My mother's cousin Vera, a maiden lady and an only child, left me in her will her family portraits - 2 rather large gilt-framed oil paintings of her grandparents. She had been rather proud of her Scottish ancestry and I wanted to find out more about this family and how it was that my mother also claimed to have Scottish ancestry. I was able, with some help, to trace Vera's father to a small island off the north coast of Scotland, where his family were boatbuilders. He, however, wanted to better himself, moved down to Lancashire, found a job in a draper's business (the owner of this was also Scottish) and married the owner's daughter. It was the owner and his wife who were portrayed in the pictures and were Vera's grandparents. During the course of my investigations I made contact with another of their descendants, who, if truth to be told, had much more right to the portraits, as, like Vera, she was one of his grandchildren, but she didn't seem to want them and was satisfied with a photo of them. They were so big that they never fitted in any of our rooms, either.
My mother, of course, was not related to this particular Scotsman, but I did discover that she, too, had a Scottish grandfather, who, like Vera's father and grandfather, had come south to find work. It was not such a long journey for him, however, as he lived not far from Gretna Green, so was only just Scottish, we used to say. Nevertheless my mother had a clan badge and skirt in the clan tartan and her sister's son, who went to live in Scotland used to wear the kilt on special occasions (and developed a strong Scottish accent!).
It's family stories like these that can start you off on the quest to find out more, as we can see from many of the earlier posts. Sometimes, like these, they can turn out to be true, and sometimes they are totally unfounded.
