Howe is a Scots term meaning “valley” or “hollow.” The Howe of Cromar is an enigmatic and distinctive oval impression in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and can easily be seen in a satellite image map. It is the ancestral home of the Cromar and Robb families, representing the pure Scottish roots of my paternal grandfather.

My father bears a classically fine Scottish name: Charles Robb Cromar Jr. (b 1937), son of said paternal grandfather Charles Robb Cromar Sr. (1907-82) and Helen Murray Hawkins (1907-91). My mother is Janice Paige Cleaton (1938-2021), daughter of William Jackson Cleaton (1914-59) and Ruth Odell Lazonby (1920-2000), lines of mostly (but not entirely) Sassenach pioneers and Jamestown settlers.

The Cromar branch includes surnames such as George, Meston, Milne, Dunn (or Dune or Dun), Geary (or Garrioch), and Bonar, among many others. The Robb family line includes Spence, Berry (or Barry or Berrie), Birse (or Birss), Thomson, Forbes, and Stuart. It is this purely Scottish lineage that is the subject of this research. Other branches of the family may get their own exploration in due time, though it is interesting to note a not insignificant Scottish presence in the Hawkins line leading to Majoribanks, Mackgeehee, McBee, and Craik.

The Cleaton side beats a Scottish path also, to Rutherford, McKnight, McMath, Forbes, Keith, and Gordon. Many of these are storied surnames in Scottish history, but it is not the purpose of this exploration to live in the reflected glory of noble ancestors (who, as it happens, are not so noble in deed as they may be in name). My purpose here is to cast a light on the history of the humble Aberdeeenshire farmers, stone-masons, textile workers, and domestic servants in the mix.

Aberdeenshire boasts some of the richest farmland in Europe, and owing to this has a long heritage in prehistory and history. It is filled with Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Medieval ruins and archaeological sites. Tomnaverie Stone Circle, a 4500 year old burial cairn and recumbent stone monument, was literally in the back yard of my great-grandfather, Theodore James Cromar (1868-1930), living as a boy in Cuttieshillock, Coull under the roof of his grandfather Alexander George (1768-1841) while his mother Ann George (1836-1913) was off seeking the family’s fortune after the early death of her husband John Cromar (1823-1870).

What must it have been like for young Thuddie, as he was nicknamed, to play among these ancient stones, as any kid would no doubt want to do? I can’t help but think the tangible presence of such deep history contributed to a sense of adventure and possibility that led Theodore, and later Ann, to emigrate to America.

But many also emigrated to Aberdeenshire: peoples from the Bell Beaker Culture to the Taexali, the Picts to the Romans, the Celts to the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons to the Normans made this land an unlikely crossroads so close to the Arctic Circle, perhaps due to the fertile plains that are such a rarity otherwise at this latitude. Conflict was inevitable as it was conquered and re-conquered, and from King MacBeth (who fell in the Cromar town of Lumphanan in 1057) through the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Aberdeenshire and the Howe of Cromar saw more than its fair share of war and clan rivalry.

By my great-grandfather’s time, the Howe was a peaceful land, but the economic depression years of the 1880s and 90s left rural crofters and the “granite men” of Aberdeen—stone-carvers such as Theodore—with few opportunities to prosper. This must have fed into the family wanderlust as much as any adventurous romanticism ancient ruins may have instilled.

So, these sons and daughters of Picts and Celts left Aberdeenshire to emigrate to Boston via New York and Liverpool on great trans-Atlantic vessels such as the S.S. Alaska (Theodore) and S.S. Canada (his mother Ann). They left behind small towns and farm settlements in the Howe: Lumphanan, Coull, Tarland, Migvie, Oyne, Aboyne, Kincardine O’Neil, Lodgie Coldstone, Leochel-Cushnie, Little Maldron. Many of these settlements have been on maps for centuries, as we can see on the Blaeu Altas of 1645.

But prior to their departure for American dreams, had the Cromar family always been inhabitants of the Howe of Cromar? This is a very tantalizing question, and a central mission of this exploration.

According to the family mythology as recounted by Christiana Robb to her grandson Charles Jr. (Theodore having died before his grandson’s birth), the Cromars were not always Cromars, at least with respect to Theodore’s branch. So the tale goes, a pair of brothers belonging to clan MacDonald had fallen prey to some unknown religious, legal, or political persecution—knowing Scotland at the time, it was quite conceivably all of the above. The brothers MacDonald had to flee or face their untimely demise. Flee they did, and the claim is they ended up in the town of Cromarty, in the former royal Highland burgh Ross and Cromarty, some hundred quite rugged miles to the north and west of the Howe of Cromar. They took the name Cromar from the town, and somehow either they or their progeny arrived later in the Howe.

The names of the town and the Howe are not otherwise connected to my knowledge, and, this being an undocumented oral family history, much could have gotten lost in the etymological sauce over generations of retelling. But my research suggests there seems to be some truth in the MacDonald myth.

In the graveyard in Kirkton of Aboyne, adjacent to the ruin of a church dedicated to Saint Adamnan, “lyes in hops of a blessed resurrection the dust of PETER CROMAR” as the grave inscription of my sixth great-grandfather poetically states. According to a sadly now-deceased fellow family history researcher named Ron Cromar, who I briefly corresponded with decades ago and with whom I foolishly never maintained a connection, Peter Cromar personifies that phenomenon most dreaded by genealogists: a brick wall, no verifiable parentage.

However, Ron’s notes evidently contain some oral evidence that Peter’s people escaped the Massacre at Glencoe—one of the more infamous episodes in a Scottish history filled with infamous episodes.

Peter’s dates, 1690-1770, are not incompatible with that theory, nor is the name MacDonald from my family’s legend.

Is there any hope of linking these oral histories? Can we dare to search “in hops of a blessed resurrection” of the Cromar origin story? Is there a genealogical road from the fertile fields of Cromar to the hard-scrabble hills of Glencoe? Or will this mystery lie forever buried with the old farmer in the Howe of Cromar?