The Band of Brothers Pipes and Drums proudly wears the Morrison Modern (MacGhille Mhoire) Green Tartan.

Despite the Gaelic name, rendered variously as "son of Maurice" or "son of the servant of the Virgin Mary," this clan is descended from Vikings shipwrecked on the shores of Lewis.  The Morrisons of Habost were heredetary breves (lawyers) as late as the seventeenth century when they turned to the church.  Although Morrisons are still plentiful in Lewis, branches of the clan settled in Harris, Uist, Skye, and Sutherland, but the Morrisons of Dunbartonshire, Perthshire, and Stirling are believed to have been a separate family.  The most famous members of the clan were Marion Morrison (aka John Wayne, 1907-79) and the musician Jim Morrison (1943-71) of The Doors (MacKay, 2008).

The colors blue, red, and green are all colors that are related to the fire service.  While navy blue is universally used as the color of a firefighter's duty uniform, red and green are very specific to our area.

All engine and truck companies in the Chicago Fire Department have at least one green warning light mounted on the front right of the vehicle, directly opposite a corresponding red light. Modeled off of the marker lights used on ships (where a red light is used to mark the port, or left side of the vessel, while a green light is used to mark the starboard, or right side), the system was thought up by Albert Goodrich, who became Chicago Fire Commissioner in 1927. His family owned a steamship line, and he took the lighting idea from his experience there. Though not especially useful in firefighting (the marker lights' purpose in the nautical world is to help ships pass each other at night or in foggy weather) it has nonetheless stuck, and is not only a distinctive feature of Chicago's fire engines and trucks, but to fire apparatus in the surrounding communities. The tradition has since been expanded to cover the lights on the front of firehouses (again with a red light on the station's left and a green one on the right), just as red and green lights are used to mark slips and passages through breakwaters for boats.

Clan Information Source:

MacKay, J. (2008), Morrison, Clans and Tartans of Scotland and Ireland, p.178, Salamander Books, New York: Metro