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Did the Cromars and Georges almost kill Tomnaverie Stone Circle?
Castles and circles I’ve mentioned the Tomnaverie Stone Circle a couple of time in prior posts. I never heard of this amazing site until a few years ago, when I was hosting a study-abroad program through the school where I teach digital media. We were taking a day trip away from Dundee (where we collaborate…
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Thuddie and Teenie in the New World
Boston My Virginian ancestry is a fact over which I harbor little obsession, likely because my formative years were spent in New England. I attended grade school in communities like Chelmsford, Massachusetts and Nashua, New Hampshire, the Granite State. I ate ice cream as New Englanders are fond of doing: standing outside, in winter. Most…
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Christiana Berry Robb 1867-1960
Lumphanan The Howe of Cromar is a quite distinct oval, but other districts of Mar are less geographically distinguishable. From west to east, these include Braemar, Cromar, Midmar, and “Mar the most easterly portion.” On the heat map of Cromar-Robb habitation in Aberdeenshire, no place is more active than the village of Lumphanan and environs.…
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Theodore James Cromar 1868-1930
The “Granite Men” of Aberdeen Aberdeen is known as the Granite City, and earned that honorific on the strength of a granite industry that built so much more than Aberdeen itself. Cities in the U.K. and internationally depended on the export of granite from Aberdeenshire, along with the stonemasons that were expert at cutting and…
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Competing theories on the “How” of Cromar
Family mythology An enduring part of the family mythology and the central concern of this exploration is the manner by which the Cromar family came to be the Cromars. Evidently, sometime around the end of the 17th Century, the escape of some variety of persecution—religious, or perhaps political or legal, the story would shift sometimes—was…
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The Backstory
Every good story has an origin myth, a meta-story that leads up to the major plot and fills in important details about the main characters and their circumstances. Since a backstory helps develop a fully realized fictional story world, surely it must be so for factual tales. So… Charles “Big Honey” Robb Cromar Sr. and…
