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The Cromar-Robb line I: progress and methods
And to think this is still a work in progress as of this writing: the Cromar-Robb Hypothesis tree under construction. With 7 out of 9 generations finished, it may only be about 50% complete. Note the impossibly dense parent-child linkages in a tree of this magnitude, as well as the consistent generational growth pattern seen…
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The Janets, Dun and Bonar: on wives of the Jacobite period and gender bias in genealogy
I’ve mentioned how the family historian Martin Robb has inspired this journal. He and I have corresponded about the possible association we may have as cousins-X-times-removed through my patrilineal great-grandmother Christiana Berry Robb, and I can only hope my writing is a fraction as insightful as his in my investigations in future posts. Using family…
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More on Thuddie and Teenie: Insights from my Father
Official data is the life-blood of genealogy, and while a careful researcher can infer a lot about family dynamics from documentation, it can only get you so far. Genealogists are right not to place stock in anecdotal evidence, but data is sometimes a skeleton that lacks the flesh only family stories can supply. Perhaps official…
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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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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…
