Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Dad and the MacDonalds



My dad loves family history. I remember driving to North Carolina with him and my older brother, Peter, one summer, to visit gravestones where our Moody and other Southern ancestors are buried. He knocked on the doors of people very willing to show their southern hospitality, inviting us to eat of their honey and listen to them fiddle (this did, in reality, happen, and it was AWESOME).

Dad has traveled to Scotland and countries Scandinavian (for work-related reasons) and found time to drive to villages where his ancestors lived for centuries before traveling to America, to ask the people living there about them.

I have always enjoyed the family stories he tells, even though my own family history skills have yet to be put to the test. Rootsweb.com, he tells me, is a really great place to find stories about your ancestors.

Dad read a story on rootsweb.com that took place when the English were trying to systematically break up the Scottish clans after the 1740's. First, some background information about Scotland: In AD 79, Scotland consisted of warring Iron tribes and by the end of the 900's, was one kingdom, Alba, with Gaelic as its language, a template for modern-day Scotland.

The Romans, who invaded during the first century, eventually had to leave what they had conquered, and Scotland had divided into four different sections: the Picts, the Britons, the Dal Riata, and the Angles (invaders who brought the Anglo-Saxon language). You can read more about the Scots here at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/.

The beginning of conflict between England and Scotland occurred when, in 1286, King Alexander III of Scotland died in an accident. His predecessor, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, died soon afterwards, and both John Balliol and Robert Bruce tried to claim the throne. Edward I of England, seeing an opportunity to rule Scotland after being asked to mediate the dispute, decided he would judge over all those trying to claim the throne so that, no matter what, the new king would already have recognized his authority.

King Edward did win control of Scotland, but not until after a lot of fruitless warfare.
Scotland was eventually declared independent when Edward the III was forced to recognize King Bruce, who threatened to invade England. The Jacobite rebellions occurred when the Scottish supported the Stuart line instead of the ruling Hanovers in England, who took control in 1701 after an Act of Settlement. http://www.scotclans.com/scottish_history/articles/clan_system.html

The story that my dad found is an important part of this. Allegedly,
the sons of the clan chiefs were sent to England to be educated and thus, hopefully, lose all loyalty and connection to the clans which they were meant eventually to rule and, inadvertently, give their allegiance to the system with which they had grown up, the English.

The first MacDonald who went to Oxford University was visited by his mother at one point, to see how he was doing. He told her that the people where he was living were crazy.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well," he explained, "the person on the one side of me keeps pounding on the wall, and the person on the other side won't stop moaning."

She asked him what he did.

"I just sit here quietly and play my bagpipes."

In an effort that was eventually successful, after the termination of the Jacobite movement in Scotland, the British were able to end the clan system, practically if not traditionally, and regain control. Perhaps the sons of the clan chiefs were no longer truly invested in the future of their people, alienated and estranged, and did not have the loyalties needed to command armies. The Scottish clans to this day are still rich culturally, bagpipe-playing, tartan-wearing.

Why do we know stories of our ancestors from hundreds of years ago? We pass down the stories of our ancestors from one generation to the next, and hope that in all the kerfaffle of modern day and oral retellings, we don't lose the essence of them.

6 comments:

  1. I would just like to say that whoever came up with this group name is awesome. Just throwing that out there.

    I think it would be really cool to go see one's ancestor's native villages and what they are like today. Mine are mostly in France and England, but I really don't know exactly where they are. It would be really cool to know where all of your different ancestors came from a long ways back. (For example, if you're of German descent were your ancestors Romans, Huns, or something else, or any combination thereof?)

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  2. Yea, it would be really cool! I would love to go to Europe and explore around there, and I think knowing about where your ancestors came from helps you to understand them as people and see their importance - sometimes I forget they have had stories and trials too.

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  3. I see how family history can be a type of folk knowledge, in fact I too have been to England and have visited the graves of my ancestors. I actually got to climb "Powley" hill! However, I still haven't really grasped the true importance of genealogy and I guess it makes me wonder if everyone suddenly finds a deep connection with their ancestors, or is it just a select few?

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  4. The timing of this post is very interesting for me. I've had my mind on family history lately because my sister was just called as a Family History Co-Chair in her single's ward. We both laughed because we haven't spent hardly any time learning our family history, which is a shame. I think that learning and knowing family history especially relates to folk knowledge because of what we know concerning Elijah. In the last days, the hearts of the children will turn to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children. Across the board, more interest has been sparked in family history. This can be seen through new TV shows like "Who Do You Think You Are?" and the increase in online genealogy sites. It's also interesting to see how family stories and individual experiences have been shared and transmitted throughout history. Until recently, experiences were only shared orally from generation to generation. Now some can access written records or journals from a few generations back. It seems lots of stories nowadays are preserved through the internet, with such devices as blogs. It's interesting to see the progression of this transmission of family history.

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  5. I come from a family with a lot of pioneer heritage, but it's really interesting to me that you went further back to 18th Europe because I don't know much about my family's history before pioneer times, even though what came before the U.S. and the Church and the crossing the plains era of my family is what really interests me. I want to know about the family members I had during the life of Christ or during the Rennaissance... to me it would be so interesting to hear about my ancestors then and try and draw similarities between them and myself even with the huge time gap.

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  6. The subject of family history spans our unit on folk knowledge and on oral knowledge. I find it interesting in Rachel's post that her father's connection with the past is not just a story; he has traveled to his ancestors' homelands. I don't know if he's tried the bagpipes, but these kinds of traditions (along with food and other material culture) add a vital dimension to the oral knowledge.

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