The Dochertys are my mom's side. A smaller crowd than the Cheesmans, but the few there are matter a lot — and the further back you dig, the more interesting it gets.
Read the full Docherty story — eight generations, Donegal to Alberta →
The anchor photo for this side is from around 1986: my Granny Docherty at the centre, her two sons Rick and Davey, her daughter Maryanne (my mom), her daughter-in-law Laura, and her son-in-law Martin. The grandchildren in the photo are Jonathan, Chris, me, and Levi.
Grampa Docherty
Thomas Richard Docherty was born January 16, 1914, in Alix, Alberta, and died March 20, 1977, in Calgary at 63. He served as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Second World War, stationed around Prince Rupert. Before that, in the 1930s, he was a Golden Gloves boxer who took prize fights for the purse — and there's a family story that he once found himself stranded in California without money and prize-fought his way back to Canada one bout at a time. The Dochertys came over from Scotland — Hamilton, Lanarkshire — and migrated through the eastern United States before settling in Alix. Presbyterian, the lot of them. His funeral was at “The Little Chapel on The Corner” with Rev. J.L. Pottruff officiating.
His siblings included his brother Abraham Lincoln “Abe” Docherty (born February 9, 1916, in Alix), his older sister Catharina Grace Docherty (born May 16, 1909, in Preemption, Mercer County, Illinois — yes, Illinois — and died May 20, 1968, in Calgary; she married Herbert Nelson McKay), and a half-sister, Lena Sullivan. Family record holds that Lena was a niece of John L. Sullivan, the bare-knuckle boxing champion. That one's family lore worth chasing down before I'd swear to it, but it's the story that got handed down — and it does fit the boxing thread on this side.
Granny Docherty
Elizabeth Annie McIver was born March 20, 1919, in Saltcoats, Saskatchewan, and died April 24, 1988, in Edmonton at 69. Her funeral was at the Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Edmonton. She brought a whole second inheritance into this family: the McIver line. She was the daughter of James Roderick McIver and Mary Ann Birse — her mother a great-grandmother of mine who lived to 102 — and her grandparents were Donald George McIver of the Isle of Lewis and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Campbell of South Uist, who married at Earlswood, Saskatchewan, in 1888. The McIvers, Campbells, and Camerons were Hebridean and Highland Scots, cleared off Lewis, South Uist, and the Moray coast and carried to the southeastern Saskatchewan prairie in the 1880s. It is, unusually, the best-documented branch in the whole family — deep enough to deserve its own telling.
There's also Roy Thomas Docherty (1951–1970), buried at Queen's Park Cemetery in Calgary, with a service at “The Little Chapel on The Corner” in September 1970. His exact relationship to the immediate family is something I'm still untangling.
If you're family on this side and you're reading this — please reach out. I want to do this side of the tree justice.