Evelyn M. E. Murray (1937 - 2025)
Evelyn Murray, co-founder and longtime member of the Strathspey and Reel Society of NH (now the NH Scottish Music Club), secretary of the club from 2015 to 2019, and supporter of all things Scottish, died on January 11, 2025, in Surrey, England. She had relocated from the Boston area to the U.K. in October 2019.
Evelyn was born in Nairobi, where her father, a Murray of Atholl, was a radio engineer in the diplomatic service. Her family belonged
to Clan Murray, and Evelyn’s father and later Evelyn herself were active in Clan affairs. She
graduated from Southampton University with a degree in physics and math, and, after further
study at Tufts University and MIT, she embarked on a career in engineering, including a stint at
MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington. In 1971, she joined the Society for Women Engineers and became a Fellow Life Member of the Society.
Those familiar with her work described her as a “ground-breaking woman engineer.”
Later, and until her return to the UK in 2019, Evelyn, with her husband Tom Lenthall, owned and operated the Atholl Brose, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, shop with Scottish goods, including dance items such as ghillies, hose, and brooches. She was a skilled kilt-maker and kilt-repairer. (The editor remembers buying his Price Charlie evening jacket at Evelyn’s store). She also worked with H&R Block, an accounting agency.
In the mid-1970s, Evelyn founded NHSCOT, a nonprofit organization officially known as The New Hampshire Gathering of the Scottish Clans, Inc. According to the NHSCOT website, the idea was born at a clan picnic in 1975. That event led to the inaugural NH Highland Games in 1976 and then to the annual games at Loon Mountain Resort in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The NH Highland Games & Festival is now one of the largest Highland Games in North America, enjoyed by thousands each year. Evelyn also served on the board of the Caledonian Foundation, USA, founded the North American Branch of the Murray Clan Society and served as president of the Association of Scottish Games & Festivals.
In 1988, Barbara McOwen wanted to start her own Scottish music group and Susie Petrov suggested having a group in New Hampshire whose "welcome back" reunion would be the Highland Games. It took Barbara and Evelyn Murray about 2 days to organize that first meeting. Evelyn and Barbara co-founded the Strathspey and Reel Society of New Hampshire, with Lezlie Webster, Marianne Taylor, Viveka Fuchs and Sylvia Miskoe. The group still meets monthly to learn, play, and perform Scottish music, especially fiddle music. Their motto: “Having fun with Scottish music.”
Typical of Evelyn’s ability to promote Scottish culture in the US was her role in arranging the Atholl Highlanders Pipe Band’s first visit to Athol, Massachusetts, a town named in 1762 by John Murray, youngest son of the Duke of Atholl in Blair Atholl. As it happens, the band will be visiting Athol, MA again in April 2025.
Evelyn was an RSCDS-certified dance teacher and founded two classes, the Brookline class in 1973, and the Kennebunk, ME class, (in conjunction with Morven Troost).
Editor’s Note: Much of the material cited above is paraphrased from articles created by members the Boston Branch of the RSCDS
(From the PhD Thesis of Jane MacMorran)
The New Atholl Collection, published in 1986 by American publisher ScotPress, was a collaboration between Ron Gonnella and Evelyn M.E. Murray, an American RSCDS-certified dance instructor who lived in Massachusetts. Murray founded the Atholl Brose record label so that Gonnella’s music could be recorded for dancing. Evelyn also produced recordings for Scottish musicians including Lezlie Paterson, Barbara McOwen, and Jeanne Morrill; Stan Hamilton and Ron Gonnella; and Bonnie Rideout.
The collection “commemorates the bi-centenary of Robert Burns’ Highland tour of 1787 being a compilation of Scottish fiddle music, Scottish country dances, descriptive text and photographs’. Gonnella explains the choice of title as reflecting the original Athole Collection (by James Stewart-Robertson, W.S. of Edradynate, Atholl and Edinburgh), which, when it appeared in 1884, was almost certainly the largest collection of Scottish dance music ever published.
Gonnella’s collection features photographs, narrative and six dances, created by Murray, that represent locations where Burns stopped during the course of his tour of the Highlands. The dances are accompanied with music composed by Gonnella.
Many of the dance tunes by Ron Gonnella are represented in the NH Scottish Music Club’s repertoire: Find them on pages 13.12, 21.5, 21.16, 31.21-22, and 32.1
