenneth was  born the Fairburn Estate, beside the River Conon in Ross hire. Kenneth’s early life was shaped by the rhythms of the croft and the close ties of a rural community. Like many young Scots of his generation, he grew up at a time when opportunity at home was limited, and stories of the wider world carried a powerful pull.

In 1888, at the age of twenty-three, Kenneth left Scotland for the United States. The journey took him from the crofting lands of Ross-shire across the Atlantic and onward by rail into the newly created state of Wyoming, where the high plains met the Rockies and where a young man used to livestock and  hard work might prosper. By 1890 he was employed as a shepherd on the open ranges of central Wyoming.

For a Highlander familiar with animals, distance, and rough weather, the sheep ranges offered both work and a possible prosperous future. Shepherding in Wyoming meant riding horseback, moving flocks across vast spaces, living from sheep-wagons, and contending with severe winters, rattlesnakes, wolves, ticks, insects, and the insecurity of frontier life.

In 1893 Kenneth was joined by his elder brother Duncan, and for a time the two men worked together near Medicine Bow. Duncan later returned to Scotland, where he rejoined his wife and took up crofting at Aigas on the Beauly River. His brief assistance in Wyoming seems to have helped Kenneth move from employee to independent owner. By 1896 Kenneth was running his own flock near Casper, north of Medicine Bow, on the range west of town and up the Poison Spider River.

Casper was then a small settlement on the North Platte River. Nearby lay Bessemer and the Goose Egg Ranch, where another Scottish family had established themselves. William Clark, originally from Aberdeen, managed the ranch, operated a hotel and restaurant, and ran a stage-coach service between Bessemer and Casper. Among his children was Wilhelmina Clark, born in Aberdeen in 1872 or 1873 and brought to America as an infant.

Kenneth and Wilhelmina met in the course of daily life in the Casper and Bessemer area.  In a small  community their shared Scottish roots and their families’ experience of migration  drew them together. They became engaged. A formal portrait of Wilhelmina was sent back to Scotland so that Kenneth’s family might see the woman he intended to marry. By 1897 Kenneth was a man on the rise: a young immigrant with his own sheep business and a future bride from a respected local family.

That promise was interrupted by the gravest difficulty of his life. On 30 May 1897, at Fales Creek on the Poison Spider River, a hired shepherd named Robert Gordon was shot. Kenneth brought Gordon’s body wrapped in a blanket and carried on horseback, into town. He told the sheriff that the death had been accidental: Gordon, entering the sheep-wagon in the dark, had dislodged a pistol that fired, killing him. The sheriff was doubtful, especially after another hired hand, Peter Keith, claimed to have heard an argument followed by a shot. Kenneth was arrested and charged with murder.

The case divided opinion in Casper. Feelings ran high. The first trial, in January 1898, ended with a hung jury: eight jurors favoured acquittal and four supported a verdict of second-degree murder. Kenneth was released on bail pending a second trial.   A month later, still in Caspar, a new jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, a verdict that carried the death penalty. The presiding judge, however, refused to pass sentence, ruling that the evidence did not support such a finding, and allowed the possibility of a further trial. The decision provoked public controversy and accusations against the judge.

The legal authorities in Cheyenne intervened, and a third trial was arranged in neighbouring Carbon County, where a more neutral jury could be found. After lengthy proceedings, Kenneth was acquitted on 2 June 1898 and discharged without prejudice. Three weeks later, on 23 June 1898, he married Wilhelmina Clark. Their marriage, coming so soon after the ordeal of the trials, suggests a steadfast attachment that had endured months of fear, uncertainty, and public scrutiny.

After their marriage, Kenneth and Wilhelmina established themselves on a ranch northwest of Casper, close to the old Chisholm Trail, along which early cattle drives had once entered Wyoming from Texas. There they built a happy home and started a family. But sadly, two of their children died young, in tragic circumstances. Yet the family endured, rooted in the land Kenneth had chosen and in the work by which he had made his place in America.

His final illness came from the same environment that had sustained his work. Rocky Mountain spotted fever was a cruel and painful disease, and after months of discomfort Kenneth was taken to hospital in Casper. He died there on 9 June 1913.

Wilhelmina survived Kenneth by many years. In later life she moved to Oregon to be near a daughter and son-in-law. She lived to the age of eighty-five. When she died in 1958, her remains were returned to Casper so that she could be buried beside Kenneth in the aptly named Highland Cemetery. [875 ]

 Postscript

The research  from which this Profile  is derived was carried out by Forbes Munro for the Dingwall Museum