Roots, shoots and stories

In genealogical terms 'cousins' do not just refer to your 'first cousins', those people who share a set of grandparents with you. It can be used to refer to your second, third, fourth etc cousins who share a common set of ancestors with you, be they great grandparents or 15 x great grandparents. One of my paternal lines can be traced back to Robert the Bruce, King Robert I of Scotland and one of my maternal lines includes King James II of Scotland, so you can imagine there are a lot of important cousins to be found. So let me introduce you to a very distant cousin. In genealogical terms he is my second cousin seventeen (!) times removed. Meet Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan aka The Wolf (or Beast) of Badenoch! Our common ancestor is the famous Robert The Bruce, my 20 x great grandfather. Robert was Alexander's great grandfather. My line descends through King Robert's daughter Elizabeth, Alexander's line through her sister Marjorie. Marjorie married Sir Wal...

As I've mentioned previously, my parents never shared family stories with me and I never asked. The only 'family lore' story I can think of was provided to me by my dad's brother, my uncle, George McAra. His bowling blazer carried the coat of arms of the MacGregor clan. He maintained that the McAras were part of this great clan and 'our' motto was "Royal is my line". He also told me our ancestors were kings in Ireland. As a teenager in the 1970s,  my mum even made me a poncho in the Macgregor tartan! (I'm relieved I don't have a photo of that!) My dad with my Uncle George. The Macgregor crest is on the blazer pocket, though not very clear. Source: own photo So.. is any of that true? Have I the right to claim I'm part of Clan Macgregor? And were they or their ancestors kings in Ireland? According to internet name sources, the McAra name itself was first found in Perthshire, likely dating back to the 11th century. Since then, it has been foun...

One man's 'troublemaker' can be another man's hero. One of my 20th great-grandfathers was such a man.  And a famous one at that! Robert the Bruce, King Robert I of Scotland for the last two decades of his life, was certainly a troublemaker in the eyes of the English. An ardent proponent for Scottish Independence, he is best known for defeating the English Army at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. After Bannockburn, he was not content to just defend Scotland, but actively led incursions into the north of England. Nowadays he is still revered as one of Scotland's heroes. Image from www.factinate.com But this wasn't always the case. Many Scots had cause to see him as a troublemaker too - or  at times, even worse, a traitor.  When, in 1296,  the then King John Balliol required all able bodied Scots to fight against the English, Robert was one of several Scottish nobles to ignore the summons. Notably then the first city attacked by Balliol's troops was Carlisle,...

 Most of my recent direct ancestors and their families are noticeably working class. This is true for both my paternal and maternal sides. There are miners, blacksmiths, labourers, iron workers, carters, weavers....  My 2 x great grandfather John Young (1801-1879) had various occupations throughout his working life - labourer, fireman, timekeeper in an engineering works. He married his wife Janet Baillie, a pin winder, in the 1820s. Janet's father James was a labourer, surfacing roads. Pretty standard working people.  However, go three generations further back and we find my 5 x great grandfather James Baillie marrying an Elizabeth Bradfute, the daughter of a local minister and this is where it gets interesting. Elizabeth's mother, Jean Mure, was the daughter of a certain Scottish born James Mure of Rhoddans (County Down in Ireland), part of the landed gentry, his own father being William Mure of Glanderstoun. We are no longer in working class territory. I call women like...

So last week I mentioned the 'Bald' men in my family and I only had to go back one generation to find some shining examples! This week's topic involved a lot more work. I have no photos of bearded ancestors. My recent lot appear to have been very clean shaven, though I do have a couple of photos of my maternal grandfather with a moustache. So I had to go very, very far back. Of course, if I go pre photographs, I need to find portraits. Again, difficult. The miners, iron workers, agricultural labourers, shoemakers, tollkeepers may indeed have sported beards, but they didn't sit for portraits. I needed to find someone 'important'! I have about five ministers in my tree, but there are no pictures of them that I can find. I had to go further back.  It used to be common practice for a landowner's youngest son to be married to a minister's daughter or his daughters to be married off to the minister, as these children were unlikely to inherit from their father,...