The Garden of Grace

Thomas Urquhart MacRae, known to all his family and friends as ‘Tommy’, was born at Balachuirn on the Isle of Raasay, on the 8th of December 1892. His father was Donald MacRae and his mother Mary Nicolson from Braes, near Portree, on the Isle of Skye. Thomas’s great-grandfather had lived in Suisinish, Strath, on the Isle of Skye and, at the time of the well-documented clearance of that settlement, he, in common with the rest of the community, along with his wife and family, were evicted. Although most of his siblings emigrated to Australia – Tommy’s grandfather Duncan and his then-pregnant wife settled in Raasay.

This book follows the life of Thomas MacRae from his childhood and early adult life experiences in Raasay and his subsequent miraculous escapes on the battlefields of WW1. We then follow Tommy during his working and married life in Glasgow where he became a highly respected horticulturalist, much loved father and grandfather and man of outstanding spiritual stature. Thomas was a highly regarded member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland for some  60 years, 47 of which he served as an Elder.