Not much is known of Agnes McKnight. The only source comes from "A Dictionary of Scottish Settlers to Canada before Confederation", Whyte, page 350, in which she is mentioned as being the wife of Phillip Murray and the mother of John Murray, who emigrated on the Portia in 1834.
    However, McKnight is a modified form of the name Macnaughtan, a clan who flourished in Perthshire, Galloway, and Argyll. The name MacNachtan means "Son of Nactan" - an old Pictish roayl name that also appears (doubtless through a Pictish mother) in the male line of the Cenel Loarn, the royal house of Lorn during the dark ages. According to Skenes old Gaelic MS. genealogies, the Macnachtans were traditionally chiefs of a cdet branch of the Cenel Lorarn, of the house of Ferchar Fada, King of Argyll who died in 697. The original Nechtan from whom the present surname is taken was probably a chief who held an appange in Lorn in about 1200, a very early period for a patronymic to have become established as a surname.

Source: Smith family archives, catalina@intergate.bc.ca
Source: A Dictionary of Scottish Settlers to Canada before Confederation, Whyte, page 350.

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