Old Photograph Roybridge Scotland

Old photograph of the railway station is on the West Highland Line at Roybridge located three miles East of Spean Bridge, Scotland. Both of the parents of the only recognized saint in Australia, Mary MacKillop, lived in Roybridge, prior to emigrating to Australia. MacKillop visited Roybridge in the 1870s where the local Catholic church, St Margaret's, now has a shrine to her. Mary Helen MacKillop was born on 15 January 1842 in what is now the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria, at the time part of an area called Newtown in the then British colony of New South Wales, to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald. Although she continued to be known as " Mary ", when she was baptised six weeks later she received the names Maria Ellen. MacKillop's father, Alexander MacKillop, was born in Perthshire, and had been educated at the Scots College in Rome and at Blairs College in Kincardineshire, for the Catholic priesthood but at the age of 29 left, just before he was due to be ordained. He migrated to Australia and arrived in Sydney in 1838. MacKillop's mother, Flora MacDonald, born in Fort William, in the Highlands, she had left Scotland and arrived in Melbourne in 1840. Her father and mother married in Melbourne on 14 July 1840. MacKillop was the eldest of their eight children. Her younger siblings were Margaret, born 1843, died 1872, John born 1845, died 1867, Annie born 1848, died 1929, Alexandrina, born 1850, died 1882, Donald born 1853, died 1925), Alick, who died at 11 months old, and Peter born 1857, died 1878. Donald became a Jesuit priest and worked among the Aborigines in the Northern Territory. Lexie also became a Josephite.



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