“I was born on the 29th day of July, 1852, in a two roomed cottage built by my father in the Village of Rackwick, in the Parish of Hoy. My father lived there all his life and his father before him, in the same house (Midhous to name) and had a small farm of ten acre of ground.

Rackwick is a small Village with only thirty children going to school. I worked on the farm with my father until I was sixteen years of age. I then went to the Herin fishing and at end of the second fishing I joined a Sloop going to the Baltic with a cargo of herring for Sateen in Germany and back to Leith with a cargo of grain and I stayed home all winter and the following year I sailed with Captain John Ritch, my half brother and in 1871 I made a voyage in the Hudson Bay Company’s ship Ladie Head going to moose factory in Hudson’s Bay and back to London, England, The following year I came to Moose factory to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company (1872)”