Dunedin

On the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island lies the small city of Dunedin (duh-NEE-din), named in honor of the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh (ED-in-bur-ah , not eed-in-burg), which is confusing unless you are aware of the Gàidhlig name of that ancient city: Dùn Èideann (tun-EE-chin). There are other Dunedins in the world — one lies in Ontario, Canada, another in Florida, USA — and other Edinburghs as well, in Australia, North America, and even the province of Mpumalanga in South Africa. Whatever their rationale for leaving, whether a function of economics, religion, politics, or some unsavory combination, it seems that anywhere Scottish migrants laid down new roots, they wanted to invoke the memory of their homeland, suggesting a move may not have always been the most welcome solution, even if it may have the most necessary.

Interestingly, Dunedin in New Zealand is nearly antipodal to Edinburgh in Scotland. About 150 miles to the west of Dunedin lies the small agricultural market town of Otautau, with a population about 750 persons. It is comparable in size to Logie Coldstone, a Scottish village about 130 miles from Edinburgh. My fourth-cousins-three-times-removed, Charles Esson and his sister Ellen (a.k.a. Helen), emigrated from Logie Coldstone to Otautau sometime after Ellen married James Low in about 1895.

Parallel places

The two towns so neatly mirror each other in character and scale that it’s hard to imagine them choosing to live in a place like Otautau for any reason other than to mitigate a home-sickness amplified by the probability they would never see Logie Coldstone again — for as close as they are in kind, these settlements could not be further apart on planet Earth. At 11,578 miles, the distance between Otautau and Logie represents the most extreme example of migration in the descendancy of Peter Cromar.

Within that descendancy, this is simply one among thousands of migration events, a Cromar Diaspora that is a metonym for the Scottish Diaspora. These travels document a collective dispersal from humble origins in Kirkton of Aboyne outward to four corners of the earth: North America, southern Africa, Eurasia, and Oceania.

Big data

In my initial study of the database, I’ve compiled several timeline-style charts that reveal the patterns of migration that will support the many interesting stories this series of posts on migration will recount. Let’s look at the big picture first.

Rough drafting

I “simply” performed keyword searches for place names in the database to find where people began and ended their journeys through life. I say this ironically, because while the action of searching was mindlessly simple, the act of compiling the results was weedy and complex. There’s a lot to refine in the expression of the patterns that resulted, but I share the initial draft as an embed below. If that’s too dense to read on mobile device, find it as a link here.

scroll table »

This spreadsheet is raw data and not for the faint of heart. For the intrepid, one reads an entry as follows:

• Headers are by generation (1, 2 3, etc.) with dates denoting the spread of birth years associated with that generation.
• Places are color coded and abbreviated with a 2-letter code. No color represents continuity in Aberdeenshire. A dark color represents a migration event. A lighter color represents generations that follow in that same place.
• Names rendered as close to full as feasible. A surname moving forward is NOT listed: to find a surname, work backward in the list until you find the progenitor of that name. A new surname is always listed when introduced.

Creating hierarchies

Notice there are several tabs on this spreadsheet, each representing a focus in the search, from the most distant to the most local with respect to Aboyne:

The World

• This sheet was divided into major regions or continents not covered in other sheets, including the Americas, Africa, Asia, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe. There are some details in Jamaica and Argentina that intersect with history in interesting ways, but there are three major branches that will generate noteworthy stories:
  • the Cromar/Birse/Evans/Tipping line in South Africa and Zimbabwe (at the time known as Rhodesia)
  • the Eales/Butz/Grünerwald line found in pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary Russia
  • the curious connection with India found along two Cromar lines.

Oceania

• Strands of Cromars, McHardys, Cruikshanks, Whites, Deavilles, Irvings, Gowies, Thirds, Clarks, and Websters are scattered in Australia, which is organized by regions (New South Wales, Queensland, etc.). Meanwhile New Zealand , also organized by regions (Auckland, Wellington, etc.) sees an influx of Cromars, Leightons, and Thirds, as well as the aforementioned Essons.

North America

• The overwhelming majority of the Cromar Diaspora is linked to Canada and the USA, and we find a surprising amount of cross-border relationships, births, and deaths, especially around Michigan and Ontario.
  • Canada | Two major branches reveal concentrations in Ontario and the West. Canadian entries are subdivided by Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories (PEI is missing because no descendants are recorded there).
  • USA | Many surprising concentrations are discovered in this study. The USA is divided by region (Northeast, South, Midwest, and West) with sub-regions (New England, Mid-Atlantic, etc.) and states (Virginia, California, etc.):
    • Utah reveals the influence of the LDS movement on two different groupings of the family found in the US
    • Michigan sponsors a large cohort centered around Ingham county
    • A small town in Washington hosts 5 generations
    • New England contingents of Buckners, McPhersons, and Essons in Massachusetts, as well as Milnes in Vermont
    • And, of course, the group represented along the East Coast by my own family group.

Great Britain

• Though we don’t think of migrations within a nation as immigrations, it is interesting to note the patterns found in:
  • England | With trends of movement to urban centers in Lancashire and London, groupings of traditional shires (Cheshire, Warwickshire, etc.) are placed within regions (North West, North East, Yorkshire and Humber, West Midlands, East Midlands, South West, South East, London, and East of England).
  • Wales | With concentrations in Wrexham and Hope, across the English border from Cheshire, Wales is subdivided by traditional counties like Flintshire and Glamoran.
  • Scotland | With a huge influx toward Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, patterns are described by relevant region (Highland, Grampian, Tayside, Strathclyde, Central, Fife, Lothian, and Dumfries-shire) and then by shire (Banffshire, Lanarkshire, Angus, etc.)

Aberdeenshire

• We finally investigate those who remained in Aberdeenshire itself, with some quite interesting observations among the sub-regions of Marr, Banff and Buchan, Buchan, Formartine, Garioch, Aberdeen City, and Kincardine and Mearns.

Cities

• Though some of these places are not urban, strictly speaking, some sub-regional concentrations in places like Washington DC, Ann Arundel, Los Angeles, Salt Lake, Boston, Manchester, and Brisbane, among many others, are revelatory.

Finally, though not precisely on the topic of place, there is a study in one tab on Generational Drift that confirms many assumptions we made in an earlier post about that phenomenon.

Major families

Patterns in the data reveal the major players in the migration game. We see the consequences of these adventurous decisions and how they affect generations down the line. The list below is incomplete as a full study of this phenomenon is ongoing, but the charts quickly tell us some of the major migration families:

James 3.9

• Robert 2.1 is the first child to leave the vicinity of Aboyne for Aberdeen, perhaps to be taken into the care of the household of his son James 3.9, a noted school-master. From James emerges a plethora of migrations:
  • James Munro 4.4 to Canada, and his progeny from Canada to Washington State.
  • Charlotte 4.7, who marries Richard Eales and begins a sojourn in Russia

Peter 3.6

• Another son of Robert 2.1, Peter 3.6, becomes the progenitor for the largest migration group to Oceania through great-great-grandchildren along the family lines mentioned above. Peter’s progeny also lead the way to the large group of Christies and Durwards that arrive in and around Dundee, the second largest urban migration after Aberdeen.

George 4.1

• A grandson of Robert 2.1 through his son Robert 3.2, George 4.1, plies the schoolmaster trade like his uncle James and becomes the progenitor of the largest migratory branch to Utah, via son Alexander Ramsay 5.4 and his wife Isabella Niven. Their children Jane 6.1 and William Tweedie 6.5, go with them, and William Tweedie fathers several children, some of whom follow him to California. Other children of Alexander Ramsay depart for England and Canada.
  
• Other sons of George 4.1, John Barclay 5.6 and Arthur 5.10, arrive as the largest wave of migration to Wales.

Fifth Generation

• In the 5th Generation, other great-great grandchildren of Peter 1 lead expeditions including the following:
  • Susan 5.6 Milne, great-grandchild of Robert 2.1, and Helen 5.8 Smith, great-grandchild of Robert’s brother Peter 2.7, each become the founder of large migration lines in Michigan. Many of Susan’s progeny go on to demonstrate the very permeable border between Michigan and Canada.
  • James 5.4 Buckner and sister Ann 5.5 Buckner, great-grandchild of Alexander 2.2, become the progenitors of a large branch in Massachusetts.

There are many other fascinating family lines to explore, including an offshoot from my direct line. We’ve already explored my great-grandfather Theodore James 6.1, son of the ill-fated John 5.1 and the peripatetic Ann George, grandson of the tragic George 4.2. John’s brother George 5.2 has a daughter, Ann 6.1, cousin to Theodore, who launches a large group of 7th Generation Milnes on a sojourn to Vermont. This was when Theodore plied his stonemasonry trade in New England, so it will be interesting to see if these cousins had an opportunity to meet. Were the Vermont Milnes also Granite Men?

From data to story

I’ve been impressed by just how much narrative can be gleaned simply by looking at patterns in the data. Decisions reverberate through history and affect many generations down the line. Who would expect a humble crofter in Aboyne would have spawned a factory worker in Detroit, a religious fanatic in Yakima, a doughboy on the battlefield in Flanders, or a digital arts professor in Philadelphia?

Untangling these stories from the data is the work to be done. In the coming months, these stories will be chronicled here. If not to the same depth as my investigations of Theodore Robb Cromar and Christiana Berry Robb, these stories will be fleshed out at least to a degree that will help give their lives and the lives of their forebears some richly textured context. It will take more than just inferring from data — an investigation of history will be needed as well as more patience!

For simplicity and continuity, I will follow a roughly chronological path. Our next stop will therefore be the earliest forays of Peter’s descendants into the urban life of Aberdeen, and the earliest migration out of the country, to the Cape Colony in South Africa.