In the shadow of history

The Peel of Lumphanan rises out of the ground like a Robert Smithson land art project gone rogue. From an an earlier post, we know the Peel has a legendary link to Macbeth, and the town-folk of the village of Lumphanan probably won’t disabuse you of the notion: you can drop by the Macbeth Arms for a pint and—I’m sure—a yarn or two, judging by the name.

The Peel of Lumphanan

Macbeth indeed lost the Battle of Lumphanan in 1057, but it’s anyone’s guess that this site was in fact the location of the fight. There may have been some kind of moat present here during Macbeth’s era, but the Peel itself isn’t documented until the early 1200s, when the Norman de Lundin family (later adopting the name Durward) was granted landholdings in the area.

It was they, not Macbeth, who constructed the fortification, which later has less legendary and more historically verifiable ties to another king, albeit a Sassenach one: when Edward I conducted his victory tour through Aberdeenshire in 1296, he used it as the place to put Sir John de Melville, a conquered Scottish laird, to heel. After the Durwards, Lumphanan was granted to the Halketts, then the Irvines, and later acquired by Thomas Charteris who built Halton House on the summit. Satellite imagery reveals the outline of the structure.

Image | Peel of Lumphanan, satellite photo showing the outline of the demolished Halton House | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland CC-BY
Map | Peel of Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire LXXXII.4 (Lumphanan) Revised: 1899, Publication date: 1902 | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland CC-BY

Cromars in the land tenure system

By the time Halton House was demolished, sometime after 1792, Cromar farmers had been tending nearby land for more than half a century. The complexities of the Scottish land tenure system are better left to a historian, but the hierarchy of monarch, followed by layer upon layer of nobility (duke, earl, feudal baron. etc.), then laird, tacksman, and finally sub-tenant or crofter (really little more than a serf in fact if not in name) had persisted since the Middle Ages. My limited understand the Highland Clearances and this time period suggests the old order was undergoing significant change, though not so much as to destroy an essentially feudal system which was not formally abolished in Scotland until, amazingly, the year 2000!

Most certainly, the land worked by the Cromars was a feu of the powerful families mentioned above. Feus were often hereditary, such that even sub-tenancies would be occupied by one family for generations—not necessarily a desirable phenomenon, as we’ll see.

Milton of Auchlossan

Such was the relationship of my family to the settlement at Milton of Auchlossan, and just as we discovered the adjacency of Tomnaverie Stone Circle to Cuttishillock, the boyhood home of my great-grandfather Theodore Cromar, we see that Milton of Auchlossan, the boyhood home of his father John, lies just a few hundred feet away from the Peel of Lumphanan. In Scotland, you can’t throw a rock without it landing on something ancient.

Tenancy

There’s certainly no land-ownership here for the Cromars! In the Aberdeenshire Ordinance Survey Name Books contemporary with John Cromar, my 2nd great-grandfather, here is what we see:

Aberdeenshire Ordinance Survey Name Books, 1865-71, Vol. 59, p.60 | A transcription follows below | ScotlandsPlaces.gov.uk

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List of names as written	Various modes of spelling	Authorities for spelling	Situation	Descriptive remarks
MILLTOWN	Milltown	Robert Smith Esqr Factor to the estate Glenmillan	82—8	This name applies to two Farm Steadings, two Croft houses, a Corn Mill, and Saw mill, all adjacent to one another partly Slated and partly thatched, from one to two Storeys high, in tolerable repair, the property of Francis Farquharson Esqr. Finzean.
	___do___	Mr. James Strachan Land Steward Milton of Auchinhove
	___do___	Mr. John Milne Ph.* [Parish] Registrar Blelack
	___do___	Revd.** Charles McCombie L.L.D.***
	Milton or Milltown of Auchlossan	Valuation Roll 1859-60
	Mill-town of Auchlossan	Old Statistical Account

*  Parish
** Reverend
*** Doctor of Law

Farquharson crofters

The Milltown, as it is known in this survey, is not the only property held by Sir Francis Farquharson. Auchlossan to the south, Newtown to the south-east, and many other properties on many other pages are Farquharson holdings. By the time John Cromar arrives on the scene in 1823, when the property was known as Milton of Auchlossan, the Cromars had been Farquharson crofters for some time. Kenneth Kidd, at his geograph entry for Milton of Auchlossan, mentions that “[t]his building and the adjacent steading was known as the Milton of Auchlossen from at least the end of the eighteenth century until sometime in the late 1950s and was occupied by the same family, different generations of course.”

That family was us. We can confirm that George Cromar (1825-1921), John’s brother, lived and died at Milton of Auchlossan. George’s son James, John’s nephew, was born there in 1869, became a law clerk by 1902, and later emigrated to southern Rodesia (which explains a significant presence of Cromars in Zimbabwe and South Africa). Though I haven’t been able to confirm the presence of a Cromar in the 1950’s, an exploration of this cousin branch, which includes surnames like Milne, may prove Kidd’s assertion in a future post.

1 | A 2008 photograph showing the refurbished old house at Milton of Auchlossan, which extends for about 27 acres from building. | Kenneth C. Kidd (CC BY-SA 2.0)
2 | Entrance from Dess Road in 2010. | Stanley Howe (CC BY-SA 2.0)
3 | Ruin of the watermill in 1981. | James Woodward-Nutt, Mills Archive Trust

Stability, or stagnation?

Some may filter a view of such an enduring generational presence through a romanticized lens of familial stability. Others might regard it as evidence that the vestiges of the Scottish feudal system provided practically no mechanism for social mobility—it was, after all, deliberately designed to preserve a gentrified status quo. It’s clear that John Cromar and Ann George, born into long-standing farming and masonry families respectively, were kindred spirits: for them, the oppression of the status quo far outweighed the stability it afforded. Like many seeking to break free of pre-industrial, agrarian economic stagnation, they seized on opportunities brought about by the Industrial Revolution as a means to do something about it.

The Industrial Revolution certainly had its own tyrannical character, quite distinct from that of the old land tenure system. But for better and sometimes for worse as we’ll see, it at least gave malcontents like John and Ann a shot at breaking free of the last gasps of feudalism.

John Cromar 1823-1870

John was born on 27 September or 9 October 1823, a Sunday or a Thursday depending on which you take as valid. Scotland birth and baptism records are sometimes painful to reconcile; one might have a date for a birth or a christening, with no clarity regarding which it might be. Unless Outlander-style time-travel shenanigans are afoot, when we have conflicting multiple dates, we’ll assume the earlier is the birth record—and if it’s not, well, we can do worse than being off by less than two weeks.

So, he was a Sunday or a Thursday child. We can’t comment on John’s temperament and looks to confirm a possible “bonny and blithe” Sunday child, but in his short life he lived up the old rhyme’s claim that Thursday’s child “has far to go.” His parents, George Cromar and Ann Meston, had been life-long residents of Lumphanan, and remained so through their whole lives. It’s no surprise, then, that John and all his many siblings were born there.

Early years

John set the ball rolling as the eldest, followed by George, David, James, Peter, Archibald, Andrew, Charles, Alexander, William, Francis, and, last but not least, a lone sister in Mary Ann. Out of the dozen children, John and Francis had the strongest cases of wanderlust, though Francis outpaced John by emigrating to Canada. It seems everyone else either stayed on the farm or met an untimely end, a tragic phenomenon we’ll explore in a future post about John’s parents.

Official records provide little information about John’s formative years at Milton of Auchlossan because a national Census doesn’t exist prior to 1841, and an investigation of the 1841 Census itself provides ambiguous results. Many potential identities in this census could indicate that our John, out of the half-dozen or so documented John Cromars present at the time, is already on the move. He’s 18 in 1841, and knowing that Scottish census takers would round ages up or down, often wildly so, we can’t hazard a guess. Of the ones that are within 5 years of 18, he could have been anywhere from Old Machar, north of Aberdeen, to Newhills, farther out from Aberdeen to the north and west.

First foray to Aberdeen

If either one of these is our John, it wouldn’t be surprising because by 1851 we do have a confirmed documentation of him as a 28 year old lodger in the home of one Elspet Moss, on Little Chapel Street in the city of Aberdeen, pursuing a career in cotton manufacturing. Textiles were one of the handcrafts mechanized by the Industrial Revolution, and John had evidently chosen this to make the escape from his rural legacy.

Both of the maps above are centered on St. Nicholas Church, where John and Ann’s only son Theodore will later be christened. To the west, near the left edge of the image, find John’s first bachelor home in Aberdeen: Little Chapel Street is the small alley bridging between Chapel and Summer Streets, bumping into Union Wynd. Later, as a married couple, John and Ann occupy 12 Wales Street, which can be found to the east, near the top right edge of the image. The change in density over a 15 year period is evidence of the Industrial Revolution’s impressive impact on urban growth.
1 | Aberdeen, drawn & engraved by J. Rapkin, 1854 | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland CC-BY
2 | Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire LXXV.11 (Old Machar, Greyfriars, St Clements, East,…) 1869 | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland CC-BY

Stone-masonry

While residing in the Granite City, John couldn’t help but become aware of the stone-mason’s trade. It was all around him. Even such a modest alleyway as Little Chapel Street was paved in Aberdeen granite half-sovereign paving stones and pebbles. Later mention of a John Watt or Wyatt, who ran a sculpture studio on Little Chapel Street, and who is mentioned as a commissioner of an estate for a bankruptcy proceeding relating to masonry in the 1890s, suggests that such tradesmen were legion, and this may have made an impression.

Crossfold

Whether exposure to so much stone-masonry soured him to the cotton trade is debatable, but we know at some point between 1851 and 1856 John abandons his textile vocation and returns home. By 1856, he has landed just a few miles away from Milton of Auchlossan, at Crossfold, a ferm-toun in Coull, where, at the ripe old age of 32, he has taken a stone-mason’s daughter as his bride.

Ann George 1836-1913

We have an easier time confirming Ann’s birth date than John’s: 11 December 1836. Daughter of stone-mason Alexander George and his wife Anne Anderson, she was the second oldest of children who included older brother Adam and younger siblings Barbara, Janet, John, Mary, and Jean. But compared to John, 13 years her senior, she was quite the young lass.

Cuttieshillock

The George family lived at Cuttieshillock in Coull. We learned about this settlement in earlier posts (here and here), but with some new information in hand, we can speculate that it may have been the Anderson family who had earlier ties to the area, since we now know from census records that Alexander George was born in Banffshire, a coastal shire to the north, and Anne Anderson was a native of Coull. Having said that, it’s quite interesting that this little Aberdeenshire croft shares a name with a quarry, Cuttie’s Hillock, located in an area now known as Quarrywood near Elgin in Morayshire, to the immediate west of Banffshire.

The settlement of Cuttieshillock does seem curious: it is nestled beside fairly non-arable land, showing overgrowth with a somewhat boggy character adjacent to a gravel pit. The presence of labeling on maps is inconsistent as well, though this can be based on the scale of the map and the bias of the cartographer. I’m speculating that Cutttieshillock may be a newer settlement adjunct to nearby Lochandu, Wardford, or Crossfold, one well suited for an itinerant quarryman who might have named it after a site back home. Of the three, Crossfold may be the best candidate: the map and aerial image show a footpath connecting the two, but there are other even strong connections as we’ll see.

1 | Aberdeenshire, sheet LXXXI (includes: Aboyne And Glen Tanar; Coull, etc.) Survey date: 1866-1867, Publication date: 1870 | National Library of Scotland CC-BY
2 | Aerial view centered on Crossfold showing adjacency to Cuttieshillock, Wardfold, and Lochandu | Screen capture from Google Maps

A wedding at Coull?

The George household was not far from Coull Parish Kirk (see map below the heading above) and it’s the likeliest candidate for the site of John and Ann’s nuptials. The church is built on the site of an original church built by Saint Nathalan in the 600s, and sometimes still goes by the saint’s name.

From Kinker to the Granite City

The newlyweds found their first home quite near Ann’s parents, at Crossfold, near Cuttieshillock. On the map, Crossfold appears to be the larger property linked by a foot-path to the George’s home, but the contemporary state of things shows Cuttieshillock as a robust settlement, while Crossfold now sits abandoned. It is possible that John came under the employ of stone-mason Alexander George at this time. Having abandoned cotton, and knowing he is documented as a stone-polisher later on, we can speculate that he got his first taste of stone-polishing under his father-in-law’s mentorship. John was late to the game, and polishing may have been a simple trade to acquire quickly.

1 | Abandoned Crossfold main house and its unusual round bothy (a small hut or cottage usually left unlocked, available for anyone to use free of charge). | Stanley Howe 2012 (CC BY-SA 2.0)
2 | Inside the bothy ruin | James Dyas Davidson 2016
3 | Another view of the Crossfold complex | James Dyas Davidson 2016

The couple resided in Crossfold in 1856, but rural living was not to their liking. By 1862 wanderlust had definitely set in, and we find them living on Turnpike Road, the main thoroughfare through a very small village with a very large name: Kincardine O’Neil. Most folk shorten the name to Kinker.

1 | Kincardine O’Neil, with Turnpike Road running through its center, from east through Cochran and due west along the southernmost fork heading out of town. | Screen capture from GENUKI NLS 1843-1882 CC-BY
2 | Aerial view showing contemporary layout. Turnpike Road is now A93 North Deeside Road. | Screen capture from Google Maps

Neighbors to the Robbs?

Kinker, as it turns out, is second only to Lumphanan in terms of Cromar and Robb inhabitation. When John and Ann, the future parents of Theodore Cromar, lived there for an unknown amount of time centered around 1861, they may have been acquaintances of Charles Robb and Ann Spence, the future parents of Theodore’s future bride, Christiana Robb. Hard to say, as we document the Robbs there in 1866, but it’s not an implausible hypothesis. You can see other Cromar and Robb events at this map dating back as early as the 1714 birth of Jannet Dun, wife of Robert Cromar, my fifth paternal great grandparents.

1 | Kincardine O’Neil Auld Kirk, once adjacent to the ruined Kincardine O’Neil Hospital, contemporary view. A new church was built in 1862, so this structure was still active when John and Ann lived in Kinker. | Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0
2 | Old Smiddy, a longstanding commercial structure on the main street once known as Turnpike Road. | Richard Slessor, 2005 CC-BY-SA-2.0
3 | Tollhouse viewed from Turnpike Road. | Photo by John R. Hume, 1974, Licence Type: Permission to Reproduce

Onward to Aberdeen

Based on known records, John and Ann may have lived in Kinker for as little as a year (1862) and as much as a decade (1856-1867). But I suspect they had moved on earlier rather than later, because of their past and future patterns of migration. By 1868 they were living at 12 Wales Street back in the big city of Aberdeen, where they finally gave birth to their only child, Theodore. This was an unusual pattern for Scottish families at the time, which more typically saw a long string of births starting a year or so after the wedding day.

An only child

An only child was an anomaly that could be explained by difficulty with conception—or by a couple carefully avoiding it in a pre-birth-control era. An on-the-move pair like John and Ann may have deliberately put off child-rearing until they could exhaust their wanderlust and be securely settled in a trade. In 1868, Theodore could easily have been the grandson of 44 year old John, and even Ann was, by Scottish standards, an ancient 31 for a first birth.

We can also conjecture whether it’s likely the couple’s quarters were limited in scale and scope, inhibiting the rearing of the kind of family that was actually helpful back on the farm. Further research on Wales Street at this time reveals tiny tenements situated a bit on the wild side of town. Today, we see little of the material culture of the city that the Cromar family would have recognized—technically the road itself has even been re-sited a few feet to the north. We see it now running roughly parallel to Beach Boulevard, which in a spate of 1950’s slum clearances had replaced the notorious Albion Street.

A notorious neighborhood

Evangelical reform of the area had predated the Cromar’s arrival when, in 1848, a “penny rattler” street theater of ill repute was displaced by the more circumspect Albion Street Congregational Church. The essentially working-class area was never destined for high society, however. Maps reveal the presence of slaughter-houses, candle factories, and big, noisy open-air markets.

1 | Aberdeen aerial view centered on the Beach Boulevard Roundabout. This contemporary feature rationalized traffic in an area where five major roads came eccentrically together. Wales Street is to the north of, and parallel to, Beach Boulevard. | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland Bing Hybrid
2 | Same area as above. | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland Aberdeen Ordinance Survey 1866-67 CC-BY
3 | Closeup of the above, centered on Wales Street and showing Albion Street directly south. | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland Aberdeen Ordinance Survey 1866-67 CC-BY

John’s passing

We remember from our post on Theodore Cromar’s early days that his father John died a tragic early death related to his occupation. Though he had sought to find escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the the Howe of Cromar several times in his short life, he saw the wisdom of returning with his young wife and infant son to secure a future for them with the support system an extended family could offer. This was likely a humbling experience for a proud and independent-minded man.

Full circle

John Cromar journeyed far, but he traveled full circle: he died in the home in which he was born, comforted by family, including his brother George who was now head of the house at Milton of Auchlossan. Instead of the bustle of the Granite City, the still sounds of nature in the Howe accompanied his passing at 1:30 PM on 10 November 1870—perhaps even the call of the frogs which gave Auchlossan its name in Gaelic: Achadh Lòsain, meaning field of the frog.

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Name and Surname. ——— Rank or Profession, and whether Single, Married or Widowed.	When and Where Died.	Sex.	Age.	Name, Surname, and Rank or Profession of Father. ——— Name and Maiden Surname of Mother.	Cause of Death, Duration of Illness, and Medical Attendant by whom certified.	Signature and Qualification of Informant, and Residence, if out of the House in which the Death occurred.	When and Where Registered, and Signature of Registrar.
John Cromar Stone Quarrier (Married to Ann George)	1870 November Tenth 1h.30m P.M. Milton of Auchlossan Lumphanan	M.	47 years	George Cromar Farmer Ann Cromar M.S. Meston	Phthisis Pulmonalis As Cert by W. Stephen M.D.	George Cromar Brother (present)	1870 November 11th at Lumphanan John Milne, Registrar

Ann on her own, on her own terms

John was survived by Ann, now a widow at age 33, and his son Theodore, age 2. They had landed back in Lumphanan, which, judging from Ann’s past and future migrations, was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Her marriage to a much older person may be explained by her attraction to a man who had managed to make his way in the world outside of the Howe of Cromar, and who probably made it clear he intended to do so again. Scotland in the mid-1800s was not a place where an independent-minded young woman had many options, and Ann may have seen John as a means to advance her own ambitions to live a more adventurous life than a farmer’s wife could hope for. Those dreams appeared to be dashed by John’s tragic early demise.

But Scotland was changing. The Industrial Revolution needed cogs in the wheels of its urban factories, and this cultural circumstance provided Ann with an escape hatch that a generation of women before her did not enjoy. We may recoil in privileged horror at the conditions urban workers endured at this time—overcrowded tenement living, long hours of repetitive hard labor, punitive wages, filthy air and water—but for a young woman like Ann, this may have seemed a better deal than endlessly pumping out kids to work the fields for the singular benefit of the aristocracy.

An independent woman

She convinced her extended family that the best course of action would be for her to return to urban life as one of those cogs, and they agreed to care for her youngster. To separate herself from her son seems like a drastic move, but consider the cultural and economic contexts. A 33 year old widow with someone else’s child has a hard time competing for a capable fish in the small pond of the Howe, and even though the Great Depression of British Agriculture and the Long Depression was still a decade into the future, the rumblings of change could already be felt in farther flung regions like Aberdeenshire. Wealth was in a liquid state, and flowing from landed lords to captains of industry, so workers naturally flowed along with it.

Ann, for a second time, and as a single head of household, became one of many who abandoned agrarian pursuits. She had spent her young adulthood as a wife for 14 years, with perhaps more than half of that in the Granite City, and she would now spend more than double the duration of her marriage to once again pursue urban opportunities, albeit at the cost of bringing up Theodore.

Urban opportunity

There were just a few large urban centers in the tiny country: Glasgow the largest, followed by Edinburgh and Aberdeen respectively. Aberdeen, the closest of the three to the Howe of Cromar, was an economy founded on land and water: stone-masonry exporting to the world, a robust fishing trade, and ship-building to serve both. Edinburgh’s reputation as an intellectual and topographical “Athens of the North” overshadows its industrial importance at the time, with printing, brewing, distilling, rubber, and engineering driving growth. Glasgow, which had overtaken Edinburgh as Scotland’s largest city in the 1820s, was by far the engine of the industrial economy: heavy industries like locomotive manufacturing and ship-building were balanced by development in textiles, garment-making, carpet manufacturing, leather processing, furniture-making, and pottery, among others.

At this time, women were rarely, if ever, welcome in anything other than these lighter-weight industries. It’s likely that Ann was involved with one of them, and given John’s earlier experience with cotton manufacturing, it wouldn’t surprise me if she gravitated to textile work, so it was off to Glasgow this time.

To Glasgow

Because we have a census record of Thuddie (young Theodore’s nickname) living in his grandfather’s house in Coull without Ann also being recorded there, it’s possible Ann moved to Glasgow for work as early as 1871, just months after John’s passing—sometime between November, when John died, and April, when census records were taken. Financial imperatives may have forced fast decision-making, but the trauma of loss may have played its part as well. In any event, by 1873 we have an unusual record to confirm Ann is living in a tenement neighborhood of Glasgow at 35 Parliamentary Road, a major street that was removed in a spate of urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s.

1 | Glasgow, focused on Parliamentary Road. | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland, Ordinance Survey 6 inch, 1888-1913 CC-BY
2 | Same area, showing the removal of Parliamentary Road | Screen capture from National Library of Scotland, Open Street Map
3 | A view of the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum off of “Parley Road” as it was known, taken around 1900, though this would have been a view familiar to Ann. The Asylum is the large X shaped structure near the center of the Ordinance Survey map. | Glasgow Guides Discussion Boards

Theodore’s half-brother

The unusual record that confirms Ann’s residence is the birth of her second son, Charles Wilson Lennie George, on 26 January 1873 in central Glasgow. Very little is known about the circumstances of Charles’ arrival on the planet. We don’t have a record of his father, though records most likely spun to mitigate the stigma of illegitimacy claim John Cromar, long deceased, as such. The middle names Wilson and Lennie, not common in the Cromar or George lineages, may be the only threadbare clue.

It’s hard to say how Ann may have coped with pregnancy and birth as the factory worker she must have been. One would presume any man with honor would at least have helped her out, but who is to say what these circumstances were? I have no doubt the pregnancy was unplanned, but I also have no doubts about Ann’s free spirit and willingness to take risks. Was the pregnancy forced upon her by assault, the byproduct of a romantic dalliance, or evidence of an unspoken deeper commitment? These questions may only be answerable by Charles’ branch of the family.

Charles’ branch

We know through the same census records that imply John as the father that Charles was sent to Coull and resided with Thuddie for a time as a child. The record remains mute until sometime in the late 1890s when Charles marries Jessie Ferries (1874-1951) from Leochel-Cushnie, a few miles from Coull. In nearby Tarland, the couple has two children, George Bruce George (1900-1967) and Margaret Jane George (1902-1988). After George passes in 1934 in Muir of Fowlis, we can trace son George to New Zealand, where he weds Mona Hutton, while daughter Margaret stays closer to home in Peterhead. She marries George Petrie in 1922, and they have 5 children: Jessie, Margaret Jane, Annie, Charles George, and Helen Tawes.

Many of these siblings survived into the 2000s. Annie, the longest lived having passed in 2017, migrated to British Columbia, but it appears the rest remained in Scotland. We know Helen Petrie died in Fraserburgh, around the bend of the northern coast of Aberdeenshire. A search for far-flung cousins may turn up an interesting story or two about Charles’ origins.

To the east

Lasswade

By the next census in 1881, we see that Ann, now under the surname Cromar, has moved from west to east, taking up residence in Lasswade, Midlothian. At 45, she has probably not retired, though the census claims her occupation as “matron.” Anne may have grown weary of stressful tenement living in Glasgow, and the move to Lasswade provided a relatively more peaceful and urbane environment where she could still enjoy proximity to employment and city life in the Edinburgh region, accessible by the regional rail system that now tied these old villages to the capital as commuter communities.

1 | To the south-south-west of Edinburgh, directly below Newton, and to the south-east of Dalkeith, we find Lasswade along the new rail lines that connect the region. | Screen capture from GENUKI, NLS 1″ 1886-1900
2 | Higher resolution, showing Lasswade and Bonnyrigg, connecting by rail to Dalkeith, with the northward branch from there terminating in Edinburgh. | Screen capture from GENUKI, NLS 1″ 1890-1910
3 | A photograph showing hilly Lasswade, date unknown, but a scene probably familiar to Ann. | National Galleries of Art, CC-BY-CN, with color brightness and contrast modified by the author for legibility.

Haddington

Ann’s sons are still being raised in Coull at this time, and we are unsure how much she is able to interact with her extended family there.There is the possibility that some members of the George family are in the Edinburgh region, however. The census of 1891 records Ann at the home of an Agnes Geroge on Church Street in Haddington, east of (and not far from) Edinburgh, but the record provides more questions than answers.

Why? It pays to understand how Scottish census records as a primary source can be both blessing and curse. An oddity of the system at the time is that census clerks would record the location of the person being counted, whether or not said location is the individual’s residence. So when we see in this particular record that Ann’s relationship to the head of household is “visitor,” this leads me to speculate that she might not live in Haddington at all, and in fact may still be living in nearby Lasswade.

Another census mystery is the odd last name of Ann’s host Agnes, originally of Wigtownshire according to the census. While Geroge is evidently a legitimate though rare surname, it also shows up as a routine mis-spelling of George. Some side research reveals an Agnes George born in Wigtownshire in 1851, daughter of a William George along with several siblings.

Agnes George?

It’s even money that this Agnes is one and the same with Agnes Geroge, letters having been transposed in the record by a hasty clerk. Now, whether the Wigtownshire and Aberdeenshire Georges are relations or not is a topic for further research, but we do know that the current district of Dumfries and Galloway is home to the old parish of Wigtownshire, and this is about as far to the south and west of Haddington as Aberdeenshire is to the north and west.

1 | Haddington to the east in relation to Edinburgh to the west. Lasswade is also on this map, south-south-west of the capital. | Screen capture, National Library of Scotland, Ordinance Survey 1-Inch 1885-1900 CC-BY
2 | Haddington and environs. | Screen capture, National Library of Scotland, Ordinance Survey 6-Inch 1888-1913 CC-BY
3 | Close-up showing Church Street extending east of High Street to the south of the Town Hall wedged between High and Market Streets. | Screen capture, National Library of Scotland, Ordinance Survey 6-Inch 1843-1882 CC-BY

These scenes in the lovely village of Haddington would have been familiar to Ann during her visit (or residence) there:

1 | Town Hall, with Market Street to the left and High Street to the right. Keep following High Street to enter Church Street. | Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-4.0
2 | A general, early photograph of Church Street, date unknown. | Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland
3 | Contemporary view of 1 and 1 A Church Street looking east-ish. | British Listed Buildings

Immigration to America

The next time we encounter Ann in the record is eight years later in 1899, as an immigrant to the United States, where she joins her son Thuddie and his family in Boston. Ann’s New World experience is primarily documented in the post Thuddie and Teenie in the New World. There we document her life, but some additional research regarding her death and burial are offered here. We know she is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Washington, D.C. but we are now able to pinpoint where with some accuracy.

1 | Ann’s gravestone, under the name Cromar. | Find a Grave
2 | A file card listing her name as Anna, and other facts such as cause of death and plot number | Find a Grave
3 | A map of Glenwood Cemetery, showing Section U to the north east of the site, somewhere along the edge defined by Lincoln Road | The Glenwood Cemetery

If I could touch a stone at Tomnaverie and be whisked back in time Outlander-style to choose one long lost relative to meet, it would be a toss-up between Peter Cromar of alleged Glencoe origin, and the fascinating Ann George. She embodies the wanderlust and unconventional thinking that I most admire in our family, and it would be fascinating to hear her iconoclastic take on the world in which she lived. Perhaps the closest I can come to that is to manage a visit to Washington to touch the stone in Section U, Site 584. It’s only a three hour drive from Philadelphia—so I’m looking forward to meeting you someday soon, Ann George!