Jul 13 - A 'Green man', one of over 100 in Rosslyn Chapel (mid 15th-cent.), 8 miles south of Edinburgh

"Rosslyn is renowned for its many carvings of the 'Green Man'. ... Traditionally the Green Man is a pagan figure most commonly shown as a male human head surrounded by foliage or with foliage emerging from its mouth." (a plaque)

- "Whilst they're not very common in buildings in Scotland, there are over 100 here at Rosslyn. There are many theories about the origins of Green men. Some say they are old pagan symbols representing nature and rebirth. Others say they are Christian images that represented man's sinful origins in nature." www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU7Xbm1aWkU (from the 00:25 second pt.)

- "Why there are so many here remains a mystery. Perhaps they are connected with the St. Clair family's sympathy for the Gypsies or Egyptians, sometimes described as men of the 'green wood'. [?]" (a plaque)

- "It's the abundance of sculptures and designs [here] that really sets Rosslyn chapel apart from almost any other building [in Europe]. Everywhere you look inside and out are carved images upon carved images." www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lh_sBhQsFo (from the 13:37 pt.)

 

 

- Warning, more geneology ahead. (The following is only of interest to close family or those on my Dad's Mom's side of my tree.)

- Cont. from the last write-up for the last photo of the exterior of Rosslyn chapel near Edinburgh.:

 

- When Babs and Min said "Oh, we don't talk about THAT side of the family", they'd just declined to talk about most of it: 3/4s or 2/3rds of their ancestry, depending on your point of view. For they and my great great grandmother had 4 grandparents but only 3 pairs of great grandparents, and 2 of those 3 had some roots on Islandhall.

- One thing that might have helped to mitigate any relative isolation in and @ Durness, Eriboll and 'Cape Wrath' is the surprising level of variety in Scottish DNA, discovered in a study in 2012. One theory ascribes this to Scotland's position in the far NW of Eurasia, as far NW as peripatetic migrants could move over the centuries or millenia from points East and South in Eurasia and Africa. www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-17740638 And clan chieftainship would be, or was supposed to be, denied to any claimant who married his 1st cousin, a tradition inconsistently held across the Highlands where first cousin marriage would've carried at least some stigma. But a one-off isn't such a big deal. The natural risk of mutation doubles, but from 3% to only 6% for children born to 1st cousins (provided their parents and grandparents et al. weren't first or 2nd cousins as well).

 

- Btw, the 1st cousin adopted as a sibling (or a bachelor brother?) who'd been living with Babs and Min was found dead in a local swamp or bog. My 2nd cousin twice removed, old Harold MacLeod, told me that "everything was all fine on the surface, but at night their tongues would start to cluck" and they'd be at him, and the two drove him mad old Harold said, and he wandered off one night, the last that he was seen alive. Old Harold was a great source of family lore. He told me that another of the MacLeod sisters (another of my great great grandmother's sisters, there were 5 in total) had a son who drowned in a mill-pond. Her other son or her daughter, the drowned boy's sibling, later named one of his or her own sons after that boy, the brother who drowned, and that son then went and drowned in that same mill pond.

 

- 'Babs' and 'Min' were of course nick-names, 'Babs' for Barbara and 'Min' was Margaret. I recently came across a reference to Babs' full maiden name as 'Barbara Allen MacLeod'. I mention above that she was almost certainly named after her father's legendary aunt Barbara, she who would swim across Malpeque Bay to deliver babies and died with her own in her arms in a snowstorm (and whose name and significance to my own family I only discovered just recently). I don't know if that earlier Barbara had a middle name (she might've been named 'Barbara Allen MacKay', although no middle name appears in her baptismal record nor on her tombstone), but Allen isn't a woman's name. 'Barbara Allen' however is one of the most beloved folk-songs in the English language, if not THE most, described by ethno-musicologists as "far and away the most widely collected song in the English language". Babs and Min were of entirely Highlander-Scots heritage. 'Barbara Allen's such a lovely song that I hope it wouldn't matter to the MacLeods where it was from, but I've just read that it "began as a Scottish ballad in the 17th cent. before quickly spreading (both orally and in print) throughout the British Isles and later North America" (Wikipedia). The fact that Babs was named after a folk song doesn't make it any less than very likely that she was named after her great aunt whose legendary exploits so impressed my Dad. Of course you can name a child after more than one person or thing or for more than one reason. But I like that 2 of my ancestors named one of their kids after a folk song or a character in a folk song, at least in part. On many a Christmas from when I was a kid until I was a teen, and on many since then too, I'd hear the 1st 3 verses of 'Barbara Allen' with interest for exactly 1 min. and 10 sec.s.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_FLHkHNaHI (There's an old American Appalachian version sung by such luminaries as the Everly brothers, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton, but it lacks the lovely minor-key sadness of the original Scottish or British version, sung in this video by John Denver.: youtu.be/pH7O-0XUxnw?si=rkez8rGL9UxZ5bKg )

 

- One last story about Babs and Min is more personal. The topic of family history would come up on occasion at family dinners on Sunday nights at our home in Scarborough when I was a teen. My grandmother told me after one supper once that her great aunt Babs had lost her only child, a lovely young girl who resembled my grandmother when she was a girl with her long black curls. She said that when Babs would look at her when she was a child, on at least one occasion she stared and became visibly moved and tears welled up in her eyes. And as my grandmother told me this tears began to well up in her eyes as well. It was the only time I'd ever seen her cry.

 

- I can't find it online, but we watched a production of what I thought was one of L.M. Montgomery's books (or so I thought?) on TV one Sunday evening after supper in the early to mid 80s. It featured a girl living in the home of 2 elderly sisters who my grandmother claimed with confidence were inspired by or based on her great aunts Babs and Min, a mistake I think. ('Elizabeth and Laura Murray' from 'Emily of New Moon'? But that was filmed in '98, so no, and the book was written in 1923. Were Babs and Min both widowed and living back together by then? What was that TV show?) My grandmother and my Dad would often remark that their Aunt Janie would say "We knew Lucy Maud" who would summer with her maternal aunt Annie (nee MacNeill) and uncle John Campbell, neighbours to my great grandmother and her family in the small community of Park Corner where my great great grandfather was both a farmer and the postmaster and where my great great grandmother succeeded him as postmistress. The Campbell home and farm is now a museum, very popular and crowded in summer with tour-groups and guides, walking trails, buggy rides, etc. (I toured it in 2018 when I took my Mom out to the island; photos to come.) It's been misleadingly renamed 'The Anne of Green Gables museum' since. (Ka-ching.) It features spots said to have inspired locations in the novel, incl. 'the Lake of Shining Waters' (a pond), the 'Whispering Lane' (a path through the woods), etc. Some Filipinos stop by and talk and learn about "Anne of Gables" or "Anne Green of Gables" in this vlog. (Everyone should say 'P.E.I.' like this one guy does at the 13 sec. pt.): youtu.be/44fu4-rZy6c?si=4cNMKQIV0fAHYpzC

- My great grandmother is mentioned in Lucy Maud's journals, but only in passing. On April 9, 1892 she was 16 yr.s old (Lucy Maud was 17) and one of 12 young women who gathered in Park Corner for "a hooking" (no, not that kind of hooking! a party where women worked together to create rugs). On Sunday, May 1, 1893, Lucy Maud fell asleep in the Long River church (my great grandmother's family's church) during the service and "dreamed that [her] Uncle John C. [Campbell] was having family worship in the kitchen and that Albert Stewart [my great great grandfather] was singing those words to a psalm tune!" archive.org/details/completejournals0000mont/page/154/mod... My Dad took me to see that church, shuttered up and abandoned at the time, in 1998. (It's been restored since then and was moved to the 'Avonlea village' cheese-fest near Cavendish. I toured it there in 2016 when the interior was intact, pews and all. Two yr.s later the interior of that historic church had been gutted to accommodate, incredibly and hilariously, a 'Boom Burger' outlet. See it and cringe at the 4:25 min pt. in this vlog.: youtu.be/Jq_gr-_PY3Q?si=Akm0Y9T1GlCzUnye ) It's likely that 5 references to a "Will Stewart" in those journals were to my great great uncle Bill, who was @ one year older than Lucy Maud. He gave her "a lively drive" in his buggy once, and was seen in the company of Mac MacNeill, "the biggest muff in Cavendish or out of it". There are also 3 references in her journals to "Stewarts'', my great grandmother's family's home, as a location.

1. "... Bounce through the pitches we went until just by Stewart's gate the other girls slipped off the sleigh and took to their heels. Lem and I, thus deserted, consoled ourselves by remembering that two were company and drove on as far as the forge before we turned back. ..."

2. "... After breakfast he simply turned them out, for he told them to go on up to Stewarts’ and they might sell their organ there. ..." ('Them' = "James McIntyre and a Mr. Mytton from town on their way to Uncle John's [in Park Corner] with a 'trial' organ," a "pump organ, sold on trial door-to-door for home entertainment", per a footnote.)

3. "... [S]o we turned back and drove to Uncle John’s where we let Lu off. Of course I supposed we'd go home then too, especially as it was now pouring cats and dogs, but Alec [MacNeill] had other views. He drove clear up to Stewarts and then walked that horse every inch of the way back. He gave me several hints about my cool behavior recently but I took no notice of them. ..."

 

- Btw, Babs' and Min's and my great great grandmother's grandfather George MacLeod (my great x 4 grand-dad) was a carpenter by trade and helped to build the Geddie Memorial Church (1836-'37, Presbyterian), "a maritime vernacular meeting house style church with neo-classical details" which is more atmospheric than you can tell from this video. (It has that old church smell.): www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plnb1AfmFfc My great great grandparents and my great great grandmother's parents (as well as my great great uncle Bill, the 'Will Stewart' in L. M. Montgomery's journals, a bachelor who lost one of his eyes to a cat), are all buried in the churchyard there. (I was often warned as a boy never to bring the cat too close to my face as Dad's Uncle Bill lost an eye to a cat.)

 

- My great-grandmother, a Stewart (Dad's Mom's Mom), had royal pretensions, or I should say the pretensions of one who claims to be of royal descent. (Or you could say that she was just generally pretentious.) Once at our home in Scarborough when I was young I found an old, disintegrating photo album in the 'crawl-space' in the basement that she'd put together. It was the type with a velvet cover and an iron clasp with room for just one old photo-card per each side of the page or sleeve with oval holes to view the photo. Of the 25 photo-cards (which I kept, but not the album, the spine was gone) 20-21 are of British and European royalty (of the other 4, 2 are of composers Rossini and Verdi, 1 of an actress and 1 of soprano Adelina Patti youtu.be/w2LY6YLHn7U?si=pyi9cj1peMJW6Qdw ). She was a royalist and this was a collection she'd built up. (I safely assume those cards were sold in the stores back then, like copies of 'Majesty' on the magazine racks today.) I don't know if she'd heard of the claims to descent from clan chieftains and Scots nobility on the MacKay side of her tree (her Mom's Dad's Mom's Dad's side), which I analyze in the write-up for the last photo in this stream (an exterior shot of this chapel). All the information set out in therein is coincidental if she hadn't. I was never told that Babs and Min made any claims to descent from clan chieftains. But again my great-grandmother's own maiden-surname was Stewart and she told my Mom on that occasion when Mom was taking notes in the early 60s that she descended from the Royal Stewarts. (Mom told me that she said to her "I think those Royals spelled their surname 'S-t-u-a-r-t'", to which the old lady responded "yes, that's how we spelled our name", which doesn't reflect well on her credibility. In fact the name in the Scots royal line had been Stewart for @ 200 yr.s from 1371 when Robert II, grandson of Robert the Bruce by his daughter Marjorie, took the throne, until a young Mary Stewart, 'Queen of Scots', was betrothed to Henri II and her surname was changed in @ 1548 to Stuart to suit French conventional spelling.) It's possible that the pretentious old lady was right, even though she was almost certainly just guessing. But just how far up the tree on the Stewart branch would one have to go to find historical types with Wikipedia entries? Consider the following. Her great grandfather, her Dad's Dad's Dad (of course), my great x 4 grandfather, was one 'Anthony Stewart of Scotland', and the story of his passing was famous in my great grandmother's family. He settled in the town of St. John's, Newfoundland in @ 1778 where he lived for @ 33 yr.s, working as a carpenter and a shipwright. (He'd been living in St. John's for 16 yr.s as of 1794, per the census of that year.) I've read that he received a commission to build ships for the British crown or the colonial government. A document shown to me in a frame in the early 90s at the home of my 1st cousin (twice removed) Arthur Dickieson in Garson, ON was an 'ordnance' of the city of St. John's stamped with 3 seals, incl. one from the 'Office of Ordnance', "granting an allowance of 54 [pounds] 15 [shillings] per annum ... [with the] Allowance to commence Nov. 29, 1806 - Dated May 1, 1801" (a pension). The primary role of that office was “to act as custodian of the lands, depots and forts required for the defense of the realm and its overseas possessions, and as the supplier of munitions and equipment to both the Army and the Navy”. armorial.library.utoronto.ca/stamp-owners/ORD002#:~:text=... There's a good chance that a 'Stewart's cove', a docking space /b/ piers in St. John's harbour, was named after him. He and his wife were married June 9, 1783 (the earliest marriage in the 'new world' that I know of [for certain] in my family tree), ngb.chebucto.org/Vstats/pre-1891-st-john-ang-mar-1783-180... "Anthony Stewart" and "Susanna Scarbrook" (sic, Scarsbrook; her name is spelled Susannah in more recent, less reliable family records) by one Edward Langman (Anglican clergyman and local official, 1716-1784 www.biographi.ca/en/bio/langman_edward_4E.html ) in the 'Cathedral of St. John the Baptist' there, which served the oldest Anglican or Protestant parish in what is today Canada, founded in 1699. ourcathedral.ca/history/ The surname is listed as Stuart 4 yr.s later in a baptismal record for their son Nicholas (the only baptismal record I could find), and as Steward in the 1794 census. I consider the marriage record to be more reliable and I'm almost certain the said pension document is for an Anthony Stewart, and of course his children all went by Stewart. Their 4th child, George, great x 3 granddad, was born in St. John's on June 13, 1791, and was also the first ancestor in my tree who I'm certain was born on this side of the pond.

 

- I received information recently that Anthony's wife, Susanna Cowans Scarsbrook, was born in the ancient town of 'St. Marychurch', in Torquay today, in Devonshire (most English fishing activity off Newfoundland's so-called 'English shore' in the 17th cent. was based in 'West Country' ports in Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire, and in Devon in particular), that her father, John Scarsbrook, owned and rented out a 'Boat room' or 'Fishing room' (a shore property) in Newfoundland (I've read that this was in Torbay, @ 10 clicks north of St. John's; I've also read that it was in Trinity Bay, much further NW), and that he was buried at St. Marychurch. He might have been living there when he died, or his body might have been shipped back to Devonshire in its coffin. It seems he was devout as arrangements were made that proceeds from the leasehold of the said property were to be paid to the parish of 'St. Mary Church' c/o his account following the death of his son, 7 yr.s before his own death when great x 4 grandma was @ 15 yrs. of age. But I don't know how reliable much of this is. Some of the information received as to Susanna's father and family is contradicted by other more reliable primary source material. And how to account for the reference to Susanna's surname as Cowans or Cowns as well as Scarsbrook in some more reliable sources? (This is a compound or so-called 'double-barrelled' surname, often joined by a hyphen. "In British tradition, a double surname is heritable, usually taken to preserve a family name that would have become extinct due to the absence of male descendants bearing the name, connected to the inheritance of a family estate. Examples include Harding-Rolls, Stopford-Sackville, and Spencer-Churchill." [Wikipedia]) I haven't found any reference (yet) to a Cowans, Cowns, Cowans-Scarsbrook nor Cowns-Scarsbrook in records from St. Marychurch online.

- In any event, a Mary Scarsbrook, who must have been Susanna's sister, was living in St. John's and was married in the same cathedral 6 yr.s earlier in 1777 to a William Bunnet or Bennet or Bennett (according to reliable church records), and per the (much less reliable) information received, their uncle was living in St. John's as well. (The best evidence is that Susanna was 19 at the time.) It might be interesting that a William and Mary Bennett sired a son who was baptized on Christmas eve, 1779 as "Richard Scarsbrook Bennett", another compound or 'double-barrelled' surname, one of only @ 10 in the list of transcribed baptismal records from that parish from 1775 to 1780.

- The said information received is supported by some records available online, incl. one extant for the burial of a John Scarsbrook in the cemetery at St. Marychurch, Torquay on Dec. 4, 1773. A John Scarsbrook, who might've been my ancestor, was sired by a William Scarsbrook and was baptized in St. Marychurch on Dec. 16, 1710. William married a 'Susana Hore' at St. Marychurch on Feb. 21, 1709. Susana was sired by a Thomas Hore at St. Marychurch (my great x 7 grandfather?) and was baptized on Oct. 21, 1686. ('Hore', from 'Hoare', is an old Devonshire name which originally meant grey or white-haired.) Another John Scarsbrook was sired by a John sr. and was baptized at St. Marychurch on Oct. 3, 1717. A John Scarsbrook married a Grace Jeffery at St. Marychurch on Feb, 27, 1709. AND a Susanna Scalbrook [sic?] was sired by a John Scalbrook [sic?] and was baptized at St. Marychurch in March, 1758 (!). (So the info. received is consistent with and supported by the relative abundance of Scarsbrooks, incl. at least 2 John Scarsbrooks in my great x 5 granddad's generation, in the records from St. Marychurch, and by this record of a baptism there of a Susanna Scalbrook [sic?] in 1758 [age 25 in 1783], which appears to have been that of my great x 4 grandmother.) Btw, Scarsbrook derives from Scarisbrick, the early medieval name of a hill in Lancashire which itself derives "from the Old Danish personal name 'Skar', of uncertain etymology, and the Old Norse 'brekka, brekk', meaning slope or hill, hence 'Skar's hillside or slope'." (NW England was the destination of the Norse denizens of Dublin for resettlement following their expulsion from that city in 902 "by Mael Finnia, son of Flannacan, with the men of Brega and by Cerball, son of Muirecan, with the Leinster men".)

- An infamous moment in the history of St. Marychurch, on Sunday, May 30, 1943, is discussed here.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDSg8VgUhpQ youtu.be/HRiPSf7Q5AA?si=Q25HkXPUMP7-2CHj

- Susanna and her sister, and then the young Stewart family, were living in St. John's in perilous times. The French had attacked and besieged, sacked or destroyed St. John's on at least 4 occasions /b/ 1696 (with the disastrous conquest by D'Iberville) and 1762. A margin note in the baptismal records from the Anglican Cathedral reads: "2 years [of] records [from Nov. 4, 1760 to June 27, 1762] lost when the French took the place and the clergyman [Rev. Langman] was confined." ! The construction of Fort Townshend was completed in 1779, only 4 yr.s before the Stewarts were married. And the city would be attacked again by a fleet of the French Republic under 'Admiral Citizen Richery' 13 yr.s later in 1796 while Anthony was in the midst of his ship-building career. (St. John's was spared but it was close. The appearance of the garrison was augmented by the marching of sailors manning the batteries around and around Fort Amherst and Signal Hill to discourage the French with the illusion that there were greater numbers of men defending the garrison than there were. The French sailed south and attacked Bay Bulls instead.) And 4 yr.s later in 1800 "there was a mutiny in the garrison in St. John's; the plot was discovered and the ring-leaders hanged." faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/nfldhistory/MilitaryH... So St. John's wouldn't have been the safest home for 2 unmarried sisters in the 1770s and '80s relative to Devonshire, and it's certainly much less comfortable in the winters. (I don't know how much Barbary-pirate slave-raiding had persisted on the SW coast of England into the 1770s and '80s, but it would've been much less than at the crisis level seen just before and into the time of Cromwell.: "Over the course of the [17th] cent. a large number of British ships and people were captured by [Barbary] pirates. Devon and Cornwall lost roughly 20% [!] of their shipping through these raiders burning settlements, sinking ships and carrying men, women and children off to [North Africa to] be slaves." www.visitsouthdevon.co.uk/blog/read/2023/04/pirate-histor... That said, I've come across an estimate online that @ 1 1/2 million European and American slaves were abducted and enslaved by or in 'the Barbary states' /b/ 1750 and 1815.) Nonetheless, St. John's was a rapidly growing boom-town at that time. "From the mid-18th-cent. to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the population of St. John’s grew from less than 1,000 permanent residents to over 10,000." www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/st-johns I have greater confidence that 'Stewart's Cove' was named after Anthony in light of those low numbers. He built a house on the 'King's road' in 1787 having sought and received an official permit to do so on the basis of his declaration that the construction wouldn't interfere with normal fishing operations in town (likely a standard requirement). Seven yr.s later in 1794, the Stewarts were renting a home in 'the 5th Division' ('from King's Beach to the Garrison') and employed a Catholic man-servant or assistant. (No-one else named Stewart/Stuart appears in the 1794 census, nor anyone with the surname Bennett, that of Anthony's sister-in-law.) In 1806 Anthony bought one of the first subscriptions sold in town to the 'Royal Gazette', a local paper.

- In 1811, almost 30 yr.s after their marriage, the Stewarts planned to move with their family to Scotland so that Anthony could retire back home (per the oral history), but he had plans to visit Quebec first to found a masonic lodge somewhere there. (I don't know just where but I've learned that there were already quite a number of masonic lodges in 'Lower Canada' in @ 1811. According to an account from my great great aunt Janie, Anthony had already founded a lodge in St. John's.) Their ship was caught in a storm in the Gulf en route and was wrecked just off Malpeque Bay, P.E.I. The family was rescued with their things but Anthony died of exposure a few days later, and his widow Susanna, who was said to have been "an educated lady", and her children settled in Prince-town (now known as Malpeque, nationally-famous today for its oysters) where she taught school. She later moved to St. Eleanor's (near Summerside today) where her daughter 'Susanna St. John Stewart' went to live after she married. (Susanna Jr. married very well to Spencer Green, son of U. E. Loyalists Daniel Green and Martha [nee Oats] who owned much of the land in and @ St. Eleanor's, then known as 'Green's shore', the future site of the city of Summerside. My great x 3 grandfather George was so impressed with his wealthy brother-in-law that he named one of his sons 'Spencer Green Stewart'.) A fine, dark, wooden (mahogany?) masonic ballot or voting box (with the dark, wooden balls used in voting ensconced within - where we get the expression 'to black-ball' or 'black-balled' from) was preserved, and I've seen it too as it was passed down to my cousin Arthur as well and to whichever of his children inherited it from him since then. (I'll scan and upload a photo I took of Arthur holding it sometime.)

- Now does it sound more or less likely in light of all of that information that my great grandmother's pretensions might have had some basis in fact? Anthony Stewart was a successful businessman who built or maintained ships for the Royal Navy and received something like a pension from the Office of Ordnance, and connections always help with obtaining such work. But his widow and children weren't 'sent for' from across the pond after the shipwreck and his passing, and she had to work. (Or did she deign to?) And yet the plan to found a Masonic lodge before leaving the continent makes Anthony sound ambitious and at least somewhat connected. I don't know who his parents were or where in Scotland he hailed from, although I've read unverified info. that his father's name was Andrew and that "he may have spent some time in Perthshire" before sailing to Newfoundland in his 20s in @ 1777-'78.

 

- 'Anthony Stewart' is an uncommon name in surviving 18th-cent. baptismal records in Scotland, with only 4 extant (incl. for Antony and Anton) /b/ 1730 and 1767, 2 in Wigtown parish and 2 nearby in Whithorn and Minnigaff (all in 'Dumfries and Galloway' in the SW; Wigtown and Whithorn are in historic Wigtownshire, Minnigaff is just across the River Cree in historic Kirkcudbrightshire), in 1733, 1742, and 2 in 1737, and none for an Anthony/Antony Stuart in the entire 18th cent. The youngest of the 4, sired by an Anthony Sr. and a Jannet Milhench, would've been 41 in 1783 when Anthony married and 69 in 1811. (According to the information recently received, Anthony "came to St. John's in his 20s, sometime shortly after 1777".) It's more likely that the mid-18th cent. record of Anthony's baptism didn't survive. Many didn't. Of 13 baptisms of an Anthony, Antony or Anton Stewart in the records /b/ 1700 and 1770, 9 took place in 'Dumfries and Galloway' incl. 3 in Glasserton (also in Wigtownshire). 3 of the other 4 were in Edinburgh (incl. 1 for an Anthonie) and 1 in Irvine; none survive from the 17th cent. Clannish Scots traditionally named their children after their parents or grandparents in that period, so it's unsurprising that more than 2/3rds of those baptisms of Anthony/Antony Stewarts took place in one region. There's a good chance they had a common ancestor, and while none seem to be a match for my great x 4 granddad, this cluster in and @ historic Wigtownshire could be a clue as to Anthony's provenance. But of course there's also a 50% chance or so that Anthony was named after his maternal grandfather or another ancestor or relation on his mother's line.

- The name 'Antony' appears only once (but never 'Anthony') in 'The Heraldry of the Stewarts' (George Harvey Johnston, 1906). It's found in the chapter 'The Stewarts of Galloway' (p. 71). archive.org/details/heraldryofstewar00john/page/70/mode/2... (A google search took me to this book and this chapter after I wrote the 4th last sentence above, honest.) This Antony was the 'Rector of Penninghame' and the scion of "the Stewarts of Clary". (Did my great x 4 grandfather descend from the 'Stewarts of Clary'?) I haven't yet found the site of the long-gone 'Clary House' in the Carse of Clary online, but it was in the historic parish of Penninghame which extended north of Wigtown to Minigaff. scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/digital-volumes/ordnance-survey-na... youtu.be/lDjYEWDZJh4?si=nJKLhsMa3GiMvlZ4 It was "the principal residence of the Bishops of Galloway in the 16th cent. and for part of the 17th ... [and] became the residence of the Earls of Galloway at the abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland". (Canmore.org.uk) 'Antony' married well to Barbara Gordon in 1566 or '69, the daughter of and heiress to Alexander Gordon (1516-1575), "the celebrated titular Archbishop of Athens, Bishop of the Isles and of Galloway" in succession, son of 'John Gordon, Lord Gordon', "the Master of Huntly by a natural [ie. illegitimate] daughter of James IV" and great grandson of James I. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gordon_ www.youtube.com/shorts/uSZ59EF4FyE

- James IV's head is buried somewhere under the streets of downtown London today.: youtu.be/ssNWSQfHtS4?si=3uSiTCKhZ3flxPlR

- In quite a coincidence OR an example of just how inter-related these peerage types were (and how), Jane Scobie (who lies buried next to my great x 4 grandmother in Simm's Field on P.E.I., see my write-up for my last photo) descends from Alexander Gordon's brother 'George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly', "the wealthiest and most powerful landowner in the Scottish Highlands" (Wikipedia), and from George's daughter Jean Gordon, Alexander's niece (who married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell [Alexander preached at their wedding at Holyrood palace], and who later agreed to a formal annulment on May 7, 1567, 8 days before Bothwell married the newly widowed Mary Queen of Scots. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:James_Hepburn,_4th_Ea... youtu.be/KeXZw0piUws?si=tWpxs58YefQEJoER [Bothwell was implicated in the assassination of Lord Darnley, Mary Stuart's 2nd husband, father to James I/James VI.] Jean then remarried to the Count of Sutherland, moved into Dunrobin castle, etc.) youtu.be/5zp3PKkJmHA?si=lBJIHhVrHko5KS_m Jean, Bothwell's ex, etc., was Jane Scobie's great x 4 grandmother as well as her great x 5 twice over (ouch!), as Jean begat Lady Jane Gordon who wed Huistean Du MacKay, XIII of Strathnaver, Jane Scobie's great x 3 grandparents (her Mom's Dad's Dad's Dad's folks) and her great x 4 grandparents twice over (her Mom's Mom's Dad's Dad's Dad's folks and her Dad's Mom's Dad's Dad's Dad's folks. [Her grandmothers were sisters.])

- Back to Antony Stewart.: Antony was 1/2 uncle to the 1st Earl of Galloway (1580-1649) and the son of one Sir Alexander Stewart, 5th of Garlies (@ 1507-@ 1581) by his 3rd wife (Sir Alexander's cousin [sigh] Katherine, daughter of 'William Stewart of Barclye and Tonderghie'); his grandfather Alexander Stewart, 4th of Garlies, died in battle at Flodden in 1513; his great great grandfather was 'Sir William Stewart of Dalswinton, Garlies and Minto' ('Sir Walter Stewart of Dalwinston' was that William's maternal grandfather); and his great x 4 grandfather was 'Sir William Stewart of Jedworth' who was taken prisoner by 'Hotspur' Percy at the battle of Homildon (aka Humbleton) in 1402 and was then executed by him. The inimical 'Hotspur', eldest son of the future Earl of Northumberland, helped to depose Richard II but then rebelled against Henry IV, and appears in both of Shakespeare's eponymous plays. Sean Connery played him in 1960.: youtu.be/bxlpLlGud7A?si=UPxSV9oSXWpjQskA Prince Hal slays him in Henry IV, Part 1 and then disses him in a eulogy, referring to his "ill-weaved ambition". (The defeat of a seasoned general of 39 by a 16 yr. old is dubious, but that's Shakespearian royalist propaganda for you.) www.shakespeareandhistory.com/henry-hotspur-percy.php The family mansion burned up with all the family records @ 270 years back and so "it is not now possible to prove the pedigree further back" than Jedworth, but direct descendants claim he "was a son of Sir Alexander Stewart of Darnley [aka Derneley], and [the] brother of Sir John [of Darnley]". (They cite references to 'Alexander of Garlies' by the Earl of Lennox, a descendant of Sir John, as his "near kinsman", and to the Earl of Galloway by King James VI as a descendant of 'the Stewarts of Darnley' [p. 70].) Sir Alexander was the great grandson of Sir John Stewart of Bonkyl and great great grandson of Alexander, '4th High Stewart', the great grandfather of King Robert Stewart II. (p. 22)

- 'Antony' of Clary's great x 4 grandfather was James Douglas, the famous 2nd Earl of Douglas, great great grandfather of William, the 6th Earl, and his brother, the young victims of the infamous 'Black Dinner' (which, together with the massacre at Glencoe, was the inspiration for George R.R. Martin when he wrote 'the Red Wedding' scene in 'Game of Thrones'. youtu.be/jD3_3iynlYI?si=TfUxOTBNFaZZ5jic ). Antony's great grandmother Margaret Douglas was the hapless 6th Earl's 3rd cousin once removed.

- In another coincidence, Jane Scobie was the great x 10 and twice (at least) great x 11 grand-daughter of 'William Crichton, 1st Lord Crichton' (her Dad's Mom's Dad's Dad's Dad's Mom's Dad's Dad's Dad's Dad's Mom's Dad, etc.), Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1440 and the depraved asshole who, together with Alexander Livingston of Callendar, invited the young Douglas brothers to the 'Black dinner' "and murdered them, despite the young King's pleas [per one account] for their lives." (Wikipedia)

 

- Recent DNA studies indicate that as bearers of the surname Stewart there's @ a 30% chance that Anthony and his son George could have claimed descent from Scotland’s Royal family, and a 50% chance of descent from that line or that of the progenitor's brother, Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll who "met his demise at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 fighting alongside William Wallace". project1-m9gb2xku8.live-website.com/?p=38755 "The Stewart family’s well-documented pedigree allowed 'ScotlandsDNA' ( www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/what-does-scottish-dna-... ) to carry out tests on his descendants, and those of his brother James, the 5th High Steward of Scotland and the grandfather of Robert II, the first Stewart king. ... 'ScotlandsDNA' checked its database of ancestry tests for men with the Stewart surname and found that ... 30% are descended from James." Again, @ 20% descend from his brother John.

 

- The descendants of Sir John Stewart of Bonkyl were scrupulous in maintaining records of their pedigrees, seeing as the Royal Stewarts/Stuarts were their cousins. Mary Stuart, 'Queen of Scots', married one of them, a Lennox Stewart, Henry Stewart Lord Darnley, great grandson of Henry Tudor VII (through his mother Margaret Douglas; Mary, Darnley's 1/2 first cousin and 3rd cousin once removed [and more distantly related several times over], was another of Henry's great grandchildren) and the father of James VI of Scotland/James I of Great Britain and Ireland. (The royal marriage was strategic in light of Darnley's descent from the Tudors and which bolstered their son's claim to the throne of England. youtu.be/SlsmMFnKg3Q?si=G7Mkn6P3Ka25rO_m ) Sir John of Bonkyl's descendants "include the Earls of Angus, Earls and Dukes of Lennox, Earls of Galloway, Atholl, Buchan, and Traquair, Lords Lorn, Innermeath, Pittenweem, and Blantyre, the Stewarts of Appin, Grantully, Rosyth, Minto, etc."

- "[Again] Sir John Stewart of Bonkyl, 2nd son of Alexander, 4th High Stewart [or Steward], was killed at the battle of Falkirk in 1298. He married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir Alexander de Bonkyl, in Berwickshire. Sir Alexander's Arms, as shown on his Seal attached to the Ragman Roll, were 3 buckles, and several of his grandsons and their descendants accordingly carried buckles in their Arms also. [They] had 5 sons and 1 daughter, [etc., etc.]."

- Again, the Lennox Stewarts were direct ancestors of James VI & I through his father Henry, Lord Darnley. Antony of Clary was likely James VI and I's 6th cousin through the Lennox line. (See p. 46).

- The Appin Stewarts famously fought for the Bonnie Prince at Culloden in 1746 (where they led the McLarens btw; my grandmother was a McLaren). Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart, immortalized by Scott in Rob Roy and by Robert Louis Stevenson in his romance 'Kidnapped' (played by Michael Caine in the movie upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Kidnapped_1971_UK_... ), was a 'Stewart of Appin'. www.flickr.com/photos/joesonoftherock/50183732266

 

- Update: Again, James IV and the line of the Stewart kings, one of the oldest in Europe, in which endogamous marriage was common, was fairly inbred (although they were no Ptolemies or Habsburgs).: youtu.be/NRStCaAXvzY?si=qklucCCi3p-q2T7y www.youtube.com/shorts/gKJmDK8a3aY And Scots Highlanders appear to be relatively inbred with much endogamy according to this article.: "Mating patterns in medieval/early modern Scotland".: hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/mating-patterns-in-medi... "The broad, general pattern wrt historic mating patterns in Scotland appears to be: more cousin/endogamous marriage for a longer duration (i.e. into the early modern period) the farther north one goes; less cousin/endogamous marriage for a longer duration (i.e. extending back into the medieval period) the farther south one goes in Scotland, with the notable exception of the border areas."

- From 'Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland': "[A]s early as 1336 John MacDonald of Islay applied for papal dispensation to marry his cousin Amy Macruari. According to canon law this marriage was within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity and any children born of the union would have been regarded as illegitimate. Close ties of consanguinity or affinity /b/ spouses were common in the Highlands, but MacDonald was aware of the wider context and the [importance of the recognition of his son's legitimacy] by the Scottish crown. Clan marriages were directed towards various ends, whether political, military or economic. Prioritization of these considerations depended on the size, standing and policy of a particular clan. A study of the marriage patterns of the chiefly family of the McIntoshes reveals both an internal and external agenda. During the 14th and early 15th cent.s it was common for the children of successive chiefs to be married into local families while at least one child was married into a satellite clan of the Clan Chattan, thereby reinforcing clan solidarity. By the 16th cent., however, a clear shift in policy is evident. Internal marriage still took place regularly although in instances where a chief had fewer children it was unusual for endogamous marriage to take place. Instead it was more important to use marriage as a means to establish and to reinforce external alliances. However, if during a period of political instability a particular chief felt the need to reinforce clan cohesion a greater number of marriages were contracted internally."

- "How much cousin/endogamous marriage was there amongst the medieval highland clans? The partial genealogy of one clan, the MacPherson clan, which has been well-researched, offers some clues. There are 3 branches of that clan - the sliochd choinnich, the sliochd iain and the sliochd ghill-iosa - and the genealogy runs from the middle of the 14th through the 17th cent.s: "The genealogy contains almost 1,000 Macphersons, men and women, and @ 200 non-Macpherson marriage partners. ... Of the total number, @ 750 are males, just > 200 are females; and > 300 marriages are recorded. ... More than 1/3rd of the recorded marriages were endogamous, which is to say they took place within the clan, both parties being Macphersons, and marriage within the sliochd [i.e. one patriline] was permissible. Of 119 endogamous marriages recorded in the clan, no fewer than 40 took place within one or other of the 3 major sliochdan. Geographical propinquity was doubtless a factor in the occurrence of some of these marriages, but a more potent force was probably the desire to prevent rights in moveable property, especially stock, and right in land from passing out of the sliochd. The same argument is probably true for inter-sliochd marriages in the clan. One curious consequence of this, perhaps, was the existence of a custom of concubinage where the rules of the Church forbade marriage. The genealogy provides one possible example of this in the case of John Macpherson of Knappach who took the widow of his deceased uncle Thomas as ‘his concubine’. The woman involved was Connie Macpherson, daughter of Donald Dow Macpherson of Pitchirn and Connie Macpherson of Essich. She was, perhaps, following the example of her father, who, after the death of her mother, ‘took as his concubine’ Eneir Cameron of Glennevis from whom the Macphersons of Clune descended. At any rate it is quite clear that the Highland clans and their major patrilineal divisions entertained no rules enforcing exogamy. ...

- "One result of repeated marriage within the clan was that cousin-ship was not a simple matter of two lines of patrilineal descent from a common forebear, but was exceedingly intricate. So complex, indeed, were the relationships established within the clan that many clansmen of the 10th and subsequent generations were able to trace their descent back to, not one, but all 3 of the original brothers, and often to one of them more than once. [Ouch.] “The exogamous marriages were formed with influential families, almost exclusively of the Highlands. ...

- So "1/3rd of MacPherson clan marriages were within the clan, many times within one of the patrilines. (Compare this to 25% in Cumbria, one of the border counties in northern England, in the early modern period.) The MacPhersons circumvented the church’s bans on consanguineal marriage simply by shacking up rather than marrying. A result of all this inbreeding was that MacPherson cousins were more closely related to one another than cousins in a more outbreeding society would be." There you go, the truth will set you free.

 

- youtube.com/shorts/9x75wqtu-OE?si=6XltJ-VILB4GKcb2

Done