Travel and courtship

We’ve looked at a lot of maps in and around the Howe of Cromar, and it’s remarkable to see how durable the patterns of settlement have been over the centuries. While the political, religious, and economic turmoil that has characterized Scotland’s history played itself out, the layout of fields, villages, and roads seem oblivious to the winds of changes whirling about them. A rural Aberdeenshire time traveler from the 18th century would have little trouble finding their way around using a map they carried with them on their unlikely journey to the 21st. However, the change in infrastructure along many familiar paths would be quite stunning to them.

Enduring patterns

Trains and automobiles superimposed themselves on the old land use patterns in Aberdeenshire in a manner that did surprisingly little to disrupt them, given how fundamentally they changed the way we use time and space. Lumphanan, a home to my ancestors, remains a village surrounded by farming, though it’s true that the identity of such communities has shifted toward an exurban commuter-driven subordination to urban centers — according to GPS data, a good road can get one from Lumphanan to downtown Aberdeen in 45 minutes, assuming no jams.

Our hypothetical time traveler might feel right at home on some of today’s bumpy dirt roads that hearken back to state-of-the-art road-building in post-Jacobite Scotland. However, they’d be flabbergasted by the material presence of the main arteries connecting village to village. To allow fast and sometimes heavy-duty vehicular traffic, the modern road we take for granted is actually an engineering marvel, even in a rural landscape like Aberdeenshire.

Evolution in road technology

The evolution of road-building technology owes quite a bit to Scottish history and ingenuity. In the 18th century, main roads might be enhanced with stone or gravel, but heavy loads were not feasible; horses and carts were the most common means of moving goods, and this limited the scope and scale of what could be carried. Whatever attention roads received from engineers was motivated more by political rather than economic concerns. After the 1745 Rebellion, the “pacification” of the Highlands — some characterize it as outright genocide — led to road-building that facilitated movement of occupying troops.

It was not until the late 1780s that J. L. McAdam developed a clever and cost-effective way to pave long stretches of connecting highway using the “macadamized” road surfacing technique he invented. Roads in rural areas like Aberdeenshire remained relatively unimproved for quite some time thereafter. By the mid-1800s there were improvements seen on some main roads, especially turnpike roads like the one we learned about in our post on John Cromar and Ann George, who lived on Turnpike Road in Kincardine O’Neil.

Geographical limits

So getting around was certainly nothing to take for granted in those days. On today’s surfaced roads, the 8.4 mile automobile trip from Tarland to Lumphanan is an afterthought. On a road that could only handle walking, a pack-horse, or (on the best routes) a horse-drawn sledge, that same trip took 11 times as long or longer! The trek from Tarland to Lumphanan was nearly a 3 hour trek one way, and one simply had to plan an entire day around a round trip journey that could use up the lion’s share of otherwise productive daylight time. Given Scotland’s famously fickle weather, this could quickly turn a simple walk into a mud-soaked misadventure.

Thus, it was a deliberate and time-consuming act to socialize or indulge in courtship, accordingly limited by geography and technology in a manner that privileged first-worlders have a hard time comprehending. Scan the map below, and you can see how some of the villages and ferm-touns we’ve encountered before relate to each other by walking time. Various settlements here are linked to Lumphanan, a historical center of Cromar family activity:

Settlement	Distance	walking time
Peel of Lumphanan	0.8 miles	16 minutes
Milton of Auchlossan	1.7 miles	35 minutes
Milton of Auchinhove	2.4 miles	48 minutes
Torphins	3.3 miles	1 hour 6 minutes
Cragievar	5.1 miles	1 hour 40 minutes*
Kincardine O’Neil	5.1 miles	1 hour 43 minutes*
Leochel-Cushnie	6.3 miles	2 hours 2 minutes
Aboyne	6.6 miles	2 hours 10 minutes*
Muir of Fowlis	6.5 miles	2 hours 11 minutes*
Coull	7.5 miles	2 hours 29 minutes
Tarland	8.4 miles	2 hours 47 minutes

* These anomalous time-and-distance relationships reveal the role that rough terrain can also play!

The implications for genealogy

This is much more than an interesting cultural digression. It has strong implications for genealogy. When we seek to confirm relationships through contemporaneous records, we must factor place ever more deliberately as we go back in time. Our ancestors courted, worshipped, traded, and socialized in a very small world.

This aids the quest for the identity of my fourth paternal great-grandparents, the mysterious mother and father of George Cromar. You’ll recall in exploring the stones at Kirkton of Aboyne burial ground that we were left holding the bag on the identity of a John Cromar as George’s father, as well as the identity of the mother and sister inscribed on George’s memorial stone. We deduced a possibility that John and the others had passed away by the date of that stone’s erection, estimated to be sometime in the later 1850s. We know factually from birth records that a John Cromar is on the birth record as father for George in Lumphanan in the year 1792. Knowing that, we’ll include the limiting factor of geography and travel to help narrow down these identities. This leads to:

HYPOTHESIS 1: John Cromar and family live within the social sphere of Lumphanan, and probably do so for their whole lives.

Names, but not identities

Our business in the old Aboyne graveyard did not supply names, but may help us link names we discover in the record to actual identities. We know the father, for example, is John Cromar, but which John? Let’s list what we uncovered:

• Between primary sources recorded at the Family Search and ScotlandsPeople website we are able to discover and confirm that a John Cromar in Lumphanan marries an Ann Cromar on 17 September 1789. This is a pretty good clue, though this doesn’t link that Ann to George.
• We are able to find another child born to a John Cromar in Lumphanan: Isabel — a daughter! — born 19 June 1790. As with George, no link for Isabel to John’s wife Ann is recorded.
• These birth dates do not conflict with the marriage date for John and Ann. Both children are legitimate, with Isabel born 9 months nearly to the day after the marriage.
• Though nothing directly ties Ann to John’s children, circumstances of time and place make this timing more than coincidental.

Does this family unit correlate with the mysterious “father, mother, and sister” on the stone? All four members of the family are accounted for, assuming all except George died before 1856 in order for him to memorialize them. The data at Family Search is mute on those death dates. But ScotlandsPeople has clues enough for us to posit:

HYPOTHESIS 2: There is adequate inferential evidence to establish father John, mother Ann, daughter Isabel and son George as a family unit.

What we know about Isabel

Born in 1790, there is an excellent chance Isabel Cromar leaves a trail in the census records begun in 1841, in the same manner George was so easily traceable for 4 decades.

There is one Isabel Cromar who is recorded at age 50 in the 1841 census. This is the right age, but this Isabel is found in Saint Andrews — and is confirmed with a birth certificate in the same place, associated with other parents. There are six other records of Isabels or Isabellas, but all are too old or young, even accounting for clerking errors. So our Isabella is missing from the census altogether. Did she die before 1841?

Testing a marriage hypothesis

Not so fast. There’s a likelihood she may have married, thereby showing up in the census under another surname. Assuming marriage around 20 to 30 years of age, we should be able to find a record around 1810 or 1820.

But the only reasonable marriage record for an Isabel is 1808, to an Alexander Deans in Banchory Devenick on the southern outskirts of Aberdeen city, 24 miles away. ScotlandsPeople records two Isabels born in the outskirts of Aberdeen in an appropriate time frame to be Alexander’s bride, and one of them, christened in 1783 in Banchory Devenick, is claimed at Family Search. The next earliest record for an Isabel or Isabella Cromar marrying in Scotland is 1841 — an unlikely age for our Isabella to tie the knot. We conclude there is no existing marriage record to help.

Absence of record is not a confirmation of absence. But it does raise the probability that our Isabel may have died unrecorded before 1841, even possibly during childhood. If so, this would account for the presence of the unnamed “sister” on George’s memorial stone, leading us to:

HYPOTHESIS 3: Isabel Cromar, born 1790 in Lumphanan, passed away prior to the 1841 census.

So, putting all 3 hypotheses together:

CONCLUSION: We have probably identified George Cromar’s mystery sister.

What we know about John and Ann

As a married couple, the following can be factually claimed or deduced from the record for John and Ann Cromar:

• John’s marriage to Ann is verified in FS Scotland Marriages 1561-1910 and at ScotlandsPeople records.
• The ScotlandsPeople source immediately clears up that Ann Cromar’s maiden name is Cromar, and not a faulty crowdsourced entry at Family Search. Scottish women often use their maiden names throughout their lives. There are hundreds of Cromars in this part of Aberdeenshire, and we know distances involved in courtship tend to limit choice. Running Ann’s family line down, we don’t see an immediately close blood tie between her and John; they may be cousins several-times-removed.
• This marriage record on 17 September 1789 in Lumphanan, along with Old Parish Records (OPR) for births of their children, suggest the family resides in the immediate social sphere of Lumphanan, if not in the village itself.
• Ann may have died in childbirth, though there is no death record to confirm or deny this theory. The family’s birth records appear to stop with George. An unfortunate early death for Ann after George’s birth might explain why the couple had so few children at a time when rural Scottish families trended large.

In the absence of records, logic

To identify the right John and Ann, we’ll infer logical limits not revealed by the record thus far. Birth records of George and Isabel suggest their parents are born in a time range from 1772 (18 for the 1790 birth) to 1742 for Ann (50 being uppermost for fertility) and possibly 1732 for John (60 approaching a lifespan for anyone who lived past 21 in this era). The median would be a 1757-ish average. Very large families typical in Scotland imply it will be hard to assume the parents here are younger rather than older. This could suggest their union may be a second marriage for either or both, and older age at marriage might explain why John and Ann’s family is relatively small. So:

HYPOTHESIS 4: Birth documentation for the John and Ann approximate 1757, with a deviation of ±15 years — possibly occurring at an older age and/or as a second marriage.

The search for John

Armed with these hypotheses, I first conducted a search for every John Cromar in the Family Search database who fit the criteria, and later cross-referenced these possibly duplicate and dubious crowdsourced entries with the records at ScotlandsPeople. At Family Search, I found well over two dozen John Cromars who fit the bill!

I found a surprising level of cross-referenced confirmation at ScotlandsPeople. Still, this exercise refined the list down to about a dozen or so Johns, including outliers who pushed the limits on one or more criteria. These were tabulated at a spreadsheet titled All the Johns and Anns linked here.

John’s data

John’s data is the first group on that table. Here, anything from birth dates to death dates to parents to spouses to siblings can be a clue, so this compilation is quite raw and weedy. Sifting through it, and considering the criteria defined by our hypotheses, we can narrow things down quite a bit.

Travel distance algorithm

Hypothesis 1 is a criteria assuming contemporary geographical limitations centered in or near Lumphanan, an algorithm that rules out the probability of the following:

• John 1769, Midlothian: Midlothian is too far south.
• John 1760, Scotland: This John has documented children born in Lanarkshire, quite far south.
• John 1758, Scotland: Although this John is documented with a spouse Margaret, that does not rule out a second marriage with Ann. However, this couple is linked by birth records to children born in Stirlingshire, too far south.

Birth year algorithm

Hypothesis 2 won’t be tested until we’ve researched Ann below, and Hypothesis 3 is primarily about Isabel, so Hypothesis 4, the birth year algorithm, rules out the following:

• John 1776, Alford: This John would be 14 for Isabella and 16 for George at their respective births, far too young.
• John 1774, Scotland: This John would be 18 for George, but only 16 for Isabella, therefore less probable.
• John 1773, Leochel-Cushnie: Born December 1773, essentially this John pushes the same limits.
• John 1737, Aboyne: Not impossible, but this John would be 55 for George’s birth.
• John 1733, Aboyne: Improbably, this John would be 59 when George is born.

There is even a possibility the John born in 1733 or 1737 could be a father to one of the later Johns!

Six Johns

With 8 initial candidates ruled out, this leaves 6 probable Johns with a spread of 12 years and a less-than-a-decade deviation from our presumed ideal birth year. Their locations bounce back and forth between Aboyne and Leochel-Cushnie, either of which is a reasonable 2 hour walking distance from Lumphanan:

• John 1754, Aboyne. Father: Alexander Cromar 1730.
• John 1754, Leochel-Cushnie. Father: George Cromar 1720.
• John 1755, Aboyne. Parents: Robert Cromar 1717, Jannet Dunn.
• John 1757, Leochel-Cushnie. Father: John Cromar (possibly John 1737 or 1733 above).
• John 1760, Aboyne. Father: Robert Cromar, unknown birth data.
• John 1766, Leochel-Cushnie. Father: William Cromar, unknown birth data.

None of these candidates has death record data at either Family Search or ScotlandsPeople, so this is as far as we can go with records. Can we rely on Ann to help narrow this down any further?

The search for Ann

For starters, Ann is not proven as the mother by the records, so to rule out another mother we have to include all reasonable marriages for our Johns, and hopefully deduce that the Ann inferred by Hypothesis 2 is most probably the spouse we seek. At the same spreadsheet linked for John, we find a second table filled with all spouses that fit the criteria of time or place by record, using the same methodology applied to John. We end up with five potential Ann Cromars for the 1789 marriage, but also an Agnes Meston, a Jean Smith, and a Mary Gordon.

Travel distance algorithm

Let’s apply the travel-distance algorithm from Hypothesis 1, and we may rule out:

• Mary Gordon 1753, Stracathro: Mary’s birth location, near Brechin, is too far south.
• Ann Cromar 1754, Scotland: This Ann has evidence in the record of children born in Lanarkshire, also too far south.
• Ann Cromar 1766, Peterculter: Peterculter, on the outskirts of Aberdeen city, is too far east.

Birth year algorithm

Checking the birth-year-based Hypothesis 4, we can discount:

• Agnes Meston 1731, Kincardine O’Neil: Agnes is beyond childbearing age for George.
• Jean Smith 1741, Kinellar (near Lumphanan): Jean would be 53 in 1792, an unlikely childbearing age.

Three Anns

Everyone who remains is an Ann Cromar, and this substantiates Hypothesis 2:

• Ann Cromar 1743, Alford
• Ann Cromar 1745, Scotland: m. 1770 Aboyne to Robert Herdman (d. 1779, therefore a 2nd spouse is possible)
• Ann Cromar 1751, Logie-Coldstone

With 6 Johns and 3 Anns, there are 18 possible combinations! What can we do to narrow down the probabilities further?

Playing the combinations

I’m no bookie, but I am desperate at this point, and we have no more records: we need a system here that can assess the odds of the various combinations of Johns and Anns actually occurring. I can’t offer this as proof, but perhaps it can lead to a good hypothesis. We’ll use criteria of 1) travel-distance, 2) birth age, and one we haven’t considered: 3) age-adjacency. This last assumes a closer adjacency in the couple makes the marriage more probable.

For travel-distance, we assign the total cumulative distance between the birthplaces:

	Alford	Aboyne	Lodgie-Coldstone
Aboyne	14.8	0	8.6
Leochel-Cushnie	5.7	10	10.9

For birth age, we subtract the oldest age in the couple away from 1790, the earliest birth (Isabel’s). Ann’s age is always the driver, because all the Johns are younger than her:

	1743	1745	1751
1790	47	45	39

For age-adjacency, we take the difference between the couple’s birth years:

	1743	1745	1751
1754	11	9	3
1755	12	10	4
1757	14	12	6
1760	17	15	9
1766	23	21	15

Just like golf

We add up the points and, as in golf, the lowest point total “wins” — that is, the lowest sum indicates a more probable couple — closer geographically, closer to the birth of children, and closer age-adjacency:

	Ann 1743 Alford	Ann 1745 m. Aboyne	Ann 1751 Logie-Coldstone
John 1754 Aboyne	14.8 | 47 | 11 | 72.8	0 | 45 | 9 | 54	8.6 | 39 | 3 | 50.6
John 1754 Leochel-Cushnie	5.7 | 47 | 11 | 63.7	10 | 45 | 9 | 64	10.9 | 39 | 3 | 52.9
John 1755 Aboyne	14.8 | 47 | 12 | 73.8	0 | 45 | 10 | 55	8.6 | 39 | 4 | 51.6
John 1757 Leochel-Cushnie	5.7 | 47 | 14 | 66.7	10 | 45 | 12 | 67	10.9 | 39 | 6 | 55.9
John 1760 Aboyne	14.8 | 47 | 17 | 78.8	0 | 45 | 15 | 60	8.6 | 39 | 9 | 56.6
John 1766 Leochel-Cushnie	5.7 | 47 | 23 | 75.7	10 | 45 | 21 | 76	10.9 | 39 | 15 | 64.9

It’s clear the most likely scenario for the mother is Ann Cromar 1751, Logie-Coldstone. The age distinctions created by 1743 or 1745 birth years simply make those outlier Anns less probable. We probably have the right Ann.

The differences between the Johns of 1754 (2 of them) and 1755 (1 of them) are a different story. I’m not sure if I trust this algorithm enough to make the definitive call for John 1754, Aboyne. We still need more information.

So, what else is in the record?

We’re going to explore additional information based on other factors: other family members, patterns of birth and migration, customary family names, family group record-keeping. We’ll also look for archaeological clues carried over from our work in Kirkton of Aboyne.

We know the following family facts:

John

• John 1754 born 30 September in Aboyne to Alexander Cromar 1730, Aberdeenshire. Nothing further is known about this family. This John’s connection to Alexander is secured at ScotlandsPeople.
• John 1754 born 24 October in Leochel-Cushnie to George Cromar 1720, Aberdeenshire. The son-father connection is secured at ScotlandsPeople. Family Search claims an unknown mother born in 1722 with no primary source, and also claims siblings Elizabeth 1749, Peter 1752, Janet 1756, and Christian 1760. Elizabeth, Peter, and Christian are documented as also born in Leochel-Cushnie via Scotland Births and Baptisms 1564-1950.
• John 1755 born 4 May Aboyne to Robert Cromar 1717 Aboyne. The son-father connection is secured at ScotlandsPeople. John’s nine siblings are listed at Family Search. Jannet Dun, Robert’s wife, is sourced for one of these siblings: Rebeka 1752, Kincardine-O’Neil. Kinker is only 4.8 miles east of Aboyne, so it is plausible this family moved between births.

Ann

• Ann 1751 born 16 May in Logie-Coldstone to Peter Cromar. This daughter-father connection is secured at ScotlandsPeople. In Family Search the record for an Anna Cromar with precisely the same dates has a father Peter Cromar 1720 marry a mother Margaret Anderson in 1850 — clearly a typo for 1750 — and several siblings from 1751 to 1766, all in Logie-Coldstone. These are confirmed in ScotlandsPeople.
• Recall Ann and John’s marriage record secured at ScotlandsPeople is 17 September 1789 in Lumphanan – quite close to Kincardine O’Neil and Aboyne. Ann would be 38, John would be 34 or 35, possibly a second marriage for either or both of them.

What does the archaeology suggest?

Lest we forget, the ultimate goal of this process of elimination is to break the brick wall we encountered with George Cromar 1793-1871 and find not simply that a John Cromar was his father, but instead the actual identity of this John.

The archaeology of Kirkton of Aboyne reveals that George’s memorial stone is erected quite close to Peter 1690, but with perhaps two intervening generations unaccounted for. Why would George choose this burial ground to erect his memorial stone to his family, unless he is closely related to other Cromars interred there? His documented aunt Janet and grand-aunt Jean are buried here, therefore along with dozens of documented cousins. Is it not reasonable to hypothesize Peter as a close relative to George, and possibly his great-grandfather, even though we are lacking in documentation? Would a link through from Peter help establish the identity for our John? Let’s work the arrow of time the other way and see.

John 1755 would be my 4th great-grandfather along a pure paternal line. If the record and/or archaeological circumstance can establish him as related to this John, Peter 1690 would be my 6th great-grandfather on that line. The record indicates several children for Peter with his wife Janet Bonar. If it is possible that Robert 1717 is the son of Peter 1690, we’ve found our link. Establishing the link between Peter and Robert will prove to be its own Sherlockian puzzle, and a topic for an upcoming post. Suffice to say the family oral history recounted in earlier posts suggests this would be the case, but we can’t count on that as the proof.

Conclusions

More probable

There is no source that creates a simple, direct line from George Cromar 1792 through to John Cromar 1755 of Aboyne and Ann Cromar 1751 of Logie-Coldstone. Because our process of elimination led solidly to this Ann, she is more probable, making Peter Cromar 1720 of Logie-Coldstone a candidate for George’s maternal grandfather. A possible continuation of the Cromar line in Aberdeenshire may be found in that direction.

Less probable

John’s identity is a bit less settled, but based on records, an algorithm factoring probability based on ages and distances from those records, and the circumstantial evidence based on family burials at Kirkton of Aboyne, we’re developing a hypothesis of John 1755 of Aboyne, potential son of Robert 1717 of Aboyne. This patrilineal vector potentially connects John to paternal grandfather Peter 1790, which would in turn connect him, and therefore his son George, to the dozens of Cromars interred at Aboyne. George’s memorial stone at Aboyne only makes sense if these connections are true. Evidently the notes of Ron Cromar mentioned in earlier posts may contain additional evidence that this conclusion is sound, but we won’t really know until we’re able to study these notes firsthand.

Though this is not the ironclad proof concrete documentation from a primary source would confirm, I think it’s based on solid sleuthing, considering Covid has left me stuck doing distant research as an armchair traveler. To borrow a legal analogy: if this were a civil proceeding, with the standard of evidence being “more likely than not,” I’d say this would hold up in court. If in a criminal court using a standard of “beyond the shadow of a doubt,” I’m not sure I’d go to trial with it.

Professional historians, genealogists, or people closer to these actual sources might refute or confirm this work — and I welcome any feedback either way. Until then, it’s the basis for moving on in my search. To John Cromar, born 1755 in Aboyne, and to Ann Cromar, born 1751 in Logie-Coldstone, my fifth paternal great-grandparents: welcome to the family… I think!