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2024 Week 37: Tombstone #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

My paternal line has been in Lanarkshire, Scotland, for the last two hundred years. The first of my McAra ancestors to arrive in Lanarkshire was my 2 x great grandfather, John McAra. He didn't come alone - some of his brothers also came to work in the iron foundries and later coal mines. 

They had come through to the west from Cramond, a small but important industrial centre in the 18th and 19th centuries on the River Almond just outside Edinburgh. By 1799 Cramond had three iron forges and it was there that my McAra ancestors worked.

On my first visit through to Cramond, I naturally visited Cramond Church and its graveyard. There I found a large headstone with details of the McAra family. The first name on the headstone was that of my 3 x great uncle James McAra and the date of his death was given as 1811. Now, by this time I had found out a lot about James McAra and knew he most certainly did not die in 1811 - but 1811 was the year of his transportation to Tasmania for the unlawful killing of his brother! And he certainly wasn't aged 42 that year either, but only 34. 

Own poor quality photograph of the tombstone in Cramond.

The second name on the list was the name of the wife he left behind, Isabella Douglas, whose age and year of death are a couple of years out. There then follows the names, ages and years of death of four of their children, Helen,  (who had erected the stone)  Margaret, Archibald and Douglas. Curiously underneath them comes the inscription, "and also John Almond who died 1874 aged 37". Who was this?? A little more research revealed that he was the son of Isabella Douglas and an Edward Almond. So after James McAra's transportation, Isabella did have another relationship and a child. 

But what of the date of James McAra's death?? James didn't die until 1840 in Tasmania. I can only surmise that the young children he left behind were never told the truth behind the loss of their father and believed him dead.

His actual tombstone in Tasmania sheds a light on the sort of man he was, despite the awful deed he committed. 

Source: shared on Ancestry.com


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