Category: Aberdeenshire

  • Jannet, Margaret, and Isobel untangle the post-Jacobite Roberts

    Jannet, Margaret, and Isobel untangle the post-Jacobite Roberts

    In our post Jannet Dun or Janet Dunn or Janet Dune, c. 1720-1770?, we discovered previously unknown sources that provide potential new insights as to the makeup of the Cromar’s family and origins, and I promised a post that would revisit the thorny problem of the many Roberts that we have never conclusively solved. Not…

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  • Jannet Dun or Janet Dunn or Janet Dune, c. 1720-1770?

    Jannet Dun or Janet Dunn or Janet Dune, c. 1720-1770?

    Cromars in the Jacobite era By the time Robert Cromar and Jannet Dun had settled down and started raising a typically large rural Scottish family, the Second Jacobite Rising may have been quelled, but the thirst for a Jacobite revolution had not been quenched, and a third revolt was to culminate in “the Forty-Five” with…

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  • Janet Bonar, c. 1695-1789?

    Janet Bonar, c. 1695-1789?

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: New information and research has invalidated conclusions about Janet’s origins detailed in the following post. You may read about this development at Bonars in the 1696 Poll Book: a deeper understanding of Janet’s origins? Because this journal is about the real-time process of researching and developing a family history hypothesis, and not the hypothesis itself, I have…

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  • The Janets, Dun and Bonar: on wives of the Jacobite period and gender bias in genealogy

    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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  • Peter Cromar — or MacDonald of Glencoe?

    Peter Cromar — or MacDonald of Glencoe?

    A divided nation At this moment of turbulence in 2021, we Americans think of ourselves as a divided nation. For us, divisive tendencies date back to debates about slavery that animated fateful compromises in our founding documents two and a quarter centuries ago. But frankly, we are absolute amateurs at this: we’ve got nothing on…

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  • Robert vs. Robert vs. Robert Cromar and Jannet Dun: turmoil in Scotland

    Robert vs. Robert vs. Robert Cromar and Jannet Dun: turmoil in Scotland

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: New information and research has invalidated certain conclusions about the identity of John Cromar in this post. You may read about this development at Ann Cromar redux — or reconsidered? and at Ron Cromar and me. Because this journal is about the real-time process of researching and developing a family history hypothesis, and not the hypothesis itself, I have decided to…

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