A guilty pleasure

I’ve made no secret of one of my deeply guilty pleasures: watching Outlander. You’ll find this show somewhere in a demonic Venn diagram intersecting Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, World on Fire, and H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, with some generic beach-read romance novel love scenes bordering on female-gaze porn thrown in for good measure (I have to say I wish I looked half as good in my kilt as Sam Heughan does in his). I can assure you from first-hand experience with standing stones that the time-travel premise is absurd, but the meticulous aesthetic of Outlander’s settings, costumes, and material culture of the times and places depicted, all in eye-popping cinematography, are more than worth the required suspension of disbelief (oh, and trust me, I had my eyes peeled for Outlander locations when I was in Scotland last November).

Weirdly harder for me to swallow than the time-travel, though, are the globe-trotting adventures of the Frasers as they galavant from the fictional Lallybroch manor in the Scottish Highlands to France, the Carribean, and Colonial North Carolina, with stops in Culloden, Lord Grey’s estate in England, and a print shop in Edinburgh along the way. For a mid-level laird like Jamie Fraser, and even higher up the nobility food chain, this amount of travel and/or change of livelihood in one lifetime at this point in history is a stretch, never minding the touching-the-stones-to-become-a-Jacobite bit.

Global Cromars

The Cromars were certainly not members of the gentry, and they had few resources at hand to indulge in such extravagant wanderlust as the Frasers. Their lives, as we know, were in large part wedded to the land they tilled and the stones they carved. So it’s surprising to find that the earliest instances of migration away from Aboyne and environs can be found even within the first generation following our progenitor, Peter Cromar 1690. More surprising still is a global range of travel that outstrips even that of the Frasers, all found within a single line of the family and all within 3 generations of Peter.

Way back in June 2022, I had planned a series of posts looking at the migrations of various branches of the family in Migrations I: from Aboyne to the four corners of the earth. A lot intervened: the death of my father, my planned trip to Scotland, a few collaborators contributing new information. Habitual readers know all this took the oxygen out of any migratory research! But a promise is a promise, and a chronological view of these migratory patterns was the plan, so: we begin at the beginning.

Robert 2.1 1717: the first migration

Relation to me: 5th great-grandfather

This Robert, my fifth great-grandfather, is designated 2.1 in the descendancy chart to indicate the second generation, first born offspring of Peter Cromar and Janet Bonar. To recap, his birth is claimed circa 1717 in Aboyne, with a marriage about 1737 to Jannet Dun. They had nine children over the span of 22 years. He died on March 9, 1798, in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, having lived a long life of 81 years. Habitual readers will recall that the veracity of this hypothesis is backed up by research detailed by me and others in the post Jannet, Margaret, and Isobel untangle the post-Jacobite Roberts.

Of course, we must always be mindful that a hypothesis is a hypothesis and nothing more. With so many Roberts running about, this death so far afield from Aboyne could be a false positive. But we know from the record that Robert had a notable scholar son, James, my fourth great-granduncle and younger brother to my fourth great-grandfather, John. James attended Marischal College and settled in Aberdeen as the Master and Rector of the Aberdeen Grammar School. Unsourced claims that Jannet died in 1771, if true, meant that Robert was a widower for the last 27 years of his long life. We could assume a timeline involving James and Robert thusly:

James and Robert timeline

• 1771 | Mother Jannet possibly passes when son James is only 6. Possibly interred at one of the illegible stones at Kirkton of Aboyne,
• 1788 | James graduates from Marischal College in Aberdeen
• 1796 | James becomes Under-Master of the Grammar School in Aberdeen. With a stable position, it is possible James can support an aging, retired, and widowed Robert better than his siblings, but such an obligation requires James to move the 79-year-old Robert to Aberdeen.
• 1798 | Robert passes. Possibly interred at one of the illegible stones at Kirkton of Aboyne, perhaps with Jannet.
• 1825 | James passes after serving the Grammar School as Rector for 22 years — meaning Robert is not alive to see his son’s promotion around 1803.

So, if this hypothesis is true, Robert, the first son of Peter Cromar — a progenitor who may have been the first of his ilk to arrive in the environs of Aboyne as a refugee — was the among the very first Cromars to leave. Perhaps Robert inherited a late-blooming peripatetic streak from his father…?

A missing grave explained?

This may explain why Robert’s grave cannot be found at the Kirkton of Aboyne burial ground, though several other Roberts of later generations are found there. We do well to remember there are the two mystery stones, numbers 14 and 43, that are no longer legible, and one of them could easily belong to Robert if James brought his father home for interment. An indecipherable stone suggests an older one, and Robert being buried in 1798 would be one of the older stones in the yard, if so.

In any event, my research has not uncovered another probable site for Robert’s burial. James himself is memorialized in the Saint Nicholas Kirkyard, which we’ll explore more below, but no Robert is found among the 22 Cromar stones indexed there. A Robert found in Aboyne Parish Kirkyard is a cousin: Robert 3.13, son of Peter 2.7, younger brother of our Robert here. Another Robert of the seventh generation out, far too late, is in Tarland Kirkyard. It seems immplausible that an individual of some standing, as we can imagine a school rector to be, would permit his father to be interred in a pauper’s grave.

James 3.9 1765: a bridge to more migration

Relation to me: 4th great-granduncle

We know James Cromar 3.9 (third generation, ninth child of Robert 2.1), born 1765, as one of many documented scholars in the Cromar brood. While we’ve noted his position as Rector of Aberdeen Grammar School before, we haven’t explored his tenure there. He occupied that position for 22 years, a fairly sedentary resume.

But remember that James was born in the fields of Aboyne, and through sheer drive to rise through an academic meritocracy, became an urban intellectual. At the risk of sounding elitist, I probably would have been like James. I may wax poetic in this journal about the beauty of the foothills of the Grampians and feel a genuine spiritual connection to the land my ancestors occupied, but if I’m totally honest with myself I would have wanted nothing to do with farming. Like James, I would have been dying to get out of the boondocks, craving the company of intellectual peers for spirited debate, expanding mental horizons, enjoying the cosmopolitan sophistications of the city. I feel a kinship to this James and the tension he must have felt between agrarian origins and aspirations for a life of the mind.

A beloved scholar

It seems he succeeded in this endeavor. On his impressive memorial table stone in the yard at Saint Nicholas, we find the following inscription in Latin:

Jacobi Cromar grammaticae hujus urbus scholae per XXII Annas Rectoris, qui Doctorina modestia probitate pietate haua mediocri, in juveitutem erudiendo ea industria es erja disciplides amora ea in animas cilindo solicitudine, uti nemo urguam supra nec nom peritus clarus felix. Discipulus sues et cicibus carrissimus natus XXVI Nov anno MDCCLXV mullem defutus obitt X Nov MDCCCXXV grata memoria penote praefulus et magistratus aberdeenis ei funerebri poma prenentaruni Vidiu et liberi morentis.

I’ve made a ridiculous stab at a translation that my high school Latin teacher will never forgive:

James Cromar, Rector of the city grammar school for 22 Years, a Teacher of modesty, honesty, and piety, who, in teaching (our) youth with such industry (energy? enthusiasm?), inculcates the love (of the same) into the souls of his pupils with (such) care, as (neither) no one above him nor (someone with) a (more) famous name, is pleased (to demonstrate?). Born as a disciple of pigs and chickens on November 26th in the year 1765, (and) exhausted by the mill (labor?), he died on November 10th, 1825, (and he) provides a pleasant memory to the prefecture and magistrates of Aberdeen (who) for his funeral and his mortified (grieving?) children (give) the fruits seized by (discovered by?) Vidius.

Mangled translation by the author

I won’t deny my Latin is horrible, but it’s better than Google Translate (try it only if you’re a fan of flarf poetry). Please offer a better translation if you can! The last bit has me really stumped — near as I can tell, the final turn of phrase is a flowery metaphorical reference to Vidus Vidius, an Italian anatomist and surgeon. What the metaphor could mean is beyond my biographical knowledge of Renaissance physicians. Prone to metaphor as this passage is, it recognizes James as the “disciple of pigs and chickens,” a nod to his rural upbringing, and it recognizes that he essentially worked himself to death, being “exhausted by the mill,” another agrarian reference. Maybe.

Rector

But never mind my weak translation skills. It’s clear enough from the sensibility (if not my sense) of the inscription that James was an educator beloved by his students and his city. Aberdeen Grammar School is one of the oldest of its kind in the United Kingdom, founded around 1257, though the earliest record documenting the school is around 1418. A comprehensive list of Rectors has been kept since 1479. When James was Rector, the school was located at Schoolhill in Aberdeen, near the site of the Aberdeen Art Gallery. Its most notable pupil, the Romantic poet Lord Byron, attended in the mid-1790s, about the time James was appointed as an under-master at the school, 1796 to be precise, so there is a possible world where my uncle and a young Byron rubbed elbows in the hallway.

A namesake to James Cromar Watt?

With two decades of scholarly leadership to his credit, James Cromar was bound to have touched many lives. I’ve often been curious, for example, about a famous Aberdeen artist, James Cromar Watt. Any search I’ve conducted for a familial connection with Watt has been in vain, but I recently connected some intriguing biographical dots after digging into a speech memorializing Watt. Born in 1862, the only son of schoolteacher Ann Hardy, he graduated from Aberdeen Grammar School in 1878, five decades after James Cromar’s passing.

Can we assume Ann Hardy taught at Aberdeen Grammar School? If yes, is it reasonable for her to name her son in honor of a rector whose tenure predated her employment there? We can deduce Ann may have started teaching at the School as early as 1840 and as late as 1860. And, if she herself was a pupil there, her relationship to the school could have intersected the end of his tenure. If James Cromar was a noteworthy and beloved leader, it’s not inconceivable that James Cromar Watt was named in his honor.

James achieved the prominent position of rectorship the same year he is documented marrying Isabella Munro, whose origins remain unexplored. Together they brought eight children into the world in the span of 14 years. The fact that this couple lived in a port city and not farther inland could account for the global wanderings of this adventurous family, whose many notable migrations we’ll explore below.

Robert 4.2 1805: from Aberdeen to the Caribbean

Relation to me: Ist cousin 5x removed

Robert followed in his father’s footsteps as a scholar. He is documented receiving a Master’s from Marischal College in 1823, which I’m sure father James, an alumnus, was proud to witness, albeit only two years before his passing.

His family’s position in Aberdeen society allowed Robert the ambition to seek a legal career as an advocate. In Scotland, the term “Advocate” has been historically reserved for a higher classification of lawyer. If you’ve ever seen British barristers wearing little wigs, white bow-ties, straps and gowns as a formal manner of dress in court, you’ve seen something very similar to what a Scottish advocate would wear.

Off to Jamaica

Robert is recorded as apprenticed to Charles and Alexander Gordon on 27 Jun 1829, and his business eventually found him in the Caribbean. I haven’t been able to deduce what an advocate is doing in Jamaica in 1830, but we do know that there is a long and storied relationship between Scotland and Jamaica, though not all all of that story is a happy one.

Many Scots who ended up in Jamaica were castoffs — prisoners of Civil War, Jacobite rebels, or refugees from the failed Darien Scheme colony — but several were doctors or lawyers from the Scottish middle class seeking a fortune. We can perhaps place our Robert in that category. Alas for the poor young lad, his Caribbean adventure and career as an Advocate ended prematurely when he died childless in Kingston, Jamaica on 17 Aug 1831, at the age of 25. We can reasonably assume he died of disease, a fate that befell many European settlers.

James Monro 4.4 1807: from Aberdeen to Canada

Relation to me: Ist cousin 5x removed

James Monro Cromar seems to have taken a more mercantile bent in his life than some of his brothers. We know he was christened at Saint Nicholas, the same grand kirk where my great-grandfather Theodore James will be christened a couple of generations later. We know little about his education and young life beyond that documentation. By the time James Monro is back in the record at age 27, we find he’s indulged in wanderlust. In Southwark in London, he marries Sarah Ann Chambers, a wardrobe shopkeeper 9 years his senior, in 1834.

The couple bears at least one child of which we are aware: James Cromar in 1835. The family is found in Southwark for several census cycles, in 1841 and 1851. James Monro goes through career changes during this time, including tenure as a coal merchant and a machinist.

To Canada

By the time we reach the census in 1861, we see that the family has emigrated to Greenock, Bruce, Ontario, Canada. Since we find so many Cromars and allies migrating to Canada, we’ll reserve more of James Monro’s story for a post dedicated to the Canadian portion of the diaspora.

George 4.6 1812: from Aberdeen to the Cape Colony

Relation to me: Ist cousin 5x removed

George was somewhat more fortunate in his colonial adventures than older brother Robert. He is often styled George Cromar, Esquire, in documentation, so we can assume he was an ambitious high achiever like his father and brother. We find him at Marischal College, listed in the second period of four years in 1826-7, as a student of philosophy and “son of the late Mr. James Cromar, Rector of the Grammar-school.”

At one point in his career he follows in his father’s footsteps as a school teacher at Forres Academy and the Kensington Proprietary School. He is eventually appointed Headmaster at Anderston’s Institution, in Elgin, Moray, in 1838.

To Africa

But, like Robert, he catches the travel bug, and in 1841 he becomes a government teacher in the Western Cape of South Africa. By 1850, we find he has made a career change, from the teaching of his father to the legal pursuits of his deceased brother. After becoming a clerk to the Supreme Court of South Africa, he winds up as a Clerk of Peace in Swellendham in the Cape Colony. His memorial epitaph amplifies this biography:

Sacred to the memory of George Cromar, Esq | Civil Commissioner & Resident Magistrate of the Division of Albert for more than 6 (?) years | He was born at Aberdeen, Scotland 21 April 1812 | and died at Burghersdorp 23 October 1865 | This monument erected by the inhabitants of the Division of Albert as a tribute of respect to an upright magistrate, a public-spirited citizen, and a warm-hearted friend.

George had married Barbara Ettershank and the couple had a daughter, Ann, around 1835, in Strachan. This possibly fills a gap in George’s resume: had he been teaching at the school in Strachan, just south of Banchory and near his ancestral home? We know that Ann did not follow him to Africa in 1841, because she is recorded in the Census in Birse that year, and later in 1851 in Kincardine O’Neil in the house of her grandmother Margaret. This suggests that Barbara may have died around 1840, and George, disoriented by the tragedy, left his only daughter in the care of extended family to seek his fortune elsewhere.

Ann herself married James Coutts, and the couple’s youngest son, John Cowie Coutts, emigrated to Canada… but we’ll explore him in a later post dedicated to the multitude of Canadian Cromars.

Charlotte 4.7 1814: from Aberdeen to Imperial Russia

Relation to me: Ist cousin 5x removed

When we think about the Scottish Diaspora, Imperial Russia is not the first destination that comes to mind, but sister Charlotte, along one of the more interesting and meandering legs of the Cromar journey, finds her way there. It is in the cosmopolitan Russian maritime trade city of Saint Petersburg that she marries Richard Eales in 1840.

How did Charlotte, born in 1814 in Aberdeen, end up in Saint Petersburg of all places, and how did she meet Richard, an Englishman born in that same year in Brighton, south of London? It’s hard to say with the sketchy record we have of Charlotte up until her marriage, but a look at Richard’s biography may supply clues. It’s a sad reality of history and genealogy that women are often neglected, something I hope this journal is helping to remediate!

We know from later documentation that Richard was trained as a civil engineer and iron-master. This suggests his time in Saint Petersburg was spent plying this trade for the large British mercantile presence at the port city. Such skills required higher education, and while we don’t have a record of Richard’s attendance anywhere, we do know that the University of Glasgow, one of the ancient universities of Scotland, established the first professorial chair of Engineering in the world. Could Richard have been in Scotland as a student, and could he have met Charlotte there?

Well, not in the way we might assume. Today, while the majority of people attending university are women, they were not able to attend university at all in Scotland until 1892, so she would not have been in his orbit as a “co-ed.” In any event, it turns out Charlotte was not Richard’s first partner.

A mystery partner

We know that a Margaret of unknown origin bore him a son in 1838 in Saint Petersburg, so he was already established there around the age of 24. This son, Richard Thomas, died in 1841, by which time father Richard had wed Charlotte. We don’t know Margaret’s fate, simply that she was lost to Richard, whether through estrangement or death, perhaps even during childbirth.

With an infant in tow, it seems unlikely that Richard could have returned to the UK to meet Charlotte, court her, and bring her back to Saint Petersburg to wed there. all while keeping to his professional obligations. More probable is that Charlotte, at the age of 25 or 26, went to Saint Petersburg and met Richard there. It remains a mystery for now how Charlotte, a young albeit cosmopolitan Scottish lass, finds herself so far from home.

The English Embankment

On 1 Feb 1840, the couple wed at the British Chaplaincy. I assume this may refer to the pre-1917 Anglican Church located at 56 English Embankment, known variously as the British Factory Church, the Embassy Church, or the English Church, and later as the English Church of St Mary & All Saints. The English Embankment, or Angliyskaya Naberezhnaya in Russian, was the home away from home for the English community in the city, with waterfront mansions belonging to foreigners.

Richard Eales is not documented as residing in this highly fashionable district. Known as the “Venice of the North,” Saint Petersburg is built upon many islands forming districts bounded by waterways, and we find Eales in остров голодай, the Ostrov Golodoi (or Goloday) district. Some authorities translate this as “Hunger Island” while others believe it could be a corruption of Halliday, the name of a British merchant. The island, now known as Dekabristov Island to commemorate leaders of the Decembrist Revolt, was an outer district of the city in 1840, but within easy travel distance to the English Embankment.

1 | Map of Saint Petersburg by Tardieu, 1840
2 | Closeup of the relatively sparsely-settled Ostrov Golodai from the same map. The English Embankment can be seen at lower left, connected by a bridge across the Néva River.
3 | 1838 view of the English Embankment, published by Firmin Didot Frères (Paris)
4 | Modern view of 56 English Embankment, former home of the Anglican Church

The English settlement in this imperial capital was a cooperative and fruitful one:

 Despite the animosity between England and Russia in the Crimea, the Emperor [Czar] Nicholas took the English in St. Petersburg under his protection and indeed he frequently walked the quays of St. Petersburg. … England had effectively monopolized trade with Russia from the time of Ivan the Terrible and Queen Elizabeth through to the Crimean War. …

The English colony (especially those in society) was a large one, and one could dine out practically every evening without meeting the same people twice. No English people living out of their own country could have lived happier or more jolly lives than we did. … It was a bright and comparatively care-free life – visitors from the old country always carried away with them happy and perhaps somewhat envious recollections.

Turtle Bunbury’s FAMILY HISTORY: The Whishaws: From Rudheath to Russia.  J. Whishaw 1992, p. 171

Hard times

But the Eales family led far from a care-free existence. Of the eight children born between 1840 and 1854, most of whom are documented to have been christened at the British Chaplaincy, the last three died in infancy. It is likely they were among the more than one million victims of a major cholera pandemic that plagued Russia from 1847 to 1851.

The family’s long-duration stay in Saint Petersburg turns out to be a temporary inhabitation of fortune. By the time of the 1881 Census, we find Richard, Charlotte, and youngest daughter Sarah Elizabeth have moved back to Scotland, residing in Saint Andrews. It’s possible that second daughter Jane returned with them, and her Scottish marriage in 1868 to William Paterson strongly suggest the entire family had actually returned before that date.

Further migrations

But not all of the family follows the parents back to the homeland:

• First daughter Mary Isabella Eales marries Henry Woldemar Butz in 1858 in Saint Petersburg, and their family ping-pongs between Finland and Latvia on both sides of the Gulf of Finland, perhaps due to the instability leading up to the Russian Revolution.
  • In Saint Petersburg in 1897, their daughter Charlotte Julia Butz weds August Nikolaus Grünerwald, son of Gustav Emil Grünerwald, an Estonian, and Emilie Katharina Bettzich, native to Saint Petersburg, and they had 3 daughters in 3 different places. This family spread itself thin geographically, attempting to dodge the worst the 20th Century had to offer: the Russian Revolution, World War I, a global economic depression, and World War II.
    • Daughter Vera Grünerwald is born in Saint Petersburg in 1898 and dies in Arlesheim, Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland in 1965.
    • Daughter Gertrud Grünerwald is born in Sloviansk, Donetsk, Ukraine in 1900, and dies ominously in February 1942 in Poznań, Warthe, Poland; judging by the date, very possibly during a military action taken by the Polish Home Army against occupying German troops.
    • Daughter Winifred Grünerwald is born in Riga, Latvia in 1906 and dies on 28 Jun 1975 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
• Mary Isabella dies in Finland, in 1912, while husband Henry’s fate is unknown.

The map below helps us understand these migrations (with Winifred’s move to the USA omitted for the sake of resolution of view):

In the end, Richard, Charlotte, and their youngest Sarah Elizabeth find a final home in Scotland’s capital city. It was Charlotte Cromar’s sad duty to bury both her husband and her child before she passed. The epitaph for the family members buried at Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh reads:

Richard Eales of Golodai St. Petersburg | Born 4th April 1814 Died 4th October 1888 |
Charlotte Cromar, his wife | Born in Aberdeen 6(?)th June 1814 Died in Edinburgh 5th July 1899 |
Sarah Elizabeth Eales, their youngest daughter | Born at the Golodai 3rd May 1845 Died 31st January 1896

A low-resolution image of the Eales/Cromar memorial in Dean Cemetery

Post-Script: a brief conjecture about Kirkton of Aboyne

After drafting this post, I realized I had not connected some obvious dots before, but with Robert 2.1, his wife Jannet, his son John 3.7, and his wife Ann all missing from Kirkton of Aboyne, it is possible they might all be interred at one of the mystery Stones 14 or 43. It’s stupid of me not to have thought about it this way before, but noticing how many families memorialize so many members on one stone, is it not reasonable to propose that this entire family group might be represented by one of those illegible slabs? Could this explain why George Cromar did not think it necessary to identify his father and mother by name on Stone 36? Is there any way any of that could be proven?