Traveling –
two words come to mind: exhilaration and
exhaustion!
After more
than 25 hours of travel, Bruce and I arrived for the start of our Scotland
travel on the evening of June 27. This is a trip that Bruce and his sister,
Leslie, had been planning for months. Leslie and her partner, Nancy, joined us
on June 30 in Glasgow for the rest of our 2 ½ week trip. We rented a car,
arranged rooms at B&Bs around the country and saw much of Scotland. We made
stops in Edinburgh, Pitlochry, St. Andrews, Inverness, Isle of Skye, traveled a
scenic route around the north and down the west coast to Oban (to check out
where the ancient McDougalls lived and see the castle), we had made stops earlier
in Ayrshire and Berwickshire where our more recent McDougall (George) came from
before arriving in Michigan (with the Muir family) in 1828. Then it was back to
Glasgow to catch the flight home arriving July 13, tired but happy. My big
disappointment is that Nessie didn’t show for me at Loch Ness. So – I settled
for the t-shirt.
I wrote in
May about our upcoming trip to Scotland, Bruce’s YDNA project and my efforts to
research the Buchanans and Laidlaws (his direct line) in Glasgow, Lockerbie and
other areas of Scotland. As a reminder, the earliest couple we are seeking is: James
Buchanan (1780- Bef. 1865) and Helen Laidlaw (1790-Bef. 1865) of Drysfesdale,
Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire. Helen was born in Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire. We found
them and connected them with 9 other children – but not our Robert. He was the
youngest and, well, probably got lost in the shuffle.
We are quite
sure that this couple is the parents of Bruce’s 2x-great-grandfather, Robert
Buchanan, born about 1823-4. Robert lists a couple by the above names as his
parents on his second marriage record and says on the 1851 and 1861 censuses that
he was born in Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire (a Shire is like a County in the U.S.).
A researcher
in the that area, Erica, did some additional research for us and found more on
the Laidlaws, but not really anything to help us document that James and Helen were
Robert’s parents.
The first
day, before Leslie and Nancy arrived, Bruce and I met with Erica. She was
delightful and we discussed our James Buchanan “brick wall.” Erica was able to
find Helen’s baptism and identify her father and possibly even her grandfather
Laidlaw. Erica showed us why James Bell, who we thought was the twin of the
second Benjamin Bell born in 1822, was not his twin or even connected. We can
certainly do more research on the Laidlaws in the future, but for now there is
nothing further we can learn on the Buchanans. Erica is going to continue with
some research for us and see if she can follow any of the other children of
James and Helen, maybe something can be gleaned from those findings.
We then did
some driving around in the Dumfriesshire and Glasgow areas, finding the addresses
we had noted from various censuses for the Buchanans. We probably didn’t see
the original dwellings they had lived in – but got a sense of the areas. We
also found the church (The Cathedral) that Bruce’s grandmother, Annie Mackie
McAlister, probably lived near, possibly attended and certainly mentioned
often. This is a Church of Scotland, or Presbyterian denomination.
An exciting
event on Saturday, after Leslie and Nancy arrived, was meeting two of Bruce and
Leslie’s second cousins, Elaine (who came over from England for the day) and Elizabeth
(Beth). We had a great dinner with them and got to know more about our Scottish
family. On Sunday, we visited Bruce’s father’s only surviving first cousin,
Margaret – 95 years young, sharp as a tack and such a delight. We spent a
couple of hours talking to her and enjoying her memories of the family. (I
think she could have easily talked for another couple of hours). Beth also gave
Bruce and Leslie a small Bible given to their grandfather, David, in 1904,
which ended up staying in Scotland all these years. What a treasure!
On a current
note about the YDNA project for Bruce, it is looking more and more as though
Bruce and the other “outliers” mentioned previously, may have been among a
group of the Scots who hundreds of years ago immigrated to the Ulster
Plantation area of Ireland. Maybe James or his father (or grandfather) were
from Ireland because of that, and eventually returned to Scotland but with a
lot more “Irish” in their genes, as Bruce’s DNA is showing.
