Margaret was brought up at Milton Mill on the River Irvine a few miles west of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland.

In his autobiography, her grandson Ernest Graham Guthrie wrote that Margaret was "with us for many years through whom to look back. I wish for the sake of the clan Guthrie, I could give a chapter to her. Tall, majestic in appearance, with the worn Bible, teaching us the Presbyterian Catechism, but leaving me at least, with the undying image of a life fed from great heights and hidden rivers, and facing a throne of Justice and Mercy, proud in spirit yet bending before the Highest. In her mind, we caught glimpses of the old home in Ayr, Scotland, of great trees and a river and the sound of wind. Often there was talk of some other property that should have been hers, but it had gone into the Court of Chancery, from which, in Britain, we understand nothing ever returns. On a later visit to my mother's family connection, I found one part of it owning great mills, while another part had cotton holdings in Egypt. We used to hear of ministers, and strangely enough, musicians, on this side of the family. But so much of it is shadowy and obscure, I should have begun this sketch before all the witnesses who really knew, had gone."

-- from Don Hutton in “Descendents”


+++++++++++++++++++++++
Note: Don Hutton often cites “Oatcakes to Otago,” a dramatized history of Scottish emigration to New Zealand. Here is a description of this book from the New Zealand National Bibliography of May 2003:

Oatcakes to Otago: a chronical [i.e. chronicle] of Dunedin's Scottish heritage by Donald Offwood (1945 - ). Christchurch, N.Z.: Caxton Press, c2003. - 288 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports., geneal. tables; 24 cm. Includes lists of New Zealand Company passenger arrivals at Otago, March 1848-January 1851 and shipping arrivals to Port Chalmers, 1848-1861. - Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-224). - "This dramatised and historically correct history follows the Crawford family from the defeat of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" at the battle of Culloden in 1746, through the Highland Clearances, the famines and the great Disruption in the Scottish Church, to their emigration to Otago on the Philip Laing in 1848"--Back cover.

ISBN 0473092417 (pbk.) : $36.95 Southern Lights, Box 36-601, Merivale, Christchurch and Caxton Press
1. Crawford family. 2. Scots--New Zealand--Dunedin--History. 3. Scotland--Emigration and immigration--History--19th century. 4. Scotland--History--18th century. 5. Scotland--History--19th century. 6. New Zealand--Emigration and immigration--History--19th century. 7. Dunedin (N.Z.)--Emigration and immigration--History--19th century. 8. Dunedin (N.Z.)--History--19th century.
993.92