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From Glencoe to Aboyne III: a virtual 17th century migration
NOTE: Please read Parts I and II if you haven’t yet done so, then return here to complete the series. When I first began this exploration as a Covid-driven hobby, I looked at maps of Scotland, tracing possible routes from Glencoe to Aboyne that generally avoided what I assumed to be a pure no-man’s land…
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From Glencoe to Aboyne II: surviving the 17th century Highlands
Drone footage of Glencoe in winter | TourScotland Part I of this mini-series explored the Massacre of Glencoe and its aftermath, including possible escape and migration scenarios that may have involved a very young Peter Cromar. Our goal was not to prove the migration, just to demonstrate it was not impossible. Here, we attempt to…
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From Glencoe to Aboyne I: reversing the riddle
YE loyal Macdonalds, awaken! awaken!Why sleep ye so soundly in face of the foe?The clouds pass away, and the morning is breaking;But when will awaken the Sons of Glencoe? Mary Maxwell Campbell | Lament for Glencoe So, after around 30 journal entries exploring the origins of the Cromars in Aberdeenshire, and with all of that…
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Peter Cromar 1690: parallel universes
I’ve completed the chronicle of our study abroad trip to Scotland, a journey that gave me the opportunity to see the Kirkton of Aboyne burial ground and close the circle for my family by burying a lock of my father’s hair at the head of slab stone for our progenitor, Peter Cromar. A lock of…
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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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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…
