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 my father’s hair prior to burial at the head of Peter Cromar’s moss-covered slab stone

This visit was cathartic, but not conclusive. Because the window of time we had there was necessarily brief, I had little time to consider whether a direct inspection of the burial ground could confirm hypotheses or open up new lines of inquiry, particularly with respect to the origin of Peter himself. So after returning home, it’s time to return this journal back to its original purpose for a post or two and reconsider some old questions from a new angle or two:

• Does the burial ground hold more clues about Peter Cromar, his progeny, or his progenitor?
• Can we find connections among various Cromar lines that are currently not firmly linked to Peter Cromar?
• What do other researchers have to say about the origin of Peter Cromar?

More KoA clues?

There are two tantalizing mystery stones at Kirkton of Aboyne burial ground. I wrote about one of these in “New” information on Kirkton of Aboyne: Stone 43, a memorial near other Cromar markers, notably Stone 39. Number 43 is described as a flat stone which is not legible.

A second mystery stone which came to my attention only after my visit is Stone 14. This marker is adjacent to the Stones 9, 10, and 11, for Jean, John, and George Cromar and their families respectively. Stone 14 has no reference to a name in the index supplied by my collaborator cousin in Scotland, and in my photo collection it shows up only as an illegible fragment of a corner of a flat slab.

Perhaps we can only speculate about things we cannot see, but there is a reasonable probability that at least one of these stones could have a Cromar connection. A cross-comparison study of historical documentation of stone inscriptions may uncover that. I know of at least two: the book my Scottish cousin shared with me, and the 1907 book Aberdeenshire epitaphs and inscriptions: with historical, biographical, genealogical, and antiquarian notes by John A. Henderson. Henderson does not number stones, nor does he describe each in full. But does he describe one that is not legible in the book shared by my cousin?

More connections to Peter?

We’ve established that there are at least two sets of Cromars in the burial ground: one directly connected to Peter, and one not. As I wrote in Kirkton of Aboyne burial ground: a Rosetta Stone for Cromar mysteries, Stone 39, the one adjacent to the mysterious Stone 43, is a memorial to Robert and Farquharson who are not along the Peter Cromar descendancy. Could it be that a connection to Peter exists for them among Peter’s ancestors, perhaps a link that predates him? There are several researchers who have included Peter Cromar in their ancestry, many of which have hypothetical ancestral relationships for Peter in their trees. Could any of these establish a clear connection among all the Cromars in the burial ground?

What does the hive mind say?

The answer is: maybe.

There are more than a dozen publicly accessible family trees containing Peter Cromar, and not all of them agree about his ancestry or connections. These trees are available among the usual suspects: Ancestry, MyHeritage, Geneanet, Filae, FamilySearch, and others. Readers of this journal are aware of my general skepticism of the accuracy and depth of research found on sites that depend on crowdsourced information to generate family trees. But to be fair, these are breadcrumbs of a kind, and they deserve objective scrutiny.

So, in that spirit, I’ve delved into every one of these I could find and synthesized an ancestry for Peter, keeping a private working draft of a tree thus generated at Ancestry. I won’t provide links here to some of those trees, because some are found behind a paywall and that can only lead to frustration when one does not have a subscription. I will also not directly share my own draft tree, because I don’t want to contribute to the echo chamber I suspect has led some researchers to fictional conclusions (and, full disclosure, I was one of those kind of researchers before I knew what I was doing!). However, I will describe what I’ve synthesized in text and image as appropriate.

In my synthesis of this hypothetical ancestry, I’ve found five basic scenarios, some of which contradict one another.

Five theories

• Peter is a member of a family fallen from nobility
• Peter has a cousin: a Culloden warrior who escaped prosecution and raised a family in Belgium while on the lam there
• Peter’s wife, Janet Bonar, is from Perthshire and died in Fife
• Peter is born to a family already deeply rooted in Aberdeenshire
• Peter is a refugee or the son of a refugee of the Massacre of Glencoe, originating with Clan MacDonald or a sept thereof

Before we look at each of these hypotheses, we do well to remember that instances of the name Cromar and its many variants — Cromer, Crommar, Crowmar, Crowmere, and others — may in fact stem from different etymologies. This alone can helpful clue to confirm or debunk some of these scenarios.

Name etymology

The surname comes from several sources. Patrick Hanks describes three of these for Cromer:

Cromer (2830) 1. French: from a Germanic personal name Hrodmar, composted of hrōd ‘renown’, ‘glory’ + mār ‘famous’. 2. English: habitational name from Cromer in Norfolk, recorded in the 13th century as Crowemere, from Old English crāwe ‘crow’ + mere ‘lake’. 3. Variant spelling of German and Jewish Kromer.

Patrick Hanks, Dictionary of American Family Names

Compare this to the Scottish etymology quoted in Competing Theories on the “How” of Cromar, repeated here for reference:

Cromar (Aberdeen), Crò Mhàrr.
“The enclosure of Mar”. Braes of Cromar is Bràigh Crò Mhàrr and Bruthaichean Crò Mhàrr.

Mac an Tailleir, p 34

So there are basically four different origins for these phonetically similar surnames: one Scottish, one English, one French, and one German. We do well to keep these distinct origins in mind as we take a critical look at the parallel universes that contain Peter.

Parallel Universe I: Noble roots

Some researchers allege an ancestry for Peter associated with nobility. According to this tree, Peter is the son of John (alias Jhon) Cromar (alias Crommar), with some claims of a Margaret Roch as his mother. John is claimed to be the son of Thomas (alias Thomae) Cromar and Elspet Margaret Garrioch, and Thomas the son of Sir Christian Cromar, a knight, and an unknown spouse. Christian in turn is claimed to be the descendant of Sir James and Sir William, who are High Sheriffs of Kent in England.

This William is the son of Sir William, a Lord Mayor of London and another Sheriff of Kent — such titles were often hereditary, though it’s unclear if that is the case here. This line eventually peters out with a Thomas J Cromar in medieval Kent. There are several trees at Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Geneanet which feature variations on this lineage, which I have synthesized.

Synthesis of a hypothetical tree linking Peter to English nobility

Pros

There is some room to consider the linkages between Peter, John (Jhon), and Thomas (Thomae) as having some plausibility, and we’ll explore that more below.

Cons

At best, we can say the link between Thomas and Christian is an aspirational attempt to discover noble origins for the Cromars. This hypothesis leaves a lot to be suspicious about:

Aspirational echo chamber

• A lot of genealogical work is done with the chief goal in mind of finding noble or royal roots, and can be subject to confirmation bias whenever such a hypothetical link is “discovered.” Any claim of this nature should be backed up by documentation, and it’s difficult to say in nearly all the expressions of this lineage what documentation, if any, is being used to back up this particular claim. The power of an echo-chamber multiplying a spurious claim of noble ancestry into several instances, thus feeding confirmation bias, is hard to resist.

Etymology

• Any claim of a farmer in Aberdeenshire in the northeast of Scotland, sharing family roots with nobility in Kent in the far south of England, should be treated with a high degree of skepticism based on geography alone. The etymology of the Cromar name cited above should be enough to debunk this hypothesis. Cromar (associated with Peter) and its variants Cromer or Crowmer (which are associated with this Christian) are distinct habitational names rooted in particular places, Marr in Scotland and Norfolk in England respectively.

A daughter Christian

• The nobility kept meticulous family records to defend hereditary claims of social status, so this kind of documentation is not difficult to find and use. In the case of Christian Cromar in particular, we do find this person is likely to be the offspring of the Sheriffs of Kent and Mayors of London. However this Christian is a demonstrably a daughter to James, not a son and certainly not a knighted “Sir.” A chart at Stirnet by Peter Barnes-Graham is but one example that compiles a lineage based on historical documentation in support of this. Follow the system down generations 1.A.i.a.(1)(A)(i)(d) to find Christian’s entry, where you can see she marries one John Hale:

Cromer lineage

I’m unsure when and where a conflation first happens between this Christian Cromer and a Christian Cromar, father of Thomas, nor is it clear who first developed the gender identity and geographic shifts that make it possible, but it is certain that many researchers have echoed variations on this hypothesis without a deeper investigation.

Conclusion

Based on a lack of primary source evidence, etymology, and historical documentation to the contrary, any hypothesis linking Aberdonian crofters to Kentish nobility contains a vanishingly small degree of probable truth.

Parallel Universe II: A Jacobite cousin

While the notion of Christian Cromar as the father of Thomas is doubtful, the analysis above still gives some quarter to the hypothesis of Thomas as a grandparent to Peter. Some researchers have expanded on this family group to claim brothers for John (Jhon), son to Thomas and father to Peter. These brothers, James and Robert, have some validity that we’ll explore below.

According to some of these researchers, each brother has offspring, and in the case of James, one of these sons has the very non-Scottish name Johannes Andreas Cromar, even though it is claimed he is born in Leochel-Cushnie. One researcher in particular resolves this oddity by connecting Johannes Andreas to the Jacobite battle at Culloden in 1745. Born in 1722, his dates would support a hypothesis that a 23 year old John Andrew Cromar fought at Culloden, escaped capture, fled to Belgium, Germanicized his name, created a cover story that he was born in Bavaria, and eventually married twice, raising two families on the Continent. This person would be a first cousin to Peter.

Synthesis of a hypothetical tree featuring Johannes Andreas Cromar

Pros

The following facts generally support this hypothesis:

• The dates of the battle and the birth of Johannes do not contradict.
• The locations associated with the persons shown (Leochel-Cushnie, Oyne, Clatt, and Aboyne) are sufficiently adjacent to be plausible.
• Jacobite activity in this part of Scotland is well-documented, and instances of Jacobite refugees escaping to the Continent are not uncommon.

Cons

The following findings cast some doubt on this hypothesis:

• More than one researcher claims that a Bavarian birth is not a cover story, but rather that Johannes Andreas Crommar was indeed born there to a father named Andries. Though without apparent primary source, this hypothesis is no more or less valid than the apparently unsourced claim it contradicts.
• Etymology can otherwise support that claim, where other hard evidence is lacking. Recall the name Cromar along with its variants Crommar and Crommer can be French or German in origin. Both French and German are spoken in Belgium, and parts of the German province of Bavaria are less than 400 km from westernmost Belgium.

Conclusion

While not utterly implausible, a lack of documentation pro or con, combined with etymology, make this hypothesis fairly unconvincing.

Parallel Universe III: A Perthshire wife

While I have explored the lack of clarity surrounding the origins of Peter Cromar’s wife Janet Bonar, several researchers seem confident enough in the record at ScotlandsPeople tying Janet to Laurence Bonnar as a father, with a birth date of 21 June 1696 in Forgandenny, Perthshire, that they place this data in their trees.

There’s no disputing the record that a Janet exists who is Peter’s wife, and there’s equally no objection to the record of a Janet existing who is Laurence’s offspring. But what case can be made these are one and the same?

Pros

The following facts support this connection:

• The dates are plausible. Peter is born in 1690, their wedding is in the record on 9 October 1716 in Kincardine O’Neil, and first child Robert is born in 1717. That would make Janet 1696 a 20-year-old bride and 21-year-old mother.
• There is no record that ties any one of the many other persons named Janet (or Jannett) Bonar (or Bonnar or Bonner) to Peter.

Cons

The following facts challenge this connection:

Cherry-picking

• By the same logic that supports our second pro point, there is no record that explicitly exempts all other Janets: the data is being cherry-picked. There are 5 or 6 Janets in the record at ScotlandsPeople that are within a reasonable date to marry in 1716. If dates are the sole criteria to establish a connection, then who is to say our candidate is not Jean Bonnar of Perth in 1684, a bride aged 32, or Jannet Bonnar of Torryburn in 1698, a bride at 18?

Geography matters

• But dates are not the sole criteria: geography matters. Among all the above-mentioned Janets and variants in the record, we find Forgandenny of course, but also Wemyss, Perth, and Torryburn. Relative to Kincardine O’Neil, these places are, respectively, 76 miles, 80 miles, 70 miles, and 100 miles away. These distances in this time period should be investigated with a healthy skepticism.
• All of the above assumes that every Janet Bonar and variants can be found in the record. It’s clear that records of this era are incomplete. There is an alternative unsourced claim in FamilySearch, which a researcher likely based on probability alone, that Janet was born to Adame Bonner and Margret Thomson, who are recorded as married in Kildrummy, north of Tarland and near Alford, in 1687. Kildrummy is reasonably close to Aboyne (16 mi) and Kincardine O’Neil (18 mi), documented sites for other life events for Janet, as well as Leochel-Cushnie (8 mi), the documented birthplace of mother Margret, that such a hypothesis is plausible in the absence of a birth record.
• Further investigation uncovers a death record for a Janet of 9 September 1789, in Strathmiglo, Fife. This is far away and very suspicious if we assume a Kildrummy birth for our Janet. Geographically, however, one might hypothesize the Janet born to Laurence in Forgandenny is the very same one who dies in Strathmiglo: these settlements are separated by only 12 miles.

A hypothesis for Peter’s spouse Janet Bonar, circumstantially based on the marriage date of Adame Bonner and Margaret Thomson, and factoring a marriage date with Peter combined with birth dates of their children.

Conclusion

While a lack of additional primary birth record exists substantiating Kildrummy as Janet’s origin, we can at least build a strong argument that Janet, daughter of Laurence from Forgandenny, is not the Janet we seek.

Parallel Universe IV: Aberdeenshire roots

In debunking noble roots for Peter, we did concede that a portion of this line merits further scrutiny. Thomas Cromar, an alleged grandparent in Leochel-Cushnie, and his son Jhon, an alleged father in Leochel-Cushnie and Auchindoir, are in the record. Peter’s possible siblings Patrick, William, John, Jean, and Alexander are also clearly documented in Auchindoir, as are Jhon’s brothers James and Robert, both in Leochel-Cushnie. This Robert’s son Robert is documented in Oyne. Various spouses and parentage of the same are also in the record. Is there enough material in these records to hypothesize a synthesized lineage as illustrated below? Is Peter the product of a deeply-rooted Aberdeenshire family?

A hypothetical tree, synthesized from other researchers, for Peter Cromar’s direct ancestors, along with aunts, uncles, and cousins

Pros

Supporting this hypothesis we find the following in the record:

• Birth dates, marriage dates, and death dates, where they are found in the record, generally do not conflict.
• Geography among this entire group, where found in the record, is plausible (see map below). The furthest distance in this group, from Oyne to the Boat of Charlestown, is 26 miles, an 8.5 hour journey on foot. Leochel-Cushnie, which figures in many of these relationships, is a solid mid-way point between northern and southern places of record. Thomas, if he is a progenitor, is born there and therefore lies mid-way between family groups that migrate north (to Oyne, Clatt, Alford, or Auchindoir) or south (to Kincardine O’Neil, Aboyne, or Boat of Charlestown).

• Peter’s birthplace in 1690 (a date indicated on his memorial stone) is unknown, but there is a record for an unnamed Cromar, son of Jhon, being christened in Clatt in 1692 sharing an unsourced claim of a birth date of 9 September with Peter. This is only 5 miles away from Auchindor and Kearn, the birthplace of all his alleged siblings: Patrick, William, John, Jean, and Alexander.

Cons

Challenging this hypothesis we observe the following:

• There are some weird echos between the children of Peter and Janet and those of Peter’s alleged uncle Robert 1677 of Leochel-Cushnie, and his wife Jean Matthewson 1685 of Oyne. Peter and Janet have a son Robert 1717 of Aboyne, married to Jannet Dun (alias Dune) 1714 of Kincardine O’Neil. Some researchers have assigned a son Robert 1717 of Oyne, married to Janet Dunn 1720 of unknown origin, to Robert and Jean. I’ll refer readers to Jannet, Margaret, and Isobel untangle the post-Jacobite Roberts, where I detail the invaluable work done by Kevin Cromar of Utah in his study of the Roberts. This tangle, found just about everywhere one finds research that pre-dates Kevin’s work, probably explains this echo.
• While there is a lot of documentary evidence among members of this tree, there’s simply not enough to make a hard and fast theory out of this hypothesis. Documentation is just too full of holes. Examples:
  • There is no primary source that definitively links Peter to Jhon, only circumstantial evidence.
  • There is no primary source that established Janet’s origin beyond doubt, again only circumstance.
  • Peter’s alleged father Jhon is not documented by birth in Leochel-Cushnie, whereas his brothers Robert and James are.

Conclusion

This hypothesis is plausible, but only if we are willing to accept circumstantial evidence in place of primary source documentation.

Parallel Universe I: Glencoe roots

The possibility that Peter Cromar or his forbears began as members of the Clan MacDonald or a sept thereof, became refugees of a persecution most likely being the infamous Massacre of Glencoe, and took the name Cromar after landing in Aberdeenshire, remained a persistent rumor in my family’s oral history. But a rumor it remained for many decades, unsubstantiated by any kind of record. After all, if you are trying to hide, you don’t leave breadcrumbs, right?

When I started this journal and acquainted myself with Ron Cromar’s genealogical work, echoes of this same oral history informed his conclusion that this rumor was true. Again, there is no objective record to corroborate it, but the fact that this same story, with the same details, existed independently for so long in two branches of the family having no contact with which to coordinate said details, is not insignificant.

Now comes a third instance of this story.

Canadian cousins

I’ve lately had the pleasure of collaborating with Wendy Cromar Mathers and her daughter Jessica McDonald, both residing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Wendy’s branch of the family includes her father Colin Douglas Leslie Cromar. Her discovery of my entry for Colin in Peter Cromar’s descendancy database began a collaboration that in part has helped her and Jessica create an e-publication, The Cromars: an account of our ancestors and, therefore, ourselves, published this past Christmas.

There is much to enjoy about their work, and I plan to incorporate their findings into my own research when I return to a long-delayed exploration of the Cromar-Robb diaspora. But most striking in pursuit of the Glencoe hypothesis is the story they tell, from which I quote here liberally:

Peter [Cromar] has an almost primogenitor-like standing at the apex of this descendancy, due to his appearance seemingly from nowhere, and what also seems like a very dominant memorial monument in the same local graveyard, installed by a later Cromar generation sometime after 1915 that marks the beginning of their lineage with his name.

With the Pollbook of 1696 to help us identify all the possible living people who could have been his parents, how is it possible that we reach a dead end? Believe it or not, the answer may lie in the family lore clue of a Macdonald ancestor who fled the Glencoe massacre.

-from The Cromars: an account of our ancestors and, therefore, ourselves

From there, Wendy and Jessica provide an account of the well-known Massacre, then continue:

When Jessica Mathers became engaged to Michael McDonald, several family members commented that she was really already a McDonald, albeit spelled as Macdonald (to which Michael commented that the McDonalds were originally MacDonalds, but that is another story).

As we pieced this together, it appears that it partly stems from detailed handwritten notes by Colin Cromar, which were stored away inside his book “The Prehistoric Antiquities of the Howe of Cromar” which had been handed down to and kept by his daughter Wendy. Her husband John, who was a detailed reader of every book and with a great interest in history, had internalized these notes and quoted them back at this point to Jessica.

When Jessica mentioned it to her grandmother Violet, she recognized and validated this history and further added to it that her husband, Colin Cromar, had all their lives together had a habit of constantly repeating the off-colour chant “the Campbells are coming, the Campbells are coming, ye ken by the smell”.

This was further substantiated by Jessica’s mother Wendy, who says it was a constant refrain and that there was a first line to this verse, quote: “the Campbells are coming, the Campbells are coming, they’re kicking up hell”.

-from The Cromars: an account of our ancestors and, therefore, ourselves

So what does the presence of a third instance of the Glencoe origin story mean?

Pros

Multiple versions of an oral history support this hypothesis thus:

• All three oral histories are closely aligned in their detail. This alignment is significant because these three oral histories were kept by three different branches of the family, independently and without cross-corroboration, in three different places (the west coast of Canada, the east coast of the USA, and Aberdeenshire) for decades.
• The likelihood that there is no truth to back up each of these independent oral histories is vanishingly small: what is the probability that three family branches in three widely dispersed places would fabricate exactly the same origin fable?

Cons

The challenge faced by this construct:

• If we are not to be hypocritical, we must apply the same standard of documentation here that we’ve applied in our critiques of all the other hypotheses above. This oral history is still hearsay until documentation is unearthed.

Conclusion

If we can claim a scientific method standard of repeatability has any bearing here, the presence of multiple independent instances of an oral history might elevate the status of this from hypothesis to theory.

Having said that, Wendy and Jessica are proposing ways to develop a record that would support our theory. Among other things they have a Victorian ring with a Cromar hair sample that can be subjected to DNA analysis, and they have proposed the creation of a DNA group that could bring the ancestors of Glencoe survivors together in a community. I hope to do what I can to assist with that effort!

A New Year post-script

I’d like to note in passing that 2022 saw an explosion of interest in this journal: over 300 visitors accessed the site for over 1000 page views. Altogether, since I founded Cromarville in May 2021, over 500 visitors have access over 1600 page views, and comments have led to several instances of collaboration. For a boutique blog with a hyper-niche subject and mission, I consider this great success and I thank all readers for this!