Niall mac Ailein Aonghuis Iain

Neil Dan MacInnis (Niall mac Ailein Aonghais Iain) was born on June 2, 1893, in Glenville, Inverness County. His great-grandfather, John MacInnis, immigrated from the Isle of Rum. Neil married Mary Sarah MacKay (1910-1973), and he spent most of his life in Glenville, except for one winter working in Massachusetts.

When Neil first started school, he spoke only Gaelic. Fortunately, his teacher was fluent in both English and Gaelic. She would have him wait under her desk while she attended to other students, bringing him out to teach him English whenever she had time. Over the years, Neil lost much of his Gaelic, and in the 1960s and 70s, he took the opportunity to relearn his mother tongue.

At the age of seventeen, Neil began working in the coal mines of Inverness. Tragically, when he was twenty, his father passed away, and Neil became the man of the house. In the fall of 1927, he traveled to the United States, where his sister Mary Sarah’s stepsons, Archie and Alex MacKinnon, helped him secure a job as an orderly at Taunton State Hospital, a mental asylum in Massachusetts. He returned home the following spring.

In 1931, Neil and Mary married. Mary lived to be 63, while Neil passed away just four months shy of his 100th birthday. In 1947, he suffered a severe heart attack that left him incapacitated. This led to the sale of much of their livestock, placing the burden of caring for two young children and their remaining animals on a pregnant Mary. Together, they had five children: Margaret, an infant daughter, Christene, Allan, and Glenn.

Neil was also a talented musician, playing the fiddle, chanter, and possibly the bagpipes. He died on January 31, 1993, at Inverness Consolidated Memorial Hospital in Inverness.